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Tortured by regrets? A new study details how best to overcome them

136 points by lxm 2y ago

jl6 2y ago
It’s not obvious to me why this experiment induced regret specifically. Are we sure the participants didn’t feel some other emotion like annoyance at losing?
brodouevencode 2y ago
Faith and religion also work well.
- Shawnecy 2y ago
  [Citation needed.]
  - Flatcircle 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    Excellent satire on Hacker News participants. That WAS what you intended, right?
- haswell 2y ago
  Read about the notion of “spiritual bypass”. Yes, people turn to faith and religion. But this often amounts to a complete bypass of actually processing/reframing difficult feelings (like regret) and instead of learning to use those feelings to learn/grow and make your future less regretful, they’re offloaded onto some entity who is supposed to carry the load for you. It works for some people for a period of time because they feel like they have permission to let go. Until it stops working because letting go isn’t enough. Actually processing these feelings is necessary but gets ignored, and eventually this build up and leads to burnout/breakdown. (I was steeped in the church from a young age, and have watched countless people find the limits of this approach). Better to confront things head-on.
  - nindalf 2y ago
    It took me until I was 19 to understand this and accept it. The reason for my failure wasn't because some higher was displeased with my lack of piety or because of some deep mysterious plan the universe had. I failed for a much more mundane reason - I didn't work hard enough, or I didn't have the right tactics/strategy or the dice roll simply didn't go my way. In the first two cases I know what I need to fix and I can fix that. In the third case, I simply must shrug my shoulders and move on. But I was no longer sitting there unhappy about some extra terrestrial being not giving me the help I asked for. The religious mindset was making me unhappy because it made me think I had no control over my life, someone else did. Once I accepted that I had control of my life I was much happier and also more successful.
  - roninorder 2y ago
    I witnessed spiritual bypass many times in the context of people becoming "spiritual" as an emotional avoidance strategy. It's even more tragic in my experience because at least traditional religions have very strong and developed frameworks for addressing various types of grief - both individually and as a group. Modern-day spiritualism is dominated by shallow inspiration masquerading as profound psychological and medical insight. Courses on "raising vibrational frequency", literal belief in astrology, crystal healing, etc.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    I can speak about Christianity, because I'm a Christian. > they’re offloaded onto some entity who is supposed to carry the load for you This isn't supposed to happen, and in fact can be considered sinful. Christians are supposed to pick up their cross and carry it.
    - haswell 2y ago
      I was raised in a Christian church. Spiritual bypass was alive and well. The notion of "carrying one's cross" was more about finding virtue in suffering than it was about actually gaining practical tools to navigate life's difficulties or learning how to process them in a psychologically healthy way. > This isn't supposed to happen, and in fact can be considered sinful And this highlights the problem with turning to religion as a primary solution for dealing with life's major emotional challenges. If you don't happen to find the "true" Christians, you're out of luck. There's a wide variety of opinions and interpretations. Unfortunately not a single one of the dozen or so churches my family bounced around while I was growing up had an enlightened view of this. And I still have fundamental problems with "bearing one's cross" (the "correct" way) in terms of the actual psychological benefit. It personalizes things that happen in life that need not be personalized. Instead of establishing a rational reason for acceptance that can actually bring psychological freedom, it attaches the idea that it's your lot in life to suffer these specific things, which is a deeply harmful idea psychologically in the long run. e.g. if I do something that I later regret deeply, the church says "you fucked up, and now you must feel bad about it". A more reasonable mindset is to use the regret as a signal that change is needed. To choose how to live differently in the future based on that regret. And then to leave that regret behind since the past can't be undone.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    Exploiting for profit -- That sounds exactly like what some religious structures are doing. Perhaps "fun" for them, but bad for the ones exploited.
    - roninorder 2y ago
      I am an atheist but it's preposterous to dismiss the fact that a vast number of people find healing in organized or individualized religion. Or to suggest that the sole purpose of religion is exploitation for profit.
      - zelphirkalt 2y ago
        > Or to suggest that the sole purpose of religion is exploitation for profit. Which is not what I did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        roninorder 2y ago
        You are right, I extrapolated a bit too far.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >But lament not. These rationalists can be exploited for fun, profit, and votes. Wow, very pleasant and inspiring. What a wonderful thing to encourage (and, dare I say, on brand).
  - yoyohello13 2y ago
    > But lament not. These rationalists can be exploited for fun, profit, and votes. Implying that religious people are not (have not) been exploited in this way for centuries?
- croes 2y ago
  Does it? Or is it just shifting responsibility? It's a kind of narcissistic wound to accept that we make bad decisions. To learn to let go such regret is a big achievement for our further life.
dilap 2y ago
