Daniel Pink

In this episode of The Oprah Podcast, Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, explains how we can use our regrets to transform our future. For his latest book, "The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward," Daniel collected regrets from more than 26,000 people in over 130 countries. He shares insights with Oprah from his research - including what he believes are the four core regrets and why people usually regret the things they didn’t do more than those they did. People from around the country join via Zoom to ask Daniel about how to move forward from their deepest regrets. BUY THE BOOKS! ⁠"The Power of Regret⁠ https://amzn.to/4byIz4f: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward," by Daniel H. Pink, published by Penguin Books is available wherever books and audio books are sold: "Oprah's The Life You Want: Becoming Unstuck Journal" published by Oprah Daily, featuring exercises inspired by Daniel Pink’s "The Power of Regret," is available ⁠here⁠ https://amzn.to/4wawQQY. ⁠"What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing"⁠ https://amzn.to/4xlafSq by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey is available where ever books are sold. Explore Rejuvenation Home Furnishings | Visit the Rejuvenation Website: https://www.rejuvenation.com https://www.rejuvenation.com%C2%A0 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprah/ https://www.instagram.com/oprah/%C2%A0 https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/%C2%A0 Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi there. I am so glad you joined me on my podcast. I'm having a fascinating conversation with Daniel Pink, who writes about the power of regret. I wonder if you're like me, just hearing the word brings up thoughts of the things in life you regret the most. Well, we spoke to some people who are experiencing regret.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  I lost my virginity too soon.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  What if I had stood up for myself in my marriage?

• 0:25Speaker 03

  Getting the diagnosis, I wish I would have just really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry.

• 0:34Oprah Winfrey?

  But what I learned, which I think you will really appreciate, is that there is power in regret.

• 0:41Speaker 04

  It clarifies what we value.

• 0:43Oprah Winfrey?

  It all depends on if regret is holding you back or if you can shift your mindset to use your regrets to propel you forward. So what comes up for you? What is your biggest regret? I have my own that I'll share on this podcast. That is my deepest, deepest regret. So everybody, thanks for joining us on this podcast. We're talking about today, something few people ever talk about. That's why I wanted to talk about it. We're talking about regrets, regrets. And I'm joined by the man who literally wrote the book on regrets, journalist, and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, Daniel Pink. Daniel Pink began his career as a Yale Law School graduate, working in politics and government in Washington DC.

• 1:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And after two years as Al Gore's chief speechwriter, Daniel decided to venture out on his own, an experience he wrote about in his Fast Company article, Free Agent Nation, which became his first book. Since then, Daniel has written six more books, including Drive, To Sell Is Human, and another one of my favorites, A Whole New Mind.

• 1:50Speaker 04

  If we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

• 1:53Oprah Winfrey?

  He's one of the world's most in-demand speakers and has delivered more than 1,200 lectures on six continents.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  And maybe we can change the world. I rest my case.

• 2:07Oprah Winfrey?

  I am so delighted to speak to you again. It's been years.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  I am so glad to be back talking to you.

• 2:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and I have to tell you, I really appreciated this book about regrets because when I saw it, and I first came across it because we had used many of your quotes in our The Life You Want, Becoming Unstuck journal, and talking about your philosophy. And I was like, you know what, it's the thing that everybody feels at some point in their life, even though there's a Frank Sinatra song that says, "Regrets, I've had a few, but two for you to mention." A lot of people have a lot, and if you make, if you have a deep regret that follows you your whole life, a lot of people can't get over it.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:48Oprah Winfrey?

  And so, that's why I wanted to talk to you. Why did you, how did you even come up with this idea to focus on this specific human emotion of regret?

• 2:58Speaker 04

  Because I had regrets. And I wanted to make sense of them. They actually were catalyzed in part when my elder daughter graduated from college. And I'm at her college graduation, and I can't believe that this kid is graduating from college, because it seems like yesterday she was two years old. I can't believe that I'm old enough to have a kid graduating from college. And I started thinking about my own college experience, and I had some regrets.

• 3:19Oprah Winfrey?

  About your college experience?

• 3:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wish I were kinder. I wish I had taken more risks, you know, those kinds of things. And I came back to Washington DC where I live, and I knew that no, and it bothered me, these regrets. And I came back to Washington DC where I live, and I knew that nobody wanted to talk about regrets. But I kind of sheepishly mentioned it to some people, and I discovered that everybody wanted to talk about it. That as soon as I gave them the license to talk about it, they came forward with their own regrets.

