What Makes a Good Life? This Study on 26,000 Regrets Will Guide You for the Rest of Your Life

20:39Mel Robbins:Well, I'll give you one that can prove this. Like I was ridiculously irresponsible with money. You and I went to college when you would check in to registration and there were tables with credit card companies just passing them out. And I just spent money. Yeah. And then I developed a habit where I just spent money that I didn't have. And I entered my marriage with like$20 ,000 in secret credit card debt that I couldn't pay off. And it became this thing that I deeply regret. And when I listen to you now, I'm realizing I hid in shame and embarrassment for probably 20 years through my 20s and 30s and continued to make stupid decisions, which ultimately led me to being in a situation where my husband and I were$800 ,000 in debt in our early 40s with liens on the house.

21:28That was so painful that it fundamentally altered

21:32Mel Robbins:the way I approach money because I didn't want to feel that bad anymore. There you go. But I dragged it around for probably two to three decades, Dan, before I unpacked that and said, okay, it's gotten painful enough. I can let it get worse before it gets better. I mean, we can analogize to going to the doctor, you know, you say, oh, I've had a really bad headache for three weeks. Or do you wait till you're two years from now when you're doubled over and can't breathe? No, you address it then because that's like a headache. A headache is a signal. Hey, something's off. We have a lot of regrets, you know, in the database that are very much like that.

22:10And I think that part of it in your case and in the case of these other folks is that when we don't talk about our regrets, when we don't share them, when we don't actively try to make sense of them, we feel like we're the only one. And we're not. That's the thing. Remember, it's universal.

22:26Mel Robbins:Can you talk to the person listening who just heard you say we feel like we're the only one? And they're saying to themselves, but the thing that I did is really bad, Dan. this is, I am a horrible person. What does your data say? And what do you want to say to them? Okay, so what I want to say to them is practice self-compassion. This is actually, there's a powerful strain of research on the need to be compassionate to ourselves. This is not some kind of gooey, woo-woo kind of thing. Essentially, here's what I would tell you. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. The way we talk to ourselves internally, You idiot.

23:06You know, swearing at ourselves internally is lacerating and mean-spirited. Don't do that. There's no evidence that -

23:14Mel Robbins:Easier said than done. What would you say to a friend in that situation? And say, would you say, you freaking idiot. You're a moron. You don't know what you're doing. You're a terrible person. You wouldn't say that. I mean, it's preposterous. You wouldn't say that to a friend. So treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself the way you would treat a friend. And second thing is what often happens is that when we make a mistake, when we screw up, when we do something that feels shameful, we think that it constitutes the full measure of our life. And it's not. It's a moment in your life.

23:46It's not the full measure of your life. If you think about this timeline, it's like, okay, during this period, you messed up. But the rest of the stuff, you're a decent person.

23:53Mel Robbins:It's like a scene in the movie. Yeah, it's a scene. It's a scene in a decade-long movie, and it doesn't fully define you. Unless you keep replaying the scene. Exactly. Is that the biggest mistake we're making? Unless you keep rewinding and watching that scene over and over and over again. Well, Dan, I'm just going to keep on dragging around the suitcase. I cheated. I squandered my finances. I was a jerk to people. I was unkind. I was too—if I had just shown up earlier, I regret not showing up earlier or picking up the phone because then the person died. I've been dragging this. I just keep replaying the scene.

24:28Mel Robbins:Is that the biggest mistake that we're making is wallowing in it and replaying it? Absolutely. We make two different kinds of mistakes. We ignore it or we wallow in it. And both are really bad. What we should be doing is like, oh, wow, this feels crappy. What is this regret telling me? And if we treat ourselves, you know, the other thing that I would say with a little bit of tough love on this is - Hit me. Let's go. You got to, like, any of these regrets? I mean, I'll be a compassionate person, but you're not that special. I mean, you know, it's like you tell me about, give me one of these regrets.

25:01It's like, oh, wow, you're the really only person in the world who squandered their money. Oh, wow, you're the only person in the world who cheated on their, it's like, I got, like, you're not that special. Like, it's part of the human experience. You're a human being. And it's not like you're like, you know, narcissists believe they're singularly excellent. But some of these people are almost reverse narcissists feeling like they're singularly bad. It's like, you're not that special. You're a human being who's living an experience. And at a moment, you have a scene where things went off the rails.

25:26All right, that feels terrible. I get it. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself like you would a friend and recognize it's a moment in your life rather than the full measure of your life. And when we do that, we can begin to make sense of our regret. We can begin to draw lessons from it.

25:42Mel Robbins:I love that because it doesn't it certainly defines how you handled yourself in that moment. But if you really are willing to use the research that you're about to unpack with us, you can allow it to teach you to become who you want to become in the future. I'd love to hear more about this huge research study, rather, that you did on regret. Dan, what's the most common type of regret that you found when you dug into the research? What we discovered is that around the world, people seem to have the same four kinds of regrets. So these fall in buckets. Right. So there are four categories all over the world.

26:19Foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work. Boldness regrets, if only I'd taken the chance. Moral regrets, if only I'd done the right thing. And connection regrets, if only I'd reached out. The most common regret was a regret of connection, all right? And so typically the story was this. You had a relationship or should have had a relationship that should have been intact and it comes apart. Usually in undramatic ways, there's very little, there's like less drama than you would think. Like, hey, I went to college with my friend Mel and we were really tight. And then, but I haven't seen her for 10 years.

26:52I should really give her a call. See how she's doing. Oh, no. It's going to be so awkward. And she's not going to care. So I don't do it. And sometimes it's too late. There's one woman I interviewed who had a friend who was deeply ill. And she hemmed and hawed about reaching out to her because she thought it was going to be awkward. And when she finally did call, the friend had died that morning. That morning? That morning. There are other people who, one woman named Cheryl, who I interviewed, had this great friend from college, actually, who she drifted apart from. And she, for 20 years, 25 years, and she didn't call her.

