Dan Pink || Normalize Regret
The Psychology Podcast
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we welcome Dan Pink who is the New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, A Whole New Mind, 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. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and other publications. His most recent book is called The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.
In this episode, I talk to Dan Pink about regret. Dan collected regrets from over 15,000 people across different countries and sorted them into four major categories. He shares insights from his research and shows us how to reframe regret so we can live out the rest of our lives with more authenticity and purpose. We also touch on the topics of happiness, mortality, philosophy, post-traumatic growth, and personality.
Website: www.danpink.com
Twitter: @DanielPink
Topics
02:52 The universality of regret
05:40 Demographic differences in regrets
11:53 Free will and fatalism
15:47 What could have beens
19:13 Action vs inaction
24:12 The four core regrets
28:40 Regret done right
36:04 Debunking “No regrets”
37:59 We don’t talk enough about mortality
41:20 Deathbed regrets
42:38 Regret and gratefulness
45:40 Treat yourself with kindness
47:30 Shame, guilt, remorse
48:21 Do public figures experience more regret?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So this thing is ubiquitous, but it's unpleasant. So why do we have it? |
| 0:04.6 | Because it's useful. Because it's functional. You know, because our cognitive machinery is pre-programmed for a regret. |
| 0:17.5 | Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Dan Pink on the podcast. Dan is the |
| 0:23.2 | New York Times best-selling author of books such as Drive, A Whole New Mind, and to Sell as Human. |
| 0:29.2 | Dan's books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold |
| 0:33.3 | millions of copies around the world. His articles and essays have also appeared in the New York Times |
| 0:37.2 | hard business review of the Atlantic, slate, and other publications. His most recent book, |
| 0:41.1 | which is the topic of our conversation today, is called The Power of Regret. How Looking Backward |
| 0:46.6 | Moves Us Forward. I really like this episode because I never really thought about regret as |
| 0:52.5 | something you could have and harness in your life today to help reflect on how you want to live |
| 0:58.1 | tomorrow. You know, we often hear a lot about deathbed regrets, and you know, what are you going to |
| 1:02.4 | regret when you're on that? One moment, the last moment, the last breath, and you'll be like, |
| 1:06.9 | oh, and they're a whole life flashed before your eyes. But why wait? Why wait until then? Dan shows |
| 1:11.9 | through a lot of quantitative as well, the qualitative research that he conducted, that regret can be |
| 1:16.8 | very powerful. It can lead us to have a much happier life. It can have a more meaning, and it allows |
| 1:21.5 | to overcome traumas and change our personalities in really powerful ways. I'd say like most importantly, |
| 1:27.8 | a big takeaway I took with Dan is that regret also allows us to realize there's a great common |
| 1:33.8 | humanity that we have with other people and other humans or fellow humans. So many of us seem to |
| 1:38.7 | have similar regrets. I think that's really telling us something really deep and profound about |
| 1:43.6 | human nature. So I really enjoyed this episode. I hope you do too. So without further ado, |
| 1:48.7 | that I bring you Dan Pink. I really didn't enjoy speed reading your book. |
| 1:54.4 | Hey, thanks. Yeah, it was really it was really it flowed really well and made me think a lot about |
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