THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Look Back To Move Forward w/ Daniel Pink

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

If you’re a human being, then you’re familiar with the emotion of REGRET.  It is IMPOSSIBLE to go through life and not experience regret.  Those are the FACTS.The good news is that regret, when managed properly, is HEALTHY. It serves as a COUNTERBALANCE and as a TEACHER. You LEARN more from the things you don’t do and second guess later, than those things you undertake in life.This week, you’re not going to have any regrets when you hear what DANIEL PINK has to say about the topic of regret.Dan’s new book, THE POWER OF REGRET is a deep exploration of how looking backward moves us forward. By the time you’re done listening to Dan’s insights, you’ll know exactly why regret is an often MISUNDERSTOOD EMOTION, and how you use insights into your own regrets to flip the script and lead your BEST LIFE.This is one of seven books Dan has written, including FIVE that are NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS.  His work is so universal that those books have been translated into 42 LANGUAGES and sold millions of copies around the world.  He is noted for delving into several parts of the human condition, ranging from CREATIVITY and BEHAVIOR to MOTIVATION, good TIMING, and how to enjoy more CAREER SUCCESS.However, this week, we’re focusing exclusively on regret, and we cover a lot of ground, including:- Four primary human regrets (foundational, boldness, moral, and connection/relationships)- What counterfactual thinking is- How to anticipate and minimize regret- Options for responding to regret- The five sins of regret…and why people get stuck living in regret and how to break out of negative traps so you can start moving forward again.Dan also discusses how to adopt a JOURNEY MINDSET and how to avoid creating a circle of regret validation.It’s not a question of whether or not regret will strike, it’s a matter of HOW YOU’RE GOING TO RESPOND when it does.Daniel Pink has got essential answers you’ll need to navigate those times when regret comes into your life.

This is the Ed Milach Show. Hey, welcome back to the show, everybody. Today is going to be a really enlightening day for so many of you, because when I read this man's book, it was for me. And so I'm really, really honored to be able to share his thoughts with you. A Daniel Pink is my guest today, five times New York Times best selling author, but guys, by the way, that is not an easy thing to do. And five times, this will be six probably.

And I gotta tell you, his background is so diverse and fascinating, we may be able to get into that a little bit. But the book that he wrote is called the Power of Regret, how looking backward moves us forward. And when I first heard the title of the book, I was telling Daniel, I go, ah, I'm not having them on. I don't think I agree with the premise of this thing at all.

And then I started to read it and it's groundbreaking work. It's stuff you've never heard before. So if you've got any regrets in your life, or maybe you've been told before, don't ever look back because then you're not looking forward. I think you'll find out that maybe some of that advice may be contrary to what Daniel will share with you and now really what I believe so Daniel welcome to the show Ed

Thanks so much for having me. Oh man. It's so great. And thanks for taking time to push past your skepticism I appreciate that Well, I told you I read the book cover to cover I read it in a day and a half and it is a great book everybody And I have to tell you because there's so many things in there that about framing and regret and that I just really had never thought about before. So let's start first of all with your overall premise. Why is regret not such a bad thing? Well, because because regret is a human thing more than anything else. Everybody has regrets. It is one of our most common emotions of any kind. It's arguably our most common negative emotion. And even though I don't like regret, even though it's painful, you have to wonder

why is something that is so kind of unpleasant, so pervasive? And the answer is, because it's useful if we treat it right. And that's the problem. Just as you were saying at the top, Ed, that this advice that we should never have regrets is nonsense.

The advice that we should never look back is nonsense. The advice that we should never look back is nonsense. The advice that we should always be positive is nonsense. What we need to do is get past this false courage of saying no regrets and actually demonstrate real courage by looking at regrets in the eye and doing something about them. And the science tells us how to do that. Well, that's the thing. I love that you said the word science

because the book is really not just some philosophy. No, no, I don't have any I don't have any philosophy. I look at the evidence. Yeah, and we and it's a it's almost this conversion You say in the book of like biology psychology neuroscience on one and it's I think it's more the way in which we look back and the Processes through which we do it the filter the lens how we process the information is what you really share in the book. So there's these two significant studies that he quotes in the book that are really fascinating about regret, the American regret project, which is an interesting name for a study. And then the world regret surveys, like 16,000 people in 105 countries. And what you uncover in this thing is that there's basically like four human regrets overall. Why don't you share with us with those of us? Sure thing. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning

those pieces of research because again, you know, I do think, you know, I said at the top like how I appreciate you're pushing past the skepticism. And I think that when when anybody makes a claim about anything, I mean, any of our books, you know, the books that you write or the books that I write or anything, you have to, I think you want to approach it with generous skepticism and say, how do you know? You know, you're making this thing, how do you know? And so what I, the reason I know this is because I've done, I looked at about 60 years of science and all those fields that you mentioned. I also do this piece of research called the American Regret Project, which is the largest public opinion survey of American attitudes of regret

ever conducted. And I also collected a lot of regrets in this world regret project. In fact, we're now over, amazingly, we're now over 19,000 regrets from 109 countries. So it's crazy. And so anyway, with that as a backdrop, let me tell you what I found, is that I and others had initially looked at

