The power of Regret

Regret is a bitter emotion, so painful that the urge to avoid it often drives decision-making strategies. Regret avoidance can be a reason to forestall any kind of commitment—to a job, a girlfriend, a religion, a place to live—out of fear that you’ll want to revisit one of those options the instant it disappears.
We don’t like to feel regret and will do a lot to avoid it. But you might be surprised to find out what makes us feel regret and how we deal with getting rid of it.

More opportunity = more regret -- The more choice and opportunity that we have the more regret we feel. The more we feel that we could have done something differently, then the more regret we feel. If we feel that we had no choice in our decision or action then we feel less regret. The stronger and clearer a corrective action is, the more dissatisfied and disappointed we will feel.
For example, let’s say you are choosing what restaurant to use for an upcoming special event. You have three great restaurants that are available on the date you want. You choose one of the three and negotiate the menu with them. At the last minute the restaurant changes the menu you had planned and you don’t insist they stick with the original menu. You are not at all happy with the food they provide during the event.
You could have taken corrective action (insisted they stick with the menu) or picked a different restaurant to start with, or switched to one of the other restaurants. But you didn’t do any of those things. So you had opportunity and you had clear corrective actions. In this situation you will feel a lot of regret, dissatisfaction, and dissapointment.
Contrast this with the following scenario: There is only one restaurant available on the date you want to hold the event. And they only offer one set of menu choices. There is no negotation. Even though you might rate the food as good or as bad as in the first example, you will feel less regret, less dissapointment, and less dissatisfaction.

Regret = Inspires Action -- Because we don’t like feeling regret, and because we feel the most regret about things we can fix, regret is actually a motivator for action. When we feel regret is when we are most likely to act. And we will often take an action to avoid regret before it happens.

The older we get, the less regret we feel -- It may seem counter-intuitive, but as we age we feel less regret.. This is because the older we get the less opportunity we have to change or fix things. Since regret is related to feeling that we have opportunities, we feel less regret the older we get.

Do you agree with the fact that the Older we get, the less regrets we feel? Feel free to share your views .

Originally written by : Susan Weinschenk

Tags: Psychology  , Susan Weinschenk Ph.D, The power of Regrets