A related mental trick I use to move on from some mistake I'm stuck on is to think the following: In the future, I will make another mistake, and I will be regretting that instead of this. So I should focus on the present and the future, and try to identify and avoid that mistake (pick a different future!), rather than obsessing over the past. It's incredibly obvious, of course, but going through the exercise of thinking it out explicitly really helps.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  > In the future, I will make another mistake, and I will be regretting that instead of this. Why not regret all of them? I'm yet to see my capacity for regrets get saturated
  - tomcam 2y ago
    This was Mark Twain-level funny
    - tough 2y ago
      Attention is the real bottleneck
- adammarples 2y ago
  Our brains are machines for trying to avoid future mistakes, and doubling down on focusing on them isn't ideal. It's good that at least you're not also tying them to the past, which is doomed, but that's not what the future has to be. It's better not to focus on fears and let the possibility of the future open up instead.
  - anthonyrstevens 2y ago
    I think I could make a good argument that our brains are machines for repeating past mistakes. Interesting to think about the opposite sides of the argument.
Fin_Code 2y ago
Regret comes from a sense of loss or embarrassment typically. You missed a job, a partner and opportunity. You flubbed a social event, you missed a signal or you messed up at work. Each has a strategy to deal with specifically. Typical ways are gratitude, acceptance, understanding and more. You just need to change your perspective on the event and it should minimize its impact. Extreme events excluded.
AlbertCory 2y ago
I just rewatched Drive My Car. The director has a new movie that's quite different, but if you want to watch a deep exploration of grief and regret, that's your movie. Now I wish I knew Uncle Vanya better.
- roninorder 2y ago
  Haven't watched Drive My Car yet, but just from the trailer it looks like it's exploring loss and grief rather than the most poignant type of regret of losing something due to own action (or inaction). I.e. having agency and being directly responsible for loss.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I'd say watch it and then decide. No spoilers.
jamal-kumar 2y ago
I think I had a huge lesson early on in life where I generated a huge amount of bitcoin in 2009 on some old pentium 4 CPU (you could do that back then!) and would have basically won the lottery if I hadn't basically just given it away to a friend of mine who was trying to do something (Which ended up being getting scammed by that butterfly labs scheme)... That friend ended up probably one of the most anxious people I have ever seen, ended up threatening to hit me over some petty shit, doesn't talk to me nor a bunch of our old mutual friends because he dragged them into the scam, and all this drama that I probably would have been subject to in some way had I been the one to blow that cash. Hell - I likely would have been dead if I was in my early 20s with that much money. Reflecting on who I am now vs who I would have been if I had done the "less regrettable" thing and been way too rich way too fast is fine, I think I just paid for having everything in life put into perspective and that's invaluable. I'm doing fine these days which is good enough for me.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  Me and a friend also mined a ton of bitcoin around the same time on his PC. We forgot about the whole thing when it turned out that you couldn't do anything useful with it. I wonder if the keys are still somewhere on a disk on landfill.
  - paulpauper 2y ago
    this is why I never thrown out old computers or wipe out disks. They just sit around. Never know when you might need something on there
    - geor9e 2y ago
      That's what I used to say, until I ran out of spare bedrooms, and the tunnel of carefully stacked old computers collapsed on me. Luckily I escaped and was able to buy a 32 TB NAS which is now 1% full of early 2000s disk images. Now it's just me, a NAS, and a mattress on the floor. I'm never going back.
      - 2y ago
boogieknite 2y ago
Study was a bit silly. Losing $10 in a game of chance is one type of regret but real regret is normally several shades darker, or at least more embarrassing. Could make an anecdotal argument that losing a small stakes game of chance is one of the easiest levels of regret to move on from. Anyone whos seen a casino on tv could tell you this. (EMPHASIS: SMALL STAKES. Yes, gambling at advanced levels is as dark as anything i can conjure.) The movie Challengers this year portrayed the most relatable depiction of regret ive ever seen. Made me feel like the intrusive memories of mistakes i live with daily, and keep to myself, are a universal experience. Knowing that living with regret is part of life helped me embrace it. Now i can think of it as, "my brain doing that thing that all brains do" then move on without a mental breakdown.
- johnchristopher 2y ago
  > The movie Challengers this year portrayed the most relatable depiction of regret ive ever seen. Made me feel like the intrusive memories of mistakes i live with daily, and keep to myself, are a universal experience. Knowing that living with regret is part of life helped me embrace it. Now i can think of it as, "my brain doing that thing that all brains do" then move on without a mental breakdown. Thanks, I didn't want to watch that movie because even though I was interested by the setting I was not interested in the drama (and headlines I read in my feeds made it clear it was about drama). But your comment makes me reconsider. Yeah, regrets like not telling "I love you" or telling it or "let's wait a bit before becoming parents" or "let's go for this career" or "don't call that friend back", etc. Those regrets. Try not to make up too many regrets, people.
- ericmcer 2y ago
