How to Live Without Regret: What Research Says

The guitar has been leaning in the corner of the room for six years. It was bought on a good day, with a plan to learn on weekends. There were lessons booked once, then a busy month, then another. Now it is furniture. Now and then someone picks it up, strums a chord badly, and puts it down with a small laugh that is not quite a laugh.

Everyone has a version of the guitar, and most advice on how to live without regret comes as slogans. A trip, a call, a move, a piece of work, a person. The research is more useful, because it shows how regret actually behaves over time, and that changes how to spend this week.

What the research found

In the 1990s, the psychologists Gilovich and Medvec set out to understand which regrets stay with people. In a 1994 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they reported what they found through telephone surveys, written questionnaires and face-to-face interviews: people's biggest regrets tend to involve things they have failed to do in their lives.

That finding seemed to clash with earlier work. Experiments on what psychologists call counterfactual thinking had shown that people feel worse about bad outcomes that come from something they did than about identical outcomes that come from something they did not do. If a choice to act goes badly, it hurts more than a choice to stay put that goes equally badly.

Gilovich and Medvec reconciled the two by looking at time. In their words, "actions cause more pain in the short-term, but inactions are regretted more in the long run." They supported this with scenario experiments about how people expect others to feel, and with a study asking people about their own regrets of action and inaction from two different periods of their lives.

A year later, in a 1995 review in Psychological Review, they set out the pattern plainly: actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run.

Why the things we didn't do stay with us

The 1995 review described several processes behind the pattern. Put simply:

• The sting of an action fades. When we act and it goes badly, the pain is sharp at first, then tends to ease over time. We make sense of it, learn from it, or move on.
• The ache of an inaction grows. When we hold back, the cost is quiet at first. Over the years, the pain of what we did not try tends to grow rather than fade.
• Unfinished things stay in view. The two kinds of regret differ in how easily they come to mind. A finished action has an ending. An untried possibility stays open, and keeps returning.

Their review also discussed where these patterns come from, in how people and cultures think about regret. The lesson for an ordinary life is simpler: the short sting of trying is usually the smaller cost.

This is not a case for recklessness. Some actions deserve their regret, and some caution is wisdom. It is a case for noticing which way fear usually pushes us. Most of the time, it pushes toward waiting.

How to live without regret, in practice

Living with no regrets at all is probably not possible, and a life without any would be a strangely thin one. The aim is different: lean toward the attempt, accept the short sting it may bring, and shrink the long ache of the things never started. A few practices help.

1. Name the thing you keep circling

Most people already know their guitar. It is the idea that comes back on quiet evenings, the plan that gets mentioned every year. Write it down in one line. Naming it makes it real enough to act on.

2. Make the first step small

Big plans are easy to postpone because they are big. Shrink the first step until it fits in a day: one lesson booked, one email sent, one page written, one call made. A small action today changes the shape of the regret, because the thing is no longer untried.

3. Let it be a little scary

If the step feels completely safe, it may be too small to matter. Some fear is part of anything worth doing. The research suggests that the sting of a failed attempt usually fades. Let the fear come along, and take the step anyway.

4. Give actions their short sting

When an attempt goes badly, let it hurt, honestly, and then let it pass. The 1995 review found that the pain of regrettable actions tends to decrease over time. Remembering that can make it easier to try again.

5. Look back once a year

Pick a day, a birthday or the turn of the year, and ask two questions: what did you try, and what did you keep circling? The first list is the life you are living. The second list is the next year's work.

What is yours to try

The Stoic teacher Epictetus opened his handbook, the Enchiridion, with a line that fits this research closely. In Elizabeth Carter's translation: "Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions."

Read next to Gilovich and Medvec, it offers a way through the fear of trying. The outcome of an attempt is not fully ours. The audition, the application, the conversation, the first lesson: other people and chance have a say in how they turn out. The attempt itself is ours. Choosing to make it, preparing for it, showing up for it, are our own actions.

That changes what a failed attempt means. If the measure is the outcome, a failure is a loss. If the measure is whether we did our part, a failed attempt is still a kept promise to ourselves. And the research suggests its sting will fade, while the untried version would have stayed open.

We wrote about the same line from Epictetus in a Stoic morning routine for an ordinary day, as a way to start each morning by sorting what is yours from what is not. The same sorting works for the bigger choices too.

Feeling the risk, fully

At dose in we talk about dosing into your own life: sober, awake, and willing to feel all of it, the heartache included. Regret belongs to that. It is a signal about what matters, and the research suggests it points most often at the things we never let ourselves try.

In a letter to his brother Theo in April 1878, Vincent van Gogh put the same idea in a sentence, in Robert Harrison's translation: "it is certainly better to be ardent in spirit, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and over-cautious." Ardent is a good word for it. It means going in fully, knowing it might hurt, because the alternative is a guitar in the corner.

So the practice is simple, and hard. Name the thing. Take the first small step. Feel the risk instead of numbing it. The dose is you, and the attempt is how it gets used.

For more on meeting each day with intention, browse the dose in journal, or start at the dose in home page to see what we are exploring.

Sources

• Gilovich T and Medvec VH, "The temporal pattern to the experience of regret," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994, doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.357
• Gilovich T and Medvec VH, "The experience of regret: what, when, and why," Psychological Review, 1995, doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.2.379
• Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh, Amsterdam, 3 April 1878, translated by Robert Harrison, letter 121, webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/6/121.htm
• Epictetus, The Enchiridion, translated by Elizabeth Carter, MIT Internet Classics Archive, classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

[ ? ]questions

FAQ

What do people regret most in life?

In studies by the psychologists Gilovich and Medvec, using telephone surveys, written questionnaires and face-to-face interviews, people's biggest regrets tended to involve things they had failed to do. Over the long run, inactions weighed more than actions, even though actions caused more pain in the short term.

Do people regret actions or inactions more?

Both, at different times. Gilovich and Medvec found that actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term, while inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run. The pattern changes with time, which is why a choice that stings today can look very different years later.

Is it possible to live with no regrets at all?

Probably not, and that is fine. Regret is part of a full life, and some of it points to what matters. The research suggests a different aim: lean toward trying, accept the short sting that some attempts bring, and reduce the long ache of the things never started.

How can I stop regretting the past?

This entry is about choices still ahead, not about treating distress. For the past, the Stoic habit of sorting what is in your control helps many people: the past itself is not, but what you do next is. If regret feels heavy or constant, talking with someone you trust or a professional can help.

Why do inactions feel worse over time?

Gilovich and Medvec describe several processes: the pain of a regrettable action tends to fade with time, the pain of a regrettable inaction tends to grow, and the two kinds of regret differ in how easily they come to mind. Unfinished possibilities stay open in memory in a way finished actions do not.