what people regret by looking at the areas of life in which they occurred. So I have a career regret, I have an education regret, I have a health regret. And what I found as you said is something deeper going on underneath. So the world regrets survey, the qualitative piece where I collected just this amazing number of regrets, I found that over and over again around the world people had the same four regrets. So let me quickly go through them. One, foundation regrets. If only I'd done the work. These are people who made small bad decisions early that accumulated into bad

consequences later on. Smoking. Not so much in the United States, but elsewhere. Bad health decisions, other bad health decisions, not working hard enough in school. A lot of people who spend too much and save too little. That's foundation. Second, boldness or grudge, big category. If only I'd taken the chance. These are people who didn't ask out somebody on a date, 20 years ago, who still bugs them, people who didn't start a business, people who didn't speak up, people who didn't travel. That's boldness or grudge. Third category, moral regret, small category, but really interesting and really painful to people Which is if only I'd done the right thing

These are people who bullied who cheated on their spouse who cheated a business partner who hurt other people Fourth category connection regrets if only I'd reached out these are about relationships all kinds of relationships not only romantic relationships. In fact, mostly not romantic relationships, just a full suite of relationships that we have in our lives that come apart, people want to reach out. They don't because they think it's going to be awkward.

And then the relationship trips apart even more and then they regret it even more and sometimes it's too late. And so those are the four things over over and over again, is a remarkable out around the world that people seem to regret. Yeah, and when you look back, you say that use the word counterfactuals. Yeah. And stood out to me because essentially what I think,

I want you to elaborate on that, but yeah, these things we talk about at least, and if only that's one way to process it, which I think is a tool for everybody to hear right now. But also, you basically say that sometimes we're telling ourselves a story that never even actually happened. Oh, completely. This is fascinating because I completely agree with you.

Well, no, but I mean, what you're getting at is just how freaking amazing our brains are. I mean, the ability to, even if if you think about the ability to, the ability to regret something requires incredible mental, cognitive, dexterity, and speed and muscularity. It's one reason why, say, five-year-olds don't experience regret because their brains haven't developed enough. It's also why people with certain kinds of brain lesions, brain lesions in the orbital frontal cortex that disturbs their ability to do this kind of thinking,

certain kinds of, and it's sometimes hunting to his patients and Parkinson's patients show the same thing. And so our brains are kind of amazing. If you think about what regret does and we'll get to counterfactual thinking. So think about just what regret is. Let's say that I regret,

that's not making me, let's take somebody who regrets Not starting a business and staying in a lack lecture job, okay? So then let's call it Maria so Maria So what does Maria do to have that regret first of all she goes back in time she gets in her time machine in her head beep she zips back in time to Maybe 10 years ago when she was contemplating starting a business. And now she didn't really start a business, so she's going to negate what really happened. She's going to do something counter to the facts there, all right.

So she does that. That's an incredible form of storytelling right there. It's like, I'm going to pretend that what really happened didn't happen and the opposite happened. But even more than that, I'm going to get back in my time machine. Beep, zip back to the present and realize that the present is now reconfigured because of what I just did in the imagined past. It's crazy. You know, and so counterfactual thinking is a big part of how we, how we think, how we process in the world. And as you say,

there are these two types of counterfactual thinking. One of them is what's called a, a downward counterfactual, a downward counterfactual is imagining how things could have been better. I like to call those, as you say, and at least. And so this is why, for instance, bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists. Because bronze medalists say, oh, at least I didn't, I'm so pumped, I finished third, at least I didn't finish fourth, like that shmo over there who didn't even get a medal. Right, so at least, the thing about at least, downward counterfactuals, at least, at least make us feel better, right?

And so I took this terrible job, but at least I made some money. They make us feel better, and that's okay. If only the other way, the other form of counterfactual thinking, where we do an upward counterfactual, we imagine, again, a world that runs counter to the facts where things are better. And if only I had started that business.

And if only's make us feel worse, but here's the thing. If only's make us do better, if we treat them right, at least make us feel better, but they don't really help us do better if we treat them right. At least make us feel better, but they don't really help us do better. If only's help us make us feel worse and make us do better. In fact, they make us do better in large part because they make us feel worse, because that feeling worse is a signal that something has gone awry. Okay, this is part of the brilliant part of the work. I'll get the ages wrong probably, but you do say in the book that, you know, five year olds haven't developed the ability to do it, but they're like seven or so, I think they actually begin to have the ability to anticipate regret. Yeah. And this is fascinating

to me because this part of, you know, the looking back in the if only's. But you make a really great point that regret is healthy in the sense that if you begin to anticipate it and may cause you to take different actions in the present So let's go to the huge absolutely Absolutely, that's that's a huge part of it that is again that this is this is our time machine goes in multiple directions Right, so what we can do is we can we can look forward and try to anticipate our regrets now There's a lot of good research on this and and it's tricky because a lot of times We're not that good at forecasting, we're not that good at, we're pretty good at forecasting for ourselves.