27:29She wanted to call her, but she didn't call her.

27:31Mel Robbins:And what happened next? So I got kind of frustrated with her because it was a classic example of a connection regret. But as I have these interviews, I'm getting to know this person better. and I'm thinking to myself, Cheryl, you know what to do here. And so finally I get an email, maybe five days later, I sent an email to her, her friend's name was Jen. I sent an email to Jen and she was so happy to hear from me. And then they ended up having a phone conversation and then they ended up meeting up. And now I swear, I get a photograph every six months of, hey, I just saw Jen, here's a photo of us together.

28:06And so, you know, that's what happens. And this woman was like living with this regret for 20 years. And all she had to do was reach out. And once she did, things were better.

28:16Mel Robbins:So I've got a story like this. So when you and I were in elementary school and high school, we're talking 70s and early 80s. You got it. No social media, no cell phones. Absolutely not. I went east for college. I grew up in the Midwest. My best friend, Jody Bricken, stayed in the Midwest. And our two paths separated. Okay. And I stayed out east. She moved to Chicago. She then moved out West. We spent the next 20 some years not talking for no reason. Right. For no reason. We just had no cell phones. I didn't even think to follow her because once I got social media, we hadn't talked in like 10 years just because we didn't see each other again because I moved far away.

28:58Mel Robbins:She moved far away. And then we ended up bumping into each other one summer in, I think, my mid-40s. and I immediately was flooded with how much I missed her. And we started making these dates, Dan, that whenever we would both travel for work, we would try to line up our calendars and then we'd stay in a hotel room together and she'd be at her business conference, I'd be at mine. It's one of the greatest joys of my life. It just took a second, Dan. It takes a second to reconnect and what I have found in interviewing people like this is that the relationship restarts almost instantly. Oh my God, we text every week.

29:37Mel Robbins:I talked to her on the phone. We see each other many times a year, even though we live nowhere. We live in completely different parts of the country. I'm in Vermont, she's in Arizona, but it has brought so much joy to my life. And that's how a lot of these relationships come apart. There's like, you know, it's like, we think that relationships come apart because there's some kind of explosion. And in this case, and in many cases, just adrift. That was the case with Cheryl and Jen. That was the case with you and Jodi. It just drifts. And all you have to do, reach out. I cannot tell you how much joy it will bring you.

30:11Mel Robbins:If there's somebody on your mind that you're thinking about as I tell you the story of Jodi, call them, text them, send them this episode. And say, you just listened to this episode with Mel and Dan, and you were the first person that popped into my mind. And I would have, and I just had to reach out to you. I miss you. I just was thinking about you. It's a life lesson. When in doubt, reach out. When in doubt, reach out. Let's hit the pause button. I want to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I also want to give you a chance to share this with people in your life. I'm sure there's somebody that has popped up into your mind because I promise you, when you reach out to somebody based on what you're learning, you're going to feel better in your relationship too.

30:52Mel Robbins:And while you do that, don't go anywhere because Daniel Pink is just getting started. And as you can tell, he has so much more to teach you and me about this topic. So stay with me.

31:05Mel Robbins:This episode is brought to you by SoFi, the all-in-one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest all in one place. Let's talk bank accounts for a second. The average bank savings rate is 0.39 % in interest. You're earning pennies on your savings, but it doesn't have to be that way. But with SoFi's high-yield checking and savings, the money barely making moves sitting in your savings account can earn over eight times the national average savings rate with eligible direct deposit. No account or overdraft fees. We love transparency. You can get your paycheck up to two days early. Plus, get up to a$300 welcome bonus when you sign up with eligible direct deposit.

31:50Mel Robbins:Sign up for SoFi checking and savings at SoFi.com. slash Mel. SoFi Checking and Savings is offered through SoFi Bank and a member FDIC. Terms apply. I want to tell you about our sponsor, Noble. Noble is a footwear brand built for training and daily life. They have these incredible all-day knit shoes that are perfect for running errands, working out, and everything in between. It means you don't need to switch shoes throughout your day. The all-day knit from Noble gives you one less thing to think about. And by the way, you need fewer things to think about and fewer things that get in your way.

32:27Mel Robbins:That's the whole idea behind Noble, a footwear brand that's designed to support you as you build your physical, mental, and emotional strength. Because real strength, it's not built on perfect conditions. You build it in the middle of real life when you're busy moving from one thing to the next and you just keep showing up. You just need the all-day knit for your whole day. exclusively for the Mel Robbins podcast listeners. Noble is offering 35 % off your first order. Visit nobleproject.com and use code MEL for 35 % off your entire first order. That's www.nobullproject.com and use code MEL for 35 % off.

33:14Everyone talks about spring cleaning. clearing out the clutter, fresh starts. But what if the reset you actually need isn't on your calendar? It's inside your body. This time of year, your immune system is working overtime, and inflammation can flare. Those lingering symptoms you've been pushing through all winter? They start demanding attention. Function gives you access to over 160 lab tests that track things like inflammation, immune health, hormones, and metabolism, all through a simple blood draw. Plus, body scans that help show where changes may be happening before you even feel them. This is how you reset this spring.

33:53With Function. Not by guessing, but by knowing. Own your health for$365 a year. That's a dollar a day. Learn more and join at functionhealth.com slash MEL. And use gift code MEL for a$25 credit toward your membership.

