The Psychology of Regret

Regret has impeccable timing.

It rarely arrives while you can still do something useful.

It arrives afterwards.

After the person has stopped calling.

After somebody else got the job.

After the deadline passed.

After the door closed.

After the organisation discovered it could manage perfectly well without you.

After the person you took for granted finally realised they could live perfectly well without you too.

Then, suddenly, everything becomes clear.

That’s the cruelty of regret: it often gives us excellent judgement five minutes after judgement would have been useful.

We tend to imagine life’s great losses as dramatic events.

Sometimes they are.

But many of the things we regret losing don’t disappear dramatically.

They deteriorate through neglect.

One missed opportunity.

One unanswered message.

One promise not kept.

One deadline treated casually.

One person expected to understand indefinitely.

One more occasion when we thought:

It doesn’t matter.

Until it did.

We Misprice Things While We Have Them

Human beings are surprisingly poor at valuing what is reliably available.

A good employee turns up every day.

A loyal friend answers.

A loving partner forgives.

A supportive colleague covers the occasional mistake.

A client keeps returning.

A parent keeps calling.

An opportunity remains open.

Reliability gradually becomes invisible.

What was once appreciated becomes expected.

And what is expected can start feeling ordinary.

This is related to what Psychologistics call hedonic adaptation: our tendency to become accustomed to positive circumstances. The extraordinary can become normal simply because it remains present.

The first time somebody goes out of their way for you, you are grateful.

By the twentieth time, you may barely notice.

Until the twenty-first time, when they don’t.

Then you notice immediately.

We often discover value through absence because presence had become too familiar to measure.

As the saying commonly attributed to various writers puts it:

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

It became a cliché because humans keep proving it.

The Person Who Will Always Be There

Relationships provide some of regent’s most painful examples.

Not necessarily relationships destroyed by spectacular betrayal.

Sometimes the damage is quieter.

You stop asking how they are.

Stop making an effort.

Stop saying thank you.

Cancel because they’ll understand.

Speak more harshly because they’ll forgive you.

Prioritise everyone else because this person is dependable.

You don’t consciously decide they are unimportant.

You make a more dangerous assumption.

They aren’t going anywhere.

So they receive the leftovers.

Leftover time.

Leftover attention.

Leftover patience.

Meanwhile, strangers get your best manners.

Colleagues get punctuality.

Clients get preparation.

Acquaintances get charm.

And the person who loves you gets:

“You know what I’m like.”

Eventually they do.

That’s sometimes the problem.

One day the endlessly understanding person stops understanding.

Not necessarily because one terrible thing happened.

Because a hundred small things did.

By the time you realise their patience had a limit, they may already have reached it.

Opportunities Don’t Always Slam the Door

The same thing happens professionally.

Someone gets a chance.

A new role.

A useful introduction.

A mentor.

A contract.

A place on a programme.

Someone important takes an interest in their work.

Initially they’re thrilled.

Then familiarity arrives.

Emails take longer to answer.

Preparation slips.

Deadlines become suggestions.

They assume there will be another meeting.

Another extension.

Another introduction.

Another opportunity.

They confuse being given access with having secured their position.

Those are not the same thing.

Opportunities often arrive with maintenance requirements.

You have to turn up.

Respond.

Learn.

Deliver.

Improve.

Be reliable.

Make yourself worth recommending again.

Talent may open a door.

Behaviour determines whether anyone wants to hold it open.

And sometimes the person who loses the opportunity tells themselves:

“They never really valued me.”

Perhaps.

But another possibility deserves investigation:

Did you behave as though you valued them?

The Job You Didn’t7 Think You Could Lose

Employment produces another peculiar form of complacency.

Someone is good at their job.

They know it.

Everyone knows it.

So gradually they begin believing their competence exempts them from everything surrounding competence.

They become difficult.

Unreliable.

Dismissive.

They stop adapting.

Feedback becomes an insult.

Basic expectations become beneath them.

They assume the organisation needs them too much to act.

Then one day it does.

And something psychologically fascinating happens.

The job that was irritating last month becomes wonderful.

The manager they complained about becomes reasonable.

The salary they considered inadequate suddenly looks attractive.

The routine they hated becomes comforting.

Loss has repriced everything.

This doesn’t mean every dismissal is deserved or every workplace worth keeping.

It means we sometimes calculate value differently when consequences become irreversible.

Regret Loves An Alternative Timeline

Part of what makes regret so painful is that the mind doesn’t merely remember what happened.

It creates what could have happened.

Psychologists call this counterfactual thinking.

If I’d called.

If I’d apologised.

If I’d applied.

If I’d stayed.

If I’d left sooner.

If I’d taken the meeting.

If I’d worked harder.

If I’d listened.

The mind becomes a film editor, endlessly cutting together alternative versions of your life.

In one, you took the job.

In another, you kept the relationship.

In another, you bought the house.

In another, you said yes.

In another, you said no.

This is why regret can hurt more than straightforward disappointment.

Disappointment says:

I wanted something and didn’t get it.

Regret says:

I might have had it, and my own decision helped remove it.

That’s a heavier sentence.

