Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Daniel Pink, How to Understand Your Emotions and Live Your Best Life | Mental Health | YAPClassic
Fri, 17 Jan
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As a bestselling author and leading voice on human behavior, Daniel Pink has spent years studying the emotions that shape our lives. But there’s one feeling that seems universally taboo: regret. In a world that often embraces a ‘no regrets’ mantra, Daniel Pink sees things differently. He believes regret can be a powerful guide—a spotlight revealing our true values and priorities. In this episode, Daniel digs into the science behind regret and explains why facing our missteps head-on can help us make better decisions and avoid repeating the same mistakes. In this episode, Hala and Daniel will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (03:21) Daniel Pink's Personal Journey with Regret (05:50) Understanding Counterfactuals and Regret (09:03) The Value of Regret in Personal Growth (19:16) Research on Common Regrets (22:25) Deep Structure of Regrets (26:07) Foundation Regrets: The Impact of Small Decisions (26:45) Moral Regrets: The Weight of Right and Wrong (27:32) Connection Regrets: The Drift in Relationships (30:35) Inaction vs. Action: The Rules of Regret (32:56) Life Lessons from Regret: Reach Out and Take Action (39:10) Dealing with Regret: Inward, Outward, Forward (46:59) The Benefits of Regret: A Path to a Better Life (49:58) Final Thoughts and Advice for a Profitable Life Daniel Pink is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and thought leader. In 2011, he was named one of Thinkers50’s top 50 most influential minds. He was also the host and co-executive of the television series Crowd Control, a National Geographic program about human behavior that aired in more than 10 countries. Daniel also hosts a popular master class on sales and persuasion. He has written for several notable publications, including Fast Company, The Sunday Telegraph, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and Wired. He is the author of seven books, the latest being The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. His books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world. Resources Mentioned: YAP Episode #50: youngandprofiting.co/42buHsR Daniel’s Book, The Power of Regret: danpink.com/the-power-of-regret Sponsored by: OpenPhone - Get 20% off 6 months at openphone.com/PROFITING Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Mental Health & Wellness Mental Health, Health, Psychology, Wellness, Biohacking, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet
Chapter 1: What is the significance of regret in our lives?
From, again, if you look at 50 or 60 years of research in neuroscience, in cognitive science, in developmental psychology, which I mentioned before, social psychology, a lot of experiments in social psychology as well. What it tells us is that regret is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Everybody experiences regret. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have.
Five-year-olds don't experience regret because they can't think counterfactually. It's also why people with certain kinds of brain damage and brain lesions can't reason counterfactually. The more I think about what our brains can do, the more I'm kind of in awe of this lump in our head and how powerful it is.
I can't emphasize that enough. Everybody has regrets. If you don't have any regrets, it's a warning. It's a bad sign. It means that you could be five years old, which I guess that's not a bad sign. You know, you got to grow up. It could mean that you have brain damage or lesions on the orbital frontal cortex of your brain or early onset Huntington's or Parkinson's.
Yeah. And I want to dig deeper on counterfactuals because you brought it up and it was a term that I've never heard of until I started reading your book. And it's super interesting. So talk to us about counterfactuals and the main ones and maybe give us some examples.
It could mean that you're a sociopath. Those are truly the only people who don't have regrets. The rest of us have regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. And this is sort of a puzzle, right? It's like you have this thing that is widespread, but it makes us feel crappy. So you have to ask the question, well, why does it exist then?
So basically what it means is that our brains allow us to imagine a scenario that runs counter to the actual facts. There are two kinds of counterfactuals here, okay? So I know you guys like to go deep. So there are two kinds of counterfactuals that are really important. One of them is what you can call a downward counterfactual, okay? So you imagine how things could have been worse.
Exactly. So we obviously evolved to have regret for good reason, right? It's kind of a survival instinct, I imagine. It makes our lives better in the end. Talk to us about that. Why do we actually need regret?
So you say, oh, okay. I regret that I married Bob, but at least I have these two great kids, okay? So you find the silver lining, okay? It could have been worse. I could have married Bob and not had any kids. So at least make us feel better. Now, there's another kind of counterfactual, if-onlys.
Exactly. That's the point. So we're not perfect organisms at all. We're not perfectly efficient, but there are adaptations that we've had. So you have to figure like, why does something that make us feel bad, why is it everywhere? It must do something. It must have some benefit to us, right? And you got it exactly right.
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Chapter 2: How can we transform regret into positive change?
I don't want to banish negative emotion. I want to actually reckon with them. I like what you said at the top of the show, Hala, is that there's evidence here, okay? This is not some kind of philosophy of mine. We have 50 or 60 years of evidence telling us that when you line up the emotions, all right, when you line up our negative emotions, we're going to do a little police lineup.
So they believe in this philosophy that you should always be positive, never be negative, always look forward, never look back. They believe in this credo, this philosophy so ferociously, they have the message enshrined on their bodies. That's a commitment, man, all right? Like you got to believe in something to have it tattooed on your body, right? But here's the thing.
Fear, guilt, shame, you know, but that regret ends up being the most common and the most useful if we treat it right, if we treat it right. And again, we haven't been treating it right because what's happened is we're totally over index and positivity. We think we have to be positive all the time. And when we're not, especially younger people,
If you say no regrets, you say, I never look backward. You might as well get a tattoo that says no growth, no learning, no progress. Nobody's getting tattoos like that. And so it's really, really misguided. The key here is what we do with our regrets. And this is, I think, a bigger problem that we have, Hala, which is this. And I think it's an American problem more than others.