  Totally agree. For the 'Portfolio' strategy to be effective you need all the bets to be of a comparable size. If I place 20 $1 bets and 1 $10,000 bet, winning the $1 ones is going to be cold comfort to losing the $10,000 one. Similarly if I regret a 10 year relationship that ends in divorce, something like finding a great new restaurant isn't going to even that out.
hnbukkake 2y ago
[flagged]
zackmorris 2y ago
My whole life is regret and I found the article very insightful. I heard a religious quote that I wish I could remember: it's better to earn gold along the way by investing in relationships than to bet it all on a gold mine. As a hacker trying to win the internet lottery since.. 1992-ish, I put all of my eggs in one basket most of the time, and I've been part of at least a dozen ventures that all failed. It's like flipping a coin and getting tails 30 times in a row, which feels like 1 in a billion odds of losing to this extent. My best years were invested in techs like C++ that nobody even uses anymore, and I wouldn't use because they don't provide enough leverage. I only have the smallest bandwidth now to get anything at all done, and 90% of that is a waste of time due to conceptual flaws in languages, frameworks, operating systems, hardware, etc. In a very real sense, my most impactful choices were in the beginning, but I chose poorly or lost, so now it's too expensive to get back the sunk cost that I've invested. Making it ever-harder to keep going. Sometimes it feels like regret is all I have. Unfortunately the winners usually don't have this experience. They don't have the gumption to lose for a lifetime. So they don't go through the same healing and growth process. Vanishingly few wealthy people can step back and use their money for social wellness altruistically. Meanwhile some of us stumble onto concepts like duality and see through the matrix. We grok that there's no way to opt out of reincarnation. Then we look around and wonder why everyone is acting so strangely, having strong attachments to materialism in the 3D. The more we have, the more we cling to our ego and accomplishments, eventually living in fear of losing it all. While the people with nothing are more likely to lose their risk aversion and live in service to others. Which means that the wealthy and powerful often live in a fear-based reality, while the poor often live in a love-based reality. Which works out well for the rich, while the poor suffer under systems of control they have little say in. Zen Buddhism and Taoism touch on the idea that life is suffering, and suffering comes from attachments. So something that helps me is to go into situations knowing that I'll likely fail, but trying anyway, without expectation of outcome or regret. So that one day if/when the win comes, I don't waste it like so many others. And maybe, just maybe, we can change the world.
- roninorder 2y ago
  I am just a stranger on the Internet, so I apologize in advance if my comments/questions are irrelevant. > In a very real sense, my most impactful choices were in the beginning, but I chose poorly or lost Specifically in relation to picking up technologies. Unless you are working on something highly specialized, I am not sure your situation calls for such desperation. Learning new languages is not hard (as you are aware, as far as I can tell), and switching to a more agile stack like e.g. React/JavaScript could unlock new opportunities, considering how in demand it is across the industry. > We grok that there's no way to opt out of reincarnation. Hm. That's a personal belief, right? It seems like you are convinced in it as a fact of life, and that might not be the most change encouraging strategy. Similar to fatalism in a sense. > Which means that the wealthy and powerful often live in a fear-based reality, while the poor often live in a love-based reality. You are romanticizing the poor. Certain societies have more family and community oriented lifestyles. Not because they are poor but because they have a cultural predisposition and a tradition. Poverty is not full of love, financial abundance is not full of fear.
mellosouls 2y ago
Somewhat connected to the approach proposed in this article is something I've found that really helps when I've taken a hit: Reframe the loss as a learning experience that will save you much more in the long term. Example: You can read and listen to all the advice in the world, say, about being careful who you lend money to, but when you get stung for $100 by a "friend" that is going to register very, very much more strongly and will possibly save you $1000s in the future as your antenna will be much more effective. It isn't something that can always be used but being able to see seemingly painful hits as cheap lessons can be quite empowering.
jere 2y ago
What people experienced during a trivial, 1 hour study doesn't really compare to regret over decades of someones life.
l5870uoo9y 2y ago
The best advice I've read about avoiding regrets was in “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William B. Irvine. William B. Irvine has an entire chapter dedicated to it titled; Fatalism. The basic approach of the Stoics was that the past (and present) should be viewed fatalistically; fate would have it so, and therefore there is no rational (again a key word for the Stoics) reason to regret this or that. Have you spent years coming to one realization or another? Lived too long in one place? Worked too long in the same workplace? It was fated to take so long. The same goes for the present; enjoy it because you can't change it. The future, on the other hand, you must influence to the extent you can. William B. Irvine starts chapter six with: > “ONE WAY TO PRESERVE our tranquility, the Stoics thought, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us. According to Seneca, we should offer ourselves to fate, inasmuch as “it is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along.”
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tomcam 2y ago