And so anticipating our regrets is a generally good idea but it can go awry. We have to actually put some guard rails up there. So for instance, let me give you an example that I, that I, that it still drives me nuts that people don't realize this, which is multiple choice tests. All right, multiple choice tests. So let's say you're taking a multiple choice test and you're on number seven and you say, okay, number, it, answer is C on number seven. Then you go along, did it, and you're, that number 11 or 12 and you're like, wait a second, I think the answer to number seven might be A, not C. Do you switch your answer? Now, We have evidence on this we have facts

Okay, again, how do you know on this one we have Evidence that you're not every time obviously, but in general in general you are better off switching your answer You're better off switching you're always better out not always I mean just as a matter of percentages People are more likely to switch from a wrong answer to a right answer than they are to switch from a right answer to a wrong answer. But people don't do that. Why? Because they anticipate the deep regret they'll feel if they switch from a right answer to a wrong answer and that deep regret that they anticipate is less than the regret they anticipate

from sticking with the wrong answer. And so they do the suboptimal thing because they're not good at forecasting their regrets. Anyway, that said, so we've got to be careful about this. That said, there's another issue here too, and forgive me for this preamble, but it'll make some sense once we get to the payoff. We can't anticipate every regret. We'll drive ourselves bonkers doing that. So I can't say, oh my gosh, what shirt should I put on today?

Should I put on my blue shirt or should I put on my green shirt? Which will I regret more? What should I have for lunch? Should I have a tuna salad sandwich or a quesadilla? Which will I regret more? There's some interesting research on what's called maximizing and satisfying, that when we make decisions, some people want to maximize every decision.

I want the Beth hamburger. I want the best person to mow my lawn. I want the best color car. And if you maximize every decision, that is almost a guaranteed recipe for being miserable Maximizers are miserable because you can't maximize everything You're always going to fall short and you're exerting a huge amount of mental and psychic energy And when every decision feels urgent and cataclysmic So what you're better off doing is what's called uncertain things is what's called

Satisfies and which is just good enough and And so in some ways, I think that, in some ways, the lesson of life, because we know maximizers are miserable and satisfies those are often happier, is you gotta figure out in life, what do you maximize on and what do you satisfy on? And I think that you maximize on a very small number of things, and here we go, here's where regret teaches us.

We can make a pretty safe bet that the me of 10 years from now anticipating my regrets. So we're going to talk to me in 2032. We're going to make a phone call to me in 2032 and say, hey, what are you regretting right now? I think the odds are zero that I will regret anything about what I had for lunch today. I think the odds are zero. Very good. The odds are zero that I will regret buying a blue car or a gray car or a green car, whatever.

But I think we can make a very safe bet that I will regret some of the things we talked about. I will regret if I do something today that is the wrong thing to do, that is I hurt somebody or I do something immoral. I will regret playing it too safe and not taking a sensible risk. I will regret not reaching out to someone and it's like you maximize on those things as you anticipate your regrets. Try to avoid your connection regrets and your boldness regrets and

your moral regrets and just freaking chill out and satisfy sin everything else. It's so good. I do use the, as you just read in the was reading the book. I'm like, I might do this more than the normal person this whole way. I think it's healthy to anticipate regret. I think everything is regret in context. So I have this overall context. Whatever your faith is, I'm a Christian, but whatever your faith is, when I pass away,

I have this vision, this belief system that I'm gonna meet the ultimate version of me, the destiny version of me, the guy who could have had the moments, the contribution, the memories, the emotions in his life. And I want to meet that guy. And so when I make decisions, I often process it because I'll re-gritify, I don't become that guy.

Does making this decision move me closer to this person? Will I regret not making this choice or taking this action because ultimately will put me closer to this person? Or will I re-grit this choice, this action, this decision, and it will move me further away from getting to this person? So I think oftentimes processing regret through the right context matters. My outcome is to meet that ultimate version of me, that destiny version of me. And so through that outcome and that context, I now make my choices and decisions based

out of the regret one way or the other, is it going to get me there or move me further away? Does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. It's actually a really smart idea. It's really, it's fascinating actually in that one of the things that we know about decision-making and problem-solving is that when we try to make decisions for ourselves or solve problems for ourselves, were generally pretty bad at it. And in some ways, we're too in mess in the details. And so there's a lot of research on what's called self-distancing, where you zoom out.

And what you're describing here is actually, it's one I haven't heard of before, but it's actually a brilliant self-distancing technique is sort of imagine meeting yourself, you're sort of what you're doing is you're sort of imagine your self-discipline. It's similar, it's like a first cousin of talking to the U of 2032.

Yes. But what you're doing here is actually even more interesting because you're traveling into the future, but you're also talking to, in some ways, the ideal version of yourself. Very well said. The whole distancing, I'd love that terminology, okay. Well, that's the key, that's the key.

And so, you know, we're terrible at solving our own problems. And'd love that terminology. Okay. Well, that's the key. And so, you know, we're terrible at solving our own problems. And this is why when we deal with it, when we deal with our regrets, especially when we try to extract lessons from them, we're better off taking a step back. So even things like, you know, when we're deciding what to do with regard to our regret, you know, for you saying, you know, instead of saying, what should I do, you should say, what should I do? You know, use language itself distance. Okay, that was big right there. That's big right there. There's a, it's not, that,

listen, that's actually helpful. There's a lot of research behind that. There's some really good stuff on, on how if you're making a decision, ask yourself, what would I tell my best friend to do? And a lot of times when people are stuck making a decision, if they say, what would you tell your best friend to do? They know immediately. Because there's a great business technique. Andy Grove used the former head of former CEO of Intel, used this technique where he was stuck on a decision and he would say, okay, again, his self-distancing technique, what would my successor do? And in that case, he almost always knew. And so Along those lines, would you elaborate on that? There's you have a thing in there on Bezos.

