How Regrets Can Move You Forward | Oprah & Daniel Pink

Hi there. I am so glad you joined me on my podcast. I'm having a fascinating conversation with Daniel Pink, who writes about the power of regret. I wonder if you're like me, just hearing the word brings up thoughts of the things in life you regret the most. We spoke to some people who are experiencing regret. I lost my virginity too soon. What if I had stood up for myself in my marriage? Getting the diagnosis, I wish I would have just really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry. But what I learned, which I think you will really appreciate, is that there is power in regret. It clarifies what we value. It all depends on if regret is holding you back or if you can shift your mindset to use your regrets to propel you forward. So, what comes up for you? What is your biggest regret? I have my own that I'll share on this podcast. That is my deepest, deepest regret. So, everybody, thanks for joining us on this podcast. We're talking about today something few people ever talk about. That's why I want to talk about it. We're talking about regrets, regrets. And I'm joined by the man who literally wrote the book on regrets, journalist and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, Daniel Pink. Daniel Pink began his career as a Yale Law School graduate working in politics and government in Washington, D.C. And after two years as Al Gore's chief speechwriter, Daniel decided to venture out on his own, an experience he wrote about in his Bass Company article, Free Agent Nation, which became his first book. Since then, Daniel has written six more books, including Drive, To Sell is Human, and another one of my favorites, A Whole New Mind. If we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does. He's one of the world's most in-demand speakers and has delivered more than 1,200 lectures on six continents. And maybe we can change the world. I rest my case. I am so delighted to speak to you again. It's been years. I am so glad to be back talking to you. Yeah. And I have to tell you, I really appreciated this book about regrets because when I saw it and I first came across it because we have used many of your quotes in our The Life You Want, Becoming Unstuck Journal and talking about your philosophy. And I was like, you know what? It's the thing that everybody feels at some point in their life, even though there's a Frank Sinatra song that says regrets. I've had a few, but too few to mention. A lot of people have a lot. And if you make if you have a deep regret that follows you your whole life, a lot of people can't get over it. And so that's why I wanted to talk to you. Why did you how did you even come up with this idea to focus on this specific human emotion of regret? Because I had regrets and I wanted to make sense of them. They actually were catalyzed in part when my elder daughter graduated from college. And I'm at her college graduation. And I can't believe that this kid is graduating from college because it seems like yesterday she was two years old. I can't believe that I'm old enough to have a kid graduating from college. And I started thinking about my own college experience. And I had some regrets about your college experience. I wish I were kinder. I wish I had taken more risks, you know, those kinds of things. And I came back to Washington, D.C., where I live. And I knew that nobody bothered me. These regrets. And I came back to Washington, D.C., where I live. And I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regrets. But I kind of sheepishly mentioned it to some people. And I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about it. That as soon as I gave them the license to talk about it, they came forward with their own regrets. And you did your own. And that's a really good sign. Okay. And the subtitle of the book is, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. How does that, if you're stuck in the regret? Yeah, well, the key is not to be stuck in the regret. And the thing is, everybody has regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that humans have. The thing is, we haven't been taught how to deal with them properly. So some of us ignore our regrets. So we put our fingers in our ears and say, No regrets, no regrets. And act like it's not. And it's just back there in the periphery. And you're seething. Denial, right? Denial, yes. Bad idea. Bad. Others of us get captured by our regrets. We wallow in our regrets. We ruminate on our regrets. That's also a bad idea. What we should be doing with our regrets is looking them in the eye. Thinking about them. And in our journal, we ask people to define their regrets. Why do you think it's important for people to define their regrets? Because regrets are often kind of blobby and amorphous. And so when we write about them or talk about them, we take this blob and make it concrete. We turn it into words. And those words help us make sense of it. And those words are less menacing. And the more we realize that, Oh, I'm experiencing something that other people have experienced, the more we kind of defang some of the pain of the regret. Got it. Okay. So those of you who are watching or listening to us right now, I know this is