Optimism is associated with better physical health. Emotions like joy, gratitude, and hope significantly boost our well-being.[8] We need plenty of positive emotions in our portfolio. They should outnumber the negative ones.[9] Yet overweighting our emotional investments with too much positivity brings its own dangers. The imbalance can inhibit lea

the card players in the second group willingly initiated the unpleasant process of experiencing regret “because they needed preparative information to help them perform better,” the researchers wrote. “Participants who did not expect to play again needed no such information and, instead, wanted only to feel good about their current performance.”

The emotion becomes regret only when she does the work of boarding the time machine, negating the past, and contrasting her grim actual present with what might have been. Comparison lives at regret’s core.

This process begins with two abilities—two unique capacities of our minds. We can visit the past and the future in our heads.

If Only and At Least offered a faster route to meaning than the direct path of pondering meaning itself.[16]

In fact, other research has found that people who thought counterfactually about pivotal moments in their life experienced greater meaning than people who thought explicitly about the meaning of those events.

In short, people without regrets aren’t paragons of psychological health. They are often people who are seriously ill.

“People’s cognitive machinery is preprogrammed for regret.”

get tattooed today!” So, they climbed into the car and rolled to