The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

This combination of time travel and fabulism is a human superpower. It’s hard to fathom any other species doing something so complex,

they’ve discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people’s lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

If thinking is for doing, feeling can help us think.[27]

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.”

Then he dropped an intellectual grenade that reverberates still today: “My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing.”[20]

more often the performance prevents people from doing the difficult work that produces genuine contentment.

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

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

To be sure, regret doesn’t always elevate performance. Lingering on a regret for too long, or replaying the failure over and over in your head, can have the opposite effect.