Daniel H. Pink

They often come apart by drifting apart rather than through some kind of explosive rift.

And what happens is that people don't want to reach out because they say, it's going to be awkward to reach out and the other side's not going to care.

One of the lessons that I learned from this book for myself is always reach out.

So that's what connection regrets are.

If only I'd reached out.

And so over and over and over again, we see these same regrets.

Foundation 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.

And when we look at these regrets, so that's interesting in itself, but what I realized is that these four core regrets operate as a kind of photographic negative of the good life.

Because if we understand what people regret the most, we actually can understand what they value the most.

And each of these regrets, to my mind, reveals something fundamental about humanity and about what we need.

We need stability.

Nobody wants to have an unstable life.

We want a chance to learn and grow and do something.

We recognize that we are not here forever and we want to do something and try something and at least feel the exhilaration of being bold.

Moral regrets.

I think most of us, almost all of us, want to do the right thing.

At some level, these moral regrets are very heartening.