going to trigger you to think about what are the things that you deeply regret. Because I walk around thinking, Oh, I don't have a lot of regrets. And then reading this book, I went, Yeah, actually, I do. Why does regret hold such power? I mean, it holds power, I think, in part because we don't know what to do for two reasons. One is that everybody has regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. And yet we've been sold such a bill of goods about positivity and being positive all the time that when we feel regret, we think that we're the only one and we're not. It's part of the human wiring. It's part of our cognitive machinery. And the reason it exists is that it clarifies what we value. And it helps us do better in the future. So you studied and collected regrets from over 26,000 people from 130 countries. The data showed that there are basically four types. Can you talk about that? Sure thing, yeah. It's pretty remarkable. Around the world, people seem to have the same four regrets. One are what I call foundation regrets. Those are small decisions people make early in their life that accumulate to terrible consequences later. Spent too much and saved too little, now I'm broke. Another one, big category, boldness regrets. You're at a juncture in your life. You can play it safe or you can take the chance. And what's overwhelming is that people regret not taking the chance much more than they regret not taking the chance than taking the chance. And it doesn't matter the domain of life. You have people who regret not traveling. I have hundreds of people in this database who regret not asking somebody out on a date years and years ago. And what that could have meant. Exactly. Or maybe it wouldn't have meant anything, but you didn't do it. Exactly. You didn't take the shot. And that's what really sticks with people. Oh, boy, that is the thing. Boldness regrets. You didn't take the shot. Moral regrets, which again, a lot of these regrets begin at a juncture of decision making. So moral regrets are you can take the high road, you can take the low road. You can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing. And most of us, when we do the wrong thing, when we take the low road, we regret it. Because most of us are good. Yeah. And most of us want to be good. And you were saying, you say this in the book too, that the regrets show us what really matters to us. Yes. Absolutely, because these other, I mean, the other regret that people have are connection regrets, which are regrets about relationships. Yeah. But when we look around the world and people have these regrets, these four regrets operate as kind of a reverse image of what we really value in life. Foundation regrets, we value stability. What's a good life? A good life has some stability underneath it. A good life is not wobbly. And so what foundation regrets, taking care of your finances, taking care of your health, taking care of your education, that's part of what it is to lead a good life. Oldness regrets, we value learning and growth. We value not wasting our time in this limited space that we're here. Moral regrets, we value goodness. A good life is being good. A good life is being true and honest and just. And connection regrets are about love. And so when you look at these regrets, what do we value in life? We want some stability. We want learning and growth. We want goodness. And we want love. And we sure want connection. Absolutely. That was the biggest category. Yeah. Okay, what do you think? You just saying that just triggered me to think about what do you think is the true definition of a meaningful and good life? Well, I mean. And has that evolved as you've grown? As I've grown? Yes. Well, I mean, I think earlier in my life, I was clueless about that. I think I was incapable of answering that question. I think I didn't know. Yeah. In the same way that I would not have written a book about regret in my 30s, whereas in my 50s, it felt inevitable. That's right. Because I had mileage on me. You know what it is. Yeah. You actually know what it is. But I mean, I think a good life is having people who you love and who love you. I think one can stop there. I think there are other things, but I think that's really at the core of it. And we have some interesting research on that. The famous Grant study at Harvard, that was this longitudinal study of following men, but then other people from the time they were in college all the way through the rest of their lives. It didn't matter what their IQ was, what their money, what their health situation, how much money they had, what ultimately mattered in people's satisfaction was love. I mean, one of the people who founded this study, this incredible piece of psychological science, he said, well, I can summarize the results in a few words. He said, happiness is love, full stop. And I think that's true. Now, I think there are other things that give us meaning in life, in a good life. And I think regret exemplifies that. Not wasting your time, doing stuff, contributing, trying things, learning and growing. I think that's a big part of it. Providing for other people, contributing to the world. And also I come back to this idea of these moral regrets of just being a