So this thing is ubiquitous, but it's unpleasant. So why do we have it?

Because it's useful. Because it's functional. You know, because our cognitive machinery is pre-programmed for a regret.

Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Dan Pink on the podcast. Dan is the

New York Times best-selling author of books such as Drive, A Whole New Mind, and to Sell as Human.

Dan's books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold

millions of copies around the world. His articles and essays have also appeared in the New York Times

hard business review of the Atlantic, slate, and other publications. His most recent book,

which is the topic of our conversation today, is called The Power of Regret. How Looking Backward

Moves Us Forward. I really like this episode because I never really thought about regret as

something you could have and harness in your life today to help reflect on how you want to live

tomorrow. You know, we often hear a lot about deathbed regrets, and you know, what are you going to

regret when you're on that? One moment, the last moment, the last breath, and you'll be like,

oh, and they're a whole life flashed before your eyes. But why wait? Why wait until then? Dan shows

through a lot of quantitative as well, the qualitative research that he conducted, that regret can be

very powerful. It can lead us to have a much happier life. It can have a more meaning, and it allows

to overcome traumas and change our personalities in really powerful ways. I'd say like most importantly,

a big takeaway I took with Dan is that regret also allows us to realize there's a great common

humanity that we have with other people and other humans or fellow humans. So many of us seem to

have similar regrets. I think that's really telling us something really deep and profound about

human nature. So I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you do too. So without further ado,

that I bring you Dan Pink. I really didn't enjoy speed reading your book.

Hey, thanks. Yeah, it was really it was really it flowed really well and made me think a lot about

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