34:14Mel Robbins:welcome back it's your friend mel robbins today you and i are here with daniel pink he's a new york times best-selling author and he is the author of this global study on regret that fundamentally changed how i think about my life the past future things i've done i know it's really making you think differently here's my next question why are we so hesitant like why do we wait so long to reconnect, Dan? Okay, because we are, here we go, I'm going to just drop another nugget of tough love here, because we think we're more special than we really are, okay? So here's what I mean by that, all right?

34:54We think it's going to be awkward, and we think the other side's not going to care. That's the most important thing. And then, but if you give it the reverse, you would say, suppose that my old friend Mel called me after 15 years. Would you say, that's really weird? I can't believe she did that. I'd be thrilled. Exactly. So why wouldn't the other person be thrilled? We think somehow we're entirely different from everybody else. Of course, we'd be thrilled if somebody reached out, but no one else would because we're so special. And so there is a great degree, particularly on connection regrets.

35:26This is actually a big lesson for me personally about feelings of awkwardness as a barrier to doing things. awkwardness is the most papery of paper tigers. Awkwardness, I mean it. I'm dead serious about that.

35:40Mel Robbins:Well, I love the papery of paper tigers. Awkward. Well, it's a paper tiger. It's not a real tiger. It's a paper tiger, but it's really paper. You go, beep, and you go right through it. It's like those things in like those, it's like in those cartoons where somebody comes and sees this giant shadow and the person looks like huge. And then you realize there's this little bitty thing right there. That's what that is. So there's awkwardness in thinking about the reconnection and we overestimate it. What am I going to say? I haven't talked to them. I don't know what they're like. We over-index on the words we use and don't realize that simply the warmth and the overture was what matters.

36:19There's research on this. Vanessa Bonds at Cornell has done a lot of this research on compliments. It's the same thing with compliments. We don't give enough compliments. And the reason we don't give compliments is we say, oh, it's going to be really awkward if I give a compliment because I'm not going to say it right. Or and the other side is not going to care when, in fact, it's not awkward and they do care. So push past that. So awkwardness is not cringe is not an excuse. Call it whatever you want, guys. It is not an excuse. So I think that's the reason why.

36:47Mel Robbins:Well, I love this topic. And let me tell you why. As you were just talking, and I'm sure as you're listening or watching, you're probably thinking about people. that you really miss or you haven't thought of and you just kind of are thinking, well, maybe I should reach out. Like I have a friend that I regret having a falling out with in college, right after college. It was due to my mental health issues and I like lie that I, or it wasn't a lie, it was gossip that I engaged in and I really regret it. And it's the awkwardness and the cringe and also this fear of rejection that keeps me from reaching out.

37:28Mel Robbins:And what I'm getting in the middle of this conversation is I need to, because I know I value connection. I know I value acceptance. I know I value these things. And I too am guilty. We're talking 30 plus years of missing that connection or at least just not ever checking back in. Can we unpack this regret of not saying I love you? Yeah. It's very striking to me. Yeah. How many people have either never heard one of their parents tell them they love them? Yeah. Or you hear it on the deathbed. Yeah. Or you're waiting for somebody to say it to you. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about this particular regret?

38:13Mel Robbins:Because I see it a lot. I didn't tell my mom or dad how they felt or my brother or my sister, and then they died. The solution is very, very simple. Say it now. Period. full stop. That's all that it is. And if it feels a little awkward, fine. Push past that awkwardness. The feeling of awkwardness you're experiencing now is nothing compared to the feeling of regret you might feel five years from now, 10 years from now. And just say it. And the thing is, like this is also learned behavior because once you do it, the next one becomes easier. Once you do that, it becomes easier and easier and easier and easier.

38:51Listen, listen, listen. This is not natural. I'm like a straight white man in my early 60s. It's not natural for me to text a buddy of mine and say, hey, I'm thinking of you, all right? That is not, that is learned behavior. That is not natural behavior. But you know what? When you do that the second time, it's not as awkward. And there's not been a single time I've done something like that where someone said, ooh, that's weird. Instead, it's the exact opposite. Oh my God, so nice of you. Fantastic. Hey, that was so nice of you to text. Like what's going on with you?

39:22Mel Robbins:I love that. One of the other buckets is foundation regrets. What are those? Your regret about debt is a foundation regret. Meaning I was like spending too much. I was very irresponsible with money, spent money that I didn't have, racked up all, that's a foundation regret? Yeah, I'll tell you why. Because each individual act of spending was not itself cataclysmic. It's small decisions that you make early in life that accumulate to terrible consequences later on. So I spent too much and saved too little. Now I'm broke. Hugely common regret. I didn't exercise or eat right. Now I'm profoundly unhealthy.

39:58You smoke one cigarette, it's fine. You do it for 20 years, it's not so fine. And so these are regrets that accumulate and then have terrible consequences. And that's how these things catch up on us. I had a guy who talked about this guy, lovely guy from Tennessee who had a tough background, but did very well in his career, but never saved money because he ate out all the time. And he felt good about taking people out to dinner, picking up the check all the time. And you go out to eat, you know, five times a week for 10 years, it's gonna add up, man. And so, you know, suddenly he's like, oh my God, I'm 40 years old, I have no savings.

40:35And I'm like living paycheck to paycheck, even though I have a good job. So it's those kinds of things. So that one time you go out to dinner and treat your friends, it's all cool. It's the accumulation of it all that really does it. So, and again, it erodes the foundation of our lives. And one of the things about regret is that regret is telling us what constitutes a good life. Okay, so these four regrets are telling us what makes a good life. And one of the things that makes a good life, and I think sometimes gets short shrift, is that a good life has some stability. A good life has a foundation to it.

41:08A good life is not precarious. You know, we can talk about self-actualizing and feeling a sense of purpose and meaning, and da, da, da, da. But if you can't pay your rent, your life is less good.