• 3:43Oprah Winfrey?

  And you did your own...

• 3:44Speaker 04

  And that's a really good sign.

• 3:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, and the subtitle of the book is, "How Looking Backward, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward."

• 3:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:51Oprah Winfrey?

  How does that, if you're stuck in the regret?

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, the key is not to be stuck in the regret. And the thing is, is everybody has regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that humans have. The thing is, we haven't been taught how to deal with them properly. So some of us ignore our regrets. So we put our fingers in our ears and say, "No regrets, no regrets."

• 4:08Oprah Winfrey?

  And act like it's not.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And it's just back there in the periphery, and you're seething.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Denial, right.

• 4:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Denial, yes.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Bad idea.

• 4:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Bad.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Others of us get captured by our regrets. We wallow in our regrets. We ruminate on our regrets. That's also a bad idea. What we should be doing with our regrets... Is looking them in the eye, thinking about them.

• 4:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And in our journal, we ask people to define their regrets. Why do you think it's important for people to define their regrets?

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Because regrets are often kind of blobby and amorphous. And so when we write about them or talk about them, we take this blob and make it concrete. We turn it into words and those words help us make sense of it. And those words are less menacing. And the more we realize that, oh, I'm experiencing something that other people have experienced, the more we kind of defang some of the pain of the regret.

• 4:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Got it. Okay. So those of you who are watching or listening to us right now, I know this is going to trigger you to think about what are the things that you deeply regret? Because I walk around thinking, oh, I don't have a lot of regrets. And then reading this book, I went, yeah, actually, I do. Why does regret hold such power?

• 5:16Speaker 04

  I mean, it holds power, I think, in part because we don't know what to do. For two reasons. One is that everybody has regrets. It's one of the most common emotions that human beings have. And yet, we've been sold such ability goods about positivity and being positive all the time, that when we feel regret, we think that we're the only one, and we're not. It's part of the human wiring. It's part of our cognitive machinery. And the reason it exists is that it clarifies what we value and it helps us do better in the future.

• 5:42Oprah Winfrey?

  So you studied and collected regrets from over 26,000 people from 130 countries. The data showed that there are basically four types. Can you talk about that?

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Sure thing, yeah. It's pretty remarkable. Around the world, people seem to have the same four regrets. One are what I call foundation regrets. Those are small decisions people make early in their life that accumulate to terrible consequences later. Spend too much and save too little, now I'm broke. Another one, big category, boldness regrets. You're at a juncture in your life. You can play it safe, or you can take the chance. And what's overwhelming is that people regret not taking the chance much more than they regret.

• 6:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Taking the chance.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Not taking the chance than taking the chance.

• 6:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  People, and it doesn't matter the domain of life. You have people who regret not traveling. I have hundreds of people in this database who regret not asking somebody out on a date.

• 6:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Years and years ago.

• 6:37Oprah Winfrey?

  And what that could have meant.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Exactly, or.

• 6:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Or maybe it wouldn't have meant anything, but you didn't do it.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  Exactly, you didn't take the shot, and that's what really sticks with people.

• 6:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, boy, that is the thing.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Boldness regrets.

• 6:48Oprah Winfrey?

  You didn't take the shot.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  Moral regrets, which again, a lot of these regrets begin at a juncture of decision making. So moral regrets are you can take the high road, you can take the low road.

• 6:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  You can do the right thing, you can do the wrong thing, and most of us, when we do the wrong thing, when we take the low road, we regret it, because most of us are good.

• 7:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  And most of us want to be good.

• 7:07Oprah Winfrey?

  And you were saying, you say this in the book too, that the regrets show us what really matters to us.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Absolutely, absolutely, because these other, I mean, the other regret that people have are connection regrets, which are regrets about relationships.

• 7:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  But when we look around the world and people have these regrets, these four regrets operate as kind of a reverse image of what we really value in life. Foundation regrets, we value stability. What's a good life? A good life has some stability underneath it. A good life is not wobbly. And so what foundation regrets, taking care of your finances, taking care of your health, taking care of your education, that's part of what it is to lead a good life.

