This is NPR's Life Kit, I'm Elise Hugh.

So I used to own a home in Austin, Texas.

It was my first ever house, which I ended up renting out when my NPR job took me to Washington, DC.

The house is gray, it's a ranch-style home with four bedrooms and a huge backyard where my renters grew watermelon.

In 2018, for no particular reason, I decided to sell it.

A house in Austin, Texas.

Now, whenever I look at the housing market and see how much Austin has grown, a specific feeling washes over me.

Regret, it's a negative emotion, it's an emotion that doesn't feel very good,

and it's an emotion that we experience when we look backward and say, if only I hadn't made that decision,

if only I had taken that action or hadn't taken that action, things today would be better.

That's Daniel Pink, the author of The Power of Regret.

How looking backward moves us forward.

He says, Regret, while painful, is distinct to humans and it's essential.

It involves agency, so Regret is our fault unlike disappointment.

It also is an amazing thing that our brains do because it involves time travel and storytelling,

and that's one of the things that makes it an essential part of our cognitive machinery.

But of course, you have to know how to use it.

You have to ask yourself, what did I know at the time when I made that decision,

and was it a good decision based on who I was at that moment and the information that I had?

And it very well might have been, or at least you totally blew it,

and you left a huge amount of money on the table.

Sorry, and it's all your fault.

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