How To!: Have Happy Regrets

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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Courtenay has more than a few regrets, starting with her career. Despite her accomplishments as an opera singer, she wishes she’d prioritized her professional goals, become more proficient on the piano and with foreign languages. Then there are the personal regrets, like the elderly friend Courteney lost touch with — who then passed away. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Daniel H. Pink, author of The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, to coach Courtenay through reclaiming her regrets. “We haven't taught people how to properly deal with negative emotions,” Pink reminds us. We’ll learn about the four core regrets that most of us share and how to turn them into wisdom. If you liked this episode, check out “How To Uproot Your Life.” Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen. Podcast production by Derek John, Rosemary Belson and Katie Shepherd. Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I regret not keeping in touch with friends after college.
0:03.8	I regret not being more patient with my aging parents.
0:07.2	I regret never learning how to drive a manual car.
0:10.4	I regret not dancing with my mother at my wedding.
0:14.3	Welcome to How-To, I'm Amanda Ripley.
0:18.6	Those are just some of the regrets that my colleagues at Slate have.
0:22.9	And what about you?
0:24.4	Do you have regrets?
0:25.4	Is it a path not taken?
0:27.0	A bakery you never started, a language you didn't learn, or maybe it's a boyfriend you
0:32.0	ghosted, or a grieving coworker you really should have reached out to and didn't?
0:38.6	It turns out that regret is one of the most common and most misunderstood emotions in the
0:43.6	human experience, which means a missed opportunity.
0:47.9	Because regret, if handled better, can lift you up rather than drag you down.
0:53.9	Our listener today came to us with a laundry list of what it could have showed us.
0:58.1	And she knew that there had to be a better way.
1:01.7	You know, it's funny.
1:02.9	My husband and I went on a little date and on the way to the restaurant, I said, do you
1:09.1	do this?
1:10.1	I said, I wake up at 4 a.m. and a panic.
1:12.7	I can't stop beating myself up.
1:14.8	How could you have done this and this and this and this and this and this and the other
	...

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