Yeah. It's something he does with regret, but it's pretty powerful. Well, what Bezos had, what Bezos had is, what Bezos had the regret minimization principle where he says that what you should do and making decisions, you should make your decisions based on minimizing your future regrets. And that's right to a point, but you can't minimize every single regret, all right? Because you're in the drive yourself not, what you should be doing, so I think of it as regret optimization. So what you should be doing is you should be

making forward thinking decisions to minimize these core regrets. The things we know most human beings that are gonna regret, not establishing a stable foundation, not taking a smart risk and growing and learning, not doing the right thing and not connecting to others. And the rest of the stuff, I mean, truly,

it doesn't matter. If you think about, I mean, just think about this. How many decisions you make in a day? And then go back 10 years from now, go back to whatever it is. We're talking in March of 2022. So imagine March of 2012. The same, imagine a single day and a random day

in March of 2012, how many decisions you made that day. And my guess is that you don't remember any of them. That's so true. All right. But the ones that you will remember are the ones that actually affect these big four concerns. Big four is huge. And then you some of these surveys, one of them, one of the big categories. I'm not talking about the college one needed. The other one is like romantic ones are often huge regrets for people later in life or

ones that are significant. Overall, generally speaking, do people regret more things they did that they wish they didn't do or things they didn't do? Meaning, uh, not asking someone out fighting for a relationship when it was broken up, you know, not making that investment. Overall, which one is more prevalent? When we're young, we have about equal numbers of action regrets and inaction regrets. But once we hit about 30 in our 40s and 50s, 60s, 70s, action regrets totally take over. Action regrets, I'm sorry, in action regrets

totally take over. In action regrets are typically double action regrets. And so we're much in general, we are much more likely to regret what we didn't do than what we did do. And there are all kinds of reasons for that. You say in the book, just looking at this right now, it just made me, it flashed me, I, parts of the book, I'm like drawing on, you know,

and that's how I know that's for me the part of the book that stands out the most. And you say that there's basically three options. This is big guys right here. If you're driving, it's like pull over and write it down. If you're on the treadmill, mark this thing right here, right? But there's three options for responding to regret. And I'll, what you kind of go there. Because I think this is awesome.

Sure. Sure. So I mean, I think there's a, there's a process by which you can, you can deal with your regrets. And so, and this is actually important at a, at a broad level, here's the thing. I don't, I don't want to go crazy here because I don't want to go overboard here because regret, just to be very clear, regret does not feel good, okay? It's a negative emotion area, it's never gonna, it's never gonna feel great, it's always gonna feel uncomfortable, it's not painful. And so the question that becomes what do you do with that? So a lot of us just ignore it, and that's a bad idea, there's no growth there. But some of us actually get debilitated by it and we wallow in it, we ruminate in it, we actually linger in it.

That's an even worse idea. What you want to do is you want to think about it. And the problem is that most of us haven't been taught how to do that systematically. And so to me, the way I look at this now is that we should have a kind of a three-step process, inward, outward, forward. Inward, outward, forward. So inward, you should, is how you reframe yourself and your regret. We should, and basically the TLDR here is treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. The self-talk that we use, the way we talk to ourselves, is absurd. We are brutal and cruel

in talking to ourselves. If we talk to anybody out, if we were in an organization and talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves, we would be fired. So true. I mean, it's ridiculous. So the solution there is don't do that. Instead, treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt.

This is something called self-compassion. Recognizing your mistakes are part of the human condition. And that any mistake that you make is just a moment in your life, not the full definition from your office. That's the inward look, outward look. There's a lot to be said for disclosure. Disclosure is an unburdening.

We fear that disclosing our regrets and vulnerabilities will make people think less of us. We have 30 years of behavioral science showing that in general, people think more of us for disclosing our vulnerabilities. And the other important thing is that when we take our regrets and talk about them and write about them, we're converting this blobby emotional abstraction into concrete words. And those are less fearsome. And that helps us make sense of it. So that's, and then finally, we were talking about before you got to extract a lesson from it. The way you do that is you take a step back and you think about the person you're going to be what the person and you're going to be in 10 years wants to do. You think about

what you tell your best friend to do. You talk to yourself in the third person. You think about what your success would do, any of those things. And so when we do that, it's not that hard. It becomes a habit. And so these regrets, the thing about it at some level, what pisses me off is that we've sort of been sold a bill of goods, where we say the way the effective blueprint for living is to never look backward and to say you have no regrets. And that's a bad idea. It's not bad feel, I mean, I think it is bad philosophically, but it's bad not because it's bad philosophically. It's bad because it runs against what 60 years of science tells

us. 60 years of science tells us that everybody has regrets and that done right, regrets can help us make better decisions, become better negotiators, become better strategists, become better problem solvers, become better parents, and find greater meaning in our life. So, anybody who proclaims no regrets is sort of saying no learning no growth Yeah, well you and you call in the book you call I think disclosure Compassion and distance is like the three terms that you used right right exactly exactly self-compassion is to how you treat yourself Self-disclosure is sort of the unburdening and then self-distancing is what we talked about before.

