HOW TO Learn from Your Regrets

If you never pine for a different past, you'll stay trapped in a cycle of mistakes

- Arthur C. Brooks

REGRETS, I'VE HAD a few. But then again, too few to mention," Frank Sinatra crooned in his 1969 hit "My Way." The song's idea is seductive: that anyone can just declare that what's done is done and move on. Some take the declaration a step further and claim that they have no regrets at all (even to the point of tattooing it on their bodies). Whether an aspiration or an actual philosophy, "no regrets" suggests that life can and should be lived without looking through the rearview mirror.

Easier said than done, though. In 2020, author Daniel H. Pink launched the World Regret Survey, the largest survey on the topic ever undertaken. With his research team, Pink asked more than 15,000 people in 105 countries, "How often do you look back on your life and wish you had done things differently?" Eighty-two percent said regret is at least an occasional part of their life; roughly 21 percent said they feel regret "all the time." Only 1 percent said they never feel regret.

If you are of the "no regrets" school of life, you might think that all this regret is a recipe for unhappiness. But that isn't the case. True, letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme may be even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn't free you from shame or sorrow; it consigns you to make the same mistakes again and again. To truly get over our guilt requires that we put regret in its proper place.