Regret is everyone's favorite topic. What is it? It is when the past invades the present. When a memory brings us such pain that we wish we could go back and change it. How do we free ourselves from this dragging emotion? Where memories float in without intrusion and we can laugh about our past blunders?
Since regrets stem from painful memories, the first thing to help us deal with our regrets is a fundamental understanding of memory itself.
First Principle of Memory: Purpose
Contrary to popular belief, your memory does not aim to keep an accurate accounting of your history. The sole purpose of your memory is to keep experiences that your brain believes will be helpful in the future. This means information you do not believe could be useful is wiped from your memory within minutes.
Second Principle of Memory: Presentism
The primary indicator your brain uses to mark information for long-term memory is intensity of present emotions. Remember the last monotone lecture you heard from an unemphatic teacher? Yeah, me neither. A speaker may have impeccable logic, but if he can't get the audience's emotions involved, the only thing they might remember is the number of tiles on the ceiling.
An important implication of this connection between memory and emotion is that your memory is distorted by your emotions. For example, if an event feels particularly embarrassing, your brain will mark it for long term memory to avoid embarrassment in the future. Meanwhile, that cute stranger who witnessed your embarrassing ordeal forgot about it by the end of the day. The stranger forgot because they either did not experience any intense emotions from the event or did not think your blunder was important enough to recall later.
Third Principle of Memory: Telephone Directory
Like the rest of the world, your brain operates on limited resources. To save computational power, your brain does not store the actual events of each memory. Instead, you recall the last time you recollected a memory. Instead of showing you the original events, your brain plays a giant game of Telephone with itself. You can only hear the details that your latest memory could capture.
If you have ever played the game of Telephone, you know that the final message does not exactly align with the original message. Similarly, your latest memory does not exactly align with the actual events you recalled.
Fourth Principle of Memory: Distortion
Each recollection strays you further from a truthful representation of an event because it also passes through a lens. This lens has two characteristics that distort memories as they pass through your brain. They are your:
1) Existing thought patterns
2) Identity
Existing thought patterns refer to your default programming, or mental comfort zone. Every time a piece of information enters your brain, it goes on a journey. It begins by entering your brain through a signal generated by a sensory organ like your eyeball. Your brain then processes the information with or without your conscious recognition. This processing refers to your thought patterns morphing the information to fit your identity. Lastly, the information is used to reach its destination: the conclusion you make from the information.
The same mechanism occurs when you recall a memory. Your brain is the sensory organ that feeds you a piece of information, or a memory. The memory is processed through the lens of your thought patterns, and you arrive at a conclusion surrounding your memory (e.g. "I am an embarrassment" or "Wow I've grown so much since then").
Identity dictates your thought patterns. "I'm a good person." "I'm not the kind of person that tries new things." "I don't approach strangers." These are all identities you can have. Your brain holds your identities very dear. In fact, it misremembers details to protect these identities.
Say you identify as someone who is difficult to be friends with. Your brain misremembers, misinterprets, and exaggerates details to protect this identity. In short, your thought patterns reflect your identity. A mere sigh from your friend means he is sick of you. Playful teasing feels like ridicule. Realistically, these events are not personal slights nor of malicious intent. But since you hold this identity, your brain manipulates the information to confirm your belief.
To quickly recap the key principles of memory:
Your memory is not an accurate accounting of your history
Memory is impacted by the emotions present during its formation
Memories change with each recollection
How your memories change depends on your thought patterns and identity
Putting these fundamentals together, we find that your emotions, thought processes, and identities from the past and present determine how you feel about your past. As you probably know, the past can be a touchy subject that is filled with regrets. You don't want to experience regret, because you want to sit on your deathbed fulfilled with how your life unfolded. And you prefer to enjoy the present rather than relive past mistakes. Let's break down how this all applies to regret.
There are two necessary components for you to experience regret:
A memory brings you pain
Your response is a desire to turn back time and change a decision
Remove either of these two components and you no longer experience regret. By applying the fundamentals of memory, there are two viable approaches to regret:
Change your thought patterns so that your past does not bring you pain.
Change your relationship with pain so that you do not wish to remove it.
Approach #1: Remove a Harmful Identity
Your past plays a large role in who you are today. Your brain is a learning machine that creates a mental framework based on your past experiences. So if your past experiences play an instrumental role in your current identity, it is safe to say you would be a completely different person if you had different past experiences. By definition, regret requires a desire to change your past experiences. So if you wish to change your past, then you likely wish to change your mental framework, and thereby who you are. People who are satisfied with themselves seldom wish to change their past, hence they rarely experience regret.
To reduce regret, the goal is to become a satisfied person. Or identify as a fulfilled person. Who you believe yourself to be ultimately determines who you are. As a wise man once said:
"Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right." -Henry Ford
As discussed earlier, your identity determines your thought patterns and behavior.
If you have a train of thought, your thought patterns are the tracks it rides on. Fortunately, you have the gift of consciousness. Consciousness means you can choose which tracks your train of thought rides. Every time you react to something, you face a variation of the trolley dilemma. Flip the switch, and you change tracks, leading you to a different destination.
The switch is your identity. You change the tracks by changing how you view yourself. You can choose to view yourself as someone who is satisfied with their life, leading to self-liberating thought patterns. Choose to believe you are unworthy of a fulfilled life and you follow the path of harmful thought patterns, finishing at a regret-filled destination.
