Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 374. The psychology of regret About this episode In our 20s especially, the fear of regret can seem like every choice has the potential to ‘ruin’ our future - the degree we picked (or didn’t), the person we stayed with, the move we were too scared to make. And then there are the things we didn’t do at all, the opportunities we let pass, the words we never said, that still weigh on us years later.
In this episode, we’re unpacking the psychology of regret – what it actually is, why it’s so tied to self-blame, and how it can either keep us frozen or push us forward.
We explore:
• The role of upward and downward counterfactual thinking
• How regret can both motivate and stagnate us
• The four BIGGEST regrets people have
• The paradox of the ‘perfect’ decision
• Why we fear regret more than we feel it
• How to grow through regret with acceptance and compassion
If you want to quieten the ‘what if’ thoughts, this episode is for you.
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0:34 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
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2:21 Jemma Sbeg? Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
2:40 Jemma Sbeg? Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s. Today's episode is cutting right to the heart of so much of our fear and our doubt in our 20s. What if I regret the decisions I'm making right now? Or what if I regret the decisions I'm not making? At the heart of, I think, every DM I get, every discussion I have with you guys, the listeners, but with my friends on dating, on jobs, on money, moving, health, whatever it is, at the centre of all that is a deep fear of regret.
3:24 Jemma Sbeg? There is like this vision we sometimes have in our mind of us looking back in 30 years, looking back at this moment and thinking, here it is, like, this is the moment, this is the decision I can pinpoint for me for when it all went wrong. No doubt about it, this fear of like, is this the moment that I realise like I messed up in the future? That fear is so amplified in our 20s, almost counterintuitively, because we actually often have so many opportunities and so many doors open and so little room for regret at this point and so much future ahead of ourselves.
4:05 Jemma Sbeg? But it's ironic, but it creates this constant pressure to not mess it all up despite just being at the start. So in this episode, I want to do a psychological deep dive into what actually drives regret, what people regret the most, how to manage it when it does show up and why I actually think regret is one of the most motivating emotions we can actually access as we plan for our futures. So without further ado, let's get into the psychology of regret.
4:45 Jemma Sbeg? When we talk about regret, what are we actually talking about? That's really important for us to understand. Regret is sadness, it's disappointment, embarrassment. It's a sad mix of all those things. But I think it's mostly rooted in grief, to be honest. Grief over a life path we could have lived and the stories we could have made. And the stories that we do make up about that life path, that it's better, that it's happier, that we didn't get to, that we didn't get to have. This what if that is attached to every single regret. What if I had done this? What if I hadn't? Is probably the most important part of it.
5:29 Jemma Sbeg? When we look at regret under like an emotional microscope, there is essentially two key ingredients. One of them is exactly what we're talking about. It's referred to as counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking is basically the brain's game of what if? You mentally go over an event, you imagine it a million different ways. One of them is obviously going to be better. There's the life that's actually happened. And then there's the alternative reality that you play in your head. The versions where you said yes instead of no. You stayed instead of left. You spoke instead of staying quiet.
6:08 Jemma Sbeg? Researchers call these counterfactuals, literally alternatives to the facts. They can go in two directions. In a downward counterfactual, you imagine how it could have been worse. Like honestly, that could have gone horribly if I hadn't left when I did. That could have really been a disaster for me. In upward counterfactuals though, you imagine a better outcome than the one you got. If only I revised properly, I could have passed that exam. And then I would have a better job than I do now and I'd be making more money and I'd be happier. Or if I'd only reached out to my friends more, maybe I'd be less lonely.
6:52 Jemma Sbeg? Maybe my life would feel like it had more meaning. It's the upward ones that hurt. But counterfactuals aren't the only element here. You might think, you know, if the weather had been better, that holiday would have been amazing. And you feel a little bit annoyed and disappointed. That isn't regret. The missing piece here that we're seeing in these examples is self blame. You can have counterfactuals, but if you don't blame yourself, you don't have regret. Regret is what happens when you look at that better imagined outcome, that upward counterfactual. And you think, okay, that was on me, like, that was my fault. Studies on this show exactly that.
