Some Regrets are Bigger than Others

Regret. It has to be one of the most painful human emotions. We all have regrets. We regret opportunities that we didn’t take. We regret decisions we made. We regret assignments we didn’t take at work, trips we missed, balls we dropped, and jokes that didn’t land quite right. Typically, our culture has focused on what could be considered “big” regrets.  Missed promotions. Failed investments. Costly mistakes and accidents. Current research, however, demonstrates that it is the little things we take for granted that cost us in the end.

In a recent study, Neal J. Roese, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, and Mike Morrison, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, found that the most powerful regrets were tied to personal relationships. “The key finding,” Roese says, “was that romance was the number one regret,” cited by 18.1 percent of the respondents. The second choice – family, at 15.9 percent – was also related to personal relationships. “People crave strong, stable social relationships and are unhappy when they lack them,” the authors explain. Thereafter came education (13.1 percent), career (12.2 percent), finance (9.9 percent), and parenting (9 percent).

Another key finding in the study shows people felt greater regret over actions they failed to take versus actions they did take. And the more time that passed since the lost opportunity, the more focus is placed on that unrealized action.

While regret seems extremely unpleasant, it is not to be avoided. As the researchers highlight,

Regret is an essential part of the human experience – something everybody has as long as they have life goals,” he says. “Rather than avoid it, it’s better to try to take some insights out of the regret experience.”

Let us discuss some insights from the research above. First and foremost, there is a simple lesson which we must all remember: people matter. Money comes and goes. That project that you spent all weekend working on? It probably could have waited until Monday, right?

Value your relationships. Relationships with spouses, children, and friends are important. We all know it. And yet we often give those relationships the short end of the stick.

How many times have traded off a personal project or even exhaustion for an intimate dinner with a friend? How many times have you half-heartedly fielded questions from a curious child while you try to multi-task, smart phone in hand. In the big picture, your heart is in the right place. You’re trying to fulfill all parts of your life (work, family, friends, hobbies), but life is often about the smaller picture. Get together with your friends. Play softball on the weekends. Join a social group. Embrace the small opportunities to connect which present themselves to you as a gift each day.

Seize your opportunities. Remember, what our friend Mark Twain said,

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Strive toward a fulfilling life with fewer regrets; focus your energies on that which brings you true gratification: family, friends, fun, and challenge. The way to achieve this and live with less regret is to adjust your thinking. You have choices. You can stay at the office late, but you may miss dinner with your family. You can take a higher paying job that will involve a lot of travel, but you will see your children less. You can use the weekends to recover from the brutal workload you heaped on yourself or you can round up the gang, have a nice dinner, and maintain the relationships that really matter. It is ironic that we need funded studies to remind us of such simple things, but sometimes we do.