good, just, generous person. And it's pretty simple. And I think that one of the things that the research on regret and even my own investigation of it reveals is that a lot of the decisions we make in our life, a lot of them don't matter that much. But a lot of them matter hugely. Yeah, the only people who don't regret it are people who are narcissists and don't have a conscious about it, right? But that's true. I mean, what we see in the cognitive science is that even though everybody, many people perform not having regrets, the only people who don't have regrets are five-year-olds because their brains haven't developed the ability to do counterfactual thinking. Certain kinds of, people with certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorders and sociopaths. Everybody else has regrets because it's part of our wiring. And when it comes to moral regrets, I think one of the things that's heartening about this research is that the number of people with moral regrets, people who regret bullying a kid in school 40 years ago and then break into tears when I'm interviewing them about it because they feel so bad about it. That's right. And because they've never brought it to the forefront of their thinking and never discussed it with anybody. One of the things that was interesting to me, you said in the book, Power of Regret, and speaks to the power of it, is you regret not going to funerals. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I still have my own regrets about that. Yes. There is a big cathedral right near my house in Washington, D.C., and there was a funeral that I didn't go to over 20 years ago. And every time I walk by, I think about, oh my God, the guy's name was Bob. I should have gone to Bob's funeral. Okay, so why does that hold such power? Because Bob wouldn't have known you were at his funeral. No, but I knew. And you know what? I want to be a good person. I want to show respect for people. I want to show respect for his family. And I didn't do that. I was at a juncture. The right thing, go to the funeral. The wrong thing, keep doing my work that afternoon instead of taking two hours. Now, what do I do with that? I can say, oh, it doesn't matter. Everything happens for a reason. Or I can say, I'm the worst person in the world. No, I say, you know what? Something that I didn't do 20 years ago is still bugging me when I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning. That's a strong signal. Yes. And it's a signal that show up and go to the funeral no matter where it is. Okay, show up and go to the funeral. And that is how looking backward moves you forward because when you're able to to take whatever it is that is the regret and turn it into something meaningful for you. Yeah. Well, we spoke to some people who are experiencing regret right now. And Tanya is one of them and she joins us from the Bronx. Tanya, hi. Tell us what's going on. Hello. How are you? Good to see you. Thank you so much, Ms. Winfrey, for having me. And Daniel, what a pleasure it is to meet you. Oh, fantastic. Virtually. You know, it's very interesting. When I think about the word regret because I've done so much work on myself. I think about when I was young, when I was 16, between 16 and 21, I guess a nicer way to put it, I was boy crazy. And I lost my virginity in my opinion, well, I think probably across the board, too soon. I don't know what was happening with me, but it was complex. My dad was not at home. I'm not blaming him on that, but my life was definitely just going through things that I couldn't explain. And I think that was an outlet for me. In hindsight, as a 52-year-old woman now, when I look back, I definitely say to myself, gosh, I wish I would have just saved myself for someone who I loved, someone like my spouse that I'm with now, someone who I can talk to, someone that I know is hearing me, there for me, just accepting me as I am. That would be my biggest regret. I think this is so interesting, Tanya, because you have been with your spouse for how long now? I have been with my spouse this February, 18 years. And is it something your spouse has brought up to you? Like, I wish you'd been a virgin when we married? No. Never. I thought it was interesting, too, and I'm sure, you know, you grew up in, you know, I'm 20 years older than you, practically, but I also grew up in an era where if you liked boys, there was no discussion other than you can't date until a certain age, and if you showed any interest in boys whatsoever, you were considered boy-crazy, and I noticed that you used that term to describe yourself, and I was thinking, that's not a term you came up with, that's a label somebody gave to you, and that's what you're carrying. That's part of what you're carrying. Daniel, what do you want to say to Tanya? Well, I mean, you know, what we, you know, in the organ... Well, first of all, what kind of regret is this? I mean, I think in Tanya's telling, it's a moral regret, all right? So you had a chance to do, you know, you could do the right thing or the wrong thing, and in your view, retrospectively, you think you did the wrong thing, but we can also look at this in the architecture of regret as a difference between an action regret, something I did, and