• 7:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Boldness regrets, we value learning and growth. We value not wasting our time in this limited space that we're here. Moral regrets, we value goodness. A good life is being good. A good life is being true and honest and just. And connection regrets are about love. And so when you look at these regrets, what do we value in life? We want some stability, we want learning and growth, we want goodness, and we want love.

• 8:04Oprah Winfrey?

  We sure want connection.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Absolutely, that was the biggest category.

• 8:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, okay, what do you think, I, I, I, just, you just saying that just, just triggered me to think about, what do you think is the true definition of a meaningful and good life?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 8:19Oprah Winfrey?

  And has that evolved as you've grown?

• 8:21Speaker 04

  As I've grown?

• 8:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I think earlier in my life, I was clueless about that. I was, I think, was incapable of answering that question. I think I didn't know.

• 8:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  In the same way that I would not have written a book about regret in my 30s. Whereas in my 50s, it felt inevitable.

• 8:38Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  Because I had, I had mileage on me.

• 8:40Oprah Winfrey?

  You know what it is.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:42Oprah Winfrey?

  You actually know what it is.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  But I mean, I think a good life is, is having people who you love and who love you. I, I think, I think one can stop there. I think there are other things, but I think that's really at the core of it. And we have some interesting research on that. The famous Grant Study at Harvard, that was this longitudinal study of following men, but then men, other people from the time they were in college, all the way through the rest of their lives. It didn't matter what their IQ was, what their money, what their health situation, how much money they had. What ultimately mattered in people's satisfaction was love. I mean, the, the, one of the people who founded this study, this incredible piece of psychological science, he said, well, I can summarize the results in a few words. It's easy, he said, happiness is love, full stop. And I think that's true.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Now, I think there are other things that give us meaning in life, in a good life. And I think regret exemplifies that. Not wasting your time, doing stuff, contributing, trying things, learning and growing. I think that's a big part of it. Providing for other people, contributing to the world. And also, I come back to this idea of these moral regrets, of just being a good, just, generous person. And it's pretty simple. And, and I think that one of the things that the research on regret, and even my own investigation of it, reveals is that a lot of the decisions we make in our life, a lot of them don't matter that much.

• 10:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  But a lot of them matter hugely.

• 10:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. The only people who don't regret it are people who are narcissists and don't have a conscience about it, right?

• 10:10Speaker 04

  But that, but that, that's true. I mean, what we see in the, in the cognitive science is that even though everybody, many people perform not having regrets, the only people who don't have regrets are five-year-olds because their brains haven't developed the ability to do counterfactual thinking, certain kinds of, people with certain kinds of neurodegenerative disorders, and sociopaths. Everybody else has regrets because it's part of our, it's part of our wiring. And when it comes to moral regrets, I, I think one of the things that's heartening about this research is that the number of people with moral regrets, people who regret bullying a kid in school. Forty years ago and then break into tears when I'm interviewing them about it because they feel so bad about it.

• 10:50Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right, and because they've never brought it to the forefront of their thinking and never discussed it with anybody. One of the things that was interesting to me, you said in the book, um, power of regret and speaks to the power of it, is you regret not going to funerals.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, I still have my own regrets about that. There is a, there is a big cathedral right near my house in Washington DC, and there was a funeral that I didn't go to twenty years, over twenty years ago. And every time I walk by, I think about, oh my God, I should have gone, the guy's name was Bob, I should have gone to Bob's funeral.

• 11:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so why does that hold such power? Because Bob wouldn't have known you were at his funeral.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  No, but I knew, and you know what? I want to be a good person. I want to show respect for people. I want to show respect for his family, and I didn't do that. I was at a juncture. I could, the right thing, go to the funeral. The wrong thing, keep doing my work that afternoon instead of taking two hours. And, and now, what do I do with that? I can say, ah, it doesn't matter, everything happens for a reason. Or I can say, I'm the worst person in the world. No, I say, you know what? Something that I didn't, didn't do twenty years ago is still bugging me when I can't even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

• 11:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  That's a strong signal.

• 12:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  And it's a signal that show up and go to the funeral, no matter where it is.

• 12:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, show up and go to the funeral. And that is how looking backward moves you forward, because when you're able to, to take whatever it is that is the regret and turn it into something meaningful for you. Yeah. Well, we spoke to some people who are experiencing regret right now, and Tanya is one of them, and she joins us from the Bronx. Tanya, hi, tell us what's going on. Hello.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Hello. How are you?