  My wife grew up in the Cultural Revolution. I grew up in an unsafe and disordered environment. When I made peak money we spent a lot on awesome experiences, then saved a good chunk. Instead of making payments on a house in the kind of enclave where pro athletes lived, we paid cash in a FAANG neighborhood. Both of us have zero expectations about the future. We have no debt and I retired comfortably but not too lavishly. Our farmhouse is not beautiful but we can afford a good health plan. We both understood sunk costs from the beginning. We know governments love to take things. Of course we could have saved more. But the people I grew up with are dead or homeless addicts. Many of the people she grew up with were destroyed or disappeared by the government. If catastrophe strikes, and we have to move to a shoebox outside of Cleveland, that’s what we’ll do. Fatalism has worked out well for us. We are exceptionally fortunate to think congruently on those matters.
  - johnchristopher 2y ago
    > Fatalism has worked out well for us. Why didn't she stay in China ? Why did you leave that unsafe and disordered environment ?
declan_roberts 2y ago
I realized in my late 30s that I have almost no sense of dread when I think back on all of the cringey or embarrassing things I've done. I think this was a huge super power for me early in my career. I embarrassed myself over and over again and didn't care or even think about it. Right back at it the next day.
- tonymet 2y ago
  can you explain the part about your success?
nineplay 2y ago
I try to follow a 'butterfly flaps its wings' mindset. In the alt universe where I had done the 'right' thing, other tragedies might have befallen me. In the alt universe where I aced the interview and gotten my dream job, I might have died in a car crash. In the alt universe where I didn't say something stupid and alienate a friend, my husband might have been stricken by cancer. We just don't know and can't know. Every night, whatever happened, I try to feel a moment of gratitude. My family is here and secure and happy and that is not true of everyone and not to be taken for granted.
082349872349872 2y ago
Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate. https://reactormag.com/sonnet-against-entropy/ https://reactormag.com/sonnet-against-entropy/
dsizzle 2y ago
https://archive.is/GazXf https://archive.is/GazXf
Tutejszy 2y ago
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more_corn 2y ago
tl;dr Focus forward. Backward is the direction of blame, forward is the direction of improvement. “Boy that sucked, I’m sure gunna remember not to do that again” Read the SRE book on blameless postmortems for more blindingly obvious and wildly underused psychological and institutional hacks.
maverwa 2y ago
Curious. I think this applies less to me than I had hoped. I don’t feel regrets over these „you win some, you loose some“ coin toss decisions. Looking back, I clearly made avoidable mistakes but they where the obvious one (for me, back then, in that context) and I can clearly learn from them. But the ones I truly regret don’t fit in that scheme for me. They are just pure loss, no reasoning whatsoever, just stupid. Most of them socially. Not finishing my bachelor but instead canceling and going to work due to financial pressure I can deal with easily. I can „sell that“ to myself. Threading people poorly and loosing good friends that? No way I’m ever forgiving myself that. But these don’t fit in that „portfolio“ framework. They where just stupid decision. I still learn from that and know what to work on. But I cannot reason them away.
lionelholt 2y ago
"For some, regret might be slow-brewing indecision that amounts to loss, like not having children." Or ... having children!
skissane 2y ago
One thing I tell myself: a lot of mistakes I made when I was younger - or things that I regret others having done to me - if they hadn’t happened, it is almost certain I would not have had the children I do. Sure, I might have still had children - but I wouldn’t have had these children. These kids, and those regrets, are a package deal. So in loving them and saying “Yes” to their existence, I have to say “Yes” to those regrets too, which are necessary to their existence. I got this idea from reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, although it is my own personal spin on some of his ideas.
xyzzy3000 2y ago
The actual study: Reeck, C., & LaBar, K. S. (2024). Reining in regret: emotion regulation modulates regret in decision making. Cognition and Emotion, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2024.2...
AbstractH24 2y ago
This assumes people’s regret focus on things they did by applying sound logic which had undesirable outcomes. And in those situations it’s a no brainer to apply this framework The ones that are harder are where you regret something that occurred as a result of not applying logic. There, you need to learn how to cut yourself slack, understand the context you existed in at the time, and acknowledge that you’re a better person who has learned from it.
Elizabeth0147 2y ago
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Elizabeth0147 2y ago
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castillar76 2y ago
> They were paid $10 for the one hour of questioning as well as bonus money for points they’d racked up during the experiment. If they answered questions incorrectly, they lost real money and may have felt a pang of — you guessed it — regret. But they didn't "lose real money". They lost theoretical money that they didn't actually have. This is a trap people fall into with gambling, the stock market, and other up-and-down financial systems. What matters is the money you're holding in your hand, not the money you could have been holding in your hand. If I go to Vegas and put $20 on roulette and watch it multiply over rounds to $20,000, do I have $20,000? Not until I cash out I don't. So if the next round wipes all of that out, how much did I lose? $20. Not $20,000 — $20. I realize this is sort of tangential to the point, but it's also a valid strategy for avoiding regret.
Marcus_Ford 2y ago
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136 points by lxm 2y ago