an inaction regret, something I didn't do. So this is an action regret, and the way you deal with action, there are two ways to deal with action regrets. One of them is to undo it. Hard to do here, all right? You're not going to unscramble this egg. So you can't undo that. So the other thing you can do is what's called in the psychological literature a downward counterfactual, where you imagine how things could have turned out worse. And so it usually starts with a sentence, at least, you know, at least you didn't get in trouble. At least you met your incredible spouse right now. And so you find, essentially, the silver lining in that. Yeah, as you were sharing your story, I was thinking, okay, at least you didn't have the responsibility of getting pregnant, and having a child, and having that alter your life. Because when we were talking about these kinds of moral regrets and foundational regrets, I was thinking, I'm sure that there are a lot of people who were promiscuous or whatever in their early years, and had child after child after child without even knowing what that responsibility would be like, and you hold regrets for it. Not regrets because you have the children, but regrets that you didn't make better choices that would allow you to better serve your children. And you have to, when we think about our regrets, you have to actually evaluate the person making the decision at that moment. And that's a different, you're a different person today at age 52 than you were at age 16, unfortunately. You know, the other thing that you can do, you know, the other thing that people can do here with regrets that can't be undone is transmit your understanding and your lessons to other people. That is, be open by talking about the regret and extract a lesson from it and see if people are interested in hearing that lesson. I also think it's important for you to go back and understand what happened to you, a book that Dr. Bruce Prairie and I co-authored together. What happened to you to cause you to be in what you call your boy crazy phase? Because that also happened to me. And up until I was like, I was sexually assaulted from 10 to 14. And during that time, like 13 to 14, I became really sexually promiscuous. And for many years, I blamed myself for that promiscuity. Like I was a bad girl. What I now know, what I now know is if you have been assaulted as a child and led into that whole sexual realm, that is almost a natural thing that shows up with young girls. And so when I see young girls that are labeled, you're a bad girl, or they used to say in my generation, you're just too fast. You're too fast. I always know when it's very, very young that there's something else going on beneath the surface there that's causing that. And you had mentioned that your father was not there. And you suffered that loss. And lots of times, you deal with it in different ways. When you're a young kid, you don't know the reason why I'm acting out is I'm looking for somebody to love me and to value me and to say that I'm okay because I'm not getting it from my father or my mother. So if I were you, I'd look back at the why. And that releases, number one, for me, released a lot of the shame and certainly me blaming myself for something that happened that basically I had no control over at that time. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I will also tell you that I just learned the term boy crazy. I would say promiscuous. But as I said, it sounds very dirty. And I didn't like the way it sounded. And it made me really dirty to use the word promiscuous. And you sharing that word and you saying it and defining yourself makes me feel there's some comfort there because the word promiscuous sounds just not nice. And I thought boy crazy sounded softer and a little more. What you were doing that you were acting out for a reason. You were acting out for a reason that happened to you for a reason. And so, you know, you shouldn't, you know, try to figure that out here with us, but you should work on that for yourself. What is the reason that you were acting out in that way? Thank you for being willing to share with us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Tanya. Kathy is a mother of two who also has deep regrets about time loss. Kathy, what's your story? My husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma in February of 2020. And I think my biggest regret was it took something like that to realize how it's not really present most of my life. I did have the good fortune of spending the last. He actually lasted 23 months and which is unheard of a glioblastoma. But I felt like all the time before that raising my two wonderful children. One's a teacher in the Bronx. One's an aspiring actress in LA that I just was going through checking lists. Like trying to even like outrun myself with accomplishing things. And it took my husband who was coming home saying, I have a headache. And I'm like, take Tylenol. I got something to do. You know, it took something like getting the diagnosis February 20th of 2020 of glioblastoma to say like, stop, just stop. And I feel like I want to forgive myself. My kids are wonderful. We had a wonderful relationship, but I go back and I think to myself, I