7:36 Jemma Sbeg? Imagining a better outcome is one thing. When you tie that better outcome directly to your own actions, those evaluations become really bitter. And they become really painful. For example, a study from two thousand and eighteen from researchers at the University of New England. They looked at a sample of over a hundred and forty individuals. And they asked them to complete a survey about symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety. And then they also had them rank and rate past regret and regret intensity. And how much they had to say, or they had the opportunity to correct that situation.
8:18 Jemma Sbeg? What the researchers found was that having greater regret did not correlate to being more depressed or unhappy. Having greater regret that you blamed yourself for. And that you felt like you could have done something about, that was where mental health went bad. Or depression really began to crop up more frequently in the participants. So what exactly do people regret the most? You may remember I did a full episode on this a while back titled The 20 Regrets People Have About Their 20s. I asked 5,000 people, what is the thing you regret the most about
8:58 Jemma Sbeg? your 20s? And the biggest answers were, number one, focusing too much on romantic love, or staying in an unsuitable relationship for too long. Number two, worrying too much about what others thought of me. Number three, not fighting more for friendships. Number four, not investing sooner. And then another big theme, not going to college, but equally going to college. We heard a similar number for both. Go and listen to that full episode if you want the entire list of the full 20, because it's honestly so fascinating what we found. But that was just for our 20s. That was just for this decade. If you were
9:42 Jemma Sbeg? to ask a room full of people of all ages, what they regret about life in general, some clear patterns do actually appear and become pretty consistent. Researchers from the University of Illinois published a meta-analysis of this very thing. They looked at 11 studies where people talked about regret and they analyzed it to figure out what the biggest themes were. They then ranked them in terms of most regret to least regret. Across all samples, all of these studies, the top six regrets were education, number one, career,
10:21 Jemma Sbeg? romance, parenting, identity, and then leisure. So above all else, education was interestingly the thing that people regretted the most, mainly for not pursuing more of it. Daniel Pink, the author, actually went further into this with his World Regret Survey. He turned this into a book, The Power of Regret. It was released in 2022. When he sorted through, and I think it was like sixteen thousand people's regrets from more than a hundred countries, what he found was that it wasn't a specific thing. We might say education is the biggest, but actually what he found is there's categories, four big categories of regrets.
11:05 Jemma Sbeg? Foundation regrets, number one, that is where education comes down, comes to. So not building stability, not pursuing an education, not taking care of finances, your health, foundation regrets, number one. Boldness regrets, number two, so not being brave enough, not taking chances. Moral regrets were number three, not acting in line with your values, doing something that you felt hurt other people. And number four was connection regrets, so letting relationships wither or break down or not pursuing the person you really cared about. There's a phrase he says in the book that I love. Most people actually ended up regretting what they felt they had the greatest opportunity to change.
11:51 Jemma Sbeg? They didn't regret the stuff that was totally out of their control. You know, the person who didn't love them back, the friend who just was never going to be on their team. But the moments where, you know, if they were honest, they had some power and they didn't use it, that was where a lot of the pain lay. They could have chased after that person, they could have bet on themselves, they could have started the business, they could have gone and gotten that education. That is the stuff that left the greatest impact. And I think that for people in their twenties, that's both a sobering and strangely empowering thought. It means that our regrets cluster around our sense of agency.
12:33 Jemma Sbeg? And knowing that is actually really essential and it's a vital takeaway. If one of your goals is to avoid regret in the future, I want to explain exactly why after this short break.
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13:17 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on, and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
13:54 Jemma Sbeg? Something that really frustrates me is when wellness brands greenwash their products to make them seem more clean or better for the environment when they are actually not. When you look into it, they are kind of just like the rest of them. Nature's Sunshine, however, doesn't just talk about the planet. They do something about it. They sustainably source ingredients, they craft their supplements with 100% solar-powered manufacturing, and their products are incredible. I don't drink coffee, and so Nature's Sunshine Brain Edge gives me that kick I sometimes need with potent ingredients, combining yerba mate with nootropics, adaptogens, botanicals to support mental clarity and focus. And you already know how much I love their marine glow and have for years.