• 12:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Good to see you.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Ms. Winfrey, for having me, and Daniel, what a pleasure it is to meet you.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Virtually. Um, you know, it's very interesting, I, when I think about the word regret, because I've done so much work on myself, I... I think about when I was young, when I was sixteen, between sixteen, twenty-one. Um, I guess, uh, a nicer way to put it, I was boy crazy. And, um, I lost my virginity, um, in my opinion, well, I think probably, uh, across the board, too, too soon. I don't know, um, what was happening with me, uh, but I, I, it was complex. I would, my, my dad was not at home. Um, I'm not blaming that on that, but my life was definitely, um, just going through things that I couldn't explain, and I think that was an outlet for me.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Um, and, and hindsight, as a fifty-two-year-old woman now, when I look back, I definitely, um, say to myself, gosh, I wish I would have just saved myself for someone who I loved. Someone like my spouse that I'm with now, someone who I can talk to, someone that I know is, um, hearing me, there for me, uh, just accepting me as, as I am. Um, that would be my biggest regret.

• 13:50Oprah Winfrey?

  I think this is so interesting, Tanya, because you have been with your spouse for how long now?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I have been with my spouse this February, eighteen years.

• 14:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Eighteen years? And i- is it something your spouse has brought up to you? Like, I wish you'd been a virgin when we married? No?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  No, never.

• 14:09Oprah Winfrey?

  And, and I, I thought it was interesting too, and I'm sure, you know, you grew up in, you know, I'm twenty years older than you practically, but I also grew up in an era where if you liked boy, there was no discussion other than you can't date until a certain age, and if you showed any interest in boys whatsoever, you were considered boy crazy. And I noticed that you used that term to describe yourself, and I was thinking, that's not a term you came up with, that's a label somebody gave to you, and that's what you're carrying, that's part of what you're carrying. Daniel, what do you want to say to Tanya?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, you know, what, what, you know, in the

• 14:48Oprah Winfrey?

  First of all, what kind of regret is this?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  I mean, I think it's, I think, in Tanya's telling, it's a moral regret.

• 14:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  You had a chance to do, you know, you could do the right thing or the wrong thing. And in your view, retrospectively, you think you did the wrong, you did the wrong thing. But we can also look at this in the architecture of regret as a difference between an action regret, something I did, and an inaction regret, something I didn't do. So this is an action regret. And the way you deal with action, there are two ways to deal with action regrets. One of them is to undo it.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Hard to do here.

• 15:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  All right. You're like an unscrambled this egg.

• 15:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  So you can't, so you can't undo that. So the other thing you can do is what's called in the psychological literature, a downward counterfactual, where you imagine how things could have turned out worse. And so it usually starts with a sentence, at least, you know, at least you didn't get in trouble. At least you met your incredible spouse right now. And so you find essentially the silver lining in that.

• 15:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, as you were, as you were sharing your story, I was thinking, okay, at least you didn't have the responsibility of getting pregnant and having a child and having that alter your life. Because when we were talking about these kinds of moral regrets and foundational regrets, I was thinking, I'm sure that there are a lot of people

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 16:02Oprah Winfrey?

  who were promiscuous or whatever in their early years and had child after child after child without even knowing what that responsibility would be like. And you hold regrets for it. Not regrets because you have the children, but regrets that you didn't make better choices that would allow you to better serve your children, so.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  And you have to, when we think about our regrets, you have to actually evaluate the person making the decision at that moment. And that's a different, you're a different person today at age 52 than you were at age 16, unfortunately. You know, the other thing that you can do, you know, the other thing that people can do here with regrets that can't be undone is transmit these, your understanding and your lessons to other people. That is, be open about talking about the regret and extract a lesson from it and see if people are interested in hearing that lesson.

• 16:52Oprah Winfrey?