wish I would have just really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry. Take your time. Just take your time. And you know what? I try to recover. Like we took everyone. Joe was the most wonderful, kind person. Like I was so lucky to have him in my life and wonderful father. But I think to myself, well, part of me doing this is because he deserves to continue to live, if you will. And I think he deserves. His legacy deserves not to disappear. But I just go back and I say, why did I not just stop? I don't know what it is. Is it a woman thing that you're trying to just outdo yourself? You have a million things going on. You're working full time. You're raising kids. And I just wish it didn't take something like a devastating diagnosis and subsequent loss. Oh, Kathy. To make me stop. Kathy, Kathy, Kathy. Thank you so much for being willing to share. And this is a podcast about the power of regret. Daniel Pink has written a really important book with a profound study about regrets all over the world. So naturally, you're going to have tears. And we appreciate you being so open to share today because you're going to really help a lot of other people to see themselves differently because of what you've shared here. What category is this? So I think this is a connection regret. It's a regret about not doing something to keep a relationship intact. The best remedy for this, I think, is something called self-compassion. Self-compassion is very simple. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. It's that simple. And so if you think about your self-talk, your self-talk, my hunch, Kathy, is cruel. It's vicious. It's mean-spirited. Here's what the research on self-compassion says about that kind of self-talk. Don't do that. And the reason to don't do that is because it's not effective. What's effective is self-compassion. And a way to think about that is to take it. If you had a friend who came to you with this situation, what would you tell her? You're doing the best you can. Exactly. You know what? I feel like I don't, I really, I know I focused when it was important. And ours was a love story to be told. And it's just like I think about when he used to go food shopping and I, like, I didn't really appreciate it. I hate food shopping. And every time I'm going down and fighting people for a loaf of bread, I'm like, oh, my God, Joe. Like, why didn't I just, like, really appreciate you doing this or painting the house? I made him paint this house, like, 55 times. And you know what? We were good and we said what we had to say to each other and there was nothing left unsaid. But, yeah, I just hope I could share with other people that, like, all this stuff we run around and do is just so not important. You can share with other people also. I think one of the lessons for regret, particularly when it comes to relationships, it's very simple to articulate. So when in doubt, reach out. So if there's somebody you're thinking about and you're saying, should I give that person a call? In any part of your life, if you reach that juncture, the answer is yes, do it. There's also something to be said for saying it now. You have a regret about not saying something at the moment, so say it now. And the best way to help other people is to exemplify that behavior by reaching out and by saying it now. The other thing, I'm sorry, but don't disrespect the work you did building a career and building a family. I mean, that's actually really important, and I don't want you to think of that as something that was somehow a betrayal of your husband or your family. It was something that actually fortified your husband and family. Well, one of the things that really has struck me about what you were saying earlier, I can't believe that this is what it took, and yeah, this is what it took. This is what it took. This is what it took for you to slow down and to stop and to want to live a more present-filled life and to be there in a way for the rest of your family and for yourself in ways that you could not before. So, yes, this is what it took. And the reason you know that is because this is now where you are. You've had that realization. And so I say bless your husband for being able to bring this to light for you so that the rest of your days can be spent in a fullness of being for yourself that you would not have had had you not had this experience. This was his parting gift to you, not to be regretted, but to be embraced. Yeah. Not to be regretted. Well, he's a gift that keeps on giving. As Andrew Garfield says about his mom, Joe is the best of us. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Kathy. Thank you. All right, Kelly, a mom to one teenage son says that she is constantly haunted by the what-ifs, the what-ifs, the what-ifs. Tell us about that, Kelly. Hi. Thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it. This is, you know, I was young. I married my high school sweetheart in my early 20s, and he was in the military. And I became an officer's wife in 2001, and this was right before 9-11 happened. So at that time, the priority seemed that the priority should be his career. It should be the things that were going on at the time. So I stepped back. I played small. I played the supporting role. And I continued doing that for years. And I don't, you know, what I was doing felt like it was valuable. It was important that it was serving a purpose. And I was grateful for the people and experiences that I had. But when my husband left, I was not prepared necessarily for the life that I had at that moment of making myself a priority. And it's been a struggle since. Meaning divorce? Divorce? Yes. So I keep asking myself, well, what if I had finished my degree before I had gotten married? What if I had gone back to school at any point? What if I had listened to my intuitions? What if I had stood up for myself? And what if I saw value in my place, in my marriage, and what I was doing at that time? And how would that have better prepared me for the life that I was living afterwards? And so even now, I still struggle. I still struggle to make the things that I value, my art and my writing, I still struggle to make them the way that I want and put them out there without trying to make myself small and fit in. So I feel like I'm on the cusp of this new transformation of moving forward still. And it's still holding me back. What if I had done these things earlier? Would I be better prepared? I heard you told the producers that you feel like you've spent most of your adulthood in the passenger seat. And so you're asking what if you had actually taken the driver's seat? That's right, yes. What if I, even at different points, even if I had just taken the driver's seat and said, you know what, I want to go back and I want to finish my degree and I wanted to start a career, what if I had done any of those things at various different points through those years? Well, you're not alone because in Daniel's study of people throughout the world, this is a big, what ifs is a big, big, big, big issue. And it's kind of a boldness regret. That is, making yourself small is in some ways the opposite of being bold. And we have a lot of regrets in this database, Kelly, that just reminds me of people using the phrase speak up, speaking up, spoken up. So what would it mean for you to not be small right now? Not an emotion, but an action. What would that mean? What step would you want to take? I finished a book. I'm about 110,000 words in and I have it and I'm right on that verge of feeling like I want to get it out there. But there's something that keeps still holding me back. Okay, can I get in here? All right. You're in here. You have the mic, sir. Okay, so this is sort of out of the pages of my own book. I'm going to tell you something that I tell to my daughters when they were younger. I have two daughters and a son. Something I told my daughters when they were younger and they were like, oh, I don't know if I should apply for this. I don't know whether I should ask to be a research assistant. I don't know if I should. And I say to them, what would a mediocre guy in your situation do? And it was always like raise their hand. Yes. And it's like, so what would a mediocre guy – believe me, a mediocre guy in your situation who's written 110,000 words would already be out there. So you need to be out there and like doing everything you can to get that book out there so you can be a guest on season three of this podcast. And so one of the things – it's interesting as a writer, one of the things with a Kindle or the eBooks is you can see what people underline. Yes. Yeah, I like that. And I find it interesting. In this book, one of the things that people underline was not something that I wrote. And it was a Chinese proverb that goes like this, and it reminds me of your dilemma here, Kelly, is the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. So if you want to get your book out there, get it out now. If you want to go back to school, get it out now. And use that feeling, that spear of regret, as a catalyst for starting now. Not waiting for the perfect moment because there isn't a perfect moment. And you were mentioning your art. Is that your art behind you, that painting? Did you do that painting? It is. That's one of my paintings, yes. I love that. Is the barn your painting? The barn? The barn is my painting. I love that barn. You know what? That reminds me like of a Harper barn, you know, a hopper. Hopper, you know Hopper. Yeah, Edward Hopper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sort of a Hopper. It's like Edward Hopper meets Andrew Wyeth. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that is what Daniel Pink just said about your work. Edward Hopper meets Andrew Wyeth. Noted art historian, Daniel Pink. Yes. Really. So thank you so much for sharing. Yeah. All right. And congrats on finishing a book. That's an amazing thing. Now get it out to the world because the world, you owe it to the world to do that. You have a moral obligation to put that in the world. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Get in the driver's seat, Kelly. Yeah. Get in their driver's seat. There's no one sitting in the driver's seat now. Kelly, take the wheel. Thank you so much. Lori now joins us. Lori, hi there. Zooming in from Dallas, Texas. Your biggest regret? Hi there. We love that hot pink girl. Hot pink against the green. Thank you. Hi, I am so grateful. I'm full of gratitude to be here with you guys today and talk about my regret. Mine's a little bit different than the other guests. Mine is financial. I have always been a big dreamer and chased after my dreams. I'm an interior designer. I'm an entrepreneur. I've done all the things. I started a nonprofit, and I'm proud of the work that I've done because it always holds compassion. All the things that I want to do, I want to help other people. I guess my biggest regret is looking back and thinking, why didn't I go the corporate route? Why didn't I get the 401K? Why didn't I do all of those things that I feel like I was supposed to do and be a little bit more stable in my life being a single mom and just moving forward, not having the regrets of all the things that I've tried to do because of my big, grandiose dreams? That's where I'm at. It sounds a little bit like a foundation regret, which are the small decisions or indecisions we make that accumulate to bad consequences. But I don't know. I don't really buy the idea that you should have gone in, just talking to you for 60 seconds, that you should have gone into a corporate life. Life with a 401K. Yes. I don't buy into it because of the hot pink you're wearing. Imagine this counterfactual. We have counterfactual Zoom, and we put an image on the screen of you having made that choice, and we're talking to you today. Do you think your regrets would be deeper about not pursuing your dreams, about not living a life fully if you had been an actuary at the Amalgamated Widget Company? Yeah. Well, yeah, no. I don't think I would have fit in there. Taking risk part, because I've done so much work, the taking risk part I do love. I just feel the failure. Why didn't my big dreams that I wanted to do just blossom into what I wanted to be? So is it because now you're regretting not having more security? Yes. More security and a safety net. So your main question to Daniel is what? What do you want from him today? I just would like to know how to move forward and not allow these worries to weigh down on my soul and to continue on my path and my goals. I mean, what I would say is when it comes to saving, I mean, you're young, start now. That a dollar a week is saving. So start now and do it. I mean, we know a lot about sort of the behavior science behind this is do it automatically. The other thing that I'm hearing from you is a kind of a sort of almost maybe a little too much exploration and too little focus. So if you have multiple lanes, pick a lane for the moment and just focus hard on that. We tend to think that pursuing your dreams and being kind of diligent and responsible are at odds with each other when in fact they actually work together really well. That the best way to pursue your dreams and be bold is to be diligent and show up and do your work. And so the lesson of foundation regrets is do the work. And the lesson of boldness regrets is take the chance. But if you take the chance and do the work at the same time, you're going to be fine. And once again, as I was saying to I think it was Kelly, start now. Like this is not a kind of thing that, okay, when I feel right, when I'm in the mood, is basically start now. As soon as you get off the Zoom, man, start. Yeah. Pick one. Yes. Does that sound reasonable to you? Yes, absolutely. It sounds reasonable to me. I don't ever want to not be a risk taker. I've done so much work around my personal growth and my spiritual growth that I still have it in me to want to save the world and be an Oprah a little bit, maybe like a mini Oprah or something, really have the compassion to want to help people. So there's that. You do it from where you are. Exactly. You do it from where you are, exactly where you are. Extending yourself in grace and kindness in the smallest ways and then any other way you can. And let that be your goal is how do I use my life in service to something or someone that's bigger than myself? That's all it is. How do I do that? And you have this bold. Thank you so much. You have the boldness of personality. You have a radiance about you. You have an energy force that we can feel just sitting here talking to you. And you should be using that as you have used it in the past and go forward and do the work. That's what you got to do. Thank you so much. Yeah. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity with y'all. I appreciate it more than you'll ever know. I love it. Thank you. You called us y'all. Thank you so much. No, I did. Thank you, Laurie. So what did you learn about your own regrets while writing and researching for The Power of Regret? That I'm not that special. That almost every regret that I have, I can find in that database. Really? Yeah. That you're like the 26,000 other people. Or all the same in that. Most people are like most people, and I'm most people. I have regrets about kindness, but I saw that in the database. I have regrets about not acting boldly and not speaking up for things that mattered. There are other people like that. I'm like everybody else. Well, yeah, I realize that about myself too. And what I have found is my deepest, deepest regret is that I didn't take the time when I ended the Oprah show before I started the next thing. That is my deepest, deepest