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16:20 Jemma Sbeg? I think in our twenties, we definitely may have regrets. We may have a few regrets, like, you know, I regret how I treated that friend. I regret not taking that job. But most of how we experience regret is our future fear of it and wanting to ensure we have as little of it as possible. That is why I think personally, like, people love those lists, like the lists I was just talking about of like the greatest regrets. We love them so much because they're like this guide, right? The irony is though, the more you think about what you may or may not regret, the more you analyze it, the more you actually let that influence your decision making. And the more likely you are actually going to make decisions that you regret more
17:04 Jemma Sbeg? or not make a decision that you regret. Why is this? Why? Because it's artificially increasing the stakes for any and all decisions you make. If you have this lingering fear that it's going to be the wrong one. And so that fear and that assessment of regret and whether this has potential for regret or not, constantly interrupts your ability to trust your instincts. A lot of us live in what we call pre-regret. You haven't made the decision yet, but you're already imagining that it's the wrong one. Or how you might feel if you chose the wrong thing. You are lying in bed thinking already, you know, you haven't taken the job.
17:49 Jemma Sbeg? But if I take the job and I hate it, I'm never going to forgive myself. But if I don't take the job and it actually ends up being great, I'm never going to forgive myself either. So which one am I going to do? This one, that one, this one, that one. And then you basically do nothing. What's actually happening there with this scenario is that you haven't chosen the job yet. Nothing in your actual life has changed. You have no knowledge of whether it's going to be good or bad. You have made this pre-assessment or this prejudgment that has influenced the decision before you've even given yourself a chance. You haven't taken the job or, you know, you haven't moved, you haven't quit, you haven't said the thing you want to say.
18:29 Jemma Sbeg? But emotionally, you're already and have already lived through all of these worst case scenarios. The more you let yourself ruminate on these scenarios, on the worst case scenario, the more you believe that it's going to come true. This is a cognitive bias we call the availability heuristic. Essentially, we inaccurately judge how likely something is to happen, simply based on how easy it is for us to recall. And of course, the emotionally salient disaster regret scenarios your brain is cooking up for you, they are going to be the easiest ones to recall.
19:12 Jemma Sbeg? They are going to be the most prominent because they are the most emotional. The danger here is that you spend so long thinking again or trying to outthink regret, you do not move, you do not act. This is the paradox of the perfect decision. The more you chase a perfect decision, one that is, I guess, that guarantees like permanent emotional comfort, the harder it becomes to do or to choose anything at all. Because the worst case scenario, the regret based scenarios, all those things your brain creates, like you cannot release them.
19:56 Jemma Sbeg? I've been there so many times, you tell yourself you're just being careful, you tell yourself like, hey, I'm just waiting, I'm just waiting till I'm ninety-three percent sure, when you could have made the decision when you were fifty-one percent sure. And you would have still felt as conflicted as you do now. And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that the perfect decision doesn't exist anyways. A hundred percent certainty only exists in hindsight. Every real choice comes with trade-offs, it comes with losses, it comes with gains as well. Trying to find the perfect option that is never going to hurt you, that is never going to give you regret, means you are going to stay in situations that you have outgrown. What I can say though, is that even if the worst case scenario happens,
20:41 Jemma Sbeg? it is often never as bad as we emotionally predict it to be. This is where effective forecasting comes in, it is the human habit of trying to predict how we feel in the future and getting it very, very wrong. When it comes to regret, our forecasts are usually wildly pessimistic. So we end up organizing our whole lives around an emotion we're probably not actually going to feel. We don't necessarily even fear regret, we fear an exaggerated imagined version of regret that is a projection of our deep fears and insecurities. And everything going wrong when actually that very rarely happens. What we also know from the research is that the easiest way, again, to avoid regret,
21:23 Jemma Sbeg? is to actually take any kind of action in any direction, even if you don't know for sure it's going to be the right one. Take for example, the nineteen ninety seven paper on regret and self discrepancy theory. What researchers found in their research assessing the regrets of thousands of people is that twenty four percent of regrets were about things people did do. Seventy six percent of regrets were about the things they didn't do. What they realized is that there are two types of regrets, action regrets and inaction regrets. Inaction regrets, they are far more common. So if you want to avoid regret over thinking it's not going to do anything, making a decision will make any decision, any decision at all.