Kodak Had the Camera

Business history contains spectacular examples of organisations struggling with decisions that later look painfully obvious.

Kodak is frequently used as one.

A Kodak engineer, Steven Sasson, developed an early digital camera prototype in the 1970’s, Yet Kodak’s enormously profitable business remained tied to photographic film and the company later struggled through the digital transition before filing for bankruptcy protection in 2012.

The full corporate story is more complicated than the popular version that Kodak simply invented digital and ignored it.”

But its history still illustrates something important.

Sometimes the future knocks while the present is still making excellent money.

And because what we already possess feels secure, we underestimate what is changing around us.

People do this too.

We protect the familiar.

Delay adaptation.

Assume the current arrangement will continue.

Then discover that opportunities have expiry dates even when nobody prints one on them.

The Cost of “Later”.

Regret has a favourite word.

Later.

I’ll call later.

I’ll apologise later.

I’ll apply next year.

I’ll visit when things calm down.

I’ll tell them how much they mean to me.

I’ll start taking the work seriously.

I’ll repair the relationship.

I’ll take the opportunity when I’m more confident.

Later sounds responsible because it isn’t technically no.

It’s merely no wearing a watch.

The problem is that later requires cooperation from circumstances.

The person must still be there.

The position must still be vacant.

The organisation must still be interested.

The health must still permit it.

The money must still be available.

The invitation must remain open.

The relationship must still be repairable.

We behave as though time preserves options.

Often it removes them.

“I Thought They’d Come Back”

Perhaps one of the saddest forms of regret comes from miscalculating another person’s self-respect.

Someone walks away.

You assume they’ll return.

They always have before.

So you wait.

No apology.

No accountability.

No change.

Perhaps even a little arrogance.

They’ll miss me.

Maybe they do.

And still don’t come back.

Missing somebody and returning to them are not the same decision.

People can love us and decide we cost too much.

They can remember us fondly and never contact us again.

They can forgive us and still refuse to restore our position in their lives.

That is one of adulthood’s harder lessons.

Forgiveness does not guarantee reinstatement.

An apology can acknowledge damage.

It cannot always reverse it.

Not Everything Should Be Recovered

Regret also needs perspective.

Not every lost relationship was good.

Not every job should have been kept.

Not every opportunity was right.

Sometimes leaving was the wisest thing you ever did.

Sometimes what feels like regret is simply grief for a road not taken.

The goal isn’t to construct a life without regret.

That’s impossible.

The goal is to recognise the difference between unavoidable loss and preventable neglect.

You cannot control everything.

But you can answer the email.

You can keep your word.

You can prepare.

You can apologise while the apology still has somewhere to land.

You can tell somebody they’re valued while they’re still present to hear it.

You can stop assuming that loyalty means unlimited tolerance.

The Regret Test

Before neglecting something important, ask yourself a brutal question:

If this disappeared tomorrow, would I suddenly behave differently today?

If the answer is yes, why are you waiting for the disappearance?

If losing the employee would make you praise them, praise them now.

If losing the relationship would make you fight for it, invest in it now.

If missing the deadline would devastate you, stop treating it casually.

If somebody else’s success with the opportunity would make you jealous, perhaps you wanted it more than your behaviour suggested.

If death would make you wish you’d called, call before death gets involved.

Regret is useful when it arrives early enough to become foresight.

Appreciation Requires Behaviour

We frequently tell ourselves we appreciate people.

But appreciation that never affects behaviour is difficult for anyone else to experience.

You can love somebody and neglect them.

Value an opportunity and squander it.

Want a job and behave as though you don’t.

Respect somebody and repeatedly disappoint them.

Intentions exist privately.

Other people experience behaviour.

Maya Angelou is often quoted as saying:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

There’s another side to that idea worth remembering:

Other people are watching what we repeatedly show them too

We don’t get to insist that our hidden intentions matter more than our visible behaviour.

Eventually people make decisions based upon what they experience.

So do employers.

So do clients.

So does life.

Before it Becomes a Memory

Perhaps maturity is partly learning to recognise value before absence explains it to us.

The good person.

The decent job.

The rare opportunity.

The friend who always answers.

The colleague who keeps recommending you.

The person who has forgiven you more times than you realise.

The chance that probably won’t come twice.

Don’t become frightened and cling desperately to everything.

Just stop assuming permanence.

People can leave.

Organisations can replace you.

Doors can close.

Patience can expire.

Circumstances can change.

And sometimes the saddest sentence in the English language isn’t:

“I never had the chance.”

It’s:

I had the chance. I just didn’t realise it was the last one.”

So look around your life.

Not at what you’ve lost.

At what is still there.

What are you treating casually because you assume it will remain?

Who receives less effort precisely because they’ve always been reliable?

Which opportunity are you postponing because you believe another will appear?

What requires something from you that you simply haven’t bothered to give?

Regret cannot change yesterday.

But occasionally it can introduce us to tomorrow before we make the same mistake again.

Value people while they can feel it.

Value opportunities while you can act on them.

Do what is required while doing it can still make a difference.

Because sometimes we don’t lose the things that didn’t matter.

We lose the things we behaved as though they didn’t.