“I regret marrying a loser,” they would say, “but at least I’ve got these great kids.” Finding a silver lining doesn’t negate the existence of a cloud. But it does offer another perspective on that cloud.
And while At Leasts can be useful for significant regrets like misguided marriage choices, they are especially helpful for addressing peskier regrets that fall outside the big four categories. For example, suppose that you recently bought a new car, but now you regret the decision and wish you’d purchased a different make and model. Assuming the car is safe and functional, the exact type of car you drive has little bearing on your enduring happiness and satisfaction. In fact, whatever car we own, plain or swanky, we get used to it pretty quickly.[3] So while you might try to find a future-facing lesson from the regret—next time check the consumer guides more carefully before purchasing a vehicle—you should also At Least it. Think about how it could have turned out worse. “At least I got a good deal.” “At least I didn’t buy that other make and model, which had less trunk space.” “At least it’s paid off.”
At Leasts can turn regret into relief. On their own they don’t change our behavior, but they change how we feel about our behavior, which can be valuable. And because At Leasts spring to mind naturally far less often than If Onlys, we must summon them ourselves at the right time. At Leasts work like antibiotics. Sometimes we need to reach into the medicine cabinet and pop a few of them to fortify our psychological immune system and fight off certain harmful emotions.[4] If we use these antibiotics too often, their efficacy will wane. If we use them intelligently, they can aid in healthy functioning.
So, with action regrets that are bringing you down, ask yourself:
How could the decision I now regret have turned out worse?
What is one silver lining in this regret?
How would I complete the following sentence? “At least . . .”
* * *
—
As I was writing this book, Jeff was still working on undoing his regret through the slow and painful process of tattoo removal. It would require several more sessions and even more money.
At least he didn’t choose a larger font.
“Ao longo da vida ter dedicado meu tempo aos estudos para a menta (racionals) e ter deixado de lado o conhecimento das emo?ōes e sentimentos.”[*]
Female, 40, Brazil
//
“I regret ignoring my inner voice and not heeding its plea to be more adventurous (moving country, changing job when the boss sucks) and for trying to live up to the expectations of society instead of focusing on myself.”
Female, 47, Singapore
//
“I regret picking up a pack of Camel cigarettes on the way to a grim business meeting in 1999. To this day I smoke—sometimes heavily—out of habit more than enjoyment.”
Male, 44, West Virginia
13.
Disclosure, Compassion, and Distance
When last we met Cheryl Johnson, she was contending with a connection regret. She’d let a devoted friendship with Jen, a college classmate, drift apart over two decades, and she missed the closeness and camaraderie they’d once enjoyed. Hers is a regret of inaction, so she can’t undo it; it’s not possible to reverse a twenty-five-year void. She can’t At Least it either. Saying “Our friendship evaporated, but at least we didn’t have a huge fight” doesn’t offer much solace or meaningfully adjust the present.
Cheryl’s best response—and the optimal response to most regrets, action and inaction alike—is to use the regret to improve the future. If we look backward with the specific intent of moving forward, we can convert our regrets into fuel for progress. They can propel us toward smarter choices, higher performance, and greater meaning. And science shows us how.
Rather than ignoring the negative emotion of regret—or worse, wallowing in it—we can remember that feeling is for thinking and that thinking is for doing. Following a straightforward three-step process, we can disclose the regret, reframe the way we view it and ourselves, and extract a lesson from the experience to remake our subsequent decisions.
STEP 1. SELF-DISCLOSURE: RELIVE AND RELIEVE
Monkeys have constructed incredibly complex societies, but they have yet to establish a central bank that prints money and regulates its supply. Thus, when primatologists try to quantify what monkeys value, they introduce what they call a “liquid currency”—and what we non-primatologists call juice. By measuring how much fruit juice monkeys demand to behave the way researchers want, and how much they’re willing to sacrifice to behave the way monkeys want, scientists can price primate priorities.
Robert Deaner, Amit Khera, and Michael Platt, previously at Duke University, helped develop the technique, and in 2005, they used it to measure how much a group of male macaques valued signals of status and sex. The experimenters discovered that if they wanted monkeys to look at photos of a low-status macaque, they had to bribe them with lots of juice. But photos of high-status monkeys and of female macaque hindquarters were so enticing that the monkeys were willing to forgo juice just to glimpse them. In other words, the monkeys required “liquid payment” to view unimportant monkeys but were willing to “pay” to look at powerful or attractive monkeys—all of which suggests that these animals place a high value on markers of dominance and sexual fitness.[1]
In 2012, the psychologists Diana Tamir, now at Princeton University, and Jason Mitchell, of Harvard University, used a modified version of this technique to assess what those macaques’ close relatives—human beings—value most. In one study, Tamir and Mitchell presented their participants three choices: to reveal their beliefs about themselves, to judge the beliefs of other people, or to answer a trivia question. And they offered to pay varying amounts of money for each activity. Over 195 trials, people’s preferences were clear. They loved talking about themselves—so much, in fact, that they were willing to take significantly less money for doing that than for any other behavior. “Just as monkeys are willing to forgo juice rewards to view dominant groupmates . . . individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self,” Tamir and Mitchell wrote.[2]