22:07 Jemma Sbeg? The only way out of the paradox isn't to lower your standards so much as to tell yourself the truth. There is no decision that will absolutely protect me from regret. At some point, I will wish I had known what I do know now. But if I make a choice, my chances of that are going to be a lot less. So if you are currently in a state of regret, you regret something you did or didn't choose in the past, I also want you to recognize that the option you're currently living in is, is the real one and it is full color and it is complicated and it has good days and bad days and awkward conversations and admin and loneliness and traffic. That is the real thing that is happening to you.
22:51 Jemma Sbeg? The option you didn't choose that you are torturing yourself with believing that it was the better one, that only lives in your head and what it is in your head is not real. As much as what hasn't happened yet can be convincingly very, very terrifying. What we expected to happen that didn't can be convincingly flawless. You see yourself in that other city with instant friends and a cool flat and you're not struggling with paperwork or a visa and you're not missing home or you're not missing your dog. You see yourself in the other relationship and the relationship you tried one more time to make work and you're laughing now and you're not arguing about money anymore. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
23:35 Jemma Sbeg? You're comparing reality, your messy real life to something that is just completely like.
23:44 Jemma Sbeg? Just buffed of all badness. And you think that those things are equally probable and you think that the one that you're imagining could have happened. That is not true. No one's life is perfect the way that we are imagining it. I think another useful reframe to stop fearing regret is to also understand when in our lives regret has maybe actually saved us. We've mostly talked about how regret hurts.
24:11 Jemma Sbeg? I don't hear people talk about how it can protect you. You regret missing that travel opportunity with your friends. You know what that means? You're not gonna miss out again. You regret how you treated that friend when you were 21, that you ghosted them, that you didn't come through with your promises. That self-blame and pain is gonna make you a better friend in the future. You regret not spending more time with your grandparents. As your parents get older, you're not gonna make the same mistake. In that way, regret functions a bit like a bruise on your moral skin. You bump up against a line you didn't know was there and it hurts. And afterwards, you remember that, you move a little bit more carefully. You don't keep walking into the same sharp corner in quite the same way.
24:57 Jemma Sbeg? It's not that you never make mistakes again, obviously you do, but you rarely make the exact same one at the same level. Because regret has taught you an important lesson. When you are tempted to see your regrets as proof that you're a disaster or that something has failed, it's worth zooming out. Some of the qualities you like most about yourself now, the care you take with people, the risks, the risk mindset you have are probably shaped by very old painful moments where you didn't know. Regret hurts. It's also been steering you away from becoming a version of yourself you probably wouldn't be able to live with either.
25:38 Jemma Sbeg? Now, there are some regrets for which this is simply not going to make us feel better. Nothing came from it. You didn't learn anything. It's made your life worse. Sadly, that is the case sometimes. Then it might be simply worth looking at how we can live with the facts of what happened. One of the hardest but most important cognitive skills I think we can master, and I'm yet to master it. I'm being optimistic. I wish I could. But it's acceptance. Accepting that this happened. Regret will happen. Such is the flow and intricacies of life and not having, not being able to predict the future. You don't have to put a positive spin on it. You don't have to turn it into an opportunity.
26:24 Jemma Sbeg? But you have to be willing to acknowledge that, yeah, it happened and there's nothing you can change it, and you can go forward anyways. I'm not going to ignore the fact that I don't like it. I wish it were different. But this is the reality that I'm facing. As long as you're mentally replaying the past, trying to get a different outcome, you stay locked in a kind of mental argument with yourself that you're never going to win and you will never be able to move forward from. Regret in that moment just paralyzes you further. It reduces any ability you have to change. It's also important to note that
27:02 Jemma Sbeg? what's happening there in that moment where you just ruminate on everything you could have done differently is its own kind of cognitive bias. It's called hindsight bias. The tendency to believe that past actions should have been obvious or avoidable, given what you know now. We all know that's not true. For every scenario your brain may have cooked up for you of how this could have gone good or bad, and for all that predictive value you think your brain has, there's always going to be an option that you didn't think of, and it's probably the option that happened. Because, again, you can't predict the future. And that is why radical self-compassion is so important. You've made a mistake, you have a deep regret about something, you're not sure if you can move past it.