regret. That's interesting. And the reason why it carries and holds such power for me is because I thought about it and thought about it and I thought about it and I didn't listen to my own inner voice, my own instinct about it, and I listened to everybody else. And every time I've ever made a mistake that I regretted, either large or small, and this was the biggest one, any time I've done that is when I diverted from listening to the still, small voice that lives inside of all of us and I did the thing that everybody said, well, you have to launch now and you have to do it now. And I have regretted it. For 14 years, I've regretted it. And as singular as that is, it's prevalent. And if I were to go pull up this database right now and look for the phrase, listen to a voice, inner voice, whatever, you would see dozens upon dozens upon dozens, that we have this intuitive sense of what's right, that we want to listen to ourselves. And I do, and I believe in that and I follow that, and the one time I didn't, I deeply regret it. It's almost at the core of a lot of these, that at some level we know what the right thing is to do. We know that we should be bold. We know that we should be responsible. We know that we should be moral. And our inner voice is telling us that, and yet there's noise on the outside or countervailing voices coming at us and we don't do that and then we regret it. Yeah, yeah. Then you're mad at yourself. And arguably you should be. I agree. Because you do better. Because you knew better. No, you don't have to be. No, you should be constructively mad at yourself. It shouldn't be self-flagellation. It should be sort of irritation in the service of action. Yeah, and I am compassionate enough with myself to know it was a mistake and I understand what the real mistake was. The real mistake was you heard the voice, you felt it inside yourself, and you acted differently than what you knew to be true. Right, right. You also had, I mean again, there's also a lot of momentum behind that. Yeah. And so when you do something for a long time, particularly obviously at the level that you did it, there's a lot of momentum carrying you forward. Yeah. And it takes actually greater force to stop the momentum. Stop the momentum. And go in a different direction. Yeah, yeah. Well, in all of your work, seven books, what do you know for sure that matters the most? That... To you and to other people. I have to say, I like to think of my books in some level about science and economics, but every single book that I've written has come back to meaning. Peoples want meaning in their life. They want to figure out why they're here. They want to actually spend their time wisely. Yeah, it's why I'm doing this podcast at this stage in my life, is because I know how important meaning is. And I think we're at a time where some people are lost and still trying to figure that out, and you're trying to get meaning from social media, and you know, oh, I see that. Oh, oh, right. Yeah. And that's what we are, you know, we are here on this planet for a vanishingly short amount of time. We really are. And at some level, all of us, either consciously or unconsciously, are reckoning with their mortality. And you want to have spent your time in a meaningful way. And so stuff that I've written, looking at like economic research and neuroscience research, so much of it comes back to the fact that we are mortal creatures looking for a sense of meaning and a sense of love. That's why we're here. Yeah. And in the end, what really matters, and I've heard this over and over and read it, and I remember a wonderful Toni Morrison novel, The Song of Solomon, where in that book, one of the characters, a granddaughter dies, and the proclamation that the grandmother makes at her funeral is, and she was loved. And I remember the first time I read that, I thought, that's really all that matters. All the awards, all the attention, all the things that people are striving to get and have, do, and be. In the end, what you want is to know that you were loved. And that you, and I think also that you loved other people. And that you loved other people. Because it's like a cascade out there. It all flows together. It boils down to who did you love and who loved you. Absolutely. I love the last paragraph of The Power of Regret. You say, after a few years, immersed in the science and experience of our most misunderstood emotion, I have discovered about myself what I've discovered about others. Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope. Thank you for The Power of Regret. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming to the Tea House. All right. Okay. So I love when a conversation inspires us to live more intentionally. And those of you who've listened, I know that many of you are going to be inspired by what you've heard from Daniel and our other guest today. Thank you all for sharing your stories. The Power of Regret is available now anywhere books are sold. And The Life You Want, Becoming Unstuck Journal is available on Amazon. Thanks everyone for listening and watching us on YouTube. I hope you'll subscribe to The Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And we'll see you next week. Go well, everybody.