41:19Mel Robbins:So it sounds like foundational regrets, these things that sneak up on us and then all of a sudden we've fallen off a cliff and our health is terrible. We have no money. We're addicted to alcohol or smoking. We've been a workaholic and never made time for friends and now have no idea where all our friends are. that these are kind of like the little daily habits that either lead you to building the foundation of a good life or that have you constantly putting it off for a rainy day. You know, in that famous fable, you had the grasshopper who was spending all summer, you know, playing the fiddle and dancing around, or you had the ant who was assiduously gathering food for the dark winter.

41:58And here's the thing. It's like, you don't want to live your entire life as an ant. You don't want to always prepare for gloom or doom, but you want to be a little ant-like because your life is going to be better if you take responsibility, if you build that foundation.

42:11Mel Robbins:Let's talk about one of the other categories of regrets, which is boldness. Yes. What does that mean? Okay, this is a really big category and it spreads throughout all of our lives. And I think it tells us something really, really important. Boldness and regrets are this. You look back on your life and you have two choices. You play it safe, take the chance. Play it safe, take the chance. Hey, I can study abroad even though I've never been out of the country or I can just go and do my thing for another semester. Hey, this person I'm really attracted to, I wanna ask him or her out on a date or I can just wimp out and not do it.

42:45You know what? I'm so deadened by this job. I can either stay in it and continue the deadening or I can take a risk and start a business. Overwhelmingly, when people don't take the shot, they regret it. Overwhelmingly. And it doesn't matter the domain of life. It's like when we look back on our lives, What really bums us out is not taking the chance, not speaking up for something we care about, not standing up for ourselves, not starting that business. I got hundreds of regrets about dating. It's like, oh my God, there was this guy or this gal and I really liked him. And this is 30 years ago and I really wish I had asked him out on a date.

43:26So regrets of boldness, if only I'd taken the shot.

43:29Mel Robbins:I'm so happy that you said it was overwhelmingly willingly focused on things that you didn't do, because I do believe there's kind of two ways to go through life. You either are going to be saying, boy, I wish I had, or boy, I'm so glad I did. And as I went through even our own like thousands and thousands, I didn't really see a lot of regret saying, I really regret quitting that job and starting the business, even though it failed. I really regret, you know, like selling everything and figuring out how to travel full time. I really regret moving. I didn't see really anybody reporting that boldness when it was a decision aligned with something that they yearned for ended up being a regret.

44:15Amen on that one, man.

44:17Mel Robbins:Can we talk about a common phrase that we saw? And I know it showed up profoundly in this massive research study that you did on regrets, which is, I wish I had done this sooner. Yeah. So it's almost like this two-pronged regret where you regretted something and then you have the double regret of wishing once you caught it, that you caught it sooner. Yeah. What keeps people in this waiting period? Because I do feel like there is, at least in the, I wish I'd gotten out of the relationship sooner. I wish I would have quit in this. I wish I would have gone back to nursing school sooner. I wish I would have.

44:53Mel Robbins:that it's almost an admission to yourself that those years you spent talking yourself out of it, you knew the truth all the time. You might have, but sometimes the timing isn't right. I'd give yourself a lot of grace on that. How come? Because you did something. You took the action. You know, you took the action. There's this old Chinese proverb, which is, you know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Second best time is now. And so that's what you just have to think about it that way. So if you stop smoking, that's fantastic. Yeah, maybe you should have stopped five years ago, but you didn't.

45:30And so give yourself some grace because you did something really hard that is actually valuable for yourself and your family. I really think you got to treat yourself with grace and not obsess over doing something sooner. A lot of us are kind of risk averse. And Daniel Kahneman, the great Nobelist, he has research basically distilling to this. Quitting at the right time always feels like quitting too early. That's just the way that it is. I think it's really helpful to hear that when it's time to quit, you're typically not going to feel ready. Exactly. So if I say, oh, this is too early for me to quit.

46:05Oh, it might be a signal that it's the right time.

46:07Mel Robbins:It's almost how we gain surety in the decision is by kind of knowing, okay, it's time. but you build up a little bit more friction and then just say, now it's time. Right, right. Here's how I kind of think about it, if I'm trying to extend myself some grace, is that when we look back on decisions that we've made and then we regret not making them sooner, we forget that we're looking back from our future self. Very good point. We did not have the information that we have as we're looking at the past. What I know about myself and what I'm capable of as a 57-year-old woman is very different than what I knew about myself and the resources and understanding that I had when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s.

47:00Mel Robbins:And it's not very fair to hold the 57-year-old version of me, who, by the way, is different because of the things I regret. Good point. And hold that knowledge over myself 20 years ago. Right. And so when we scrutinize our past behavior, we have to think about that person. Not this person today, but what did that person know? Daniel, these four categories that regrets fall into are so helpful to understand. And it's also helpful to understand that this is universal. We all experience regrets and we can learn from them. It's helping me see that I'm not alone, and it's also giving me the sense that there's something you can do.

47:44Mel Robbins:And I'm sure as you're listening right now or you're watching, there's something in this conversation that's just making you feel lighter, you're nodding your head, or perhaps you're thinking about people in your life who really need these tools and these frameworks. I want you to take a minute and share this episode with them. Drop it in your family group chat. Send it in an email to a bunch of colleagues. Send it to that friend of yours. that's constantly beating herself up? Because I'm gonna tell you something, this research could fundamentally change how they see their entire life. And don't go anywhere because Daniel Pink has specific recommendations for how to turn regret into your biggest teacher when we return.

48:27Mel Robbins:Stay with me.