  I also think it's important for you to go back and understand what happened to you. A book that Dr. Bruce Perry and I co-authored together. What happened to you to cause you to be in what you call your boy crazy phase? Because that also happened to me. And up until I was like, I was sexually assaulted from ten to fourteen. And during that time, like thirteen to fourteen, I became really sexually promiscuous. And for many years, I blamed myself for that promiscuity, like I was a bad girl. What I now know, what I now know is, if you have been assaulted as a child,

• 17:35Oprah Winfrey?

  and you know, led into that whole sexual realm, that that is, that is almost a natural thing that that shows up with young girls. And so when I see young girls that are labeled, you know, you're a bad girl, or she's, she, they used to say in my, my generation, you're just too fast, you're too fast, you're too fast. I always know when it's very, very young, that there's something else going on beneath the surface there that's causing that. And you had mentioned that your father was not there, and you know, you suffered that loss, and lots of times you deal with it in different ways. When you're a young kid, you don't know, the reason why I'm acting out is I'm looking for somebody to love me and to value me and to say that I'm okay,

• 18:18Oprah Winfrey?

  because I'm not getting it from my father or my mother. So if I were you, I'd look back at the why, and that releases, number one, for me, released a lot of the shame, and certainly me blaming myself for something that happened that basically I had no control over at that time.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you for sharing that. And I will also tell you that I had just learned the term boy crazy. I would say promiscuous, but as I said, it sounds very dirty. And I didn't like the way it sounded. And it made me really dirty to use the word promiscuous. So, and, and you sharing that word and you saying it and defining yourself.

• 18:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Makes me feel, uh, there's some comfort there because the word promiscuous sounds just not nice. And I thought, boy crazy sounded

• 19:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  softer and a little more

• 19:10Oprah Winfrey?

  But you were doing, that you were acting out for a reason. You were acting out for a reason. That happened to you for a reason. And so, you know, you shouldn't, you know, try to figure that out here with us, but you should work on that for yourself. What is the reason that you were acting out in, in that way? Thank you for being willing to share with us today. Thank you.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 19:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you. Okay, thanks, Tanya. Kathy is a mother of two who also has deep regrets about time loss. Kathy, what's your story?

• 19:46Speaker 03

  I, my husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma in February of 2020. And I think my biggest regret was it took something like that to realize how I was not really present most of my life. I, I did have the good fortune of spending the last, he actually lasted 23 months. And, um, which is unheard of with glioblastoma. But I felt like all the time before that, raising my two wonderful children, one's a teacher in the Bronx, one's an aspiring actress in LA, that I just was going through checking lists, like trying to even like outrun myself with accomplishing things.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  And it, it took my husband, who was coming home saying, I have a headache. And I'm like, take Tylenol, I got something to do, you know? It took something like getting the diagnosis February 20th of 2020 of glioblastoma to say like, stop, just stop. And I feel like I want to forgive myself. My kids are wonderful. We had a wonderful relationship, but I go back and I think to myself, I wish I would have just, um, really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry.

• 21:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Take your time, just take your time.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  And you know what? I, I tried to recover. Like we took everyone, Joe was the most wonderful, kind person. Like I was so lucky to have him in my life and wonderful father. But I think to myself, well, part of me doing this is because I, he deserves like to continue to live, if you will. And I think he deserves, his legacy deserves not to disappear. But I just, I go back and I say, why did I not just stop? I, I don't know what it is. Is it a woman thing that like, you're trying to just outdo yourself? You have a million things going on, you're working full time, you're raising kids.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  And like, I just wish it didn't take something like a devastating diagnosis and subsequent loss.

• 21:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, Kathy.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  To make me stop.

• 22:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Kathy, Kathy, Kathy. Thank you so much for being willing to share. And this is a podcast about the power of regret. Daniel Pink has written a really important book with a profound study about regrets all over the world. So naturally, you're going to have tears and we appreciate you being so open to share today because you're gonna, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna really help a lot of other people to see themselves differently because of what you've shared here. What category is this? What?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  So I think this is a connection regret. It's a regret about not doing something to keep a relationship intact. The best remedy for this, I think, is something called self-compassion. Self-compassion is very simple. Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. It's that simple. All right? And so if you think about your self-talk, what, what is, your self-talk, my hunch, Kathy, is cruel, it's vicious, it's mean-spirited. All right? Here's what the research on self-compassion says about that kind of self-talk. Don't do that. All right? And the reason to don't do that is because it's not effective. What's effective is self-compassion. And a way to think about that is, is to take it, if, if you had a friend who came to you with this situation, what would you tell her?

