Daniel Pink

We think that nobody wants to talk about regrets.

That's proof that that's wrong.

People do want to talk about regrets.

Yes, you can.

Regret clarifies what we value and points us how to do better in the future.

This emotion that these people are expressing here is one of the most common emotions that human beings have.

Yes, it is ubiquitous in the human experience.

All right.

People talk about, say, oh, I don't have any regrets.

Everything happens for reasons.

That's utter BS.

The only people who don't have regrets are little kids because their brains haven't developed the cognitive capacity to do it.

People with certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorders and sociopaths.

Otherwise, everybody has regrets, okay?

So the question is, why?

Why would something that makes us feel so bad be so widespread?

And the answer is, because it's useful.

If we treat it right, and here's the problem, here's the heart of it.

No one ever told us how to do that.

So what happens is, is that we basically plug our ears and say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no regrets, or we get buried by it.