27:43 Jemma Sbeg? Having radical self compassion in that moment is not an attempt to excuse the behaviour or to change it. It's just the tone you take with yourself when you think back on it. When I think about regrets I have, I always go back to the Professor Kristin Neff's model of self compassion. She defines it as comprising of three components. Self kindness, responding to personal failure with care rather than harsh judgement. Common humanity, recognising that anybody else could have made the same mistake or have a similar regret to you and what you're experiencing. And also mindfulness, just holding painful thoughts and emotions in
28:27 Jemma Sbeg? balanced awareness with other, with other more positive thoughts. Not over identifying with them, not saying that because I made this mistake, because I didn't make this choice, this is who I am for the rest of my life. Just acknowledging that they are part of your life, the way many more magical parts are as well. Importantly, this research consistently shows
28:50 Jemma Sbeg? having that kind of respect in relationship to regret doesn't reduce accountability. It doesn't reduce moral standards. It actually means you're more likely to take responsibility, you're more likely to apologise, to want to change. And again, it actually reduces future likelihood of encountering a similar situation, acting in the same way and doubling your regret. As we wrap up this episode on the psychology of regret, I want to say it is impossible to live without regret. It is one of those emotional scars we all get as humans. The same as heartbreak, the same as grief. It also reflects the fact that we get choices and that we have agency and that
29:33 Jemma Sbeg? we have things that we care about. I've been trying to do this thing lately. For every emotional thing or event I fear, or that I think is bad, or that I don't enjoy, like regret, I imagine what life would be like without it. Like if regret was an emotion we just couldn't feel, or we could opt out of, or we didn't have access to, would that be better? And honestly, I actually think the world would be way worse. People would be terrible to each other because they wouldn't have regrets about it. And again, I think we wouldn't have the agency we have over our lives now is a worthy price to me, you know, that I am able to regret because I have choices.
30:16 Jemma Sbeg? If I didn't regret, I wouldn't have choices and I wouldn't have the freedom to choose. And that in itself is a blessing. So that is my final takeaway message from this episode, not to be, you know, not to be too toxically positive, but yeah, how can we see regret as maybe an asset rather than a weakness at times? If you enjoyed this episode, I would really recommend you go and listen to our episode on the 20 biggest regrets people have in their twenties. That full list is incredible and so much effort went into that episode. And there's so much to learn, especially if you like knowing what kind of themes, regret clusters around in order to avoid it yourself.
31:00 Jemma Sbeg? If you have made it this far as well, thank you for listening. You have made it to our secret question of the episode. What's something you actually thought you would regret but didn't? Leave a comment down below. And as always, thanks for tuning in. Thank you to our researcher, Libby Colbert, for her contributions to this episode. Make sure you are following us on Instagram at that psychology podcast and subscribe wherever you are listening right now. Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. Thank you for tuning in. We will talk very, very soon.
31:44 Speaker 00 Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
32:14 Jemma Sbeg? This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know, they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on, and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.
32:51 Jemma Sbeg? Something that really frustrates me is when wellness brands greenwash their products to make them seem more clean or better for the environment, when they are actually not. When you look into it, they are kind of just like the rest of them. Nature Sunshine, however, doesn't just talk about the planet. They do something about it. They sustainably source ingredients. They craft their supplements with 100% solar-powered manufacturing, and their products are incredible. I don't drink coffee, and so Nature Sunshine Brain Edge gives me that kick I sometimes need with potent ingredients combining yerba mate with nootropics, adaptogens, botanicals to support mental clarity and focus. And you already know how much I love their marine glow and have for years.
33:36 Jemma Sbeg? It is the only collagen that combines skin-supporting marine collagen with the sun and blue light protection of Luton to make your skin feel and look Glowy and protected. Plus, I just really like that they have nature at the core of everything that they do. Try Nature's Sunshine and experience the difference with supplements that are better for you and the planet. Go to nature's sunshine dot com today and use the code PSYCH for 20% off your first order plus free shipping. That's code PSYCH for 20% off your first order at nature sunshine dot com.
34:12 Jemma Sbeg? I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my whoop. Truly, you guys, you know, I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional
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35:53 Jemma Sbeg? I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop. Because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day. Why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress. And most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns. So I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.
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