3 Strategies to Help Stop You From Regretting Past Mistakes
By: Elizabeth Dawber
Tags: Regret, Psychology, Advice, Self, Mental Health

Why Do We Have Regrets?

In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published an article titled ‘The temporal pattern to the experience of regret’. It detailed the results of a comprehensive study on long-term and short-term regrets. One of the things it revealed was that we are more likely to regret inactions rather than actions. For example, we are more likely to regret not traveling the world rather than the time we dated someone in high-school that we didn’t really fancy. Furthermore, it showed that inactions are regretted more in the long run.

The reason for this is because we can normally learn from ‘action regrets’ by not repeating the same mistake again or by making amends for it. For example, if we miss our child’s birthday party because we worked late, we can make sure that we don’t miss their birthday party next year or we can make it up to them sooner by treating them to a day out at the weekend. Our regret is then minimized or eradicated as a result.

‘Inaction regrets’, on the other hand, are hard to come to terms with because often there is not much we can do to rectify them. If we turned down a dream job then it is unlikely we will have that same opportunity again. If we didn’t go to university when younger, it becomes increasingly unlikely that we will ever go due to family and work commitments.

Furthermore, inaction regrets are normally the ones that linger throughout our life; they are the ones that make us think ‘what might have been?’. The feelings we harbor as a consequence of these regrets can negatively impact our physical and mental health, and can actually stop us from re-engaging with life.

In addition, psychologists Shai Davidai and Tom Gilovich found in their study that inaction regrets are typically linked to goals or aspirations, and this causes us additional distress because we feel that we have been prevented from being our ideal self. Unfortunately, we are then more likely to suffer from inaction regrets the more goals or ambitions we have.

How to Minimize Regrets

Now that we know why regrets are so common, let’s look at the 3 strategies that can be used to reduce or even eliminate regrets as identified in the study by Davidai and Gilovich: ‘The ideal road not taken: The self-discrepancies involved in people’s most enduring regrets’.

Create goals based on facts

Many inaction regrets come from having abstract goals. For example, we may have the belief that a certain job would have been our dream job and made us really happy and yet we don’t always base this assumption on logic.

When I was 20 years old, I managed to land my dream job in journalism. However, within a few days, I realized that it was far from what I expected it to be. Three months later, I quit. Yet if I had never gotten that job then I know for a fact that I’d still have regrets today, because I’d still be of the belief that it was my dream job.

Aspirations or goals can often be based on idealized beliefs rather than concrete facts. If I had actually done my research on journalism properly then I would have known all along that it wasn’t suited to me.

Dr. Sharam supports this idea in his article, 7 Tips for Setting Achievable Goals in Psychology Today. He states that ‘A decision to pursue a goal is based on an expectation of how much the goal achievement will make them feel happy’. This can lead to ‘miswanting’: wanting something that you don’t like when you get it. Therefore, ‘decisions made on the basis of false predicted happiness are likely to turn out to fail to maximize eventual experienced happiness’.

Consider the regrets you have because of the path you never chose. Is the assumption of how happy/rich/successful it would have made you actually based on fact? Perhaps, when you really consider it you’ll find your goal wouldn’t have given you the dream life you always believed it would.

When setting goals for the future, ensure that they are based on what you know and not on an imagined belief of what you may like. This will prevent you from regretting something that you never did, that you may not have liked anyway. It will also prevent you from ‘wasting’ time on something that won’t make you happy if you do eventually achieve the goal.

Choose the option you’ll find easier to live with

If we know that the things we regret are typically the opportunities not taken then why don’t we just take every opportunity there is and then we’d never have regrets?

Unfortunately, in the majority of situations, we find ourselves torn between 2 good options, and this is the main reason why many of us will have so many regrets. To minimize the chances we’ll regret the option not taken, we need to choose what we believe will be the situation we’ll find easier to live with afterward.

For example, last year my partner was in a position that allowed him to realize his long-time dream of starting his own business. Unfortunately, his business relied on him being in the countryside and not the city where we lived. I didn’t want to move to the countryside because I wasn’t willing to give up my job at a top university in the city. We had a choice: choose our careers or chose our relationship. We both chose our careers. It wasn’t the ideal solution but it was the one that we could both live with.

Davadai and Gilovich’s study identified 2 different types of people; those that believe more in the ‘ideal’ so they place emphasis on goals and aspirations. And those who are ‘ought’ who place more emphasis on fulfilling their duties and responsibilities. An ‘ideal’ person will be happier choosing their dream of traveling over starting a family, for example, and an ‘ought’ person will be happier to sacrifice a dream career for the sake of their family. Both myself and my partner are ‘ideal’ people and that is why the decisions we made to follow our dreams and not our responsibilities were right for us.

You may already know which type of person you are or you may have to consider the choices you made in the past and the regrets you have to figure out which one you are. Making decisions in the future based on whether you are ‘ideal’ or ‘ought’ will reduce the likelihood of regretting the choice you didn’t take.

Reduce the sting

If you believe that you regret not doing something that you genuinely knew you would love, then you need to try and find ways to reduce the sting of the lost opportunity by replicating it.

For example, if your regret was not traveling then you could replicate this experience by holidaying in the countries you wanted to travel to. If your regret was not having been a lawyer, then do an online law course. These mini experiences will give you a taste of the life you wanted and will go some way in reducing the regret.

You may even find that you don’t like it as much as you thought you would and this may eradicate the regret completely.

On the other hand, you may find that you love it and this could put into motion a plan to help you achieve the dream. For example, you may request overtime at work to save money so you can take a year off and go traveling. Sometimes we believe that it is too late in life to achieve our dreams and that is why we let our regrets fester. But by having a mini experience of the thing we wanted, it can propel us to finally make it happen.