48:32Mel Robbins:You know, I'm a real homebody and one of my favorite life hacks is having your home reflect who you are. Not who you used to be or what you think it's supposed to look like, just you now. And Ashley has pieces that fit whatever your style is. In fact, I'm scrolling Ashley's site right now and I am immediately drawn to the pieces in the Serene Bay Outdoor Collection. Oh my gosh. My personal style, it's cozy and functional. The pieces in this collection feel elevated, but still livable. But what I love most about Ashley is that every piece doesn't just look great. They're built for real life with features like stain resistant fabrics that are easy to clean and even machine washable cushion covers.

49:19Mel Robbins:Plus, Ashley offers white glove delivery. So everything is brought right into your home and set up where you want it, making the entire process easy from start to finish. Visit your local Ashley store or head to ashley.com to find your style. From leaky faucets to faulty ovens, home breakdowns are inevitable. And repair bills add up fast. That's why American Home Shield Warranty is a homeowner's sanity saver. AHS can repair or may even replace covered parts of home systems and appliances no matter how old. And as a benefit with select plans, you can video chat with a repair expert in real time.

49:56Mel Robbins:American Home Shield. Don't worry, be warranty. Get 20 % off any plan at ahs.com slash mel and see promo details. See ahs.com slash contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations, and exclusions. What if you stopped waiting to feel ready and just did the thing you're afraid of? With Southern New Hampshire University, taking the next step toward your goals couldn't be simpler. Their online degree programs are flexible, affordable, and designed to fit your life. And get this, you can apply for free in minutes. It doesn't have to feel like the right time to be the right time.

50:39Mel Robbins:Get started at snhu.edu slash Mel.

50:48Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. And today you and I are diving into one of the most powerful studies I've ever read. It's all about regret and how you can use regret to be a signal and a teacher that improves your life and who you become in the future. Daniel, here's my next question. One thing that really strikes me is how many people talked about how they stayed in relationships too long or stayed in relationships with somebody that was disrespectful or abusive or treating them poorly. And when you are in a relationship where you're being disrespected or worse, abused. Oh my God, yeah. You don't feel safe.

51:30Mel Robbins:You don't have the perspective that you will be able to leave it, which explains why you hedge on the decision to do so at the time. And so I love that piece of this, Dan, to help relieve you of continuing to make yourself wrong for not being ready or able at the time that you now think you should have been. Absolutely right. Because of what you know now. Yes. And remember, regret requires agency. And what does that mean? Agency means you have control over what you do. Okay. All right. I can't regret that it's raining outside. I can be disappointed if I want to go outside. I can't regret that because I don't have control over that.

52:09But if I go outside in the rain and don't bring my umbrella, I can regret that. And there are people in relationships out there who actually don't have agency. And so you can't beat yourself up for not making decisions when you didn't have the agency. It'd be like beating yourself up for renting outside. So you have to scrutinize the person that you were at that time and treat that person, again, not better than anybody else, but not worse than anybody else. This is the mistake that we make. We treat ourselves worse than we treat other people, and we shouldn't do that.

52:39Mel Robbins:Let's talk about the big regret of worrying too much about what other people think. Oh, Lord have mercy. We have so many of those. Let's talk about that. There are a lot of people who have those kinds of regrets. And it is another case where our view of the world is distorted. I actually, when I was younger, I actually cared what other people thought in a way that was probably not particularly healthy. and then I actually discovered what people thought about me and it was this nobody was thinking about me they were thinking about themselves no one was thinking about me and it's like like it's like it's like what's in social psychology is called the spotlight effect we think that we're constantly in the spotlight everybody's watching us and they're not so go do your thing go do your thing And the other thing, okay, here we go.

53:34I'll give you something else. I'll see you and raise you. If they do care, there's a two-word answer.

53:44Mel Robbins:Let them. Well, you can't control. It's been very liberating to create that theory and use it and recognize how much time and energy I've wasted and how much power I gave away to worrying about what other people were thinking. and how that held me back from doing things that I wish I had done sooner. Absolutely. And it's true for most human beings who walk the planet. That is true of. And if we can get people past that, people are going to act more boldly. They're going to speak up for things that they care about. Why do we regret the things we didn't do rather than the things we did? Hugely important question.

54:27And this is a big, big deal. There's a lot of existing research on this. In the architecture of regret, there are two kinds of regrets. There are regrets of action, regrets of inaction. I regret something I did, I regret something I didn't do. Now, what you see over and over again is that with action regrets, I regret something I did. If only I had married Fred instead of Ed, I would be much happier, all right? So we say if only. So that's what's called in the literature an upward counterfactual. We think about how things could have been better.

54:59Mel Robbins:And that's the dating one. Well, yeah, that's if only I had married Fred instead of Ed. But with action regrets, we can do what's called a downward counterfactual. We imagine how things could have turned out worse. And there's some really super cool research on this. But here's where it comes up in the database. Legions of people, all women, saying such a, I shouldn't have married that idiot, but at least I have these two great kids. There's a famous piece of research. I love it. They showed photographs of the three medalists on the Olympic medal stand in a number of different situations. But they didn't show what medal they got.

55:37And they asked people, based on their facial expressions, how happy are they? And so not surprisingly, the happiest looking people were the gold medalists. The second happiest people were the bronze medalists, not the silver medalists. Because the silver medalists were doing an upward counterfactual. If only I had peddled four tenths of a second faster, I'd have the gold. The bronze medalists were doing a downward counterfactual. At least I have a bronze, not like this schmo who's four tenths of a second behind me, who's like, doesn't get a medal at all. And so for action regrets, we can at least them.