It's how you extract a lesson from it. I worry about people looking back in the sense that I think there's two types of people that look back. It's not just the regret. I think you can become a regret avoid-risk-obsessed, which is probably an unhealthy thing. But I think it's the people who go back that just keep replaying the same version of the story repetitively and don't do it. You've said they've extracted no lessons. The past is important because there's lessons in it, right? Exactly. And then there's the other person who's like, they replay the story of their highlight

from high school football. You know, over and over. So I'd brother, you're 40 years old. Let's get out of that past and let's get a vision for the future. So I think sometimes it's not looking back in this sense is very healthy, looking back and just living there all the time. No way. I think is it's not looking back in this sense is very healthy, looking back and just living there all the time.

No way. I think is where that comes from. There's something really instructive in the book for me though. And so because if you know them in advance, it helps you make the decision. If you know these five things in advance, it's sort of they become flags when you see them in front of you. Exactly. It's called on the five sins of regret, right?

This is big guys because when you hear Daniel describe someone, you can do all of them, brother, whatever you want, you go, yeah, that's one. But for me, I'm like, I'm now sort of, this is sort of in my particular activating system a little bit, you know? Like, I'm seeing these five things now. As I read the book about a week ago,

and I was already, I've been in a couple situations, I'm like, that's sort of one of the five sins of regret right there. And it stood out to me because it's such a healthy thing to sort of govern choices and behavior. So what are the five sins? Well, this has to do with moral regrets. And one of the things about moral regrets is interesting is that like you and I and your listeners probably have a consensus about that saving money instead of spending it frivolously

is a better way to build your foundation, right? Most of us have an idea that starting a business is bolder than staying in a lackluster job. But when it comes to moral, we don't have a consensus. We have some consensus. Most of us agree that you shouldn't harm or the people, you shouldn't have a consensus. We have some consensus. Most of us agree that you shouldn't harm other people, you shouldn't treat other people.

But there are other aspects of morality that we don't have full consensus on. And what we have to, and so for instance, I'll give you an example of this. So I have a lot of people, Americans who regret not serving in the military. And the reason they regret not serving the military is not because they missed the adventure,

but because they felt like I had a duty as a patriot to serve, and I didn't do that, and I let that down. There's some people who think that's not a real moral regret, and those people are wrong. It might not be their moral regret, but it is a moral regret. And so we have that.

There are other people and other cultures who think about, you know, they feel like they have an incredible duty to their parents in a way that many Westerners don't feel. Are those people wrong or right? They're them. That's their moral code. We even have to make things even not controversial at all. I have some women in the database who regret having an abortion.

And so we have different views in America, especially, we have very divided views on that. There's some people who would say, well, that's not a moral regret. And I would say to them, I'm sorry, you don't get to decide what other people's moral regrets are. We get to decide. And so moral regrets are complicated. Now again, in most of the more regrets that I accumulated, they mostly dealt with those areas of harm and cheating, hurting somebody else, cheating somebody else.

One of the things that we have to understand, I think it goes way beyond regret, is that when you look at one person's version of what's moral, it's not going to map perfectly to someone else's version of what's moral. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that one side is a bad person or anything like that. It just means that we have different, as John Hyde puts it in his book, The Righteous Mind, different moral taste buds. And I really encourage your listeners to read this book called

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Hyte, which really talks about, it even talks about how we make moral decisions. The way that we think we make moral decisions is not how we really make moral decisions. When we're deciding certain kinds of moral decisions like, do you believe in, no, I mean abortion is one, same sex marriage is another one. We like to think that we weigh the pros and cons and then like a judge and then come up with a verdict. That's not it. We make an emotional visceral decision immediately and then use reason to justify those

emotional decisions. Yeah. But of the five, the one that stood out for me was disability. And I'm not talking about disability like in a romantic relationship. Yeah. So the thing that stood out for me was disability. And I'm not talking about disability like in a romantic relationship. Yeah. So the thing that stood out for me, how often do you, at some point in your life, regret a form of disloyalty, meaning even gossip about a friend when they're not present? Okay.

There you go. I mean, we do have a consensus on, almost nobody would tell you it's a good thing to gossip about a friend when they're not present or to speak ill of somebody at any point, particularly not in their presence. And we are all constantly put into situation. See, I think a lot of people think we're regret, there's these biggies. Oh my gosh, I got a divorce and I could have saved my merits. Those are biggies. But there's the day to day.

