The Best Strategy for Avoiding Regret? Take a Chance

Last month I received a call from my middle child, a college senior, with quite surprising news. He’d just received an offer from the Peace Corps to spend 27 months working in Peru.

My immediate response as a Mom — after offering him my congratulations — was to worry. Peru is a very long way from our home in Massachusetts, and given the limited time off for Peace Corps volunteers, he likely wouldn’t return home during that entire time.

But when he asked for my advice, I took a deep breath, and said “I think if you don’t go, you’ll regret it.”

My advice was decidedly not based on my preferences as his mother. Instead, it was based on my knowledge of the psychology of regret.

The nature of regret

We can all think about choices we’ve made that might have seemed wise at the time, but later we come to regret. Perhaps it was where you attended college, your major, or a particular career path. Perhaps it was a relationship you stayed in longer than you should have — or failed to pursue at all.

Researchers in one study examined the most common types of regrets for American adults. Their findings revealed the following six biggest regrets (in order of frequency): education (“I should have studied harder”), career (“I should have become a dentist”), romance (“I wish I’d married Jake instead of Bill”), parenting (“I wish I’d spent more time with the kids”), self-improvement (“I should have started exercising sooner”), and leisure (“I wish I’d visited Europe”). These six categories account for 86 percent of all the regrets listed.

Research also consistently shows that we experience more regret over things we choose not to do than things we choose to do. In other words, regrets of inaction haunt us more than regrets of action.

In one study, people were asked what they would do differently if they could live life over again. More than half of the regrets had to do with inaction — should have attended or completed college, should have pursued a particular career, should have tried harder in social relationships or marriages. In contrast, only 12 percent were regrets of action — shouldn’t have smoked, shouldn’t have gotten married so early, shouldn’t have worked so hard.

These findings explain why we are often haunted by paths not taken — our choice to turn down an appealing but less certain job opportunity or fail to express our romantic interest to a friend due to a fear of rejection.

Why regrets of inaction tend to linger

Why do regrets of inaction linger more than those of action?

One explanation is that it’s easier to overcome regrets of action. Let’s say you took a job you thought was going to be great, but come to recognize it was the wrong choice. You can quit that job — or at least look for another position. Or perhaps you chose to spend your limited vacation time taking an expensive cruise — only to realize that cruising isn’t really your thing. You can — and should — make different plans for your next vacation. In other words, we can deal with bad choices we’ve made by learning from our mistakes.

It’s far harder to recover from regrets of inaction. If you didn’t apply for a job, or turned down a job offer, at this point there’s little you can do to fix that choice. That position is almost certainly filled, and you’ll never know if it would have been a better fit. If you failed to pursue a long-time crush, that person may now be married, and you’ll never know where that relationship would have gone.

Another explanation is that we process regrets of action versus inaction in different ways. Regrets of action often prompt a clear emotional response, such as guilt, sadness, or anger. We recognize that mistakes were made, and we respond accordingly.

But it’s harder to process — or come to terms with — regrets of inaction. This uncertainty helps explain why regrets of action tend to fade over time, whereas regrets of inaction may instead increase over time.

The upside of taking a chance

Many people — perhaps even most people — go through life afraid of taking a chance. Why? Because taking a chance feels risky. It can lead to disappointment, failure, or rejection. And as one of my closest friends always says, “rejection is never a party.”

Taking a chance does risk failure and disappointment and rejection — but there’s honor and value in trying, no matter the outcome.

As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at best know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

This type of risk-averse mindset can also have lasting consequences. It encourages us to settle for safety instead of venturing boldly into the unknown. So we stay with jobs we don’t find rewarding and in relationships that don’t make us happy.

The findings from empirical research in psychology are clear; if you want to avoid future regret, take a chance. As author H. Jackson Brown Jr. wrote, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”