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're doing the best you can.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  And that's, you know what, I feel like, I don't, I really, I know I focused when it was important. And ours was a love story to be told. And it's just like, I think about when he used to go food shopping and I, like, I didn't really appreciate it. I hate food shopping. And every time I'm going down and finding people for a loaf of bread, I'm like, oh my God, Joe, like, why didn't I just, like, really appreciate you doing this? Or painting the house, I mean, I painted this house like fifty-five times. And, um, and you know what, he, we were good and we said what we had to say to each other. There was nothing left unsaid, but, um, yeah, I just hope I could share with other people that,

• 24:00Speaker 03

  like, all this stuff we run around and do is just so not important.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  You can all, you can share with other people also. I think one of the, one of the, one of the lessons for regret, particularly when it comes to, to relationships, it's, it's very simple to articulate. So when in doubt, reach out. So if there's somebody you're thinking about and you're saying, should I give that person a call? Uh, in any part of your life, if you've reached that juncture, the answer is yes, do it. Um, there's also something to be said for saying it now. You have a regret about not saying something at the moment, so say it now. And, and the best way to help other people is to exemplify that behavior by reaching out and by, by saying it now. The other thing, I'm, I'm sorry, but don't disrespect the work you did building a career and building a family. I mean, that's actually really, that's actually really important.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  And I don't want you to think of that as something that was somehow a betrayal of your husband or your family. It was something that actually fortified your husband and fa- and family.

• 24:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, one of the things that, that really has struck me about what you were saying earlier, I can't believe that this is what it took. And, yeah, this is what it took.

• 25:07Oprah Winfrey?

  This is what it took. This is what it took for you to slow down and to stop and to want to live a more present-filled life and to be there in a way for the rest of your family and for yourself in ways that you could not before. So, yes, this is what it took. And the reason you know that is because this is now where you are. You've had that realization. And so, I say, bless your husband for being able to bring this to light for you so that the rest of your days can be spent in a fullness of being for yourself that you would not have had had you not had this experience.

• 25:51Oprah Winfrey?

  This was his parting gift to you, not to be regretted, but to be embraced. Not to be regretted.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Well, he's a gift that keeps on giving. As Andrew Garfield says about his mom, "Joe was the best of us."

• 26:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Kathy.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 26:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you. All right. Kelly, a mom to one teenage son, says that she is constantly haunted by the what-ifs. The what-ifs, the what-ifs. Tell us about that, Kelly.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Hi. Thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it. This is, you know, I was young. I was, I married my high school sweetheart in my early twenties and he was in the military and I became an officer's wife in 2001. And this was right before 9/11 happened. So, at that time, the priority seemed, it seems that the priority should be his career. It should be the things that were going on at the time. So, I stepped back. I played small. I played the supporting role and I continued doing that for years. And I don't...

• 27:08Speaker 02

  You know, what I was doing felt like it was valuable. It was important that it was serving a purpose. And I was grateful for the people and experiences that I had. But when my husband left, I was not prepared necessarily for the life that I had at that moment of making myself a priority. And it's been a struggle since.

• 27:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Last meaning divorce? Divorce?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. So I keep asking myself, well, what if I had finished my degree before I had gotten married? What if I had gone back to school at any point? What if I had listened to my intuitions? What if I had stood up for myself? And what if I saw value in my place, in my marriage, and what I was doing at that time? And how would that have better prepared me for the life that I was living afterwards? And so even now, I still struggle. Like, I still struggle to make the things that I value, my art and my writing, I still struggle to make them the way that I want and put them out there without trying to

• 28:16Speaker 02

  make myself small and fit in. So I feel like I'm on the cusp of this new transformation of moving forward still, and it's still holding me back that what if, like, what if I had done these things earlier? Would I be better prepared?

• 28:29Oprah Winfrey?

  I heard you told the producers that you feel like you've spent most of your adulthood in the passenger seat. And so you're asking, what if you'd actually taken the driver's seat?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  That's right, yes. What if I, even at different points, even if I had just taken the driver's seat and said, you know what, I want to go back and I want to finish my degree. And I wanted to start a career. What if I had done any of those things at various different points through those years?