Yeah. And you talked about yourself, talk. I have a philosophy about this. You know when you're doing something that you shouldn't do. And every time you do that, it steals a little bit of your identity. It steals a little bit of your self worth. And being aware of these situations that you're doing these little cuts that are things you regret as you're doing them, steal something about you that believes you're worthy and deserve

to be happy, successful, and blissful. And so what you give in the book are these seven techniques you won't regret. So this is sort of how you deal with this stuff, right? Oh yeah, there are all kinds of like, yeah, there's something, so we have this method, you know, it's awesome. But there are other kinds of things that I think are super useful. I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one of my favorites, and it's my favorite because I've done it and can testify to the, it can testify to its virtues. One of my favorites is a failure resume. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's awesome. This is an idea from Tina C. Lake at Stanford and here's what it is. So all of us have resumes or, you know, LinkedIn profiles or whatever. And our resumes are just these incredible accomplished, you know, list of how all of our accomplishments

and achievements and accolades and things like that. A failure resume is the flip side of that, where you list for yourself. You can share it with others. I've only done it for myself, where you list all of your failures, your screw ups, your missteps, your blunders, all that kind of stuff.

And the way I do it is this. So I list that all in one column. And then in the second column, I list what's the lesson I learned from that. And then the third column, I list what I'm going to do about it. Now, that second column for me was a revelation because he was what happened. I list certain kinds of mistakes and scripts and things like that. And look for the lesson.

And sometimes here's the thing. There is a lesson. Things don't work out sometimes here's the thing. There is in a lesson, things don't work out. There's bad luck. Nothing you can do about it. That's life. And so that's actually really helpful to understand that now because it lets you understand where it actually was your fault, where your decisions were the cause of the problem. And for me, when I looked at that, I realized that I was making the same two mistakes

over and over and over again. And this helped me prevent making those mistakes as all, most of those mistakes again. Well, I think a perfect example of that is my dad passed away about a year ago. I really regret that my dad passed away. That's not something that I did or caused. No, I still have regret.

And I, but what it does do is I look back at that relationship as I'm, I do evaluate how did I treat him? Was I loyal to him? These other things that you have in the book. Yeah. The other thing you teach in the seven things you won't regret to deal with it. I just want you to elaborate on this,

because I don't think, I think what you just said about, hey, not everything happens for a lesson to come out of it, is that you should, the seventh one, adopt a journey mindset. Yeah. And I think that's important because when you go back and hyper focus on a particular event, the context of it can be really magnified

compared to the entire journey that you're on. So elaborate on that a little bit. Well, this is from Jonathan the work of Jennifer Aucker, at Stanford, and what she has found, and I think a lot of us have had this experience, is that let's say you're driving toward a goal, you're pushing toward a goal, and you achieve the goal. And about 45 seconds after achieving the goal,

you're like, oh, yeah, you know? And so what's going on there? And what's going on there is that in some ways, we're over indexing on the destination and under indexing on the journey. It would really, and so what you see sometimes is once people hit their goal, hit a particular goal, they lose all future motivation, not all future motivation,

but they lose a lot of future motivation, so they don't sustain that high performance. And what you're better off doing is thinking about your work as a journey where the purpose is the trip itself. The purpose is getting a little bit better and actually sustaining your focus because you want to sustain your focus. There's another sort of related idea from the work of Guy wrote this book, maybe 40 years ago, a guy named James Kars, who wrote this book called,

finite and infinite games that I always think about. And his view is this, is that there are two kinds of games. A finite game, the goal is to win. An infinite game, the goal is to keep playing. And what you want is that the people who are happiest in life itself is an infinite game. Life is not a game you can win. It's much more complicated than that, but life is a game that you want to keep playing

because of its inherent joy and satisfaction and the contribution that you can make. And so this is another way of, it's another way of, it's another way of thinking about that. What would you say to somebody who says, I don't, I think you'd be concerned about this too, the validating somebody who regularly lives in regret and doesn't do it the way that you described. They don't frame things correctly. They're not taking lessons from it.

They're not extracting different things. And they live there. And maybe they're saying, you know what, I'm stuck here. And how do I move? Is it, are you changing the frame? The questions they ask themselves? So there's a lot of people, directly right now, context of the world, like, you know,

why would someone, every single day, want to get better? Because maybe they're pointing their life away, yeah, I just really regret where I'm at. I thought it'd be further along, I regret this choice. And they just live there. What would you say to them? Yeah, I mean, I think what we should do for them is, you know, it's a great question.

You know, I think what we have to do is empathize with them a little bit because I think the reason they're stuck there is that no one taught them how to deal with negative emotions. No one taught them enough what to do. And so I think that in some level, I think they need some coaching, I think they need some coaching

and how to do these three steps. And the first thing that I would tell them is, is a little bit of tough love, which is that you're not that special. All right, you have these regrets, but let me show you these 19,000 regrets I've collected from around the world. A lot of people have these regrets. So this doesn't, this is not some kind of final judgment on you. This is a, this is part of the

human experience. And you have a choice about whether you want to respond to this human experience by wallowing and giving up or by taking some small steps to do a little bit better. So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that I think you have to make those small steps somewhat easier on them. And so this is another reason why I think it's important for leaders and friends to talk about their regrets. One of the things that got me interested in this topic was that I started thinking about my own regrets, very sheepishly mentioned them to a few people and found that my mentioning

my regrets to them opened the floodgates. They wanted to talk about their regrets. They weren't boo-hooing it. They just wanted to have an honest adult conversation about it. So, just letting people, you know, treating people with kindness, recognizing that they're not that special because everybody has regrets. And then, you know, just's helping them make sense of it and try to do one small thing to make things a little bit better.

