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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

456: Daniel Pink - How Looking Backwards Moves Us Forward (The Power Of Regret)

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Ryan Hawk

Careers, Management, Business

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Read my new book, The Pursuit of Excellence https://bit.ly/excellencehawk

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Text Hawk to 66866 for "Mindful Monday"

Daniel H. Pink is the author of seven books, including the forthcoming The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward (Riverhead, 2022). His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world.

Notes:

  • The truth: We regret inactions much more than actions.The lesson: Be bold. Take that chance. In a world full of talkers, be a doer. Have a bias for action.
  • The 3 keys to a productive achiever: empathy/compassion, curiosity, doggedness (consistency).
  • We overvalue intensity and undervalue consistency and doggedness. Continue to show up and do the work.
  • The four core regrets:
    • Foundation regrets - People want stability. (save money, plan for the future)
    • Boldness regrets - "If only I'd taken that chance." People regret not taking the chance.
    • Moral regrets
    • Connection regrets
  • The truth: We deeply regret not asserting ourselves. The lesson: Speak up.
  • Optimizing Regret: Our goal should not be to always minimize regret. Our goal should be to optimize it. By combining the science of anticipated regret with the new deep structure of regret, we can refine our mental model.
  • “Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.”
  • This is a great exercise. Instead of a New Year's resolution, choose a single word to guide your 2022. After 2 years of upheaval, it can help you focus on the goals & changes most important to you. Dan's choice? Restore.
  • The Dan Pink family acronym: HAHU - Hustle. Anticipate. Heads up.
  • Big life decisions:
    • Maximizers and satisficers
      • Know when to maximize and when to satisfy. For low stakes decisions (the color of your car), you don't have to maximize
  • Regret is part of the human condition. We all have regrets. Disclose it. Lift the burden.
    • Someone that says they have "No Regrets" is either lying or they are a sociopath.
  • Disclose lessons from your regrets. Ask yourself, "What did I learn from it?"
  • Does everything happen for a reason?
    • The lesson to be learned from it is understanding what we have control over and what we don't.
  • Regret depends on storytelling. And that raises a question: In these stories, are we the creator or the character, the playwright or the performer? The answer is... YES. We are both.
    • We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.
  • "Our everyday lives consist of hundreds of decisions—some of them crucial to our well-being, many of them inconsequential. Understanding the difference can make all the difference. If we know what we truly regret, we know what we truly value. Regret— that maddening, perplexing, and undeniably real emotion—points the way to a life well-lived."
  • Career/Life advice:
    • Doggedness is important. Be a person of action. Be willing to try stuff. "We learn who we are in practice, not in theory." Doing something helps you figure it out.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's a big week. My book, The Pursuit of Excellence, is now out. Years and years of writing

0:11.8

and rewriting and cutting and editing and redrafting and now it's out. The Pursuit of Excellence

0:21.4

was written because I continued to receive the question from so many, which was, what

0:29.4

have you found to be the common behaviors of people who are sustaining excellence over

0:37.4

an extended period of time? And I imagine the reason that I'm asked that is because

0:43.1

I ask it so often of others on my podcast, The Learning Leadership, as well as in regular

0:49.1

everyday life. I'm fascinated by that question. And so what I've tried to do in this book

0:54.0

is take the best of the best of what I've learned from asking that question so much and

1:00.0

combine that with some of the actions and the experiences within my own life, as well

1:06.3

as some of the interviews I've done off the microphone, put it all together to make

1:11.7

this book as useful, entertaining, and informative as possible. And my style that I try to follow

1:19.7

throughout to make this a useful book is to use a story, science, practical application

1:28.6

method. The story is there to be entertaining, to grab your attention, to make it pleasurable.

1:36.4

The science is to make it informative, to prove those stories true. The research is accurate.

1:42.7

And then the practical application answers a very important question, which is, so what?

1:48.1

Why should I care as the reader? And that is how you can apply it to your life. And so

1:55.1

I would say, please, buy this book. I am very confident that you will find an idea or

2:05.3

two that will change your life. And remember, Remete Satie's book, Buying Rule that he

2:12.3

talked about on this podcast when he was my guest. He said, if you're even considering

2:17.7

it for a millisecond, buy the book, go to Amazon, click buy. If you get just one, one

2:28.4

idea that changed your life, isn't that worth 20 or so dollars? No, it's worth a lot

2:34.1

more than that. So just the chance that you will find a life-changing idea makes it worth

...

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