• 28:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you're not alone, because in Daniel's study of people throughout the world, this is a big, this is the what-ifs is a big, big, big, big, big.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  And it's kind of a, it's kind of a boldness regret. That is, making yourself small is in some ways the opposite of being bold. And we have a lot of regrets in this database, Kelly, of, that remind, that just reminds me of, of people using the phrase, speak up, speaking up, spoken up. And so, but so what would it mean for you to, like, not be small right now? Like, not an emotion, but an action. What would that mean? What step would you want to take?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  I finished a book. I'm about 110,000 words in and I have it and I'm right on that verge of feeling like I want to get it out there, but there's something that keeps still holding me back from.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Okay, can I get in here? All right.

• 29:52Oprah Winfrey?

  You're in here. You have the mic, sir.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Okay, so this is sort of out of the pages of my own book. I'm going to tell you something that I told to my daughters when they were younger. I have two daughters and a son. Something I told my daughters when they were younger and they were like, "Oh, I don't know if I should apply for this. I don't know whether I should ask to be a research assistant. I don't know if I..." And I say to them, "What would a mediocre guy in your situation do?" And it was always like, raise their hand.

• 30:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  And it's like, so what would a mediocre guy... Believe me, a mediocre guy in your situation who's written 110,000 words would already be out there. So you need to be out there and like doing everything you can to get that book out there so you can be a guest on season three of this podcast. And so, one of the things... It's interesting as a writer, one of the things with a Kindle or the eBooks is you can see what people underline.

• 30:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yeah, I like that.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  And I find it interesting. In this book, one of the things that people underline was not something that I wrote. And it was a Chinese proverb that goes like this, and it reminds me of your dilemma here, Kelly, is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. So if you want to get your book out there, get it out now. If you want to go back to school, get it out now. And use that feeling, that spear of regret, as a catalyst for starting now. Not waiting for the perfect moment because there isn't a perfect moment.

• 31:22Oprah Winfrey?

  And you were mentioning your art. Is that your art behind you, that painting? Did you do that painting?

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  It is. That's one of my paintings, yes.

• 31:30Oprah Winfrey?

  I love that. Is the barn your painting? The barn?

• 31:34Speaker 02

  The barn is my painting.

• 31:35Oprah Winfrey?

  I love that barn. You know what? That reminds me like of a Harper barn. You know, a Hopper. Hopper, you know Hopper.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, Edward Hopper, yeah. It's sort of a Hopper... It's like Edward Hopper meets Andrew Wyeth.

• 31:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that is what Daniel Pink just said about your work. Edward Hopper meets Andrew Wyeth.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Noted art historian, Daniel Pink.

• 31:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Really, so, thank you so much for sharing.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Alright.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  And congrats on finishing a book, that's an amazing thing. Now get it out to the world, because the world, you owe it to the world to do that. You have a moral obligation to put that in the world.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you, I appreciate that.

• 32:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, get in the driver's seat Kelly.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Get in the driver's seat.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  There's no one sitting in the driver's seat now.

• 32:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Kelly, take the wheel!

• 32:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Kelly, take the wheel, thank you so much. Laurie now joins us. Laurie, hi there, zooming in from Dallas, Texas. Your biggest regret?

• 32:33Speaker 05

  Hi there.

• 32:34Oprah Winfrey?

  We love that hot pink girl. Hot pink against the green, that's great.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  Thank you, hi, I am so grateful, I am full of gratitude to be here with you guys today and talk about my regret. Mine's a little bit different than the other guests. Um, mine is financial. I have always been a big dreamer and chased after my dreams. I'm an interior designer, I'm an entrepreneur, I started a, I've done all the things. I, I started a, um, nonprofit. Um, and I'm proud of the work that I've done because it always holds compassion, all the things that I want to do, I, I, I want to help other people. And so, I guess my biggest regret is looking back and thinking, why didn't I go the corporate route?

• 33:20Speaker 05

  Why didn't I get the 401K? You know, why didn't I do all of those things that I feel like I was supposed to do? Um, and be a little bit more stable in my life, being a single mom and just moving forward, uh, not having the regrets of all the things that I, that I've tried to do because of my big grandiose dreams, you know? So, that's where I'm at.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  So it sounds a little bit like a foundation regret, which are the small decisions or indecisions we make that accumulate to bad consequences. But I don't know, I have to say, I don't really buy the idea that you should have gone in, just talking to you for 60 seconds,

• 34:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  that you should have gone into a corporate.