But I think that the kind of people you're talking about need some coaching. They're unlikely to do it on their own. They need a friend or a spouse or a boss or a colleague to help coach them out of it. Yeah, and I'll stick the book and coach them out of it. I mean, you will help. Yeah, I will.

There's a bunch of stuff in there. I say one of the thing to people that live in regret. I think the fact that you process regret and experience regret, I think most people give themselves credit for it. This is a great indicator of the caliber of person, or that you're a good person, that you deserve to be successful.

The fact of the matter is, sociopaths process no regret. They don't feel bad about any choice or decision or harm they've caused somebody. So the process, the presence of regret in your life is a screaming indicator, you're a good person, and that you deserve to be happy and successful. The lack of any regret, this is someone who's sociopathic,

and it's not who you want to be. And so just remember this, the fact that you're processing regret is a tremendous indicator that you're a great person and that you deserve bliss, success, happiness, whatever it is your outcome is. The only thing I have to add to that is a single word, which is amen. Yeah. Amen, right? Everybody. I just know exactly. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And the absence of regrets, like people who don't have truly, if you don't have regrets, it's a sign of a grave problem.

It's a sign that you could literally have a brain injury. It's a sign that you could have a neurodegenerative disorder. It's a sign that you could be a sociopath. And. No, but I gotta tell you, I have a couple of people that I thought were friends of mine. And I've really started to wonder because when I've watched them harm others or make poor

life decisions for themselves, and they process no regret from it, which by the way, no regret means no growth, no change. Bingo. At all. And some of these folks who I really valued their friendship over time, I'm starting to question their connection with me, not even things they've done to me. Other people, choices they've made. Like, you keep repeating this pattern

because you don't regret it and you're devoid of emotion about it. I think good people experience regret. I agree with you. I think that moral regrets are somewhat heartening. I kind of like the idea that people are bothered by that they bullied somebody three decades ago. I think it suggests that they know right and wrong and that they want to do the right thing. And so in some ways, these

things are, in some ways, these things are very heartening. And what I say, as you know from the book, is that these four core regrets that I write about, I think operate as a photographic negative of the good life. That is all these people who are telling me what they regret most, they're also telling me what they value most, what matters most to them, and what matters to them. Foundation, some stability, boldness, learning and growth, moral, goodness. I think most people want to be good and that a good life is a life where you are actually being good and then connection, which is love.

And once again, this emotion of regret is, again, it's a powerful emotion. It is, and this is what I'm trying to do here. There's a reason why I chose the title that I did, the power of regret, and why I didn't try to dance past the graveyard by not using the R word in the title. I used the R word in the title. I put it in big frickin' capital R word in the title. I use the R word in the title. I put it in big freaking capital letters right in the center

because regret clarifies what we value and it instructs us on how to do better. It's a powerful and transformative emotion if we treat it right. You said that you started to write the books. That's going to be one of my last couple questions. But you started to write the book because you had shared with some folks the a couple regrets of years and sort

of open the floodgates almost like if you're vulnerable with other people, they're more willing to be vulnerable with you. Right. Where's the line there though to where you create a circle of a pity party with. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because you run those you that will Google Daniel.

This man's had really a remarkable life and worked with remarkable people, some of the most influential people that have ever been on our planet, he's worked with. And so that's sometimes I think contextually, hey, we're at this level, but we're having this dialogue that's based on a context of our lives. And I sort of think there's a line there where perhaps you know, perhaps you

start to create a circle of people who validate your regrets and you validate theirs. And that's an interesting point. Very cool. What do you think about that? Yeah, that's a really good point. I think that is a danger. I think it's a danger because what you're doing there, I mean, what you're describing there is in some ways, I had never thought about this before until you describe it, but in

some ways what you're describing is kind of group ways, I had never thought about this before until you describe it, but in some ways what you're describing is kind of group rumination, not individual rumination, but kind of a collective rumination. And rumination is really bad for us. I mean, it really is. When you're caught in that infinite loop of thinking, thinking, and revisiting, and revisiting,

and revisiting, that is very, very harmful. There's nothing, I mean, truly, there's nothing good about rumination. And so what you're doing there is collective rumination. So in some ways, it's like a rumination contagion. That is, by my ruminating, I basically contaminate you and you start ruminating. And so, but this is why that process is really important, because when we treat ourselves with self-compassion, when we treat ourselves with kindness rather than contempt, when we disclose to make sense of it, when we draw a lesson from it, what we're doing is

we're interrupting that march to rumination. That is, you can see our brains on this march toward rumination, but this process builds a wall, and you're like, oh, you're stuck, you're not gonna get over this wall, you're not gonna get through this wall, you're not gonna get around this wall, because we're gonna get through this wall, you're not gonna get around this wall.