jl6 2y ago

It’s not obvious to me why this experiment induced regret specifically. Are we sure the participants didn’t feel some other emotion like annoyance at losing?

brodouevencode 2y ago

Faith and religion also work well.

Shawnecy 2y ago
[Citation needed.]
- Flatcircle 2y ago
  [flagged]
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  Excellent satire on Hacker News participants. That WAS what you intended, right?
haswell 2y ago
Read about the notion of “spiritual bypass”. Yes, people turn to faith and religion. But this often amounts to a complete bypass of actually processing/reframing difficult feelings (like regret) and instead of learning to use those feelings to learn/grow and make your future less regretful, they’re offloaded onto some entity who is supposed to carry the load for you. It works for some people for a period of time because they feel like they have permission to let go. Until it stops working because letting go isn’t enough. Actually processing these feelings is necessary but gets ignored, and eventually this build up and leads to burnout/breakdown. (I was steeped in the church from a young age, and have watched countless people find the limits of this approach). Better to confront things head-on.
- nindalf 2y ago
  It took me until I was 19 to understand this and accept it. The reason for my failure wasn't because some higher was displeased with my lack of piety or because of some deep mysterious plan the universe had. I failed for a much more mundane reason - I didn't work hard enough, or I didn't have the right tactics/strategy or the dice roll simply didn't go my way. In the first two cases I know what I need to fix and I can fix that. In the third case, I simply must shrug my shoulders and move on. But I was no longer sitting there unhappy about some extra terrestrial being not giving me the help I asked for. The religious mindset was making me unhappy because it made me think I had no control over my life, someone else did. Once I accepted that I had control of my life I was much happier and also more successful.
- roninorder 2y ago
  I witnessed spiritual bypass many times in the context of people becoming "spiritual" as an emotional avoidance strategy. It's even more tragic in my experience because at least traditional religions have very strong and developed frameworks for addressing various types of grief - both individually and as a group. Modern-day spiritualism is dominated by shallow inspiration masquerading as profound psychological and medical insight. Courses on "raising vibrational frequency", literal belief in astrology, crystal healing, etc.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  I can speak about Christianity, because I'm a Christian. > they’re offloaded onto some entity who is supposed to carry the load for you This isn't supposed to happen, and in fact can be considered sinful. Christians are supposed to pick up their cross and carry it.
  - haswell 2y ago
    I was raised in a Christian church. Spiritual bypass was alive and well. The notion of "carrying one's cross" was more about finding virtue in suffering than it was about actually gaining practical tools to navigate life's difficulties or learning how to process them in a psychologically healthy way. > This isn't supposed to happen, and in fact can be considered sinful And this highlights the problem with turning to religion as a primary solution for dealing with life's major emotional challenges. If you don't happen to find the "true" Christians, you're out of luck. There's a wide variety of opinions and interpretations. Unfortunately not a single one of the dozen or so churches my family bounced around while I was growing up had an enlightened view of this. And I still have fundamental problems with "bearing one's cross" (the "correct" way) in terms of the actual psychological benefit. It personalizes things that happen in life that need not be personalized. Instead of establishing a rational reason for acceptance that can actually bring psychological freedom, it attaches the idea that it's your lot in life to suffer these specific things, which is a deeply harmful idea psychologically in the long run. e.g. if I do something that I later regret deeply, the church says "you fucked up, and now you must feel bad about it". A more reasonable mindset is to use the regret as a signal that change is needed. To choose how to live differently in the future based on that regret. And then to leave that regret behind since the past can't be undone.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
[flagged]
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  Exploiting for profit -- That sounds exactly like what some religious structures are doing. Perhaps "fun" for them, but bad for the ones exploited.
  - roninorder 2y ago
    I am an atheist but it's preposterous to dismiss the fact that a vast number of people find healing in organized or individualized religion. Or to suggest that the sole purpose of religion is exploitation for profit.
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      > Or to suggest that the sole purpose of religion is exploitation for profit. Which is not what I did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - roninorder 2y ago
        You are right, I extrapolated a bit too far.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >But lament not. These rationalists can be exploited for fun, profit, and votes. Wow, very pleasant and inspiring. What a wonderful thing to encourage (and, dare I say, on brand).
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  > But lament not. These rationalists can be exploited for fun, profit, and votes. Implying that religious people are not (have not) been exploited in this way for centuries?
croes 2y ago
Does it? Or is it just shifting responsibility? It's a kind of narcissistic wound to accept that we make bad decisions. To learn to let go such regret is a big achievement for our further life.

dilap 2y ago

A related mental trick I use to move on from some mistake I'm stuck on is to think the following: In the future, I will make another mistake, and I will be regretting that instead of this. So I should focus on the present and the future, and try to identify and avoid that mistake (pick a different future!), rather than obsessing over the past. It's incredibly obvious, of course, but going through the exercise of thinking it out explicitly really helps.