56:17Mel Robbins:So I married the wrong person and I regret doing that, but at least I have the kids. At least I have these two great kids. Okay. All right, so it makes us feel better. Doesn't necessarily do better, but it makes us feel better. With inaction regrets, we can't do that stuff. That's true. You can't undo it. You didn't do it. You can't undo something you didn't do. You know, it's metaphysically impossible. You can't do it. Let's say the person who's listening or watching right now is sitting on a big decision. Maybe it's about their career. Maybe it's about a big move. Yeah. And they're stuck in that overthinking, not quite sure what to do in terms of taking this risk or making this decision.

56:57Mel Robbins:what does your research suggest? Yeah. So if you're thinking about that, you're not sure what to do. You can imagine having a conversation with someone who you haven't met yet, but who cares deeply about you. Okay. And that is the you of 10 years from now. So 10 years from now. So imagine you're having a conversation with the you of 2036. Okay. What does that person want you to do? It's pretty freaking clear to me what that person's going to want you to do. Because that's what all the people in your list and all the people in my database want you to do. They want you to build a solid foundation for yourself and for your family.

57:27They want you to take that shot. They want you to do the right thing and they want you to reach out. And it's pretty clear. And so have that conversation. You know what that person 10 years from now wants you to do. And you don't want to have the conversation where 10 years from now, you have to tell the you of 2036, hey, I wimped out.

57:43Mel Robbins:I blew it. I blew it. I chickened out. I love that. Let's move on to the final bucket of regrets that you found in your research. We have talked about connection, foundation, boldness. The fourth one is? Moral. What is moral regret? You're at a juncture in your life. You have two choices. You can take the high road. You can take the low road. And when you take the low road, when you do the wrong thing, most of us, most of the time, regret it. And in this category, it was the smallest category, but very, very, very deeply held. And this is sort of the weird thing about this topic of regret is that the more you go into it, at least for me, the better I feel about human beings.

58:29Because what this suggests to us is that most of us are good. Most of us want to be good. And most of us feel shitty when we're not good. I think that like 95 % or 98 % of us are good people who want to do the right thing. And when we don't do the right thing, we feel bad about that. 98 % of people like want to do the right thing and feel bad. That's good. Those 2 % mess things up for everybody else. So more regrets are if only I'd done the right thing. And so if the person who's listening right now is feeling that weight, what's the first

59:05Mel Robbins:step to take in order to free themselves of this burden that they've been carrying around? So one thing, as I mentioned before, is to treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself with compassion. You are not the only person who has a moral regret. Every single human being has a moral regret. It doesn't mean that you're a shameful, terrible person. It means that you might have done a bad thing. And so it's also a kind of a moment in your life, a scene in your life, rather than the full measure of your life. So there are different things that you can do. If you've hurt somebody, right?

59:38if you have cheated somebody, if you have harmed somebody in a way, go make amends.

59:44Mel Robbins:How do you do that if the person isn't here and you cannot forgive yourself? You play it over? You hold on to the regret about what happened? First of all, you can talk about your regret. And the other thing, especially as we get older, we can instruct other people who are younger how to live better than we did. So let's talk about how we deal with the regret we haven't dealt with. Let's go through the process based on this research. So now that we know that we're dealing with whether it's a connection or foundation or boldness or a moral regret, let's look at your research and unpack for a stand, how do we actually face a regret that we haven't dealt with yet?

1:00:26Okay. So I look at it as three stages. Okay. Inward, outward, forward. Inward, outward, forward. Right. So inward. Inward is basically how you treat yourself. And as I've mentioned, the way we talk to ourselves in the face of screw-ups is brutal and cruel. If you were to sort of implant in my head and like broadcast my self-talk out there, if I would do that in a workplace, HR would be intervening immediately.

1:00:53Mel Robbins:I'd drive you to the seventh floor over at Mass General Brigham right now. Exactly. He's like, he's nuts, get him out of here. This is a madman, the way he's talking to other people. Yes. So don't do that, please. And here's the thing. It's not only because it's not nice, because we have piles of evidence showing that that kind of horrifying, lacerating self-criticism doesn't improve your performance. What does improve your performance is self-compassion, which is treating yourself with kindness rather than contempt, treating yourself the way you would treat a friend. And when we do that, okay, so that's inward.

1:01:24Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Recognize that regrets are part of the human experience, i.e. you're not that special. And also, and this is, I think, super important, is that it's a moment in your life. It's not the full measure of your life. And so when we do that, that opens the way to the second stage, which is outward. And there is a very, very strong argument here for writing about and talking about our regrets.

1:01:49Mel Robbins:Why does writing about or talking about your regrets help you? It does a few things. First, it's an unburdening because we're carrying something and you sort of say, oh, I got this heavy backpack on. Let me just put it on the table here. You're putting it on the table, right? So, but more important than that, I think this is the really interesting thing. There's a guy at the University of Texas, Jamie Pennebaker, who's done a lot of research on this. If you write about a big regret you have for 15 minutes a day for three days, you feel better about it. Why do you think that works? Because what you're doing is you're taking something blobby.

1:02:23You're taking this like phantom that is like stalking you and you're saying, okay, come here, sit down here. Let's see what you're really made of. oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. And you're converting this blobby thing into concrete words, and that helps you make sense of it. It makes it less menacing. We go from abstract to so much more concrete.

1:02:46Mel Robbins:So we start with the N-word, which is you got to shift your self-talk. And one of the ways to really leverage this research is to say, I'm not the only person who's done this. No way. And if I can really embrace that I did the best that I could at the time and I'm going to stop beating myself up, the inward is how you talk to yourself. Exactly. It's like dropping the sword against yourself. Outward is get it out of your head. Exactly. And get it on paper or go talk to somebody about it. And that I love the exercise of just three days in a row for 15 minutes, write about it. And suddenly, based on the research, you're going to have this shift where you're like, well, okay, but what happens after you write about it?

