How to Stop Regretting Your Decisions
Understand the psychology of regret., Go easy on yourself., Accept what you cannot know.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Understand the psychology of regret.
Regret is a powerful emotion.
Learning to better cope with regret means understanding the psychology behind it.
Regret is negative feelings of guilt, sadness, or anger over past decisions.
Everyone experiences regret at some point in life, especially young people, but regret becomes a problem when ruminating over past mistakes results in disengagement with your life, career, and personal relationships.Counterfactual thinking drives regret.
This means that the easier it is to imagine a different, better outcome for a situation, the more likely we are to regret that decision.
Regret is most intense when you feel you've come close to a major success and missed the opportunity because of poor planning or inaction.
If, for example, you play the same numbers in the lottery each year and, the one year you don't play, your numbers come up.Regret can have negative emotional and physical effects.
Regret can lead to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety and the chronic stress associated with regret leads to hormonal imbalances and a weakened immune system.Regret is distributed differently across genders.
Women are more likely to disengage from past relationships and tend to experience more overall regret over past romantic experiences. -
Step 2: Go easy on yourself.
Taking on an unreasonable amount of personal responsibility heightens the likelihood that you will experience regret.
Learning to ease your personal expectations, and accept there's much in life that you cannot change, is a good defense against regret.
When you find yourself riddled with regret, and ruminating over what you could have done differently, remove yourself from the situation.
Ask yourself, "If a friend or family member was telling me this, what would I say? Would I think taking on this level of blame is reasonable?" Consider the circumstances surrounding the situation or decision you're regretting.
A variety of factors beyond your control could have influenced your judgment.
Were you under to pressure to make a choice prematurely? Did you have limited knowledge at the time you made a decision? Were there multiple stressors impairing your judgment? Say you're in charge of managing a charity organization.
For an upcoming fundraiser, you've secured a popular hotel bar/restaurant well in advance.
The hotel manager calls you a week before the event to alert you he inadvertently overbooked that weekend.
As your group was the second to make reservations, he is honoring the first group's request over yours.
Panicked, you scramble to find alternative options.
You find another hotel bar/restaurant a mile down the road and a local theater with no bookings that weekend.
Lacking time to weigh pros and cons as much as you would like, you settle on the second hotel.
When the event comes, the hotel staff is rude, the food is poorly prepared, and the space is not big enough to adequately seat the attendees.
In this scenario, you might regret your decision to choose the hotel and wish you had gone with the theater.
However, how much control did you really have? You were put, by circumstance, in a difficult situation and had to make a decision fast.
While it did not go over well, it's probably not reasonable to blame yourself. , Regret, as stated, stems from counterfactual thinking.
In order to stop regret, we need to accept this line of thinking is damaging.
There is much in life we do not know.
All our actions have a ripple effect.
That is, there is an influence to our choices that we cannot calculate.
Usually, the impact of our choices is only truly visible years after decisions are made.
Even if something looks bad now, we do not know what the future holds and the regretted decision could turn out to be only minor setback years later.Keep in mind, when you engage in "what-ifs" you're usually operating under the assumption the imagined scenario would be superior to your current state.
The fact is, this is not something you can know.
Try to imagine a "what-if" scenario that acknowledges the possibility the choice you made was actually the better one.
Take the above lottery example.
What if you had played your numbers that week and did win big? What if you quit your job, grew bored, and so the fortune ultimately resulted in you developing a problem with gambling, drinking, or hard narcotics to pass the time? -
Step 3: Accept what you cannot know.
Detailed Guide
Regret is a powerful emotion.
Learning to better cope with regret means understanding the psychology behind it.
Regret is negative feelings of guilt, sadness, or anger over past decisions.
Everyone experiences regret at some point in life, especially young people, but regret becomes a problem when ruminating over past mistakes results in disengagement with your life, career, and personal relationships.Counterfactual thinking drives regret.
This means that the easier it is to imagine a different, better outcome for a situation, the more likely we are to regret that decision.
Regret is most intense when you feel you've come close to a major success and missed the opportunity because of poor planning or inaction.
If, for example, you play the same numbers in the lottery each year and, the one year you don't play, your numbers come up.Regret can have negative emotional and physical effects.
Regret can lead to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety and the chronic stress associated with regret leads to hormonal imbalances and a weakened immune system.Regret is distributed differently across genders.
Women are more likely to disengage from past relationships and tend to experience more overall regret over past romantic experiences.
Taking on an unreasonable amount of personal responsibility heightens the likelihood that you will experience regret.
Learning to ease your personal expectations, and accept there's much in life that you cannot change, is a good defense against regret.
When you find yourself riddled with regret, and ruminating over what you could have done differently, remove yourself from the situation.
Ask yourself, "If a friend or family member was telling me this, what would I say? Would I think taking on this level of blame is reasonable?" Consider the circumstances surrounding the situation or decision you're regretting.
A variety of factors beyond your control could have influenced your judgment.
Were you under to pressure to make a choice prematurely? Did you have limited knowledge at the time you made a decision? Were there multiple stressors impairing your judgment? Say you're in charge of managing a charity organization.
For an upcoming fundraiser, you've secured a popular hotel bar/restaurant well in advance.
The hotel manager calls you a week before the event to alert you he inadvertently overbooked that weekend.
As your group was the second to make reservations, he is honoring the first group's request over yours.
Panicked, you scramble to find alternative options.
You find another hotel bar/restaurant a mile down the road and a local theater with no bookings that weekend.
Lacking time to weigh pros and cons as much as you would like, you settle on the second hotel.
When the event comes, the hotel staff is rude, the food is poorly prepared, and the space is not big enough to adequately seat the attendees.
In this scenario, you might regret your decision to choose the hotel and wish you had gone with the theater.
However, how much control did you really have? You were put, by circumstance, in a difficult situation and had to make a decision fast.
While it did not go over well, it's probably not reasonable to blame yourself. , Regret, as stated, stems from counterfactual thinking.
In order to stop regret, we need to accept this line of thinking is damaging.
There is much in life we do not know.
All our actions have a ripple effect.
That is, there is an influence to our choices that we cannot calculate.
Usually, the impact of our choices is only truly visible years after decisions are made.
Even if something looks bad now, we do not know what the future holds and the regretted decision could turn out to be only minor setback years later.Keep in mind, when you engage in "what-ifs" you're usually operating under the assumption the imagined scenario would be superior to your current state.
The fact is, this is not something you can know.
Try to imagine a "what-if" scenario that acknowledges the possibility the choice you made was actually the better one.
Take the above lottery example.
What if you had played your numbers that week and did win big? What if you quit your job, grew bored, and so the fortune ultimately resulted in you developing a problem with gambling, drinking, or hard narcotics to pass the time?
About the Author
Robert Hall
Brings years of experience writing about home improvement and related subjects.
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