alexey-salmin 2y ago
> In the future, I will make another mistake, and I will be regretting that instead of this. Why not regret all of them? I'm yet to see my capacity for regrets get saturated
- tomcam 2y ago
  This was Mark Twain-level funny
  - tough 2y ago
    Attention is the real bottleneck
adammarples 2y ago
Our brains are machines for trying to avoid future mistakes, and doubling down on focusing on them isn't ideal. It's good that at least you're not also tying them to the past, which is doomed, but that's not what the future has to be. It's better not to focus on fears and let the possibility of the future open up instead.
- anthonyrstevens 2y ago
  I think I could make a good argument that our brains are machines for repeating past mistakes. Interesting to think about the opposite sides of the argument.

Fin_Code 2y ago

Regret comes from a sense of loss or embarrassment typically. You missed a job, a partner and opportunity. You flubbed a social event, you missed a signal or you messed up at work. Each has a strategy to deal with specifically. Typical ways are gratitude, acceptance, understanding and more. You just need to change your perspective on the event and it should minimize its impact. Extreme events excluded.

AlbertCory 2y ago

I just rewatched Drive My Car. The director has a new movie that's quite different, but if you want to watch a deep exploration of grief and regret, that's your movie. Now I wish I knew Uncle Vanya better.

roninorder 2y ago
Haven't watched Drive My Car yet, but just from the trailer it looks like it's exploring loss and grief rather than the most poignant type of regret of losing something due to own action (or inaction). I.e. having agency and being directly responsible for loss.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I'd say watch it and then decide. No spoilers.

jamal-kumar 2y ago

I think I had a huge lesson early on in life where I generated a huge amount of bitcoin in 2009 on some old pentium 4 CPU (you could do that back then!) and would have basically won the lottery if I hadn't basically just given it away to a friend of mine who was trying to do something (Which ended up being getting scammed by that butterfly labs scheme)... That friend ended up probably one of the most anxious people I have ever seen, ended up threatening to hit me over some petty shit, doesn't talk to me nor a bunch of our old mutual friends because he dragged them into the scam, and all this drama that I probably would have been subject to in some way had I been the one to blow that cash. Hell - I likely would have been dead if I was in my early 20s with that much money. Reflecting on who I am now vs who I would have been if I had done the "less regrettable" thing and been way too rich way too fast is fine, I think I just paid for having everything in life put into perspective and that's invaluable. I'm doing fine these days which is good enough for me.

rqtwteye 2y ago
Me and a friend also mined a ton of bitcoin around the same time on his PC. We forgot about the whole thing when it turned out that you couldn't do anything useful with it. I wonder if the keys are still somewhere on a disk on landfill.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  this is why I never thrown out old computers or wipe out disks. They just sit around. Never know when you might need something on there
  - geor9e 2y ago
    That's what I used to say, until I ran out of spare bedrooms, and the tunnel of carefully stacked old computers collapsed on me. Luckily I escaped and was able to buy a 32 TB NAS which is now 1% full of early 2000s disk images. Now it's just me, a NAS, and a mattress on the floor. I'm never going back.
    - 2y ago

boogieknite 2y ago

Study was a bit silly. Losing $10 in a game of chance is one type of regret but real regret is normally several shades darker, or at least more embarrassing. Could make an anecdotal argument that losing a small stakes game of chance is one of the easiest levels of regret to move on from. Anyone whos seen a casino on tv could tell you this. (EMPHASIS: SMALL STAKES. Yes, gambling at advanced levels is as dark as anything i can conjure.) The movie Challengers this year portrayed the most relatable depiction of regret ive ever seen. Made me feel like the intrusive memories of mistakes i live with daily, and keep to myself, are a universal experience. Knowing that living with regret is part of life helped me embrace it. Now i can think of it as, "my brain doing that thing that all brains do" then move on without a mental breakdown.

johnchristopher 2y ago
> The movie Challengers this year portrayed the most relatable depiction of regret ive ever seen. Made me feel like the intrusive memories of mistakes i live with daily, and keep to myself, are a universal experience. Knowing that living with regret is part of life helped me embrace it. Now i can think of it as, "my brain doing that thing that all brains do" then move on without a mental breakdown. Thanks, I didn't want to watch that movie because even though I was interested by the setting I was not interested in the drama (and headlines I read in my feeds made it clear it was about drama). But your comment makes me reconsider. Yeah, regrets like not telling "I love you" or telling it or "let's wait a bit before becoming parents" or "let's go for this career" or "don't call that friend back", etc. Those regrets. Try not to make up too many regrets, people.
ericmcer 2y ago
Totally agree. For the 'Portfolio' strategy to be effective you need all the bets to be of a comparable size. If I place 20 $1 bets and 1 $10,000 bet, winning the $1 ones is going to be cold comfort to losing the $10,000 one. Similarly if I regret a 10 year relationship that ends in divorce, something like finding a great new restaurant isn't going to even that out.