1:03:29Okay, this is the key. So the third part is forward. You gotta actually think hard and draw a lesson from it and say, what is this lesson telling me and what should I do next? There's some interesting research about self-talk where we're actually more clear-headed when we talk to ourselves in the third person. What's the third person? As crazy as it sounds. So instead of me saying, what should I do? What should Dan do?

1:03:52Mel Robbins:Oh, so use your own name. Yeah, use your own name. Mel, what should you do? Right. You idiot, you should reach out if you're thinking about it. But also, but on the lesson, it's like, okay, what lesson is this teaching Mel? What lesson is this teaching Mel? All right. Explain it in a sentence. And in most cases, people know, because none of this is, I don't think any of this is super complex. Okay, what should Mel do next? So what is this, in a sentence, what is this teaching Mel, Jose, Fred, Maria, whoever, right? So use your name. Use your name. What lesson is this teaching? Fill in the blank.

1:04:26Okay. What should fill in the blank do next? Okay. So let's go back to, I don't know, give me any kind of regret.

1:04:33Mel Robbins:I am just flipping through a hundred plus pages, marrying the man who left me and my kids in a terrible divorce. There's one. I'll give you a couple more. Living with so many limitations, waiting for a better time to call my best friend. She passed away. I regret living away from my parents and siblings, not trusting myself, not taking my small children to see my parents more, fell in love with a married man, thought he'd leave his wife, regret not working harder in my 20s. I'm reading through all of these regrets. Pick anyone, Dan. Okay, so let's take the - Because we all know they're not unique and you're not special and you're not the only idiot.

1:05:12Let's take the, I didn't call my friend, then they passed away.

1:05:15Mel Robbins:Yeah, and here's, yes, absolutely. There's that one, Letting my best friend and I drift apart. Okay, here we go. So let's take that one. That's an easy one, all right? I love that. Dan's like, that's an easy one. You've been torturing yourself for a decade, but that's an easy one. They're all relatively, they're not easy. They're simple. They're simple. And here's the thing. It's much easier for me to look at it from the outside than it is for the person who's inhabiting that body and soul and heart to see that. And so one of the things you want to do is you want to kind of get outside of yourself.

1:05:46This is why the way we talk to ourselves is incredibly important. If somebody comes to me saying, Dan, I need advice. I don't know what I should do. I say, what would you tell your friend to do in that situation? You tell your friend, another friend, pick up the phone, send a text, send an email.

1:06:02Mel Robbins:Well, you know, every time I go to a funeral, when somebody dies unexpectedly or they die young, I sit at their celebration of life service and I think about how I wish I would have stayed in closer contact. I think about how I wish I would have reached out more. And it was attending a number of funerals that made me start this habit where I just have a habit of texting a friend every day, just randomly. A great, I mean, I think that is a great strategy. Now, here's the thing. I think it's great for your friends. I think it's great for you. Of course it is, because I feel like even though I can't reach out to everybody every single day and I can't, I'm not the greatest in getting back on text right away, but I feel like I'm the kind of person who makes a effort to proactively reach out because connection and friendship matters to me.

1:06:55Have you always done that?

1:06:57Mel Robbins:No, I've let work and I've let worries and I've let feelings of being like a bad person or beliefs that people maybe don't like me or whatever else keep me from doing that. Or I've let - What allowed you to push past it? Sitting at funerals. There you go. And feeling like I wish I would have reached out more or like sitting, you know, even even things, Dan, like and it's weird because I don't know that I regret it. Maybe actually here's what I'm going to say. I don't regret it now because I've moved through it. So when my career really began, it was beginning kind of like a phoenix rising from the ashes of financial distress.

1:07:39Mel Robbins:I often joke that I'm not positively motivated. I need a negative motivation. Like, it's pretty amazing how talented you can be when you've got problems to solve, like paying your bills and putting food on the table. Necessity as a mother. Yes, it is. I worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked because my highest value was safety and security. And I basically missed out on our daughter's middle school and high school. And at the time, I regretted it. And at the time, it was painful to see how much I was missing out on and all the games that I missed. But I've really looked at that period of my life and said to myself, yes, and I am so glad I put my head down and got us out of debt.

1:08:23Mel Robbins:And I did what I needed to do. And knowing what the situation was, I could have made a different choice, but that would have come with different consequences. And so I can see it fully, which relieved me of the burden. And so I used to make myself wrong for having, quote, let friendships go or not, quote, being a good friend or not keeping up with friends. But I just look through the last two decades of my life as, well, you had a lot going on. Yeah. And it wasn't your top priority, and that's okay. Yeah. But now you realize that this actually really matters to you. And so you got to figure out, woman, how to insert this in small ways, because this is a core value.

1:09:07How is your relationship with that daughter now?

1:09:09Mel Robbins:My daughter's fantastic. Yeah. And it was good then because dad was staying at home. And so they have an amazing relationship with both of us. But I just felt like I was missing out. And I had resentment around it. And I felt like I couldn't be everywhere at once. And so I sort of regretted how much I worked. You know why you felt that way? Why? Because you couldn't be everywhere at once. It's that simple. And so you apply the lesson going forward. And so now that I'm at a different point in my life, I can actually have the freedom, the bandwidth, the wherewithal to reach out. You have to do that.

1:09:43Mel Robbins:You know, Dan, I would just love for you to talk to the person who's listening or watching right now. And if they're thinking of somebody that they care deeply about, who is really struggling with regret, what do you want them to do or know? I want you to convey to the person who is struggling with regret, that number one, they're not alone, that this is one of the most common experiences that human beings have. And it's telling you something important. And if you just listen to it, you're gonna be better off. It's not something that can bring you down, that when you do it right, it's something that can lift you up.