So how do you simply change a harmful identity? Follow the Identity Change Cycle.
Figure out which harmful belief of yourself is responsible for unwanted behavior.
Prove yourself wrong. Find all the evidence you can to justify that your self-limiting belief is wrong. Wrack your brain for examples of actions you have taken that contradict this belief.
Think about how much you have missed out on because of this false belief. Think of the time and energy it has cost you. And the people it may have pushed away.
Get angry about it. Remember, getting your emotions involved makes it stick better in your memory.
Are your unwanted behaviors still present? If yes, rinse and repeat. If not, congrats! You now have a new identity.
The Identity Change Cycle applies to any choice between harmful and beneficial identities, but this essay is focused specifically on using it to handle regret. Handling regret through this approach could look something like this:
My constant feelings of regret are caused by some harmful thought patterns, indicating I view myself as someone unworthy of living a fulfilled life. I let my past haunt me because I do not see myself as someone with the self-respect to develop from my past mistakes.
These beliefs are not objectively true. I am worthy of satisfaction and behave with self-respect. In fact, I took the time yesterday to improve my writing skills because it brings me satisfaction. And today, I chose to exercise and eat healthy food because I respect myself.
These false beliefs have filled me with regrets. These regrets have kept me up at night, causing a detriment to my physical and mental health. These regrets have created insecurities. These insecurities have blocked me from creating healthy relationships and caused harm to those I care about.
This is ridiculous. Why should I continue to believe such things when they are neither true nor beneficial to me? This is not who I am.
Repeat these steps daily, meditating on new evidence against your identity and its harmful effects until you stop experiencing regret. The end of regret signals that your thought patterns and identity have changed. The following visual illustrates the Identity Change Cycle approach to relieving regret.
This approach takes some time to achieve and serious amounts of self-awareness. But it is a lasting, preventative method that can be applied to any problem stemming from a harmful identity (e.g. anxieties, insecurities, etc). Not all regret stems from a harmful identity however. So another approach must be used for these situations.
Approach #2: Use Regret as a Tool
Sometimes your identity is beneficial to yourself, yet you still experience regret. You can be satisfied with who you are, but you may regret how past decisions have impacted others. Knowing that you brought pain and suffering upon another person can be a real source of pain.
Pain is a primary criterion for regret. And the pain it brings is why many people view regret with dismay. The second approach to regret is to change the way you view pain so that it is not something you wish to remove. Now, I'm not suggesting you become a glutton for pain. But you can use your pain and emotions as tools.
Many understandably avoid or block out "bad" emotions because they are uncomfortable. Instead of cowering from pain, try embracing it. Emotions are to be learned from, not feared. When you view regret as a learning tool, the pain tends not to sting as much.
So what does it mean to view pain as a learning tool? Pain is simply a signal that indicates something is wrong. It could be something that's wrong for everyone (e.g. burning your hand on a stove) or for you in particular (e.g. You regret not treating someone with compassion).
Regrets that don’t stem from a harmful identity are usually caused by an inconsistency between your personal values and your past actions. Through self-reflection, you can use your regret to show you your values. Once you discover the value you embrace, you can decide if this value should stay or go.
Say you lose sleep at night thinking about how you could have invested in Bitcoin in 2012. Maybe you value money too much and should follow the first approach to identify less with this value. But if you regret treating someone maliciously, you should keep valuing compassion. Instead you can focus on how to better align your behavior with your values. Make Some Ripples and Leash That Dog go into greater details discussing tactics to make better decisions.
When the experience of regret becomes a constructive exercise, the sting of its pain recedes. It's much more painful to focus on "Ow this hurts" instead of "What can I learn from this?". Acknowledge the pain of regret, but don't let it consume you. When you view pain as a source of information instead of a burden, you no longer wish to remove it from your life. This approach stops regret dead in its tracks and can be applied to other painful experiences.
Conclusions
Regret is a complex emotion that is highly dependent on your memory. There are four primary characteristics of memory that help you with regret.
One, the fundamental purpose of your memory is to prepare you for the future. It does not try to maintain an accurate recording of your history.
Two, your emotional state impacts the “stickiness” of a memory. You remember things that involve your emotions and forget boring statistics.
Three, your memories become distorted with each recollection because your brain plays one giant game of Telephone.
Four, your thought patterns and identity fill in the gaps missed from the brain’s game of Telephone. This means your memories morph to fit your beliefs of yourself and the world
There are two primary ways to leverage these fundamentals to deal with regret:
1) For regrets stemming from harmful identities, change how you view yourself so that you do not wish to change your past. Follow the Identity Change Cycle. Find an identity that causes regret. Elect to switch your train of thought like a conductor switches tracks. Do this by understanding your harmful identities and proving them wrong. Study them to see their negative impact, and get angry at the absurdity of believing false truths that squander your happiness.
2) For regrets despite a beneficial identity, stop fearing pain. Instead see it as something to be learned from. Use your regrets to discover your values. Decide whether they are worth keeping, and work towards aligning your behavior with your best intentions. Focus on improving the path moving forward rather than the broken road behind you.
All emotions reflect your values to you, and regret is no different. Consider what values you hold, and follow the appropriate path to mend your regrets.