hnbukkake 2y ago

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zackmorris 2y ago

My whole life is regret and I found the article very insightful. I heard a religious quote that I wish I could remember: it's better to earn gold along the way by investing in relationships than to bet it all on a gold mine. As a hacker trying to win the internet lottery since.. 1992-ish, I put all of my eggs in one basket most of the time, and I've been part of at least a dozen ventures that all failed. It's like flipping a coin and getting tails 30 times in a row, which feels like 1 in a billion odds of losing to this extent. My best years were invested in techs like C++ that nobody even uses anymore, and I wouldn't use because they don't provide enough leverage. I only have the smallest bandwidth now to get anything at all done, and 90% of that is a waste of time due to conceptual flaws in languages, frameworks, operating systems, hardware, etc. In a very real sense, my most impactful choices were in the beginning, but I chose poorly or lost, so now it's too expensive to get back the sunk cost that I've invested. Making it ever-harder to keep going. Sometimes it feels like regret is all I have. Unfortunately the winners usually don't have this experience. They don't have the gumption to lose for a lifetime. So they don't go through the same healing and growth process. Vanishingly few wealthy people can step back and use their money for social wellness altruistically. Meanwhile some of us stumble onto concepts like duality and see through the matrix. We grok that there's no way to opt out of reincarnation. Then we look around and wonder why everyone is acting so strangely, having strong attachments to materialism in the 3D. The more we have, the more we cling to our ego and accomplishments, eventually living in fear of losing it all. While the people with nothing are more likely to lose their risk aversion and live in service to others. Which means that the wealthy and powerful often live in a fear-based reality, while the poor often live in a love-based reality. Which works out well for the rich, while the poor suffer under systems of control they have little say in. Zen Buddhism and Taoism touch on the idea that life is suffering, and suffering comes from attachments. So something that helps me is to go into situations knowing that I'll likely fail, but trying anyway, without expectation of outcome or regret. So that one day if/when the win comes, I don't waste it like so many others. And maybe, just maybe, we can change the world.

roninorder 2y ago
I am just a stranger on the Internet, so I apologize in advance if my comments/questions are irrelevant. > In a very real sense, my most impactful choices were in the beginning, but I chose poorly or lost Specifically in relation to picking up technologies. Unless you are working on something highly specialized, I am not sure your situation calls for such desperation. Learning new languages is not hard (as you are aware, as far as I can tell), and switching to a more agile stack like e.g. React/JavaScript could unlock new opportunities, considering how in demand it is across the industry. > We grok that there's no way to opt out of reincarnation. Hm. That's a personal belief, right? It seems like you are convinced in it as a fact of life, and that might not be the most change encouraging strategy. Similar to fatalism in a sense. > Which means that the wealthy and powerful often live in a fear-based reality, while the poor often live in a love-based reality. You are romanticizing the poor. Certain societies have more family and community oriented lifestyles. Not because they are poor but because they have a cultural predisposition and a tradition. Poverty is not full of love, financial abundance is not full of fear.

mellosouls 2y ago

Somewhat connected to the approach proposed in this article is something I've found that really helps when I've taken a hit: Reframe the loss as a learning experience that will save you much more in the long term. Example: You can read and listen to all the advice in the world, say, about being careful who you lend money to, but when you get stung for $100 by a "friend" that is going to register very, very much more strongly and will possibly save you $1000s in the future as your antenna will be much more effective. It isn't something that can always be used but being able to see seemingly painful hits as cheap lessons can be quite empowering.

jere 2y ago

What people experienced during a trivial, 1 hour study doesn't really compare to regret over decades of someones life.

l5870uoo9y 2y ago

The best advice I've read about avoiding regrets was in “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William B. Irvine. William B. Irvine has an entire chapter dedicated to it titled; Fatalism. The basic approach of the Stoics was that the past (and present) should be viewed fatalistically; fate would have it so, and therefore there is no rational (again a key word for the Stoics) reason to regret this or that. Have you spent years coming to one realization or another? Lived too long in one place? Worked too long in the same workplace? It was fated to take so long. The same goes for the present; enjoy it because you can't change it. The future, on the other hand, you must influence to the extent you can. William B. Irvine starts chapter six with: > “ONE WAY TO PRESERVE our tranquility, the Stoics thought, is to take a fatalistic attitude toward the things that happen to us. According to Seneca, we should offer ourselves to fate, inasmuch as “it is a great consolation that it is together with the universe we are swept along.”