1:10:17Mel Robbins:Well, what I love about the fact that you made time to come here today is that one thing you can do is share this conversation with them and let Dan get through to them with the research. because I think, you know, it's one of those things that you sit with alone, but when you hear the research and these frameworks, you immediately feel a little lighter. Because here's the thing, no one's taught us this. This is the thing. Somehow we've been taught the idea that, as I said, you should be positive all the time and never be negative and always look forward and never look back. And that's bad advice.

1:10:51That's bad advice. What you should be doing is saying, regret is part of the human experience. It's a signal. It's a knock at the door. Answer the door. See what it has to tell you. And in the systematic way, approach it, draw a lesson from it, and you're going to be better off. You're going to find more meaning in life. You're going to be happier in life. And for a lot of stuff on the job, you're going to perform better on the job too.

1:11:13Mel Robbins:Whether that job is being a parent or being at work or being married. I don't know if you can do this because you poured so much into us today and taught us so much, but if you had to distill everything down about all this research on regret, Dan Pink, what do you think the single most important takeaway is for the person listening? Regret makes us human and regret makes us better. Dan Pink, what are your parting words? I thought those are pretty good parting words. You know, I was ready to, I mean, if this is a handheld mic, I would have dropped it. The parting words are regret is part of the human experience.

1:11:50It's one of the things that makes us human. Everybody has regrets and you have a choice. You can ignore your regrets or you can wallow in your regrets or you can confront your regrets. And when we do that in a kind way toward ourselves, it makes us better. We get more out of life. We deepen our relationships. We find a greater sense of meaning and we don't waste our precious time on this planet.

1:12:17Mel Robbins:Dan Pink, thank you for all the work you're doing. Thank you for this research. Thank you for making the time to come to Boston. What a pleasure to come to Boston. It was. And come here and talk to you. Well, thank you. And here's what I appreciate about you. I appreciate that you took a topic that most of us don't know how to talk about, that is universal. And you didn't just come in and tell us about it. you gave us a framework to better understand this universal human experience, to put our regrets in these four buckets of boldness, foundation, moral connection. And then based on understanding what we're dealing with, you gave us very specific tools based on the research to set ourselves free from the prison that we put ourselves in.

1:13:04Mel Robbins:And on behalf of the person that's listening, on behalf of everybody that they will share this with, I want to thank you for the gift of all these tools and for giving us a way to think about process and move through one of the most common and universal experiences that we will have as human beings. Thank you. It's been a joy. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you. It has been a joy to be here with you. I'm so excited for you. And I'm excited for everybody that you share this extraordinary conversation and research with. I mean, just imagine how incredible it's going to feel to relieve yourself of the burden of carrying these regrets and instead use the research you just learned about to learn from them, to create a better future, to continue becoming the kind of person that you really want to become.

1:13:50Mel Robbins:I loved this. I loved being here with you. And one more thing, in case nobody else tells you this today, as your friend, I would regret not telling you this. I want you to know that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And one of the reasons why we just had to talk about this extraordinary research is because everything that we learned today, using regret as a teacher, as a signal to help us make changes that will make our lives better, that is how you create a better life. All righty. I will see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

1:14:29Mel Robbins:Because it sounds like it might be one of those things that you regretted not doing. 100%. Which brings us to our conversation today. Oh, what a segue. So, Bri, how we doing? Are we good? Awesome. Happy birthday again. Okay, here we go. God dang, this kid was just like born. Wait a second. How is it possible that I have a kid who's 22 years old? Like, I'm like 26. You know what I mean? It's like you feel like you're like way younger than you really are. My wife allows me one sports metaphor a day. And so I'm on a very strict diet and I don't think I've used one yet. There's a baseball metaphor here where, you know, like there's a there's a pitcher and the pitcher is getting clobbered.

1:15:07The manager always says I kept the pitcher in too long.

1:15:09Mel Robbins:Dan, this may sound like a really, I don't know, obvious or dumb question. It's been a joy. Thank you. How do you feel? I feel good. I was a good conversation. It's super interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to say I am sort of blown away by the intentionality of how you guys approach this. It's not the norm. You know that. Thank you. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist.

1:15:50Mel Robbins:And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional, coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Sirius XM Podcasts.

1:16:12You've likely heard about PDRN originating in Korean medical grade injectables. This ingredient supports skin rejuvenation and is often derived from salmon DNA. Medicaid's new XOPDRN Prismatic Plus Serum unlocks the power of non-invasive vegan PDRN through advanced biotechnology. It's proven to boost skin's natural rejuvenation by 50%. Like the clinical treatments it's inspired by, Medicaid's ExoPDRN Prismatic Plus Serum delivers full-spectrum rejuvenation results to visibly improve skin health, tone, luminosity, firmness, and volume, while reducing the appearance of wrinkles. Visit Medicaid.us.

1:16:54That's M-E-D-I-K and the number 8.us to discover more. Use code PODCAST20 to save 20 % off your first order. Sleep is so critical, especially that deep comforting sleep. But oftentimes, it's hard to find the right mattress for that deep sleep without trying it in person. That's why Helix and Steinhoffels have come together, combining their years of mattress knowledge and technology to bring you your best night's sleep. Helix Sleep's award-winning mattresses are now available to try and purchase at 13 Steinhoffel's locations, an in-store opportunity you won't find just anywhere. Plus, Helix and Steinhoffel's are offering 20 % off all mattress orders for our listeners.

1:17:37Please visit helixsleep.com to find your nearest location. Remember to ask a team member about their selection of award-winning Helix Sleep mattresses. Eligible items are in stock and available for free local delivery. That's helixsleep.com to find the story nearest you and ask about Helix Sleep. With Helix and Steinhoffel's, better sleep starts now.