Because we're not gonna let you get all the way to rumination, we're gonna convert it into something else. That's the power of it. For me, it's everything you said, but the lesson, if you're gonna be in a group where you're doing this, I was yesterday, I flew back on a plane with some guys that are becoming new friends of mine. And we sort of, I told them I was gonna be interviewing today. And so I phrased the question as some of your

great life lessons come from something you regret. And each of us shared it. But what came with it was the lesson. And the lesson. The lesson was illustrative for the rest of us. Right. That's a good way to do it. And they had choices and decisions or lack of choices or decisions, actions or inactions that I hadn't had. And that was valuable to me, a couple of them were much older than I was. And so to learn from the kind of wisdom of their experience. So just that fine line, everybody of sharing this. So I got to tell you, but were you going to say something about that? I don't want to interrupt. No, no, I think it's I think it's very interesting. I actually, I sort of like the idea, I didn't write about this,

but it's an interesting way at it of talking about, I think in some cases it's smart to start from the lesson. And then, for people who are a little bit more enlightened, for people who've done a better job at reckoning with their regrets, starting with the lesson is a good idea. Tell me a lesson you've learned and the regret that produced it. That's a really interesting way to do it. Yeah.

I love this topic and I love your book. And in the reason why, there's why I wanted to have you on it. And I'll ask you one last question. There's nothing else like it. And it does sort of fly in the face of what I guess is conventional thinking and wisdom, which is don't ever look back. I get interviewed all the time.

People ask me if you have any regrets. I say, of course I do is conventional thinking and wisdom, which is don't ever look back. I get interviewed all the time. People ask me if you have any regrets. I say, of course I do. Several of them. And it's hopefully why I've grown. If I've done no self-reflection on my life. Exactly. Like lack of self-reflection creates a complete lack of self-awareness in the present state.

So this reflection creates awareness. There's an unhealthy way to do it, which is what Daniel talks about in the book. There's an incredibly healthy way to do it. And the other thing is this notion of, no, you're a people say, well, I don't regret anything because I'm where I am because of all these events. How do you know that? How do you know that had you extracted lessons from these things that you wouldn't be in a better place?

You know, or the exact same place. You don't know that that's true because all these things happen that you're you're where you are right now. That's just that's just something people repeat. That's got no validation to it. There's no study about. There's no science behind it at all. So, so guys, it's okay to be looking back at your life and extract the lessons and the emotions. Powerful part of the book, as I said earlier, is on the anticipation of regret. I love what you said about becoming not too obsessed about that, but there's power of that. Will I regret this getting the ultimate version of it? All right, last question. And when you do another one of these, come back on because you're working. I'll be back. It's magic, man. Your work is magic. And I love the parts about self-compassion

of the other things. Aside from what we we've covered and someone right now is sitting here, they're listening to it, they make you a Starbucks, they said, hey, I loved your book, you know, but I'm sort of stuck and you know, you an ed my let, you didn't cover this, you know, I'm sure there was something you wanted to say to everybody that he didn't ask you about regret, processing every threat, the power of it. And so I'm going to give you that opportunity right now so they can't ask you that question. What did we not cover that I not ask you that you feel is really important everybody understands about the entire topic and the book in the book or out of the book? Okay, I'll tell you one thing. I actually think that it's important. I think one of the lessons

of these regrets, particularly when you were you were talking about which is bigger in action or action regrets and in action regrets would take over. I think there's actually something to be said in life for having a bias, a slight bias for action. Not in every single circumstance, but a bias for action. Because what really knows that is over time or when we don't act, when we don't ask out that crush, when we don't start that business,

when we don't take that trip. And so a general bias for action, but the other reason for that is that sometimes I think we are We try to plan too much We're trying to make a career transition or do anyway like okay I got to plan it all out and plan it all out and plan it all out and and and I think we've gotten the sequence wrong that action Is in some things how we learn that we learn by acting that that in some ways By doing something we know what we learn more about what to do.

Rather than, so I wanna do it a little less planning a little bit more acting. And I think that in general, it's the surprise takeaway for me in this stuff is that I try to learn is that like, you gotta have just a bias for action, for trying stuff because you're less likely to regret that than you are not acting,

but what's more is that acting is a form of learning. It's not separate from learning. It's a form of learning. Very good. I enjoyed the day so much. Like, we've never covered anything like this on the show. Good. And when you're in the inspirational life strategy space, there is this bias towards never looking back. And I want everybody to know this.

I've said this before, but the context I've said it in is to go back and replay the video over and over again, which is probably not an accurate story, as Daniel said. Right. And extract no lessons from it and get no better from it. That's unhealthy. The way we're describing it in Daniel wrote about it is incredibly healthy, productive, and growth oriented. And so thank you today, brother. Very, very much for not only the

time, but you know, the other thing, man, I just, you work, you work very hard when someone asks you a question to give the best possible answer you can. It's not autopilot. You're reflective even as you're answering. And I appreciate that indicates to me you really want to help people in your passion about your work. So thank you. Oh, thank you. Thanks for the great interview your passion about your work. So thank you. Oh, thank you. Thanks for the great interview. I really, I enjoy talking to you. Thanks for making me think.

Yeah, I made me think and I know it's made millions of other people think, hey, everybody, if this helped you today, you have anybody you know that's dealing with any form of regret or they just want to grow and get better. They want to change their life. Have them listen to this show, share it with them, fastest growing show on the planet for a reason. We doubled again the last 90 days because I get you people

like Daniel and we get good stuff out of them every single time they're here so by the way you can get your hands on my new book to the power of one more go to the power of one more dot com pre-order it there's a huge reward and incentive in doing so God bless all of you max out your life. This is The Edmila Show. You