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tomcam 2y ago
My wife grew up in the Cultural Revolution. I grew up in an unsafe and disordered environment. When I made peak money we spent a lot on awesome experiences, then saved a good chunk. Instead of making payments on a house in the kind of enclave where pro athletes lived, we paid cash in a FAANG neighborhood. Both of us have zero expectations about the future. We have no debt and I retired comfortably but not too lavishly. Our farmhouse is not beautiful but we can afford a good health plan. We both understood sunk costs from the beginning. We know governments love to take things. Of course we could have saved more. But the people I grew up with are dead or homeless addicts. Many of the people she grew up with were destroyed or disappeared by the government. If catastrophe strikes, and we have to move to a shoebox outside of Cleveland, that’s what we’ll do. Fatalism has worked out well for us. We are exceptionally fortunate to think congruently on those matters.
- johnchristopher 2y ago
  > Fatalism has worked out well for us. Why didn't she stay in China ? Why did you leave that unsafe and disordered environment ?

declan_roberts 2y ago

I realized in my late 30s that I have almost no sense of dread when I think back on all of the cringey or embarrassing things I've done. I think this was a huge super power for me early in my career. I embarrassed myself over and over again and didn't care or even think about it. Right back at it the next day.

tonymet 2y ago
can you explain the part about your success?

nineplay 2y ago

I try to follow a 'butterfly flaps its wings' mindset. In the alt universe where I had done the 'right' thing, other tragedies might have befallen me. In the alt universe where I aced the interview and gotten my dream job, I might have died in a car crash. In the alt universe where I didn't say something stupid and alienate a friend, my husband might have been stricken by cancer. We just don't know and can't know. Every night, whatever happened, I try to feel a moment of gratitude. My family is here and secure and happy and that is not true of everyone and not to be taken for granted.

082349872349872 2y ago

Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate. https://reactormag.com/sonnet-against-entropy/ https://reactormag.com/sonnet-against-entropy/

dsizzle 2y ago

https://archive.is/GazXf https://archive.is/GazXf

Tutejszy 2y ago

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more_corn 2y ago

tl;dr Focus forward. Backward is the direction of blame, forward is the direction of improvement. “Boy that sucked, I’m sure gunna remember not to do that again” Read the SRE book on blameless postmortems for more blindingly obvious and wildly underused psychological and institutional hacks.

maverwa 2y ago

Curious. I think this applies less to me than I had hoped. I don’t feel regrets over these „you win some, you loose some“ coin toss decisions. Looking back, I clearly made avoidable mistakes but they where the obvious one (for me, back then, in that context) and I can clearly learn from them. But the ones I truly regret don’t fit in that scheme for me. They are just pure loss, no reasoning whatsoever, just stupid. Most of them socially. Not finishing my bachelor but instead canceling and going to work due to financial pressure I can deal with easily. I can „sell that“ to myself. Threading people poorly and loosing good friends that? No way I’m ever forgiving myself that. But these don’t fit in that „portfolio“ framework. They where just stupid decision. I still learn from that and know what to work on. But I cannot reason them away.

lionelholt 2y ago

"For some, regret might be slow-brewing indecision that amounts to loss, like not having children." Or ... having children!

skissane 2y ago

One thing I tell myself: a lot of mistakes I made when I was younger - or things that I regret others having done to me - if they hadn’t happened, it is almost certain I would not have had the children I do. Sure, I might have still had children - but I wouldn’t have had these children. These kids, and those regrets, are a package deal. So in loving them and saying “Yes” to their existence, I have to say “Yes” to those regrets too, which are necessary to their existence. I got this idea from reading Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, although it is my own personal spin on some of his ideas.

xyzzy3000 2y ago

The actual study: Reeck, C., & LaBar, K. S. (2024). Reining in regret: emotion regulation modulates regret in decision making. Cognition and Emotion, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2024.2357847 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02699931.2024.2...

AbstractH24 2y ago

This assumes people’s regret focus on things they did by applying sound logic which had undesirable outcomes. And in those situations it’s a no brainer to apply this framework The ones that are harder are where you regret something that occurred as a result of not applying logic. There, you need to learn how to cut yourself slack, understand the context you existed in at the time, and acknowledge that you’re a better person who has learned from it.

Elizabeth0147 2y ago

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Elizabeth0147 2y ago

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castillar76 2y ago

> They were paid $10 for the one hour of questioning as well as bonus money for points they’d racked up during the experiment. If they answered questions incorrectly, they lost real money and may have felt a pang of — you guessed it — regret. But they didn't "lose real money". They lost theoretical money that they didn't actually have. This is a trap people fall into with gambling, the stock market, and other up-and-down financial systems. What matters is the money you're holding in your hand, not the money you could have been holding in your hand. If I go to Vegas and put $20 on roulette and watch it multiply over rounds to $20,000, do I have $20,000? Not until I cash out I don't. So if the next round wipes all of that out, how much did I lose? $20. Not $20,000 — $20. I realize this is sort of tangential to the point, but it's also a valid strategy for avoiding regret.

Marcus_Ford 2y ago

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