When they say, when they feel negative, they feel regret, they feel bad, they say, wait a second, I'm feeling regret, I'm feeling bad. That's terrible because not only is it inherently unpleasant, but I look around and everybody else is perfect. There must be something wrong with me. And they get brought down by that rather than saying, A negative emotion is a knock at the door.
We Americans have a problem with negative emotions. We don't know what to do with them. Here's the thing. Just go back again. Positive emotions are great. I want to have a lot of positive emotions. I want you to have a lot of positive emotions. I want all the listeners to have lots of positive emotions. OK, positive emotions are great. gratitude and joy and elation. They're great, okay?
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Someone's trying to tell me something. Let me listen, not drown it out, not get freaked out by it, but listen to it, learn from it, and do better in the future.
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They're part of what makes life worth living. But here's the thing. People shouldn't have only positive emotions. That's not healthy. It goes back to what you were saying before. We have adapted to the world. Negative emotions are adaptations. So if you think about this, I'll give you an example. Let's take fear. Fear is a negative emotion.
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Chapter 3: What are the common types of regrets people experience?
So it's like, huh, maybe there's not something there. And so actually not that long ago, 16, 17 years ago, researchers started doing more systematic looks at what people regretted. And they found that people regret a lot of stuff. It was all over the place. They have career regrets. They have romance regrets. They have finance regrets. They have health regrets. They have family regrets.
Over eight times the national average savings account interest rate claim is based on data from the FDIC as of November 18th, 2024. Like you said, regret is so common and it's universal and it's normal, right? It's a normal feeling to have. It's just about how you manage it, how you process it and what you do with that information.
It's all over the place. So that's the lay of the land. So I said, I'm going to try to crack the code here. And so I did something called the American Regret Project, which is the largest public opinion survey of American attitudes about regret ever conducted. We did a brilliant, gorgeous survey of nearly 4,500 Americans modeling the
the sample, sort of configuring the sample so that it reflected the glorious diversity of the United States of America. And so I asked these people, tell me one of your big regrets. And then I had them put it into those categories, career, finance, romance, whatever, because I said, I'm going to figure this out. Amen.
Yes. Okay. So in this book, you did a lot of research yourself, but there was also years of research prior to that about regrets and the common regrets that people have. So can you talk to us about the research that was available before you started and then maybe why you ended up doing more research and what you found?
And I found after careful deliberation and data analysis that people regret a lot of stuff. It was all over the place. So now that's the bad news. The good news is that I also did another piece of my own research, something called the World Regret Survey, where I simply set up a website, worldregretsurvey.com, where I gathered regrets from around the globe.
Yeah. So I was also curious about what people regretted. I was really curious about that. And the reason I was curious is that when you looked at the existing evidence, most of it in social psychology, initially researchers said, oh, this is an American sample, that Americans, oh, they have education regrets. Education is the biggest regret that Americans have.
Scientists believe that for 20 years. And then Somebody finally realized, like, wait a second, all these studies showing that education is the biggest regret were done on college campuses with college students. And so, you know, if you had done all this research in hospitals, maybe health would be the greatest regret. If you had done it in banks, maybe, you know, whatever.
And we now have a database of over 21,000 regrets from people in 109 countries. It's incredible. And once I looked at those, okay, just basically just people offering their regrets, but by the thousands all over the world, and I didn't ask them to categorize it. I just wanted to know their age, their gender identity, and their location.
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Chapter 4: How does our understanding of regret influence personal growth?
If only I had eaten better, if only I had exercise, I wouldn't be out of shape and unhealthy today. So it's small decisions early in life that accumulate to really nasty consequences later in life. Again, these small decisions, like no single one is cataclysmic. It's like, oh, I ate a whole bag of Cheetos once. People don't regret that.
So we got an education regret. We've got a career regret. We've got a romance regret. But here's the point I'm making in this little diatribe here. Those are all the same regret. Those regrets on the surface, they're in different categories, but they're the same regret. You're at a juncture in your life and you have a choice. You can play it safe or you can take the chance. And overwhelmingly,
They regret eating unhealthily for a year, two years, five years, 10 years, and it adds up and it's hard to undo. So foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work. Third category, we got boldness too. We got moral regrets. Moral regrets are, if only I'd done the right thing. Again, you're at a juncture. You can do the right thing. You can do the wrong thing.
When people don't take the chance, they regret it. And that's what I call a boldness regret. So on the surface, it's career is different from romance, is different from education. But one layer down, it's the same regret. If only I'd taken the chance.
When we do the wrong thing, most of us regret it because I think most of us are good and want to be good. And when we're not good, we feel crappy about it. And so these are regrets that people have about, oh my gosh, the two bigger ones here, marital infidelity. I had a lot of people basically confessing on this world regret survey. It was like an online confessional.
And what I found is that that is one of boldness regrets or one of four of these deep structure core regrets that people all over the world seem to have. And then also a shocking number, shocking to me, number of people who regretted bullying other people when they were younger. So bullying and marital infidelity, if only I'd done the right thing. Finally, Fourth category, connection regrets.
Yeah, and I feel like it makes sense to go through all four of them. And then I have some other questions about them individually.
Yeah, rock and roll.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What are foundation regrets and how do they affect us?
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It is going to care of, did I use my opportunity, this vanishingly short amount of time that I'm alive to like learn and grow and do something and contribute. It's going to care if I, 10 years from now, if I do the wrong thing, I have to confront the me of 2032, who's going to be wagging his finger at me saying, shame on you. Why'd you do the wrong thing?
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And it's going to care if I don't reach out and build relationships of love and connection and affinity and belonging. And again, it's not super complicated, but I think the cool thing is that this emotion that we often try to avoid is giving us this very, very clear window into what makes life worth living.
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