• 34:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Life with a 401K.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  But so imagine.

• 34:08Oprah Winfrey?

  I don't buy into it because of the hot pink you're wearing.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Imagine, imagine this counterfactual, all right? We have like, we have counterfactual Zoom and we put an image on the screen of you having made that choice and we're talking to you today. Do you think your regrets would be deeper? About not pursuing your dreams, about not living the life fully? If you had, if you had been, if you had been an actuary at the amalgamated widget company?

• 34:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Well, well, yeah, no, I don't think I would have sit in there, but you know, I think taking risk part, because I've done so much work, the taking risk part I do love. I just feel the failure, you know, like, why didn't my big dreams that I wanted to do just blossom into what I want them to be?

• 34:57Oprah Winfrey?

  So is it because now you're regretting not having more security?

• 35:01Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:02Oprah Winfrey?

  More security and a safety net?

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so your, your, your main question to Daniel is what? What do you want from him today?

• 35:08Speaker 05

  I just would like to know how to move forward and not allow these worries to weigh down on my soul and to continue on my path.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  And my goals.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  I mean, what I, what I would say, what I would say is, when it comes to like saving, and I mean, you're young, start now. That, that a dollar a week is saving. So start now and do it, I mean, we know a lot about sort of the behavior science behind this is do it automatically. The other thing that I'm hearing from you is a kind of a, sort of. Almost maybe a little too much exploration and a little and some and too little focus. So if you have multiple lanes, pick a lane for the moment and just focus hard on on that. It's not, we tend to think that pursuing your dreams and being kind of diligent and responsible are at odds with each other, when in fact, they actually work together really well.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  That the best way to pursue your dreams and be bold is to be diligent and show up and do your work. And so, and so the lesson of foundation regrets is, is do the work. And the lesson of boldness regrets is, is take the chance. But if you take the chance and do the work at the same time, you're gonna be, you're gonna be fine. And once again, as I was saying to, I think it was Kelly, the, um, start now. Like, this is not a kind of thing that you, that, okay, when I feel right, when I'm in the mood, is basically start now. As soon as you get off the Zoom, man, start.

• 36:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Pick one.

• 36:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:40Oprah Winfrey?

  I, I, does that sound, does that sound reasonable to you?

• 36:45Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely. It sounds reasonable, reasonable to me. I just, I don't ever want to not be a risk taker. I've done so much work around my personal growth and my spiritual growth that I, I still have it in me to want to, you know, save the world and be an Oprah a little bit, maybe like a mini Oprah or something. You really have the compassion to want to help people. So there's that.

• 37:12Oprah Winfrey?

  You do it from where you are.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 37:14Oprah Winfrey?

  You do it from where you are, exactly where you are. Extending yourself in grace and kindness in the smallest ways and then any other way you can. And, and, and let that be your goal, is how do I use my life in service to something or someone that's bigger than myself? That's all it is. How do I do that? And you have this bold.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 37:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Bold, you have the boldness of personality, you, you know, have a radiance about you, you have an energy force that we can feel just sitting here talking to you. And you should be using that as you have used it in the past. And, you know, go forward and do the work. That's, that's what you gotta do.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to have this opportunity with y'all. I appreciate it more than you'll ever know.

• 38:06Oprah Winfrey?

  I love it that you, you called us y'all. Thank you so much.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  No, I did.

• 38:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Alice, thank you, Lori. So what did you learn about your own regrets while writing and researching for the power of regret?

• 38:19Speaker 04

  That I'm not that special. That almost every regret that I have, I can find in that database.

• 38:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:27Oprah Winfrey?

  That you were like the 26,000 other people?

• 38:29Speaker 04

  That we are...

• 38:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Are all the same in that?

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Most of, most people are like most people. And I'm most people. I have regrets about kindness, but I saw that in the database. I have regrets about not acting boldly and not speaking up for things that mattered. There are other people like that. That, you know, I'm like everybody else.

• 38:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, yeah, I realize that about myself, too. And what I have found is, you know, my deepest, my deepest, deepest regret is that I didn't take the time when I ended the Oprah show before I started the next thing. That is my deepest, deepest regret.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  That's interesting.

• 39:09Oprah Winfrey?

  And the reason why it carries and holds such power for me is because I thought about it and thought about it and I thought about it and I didn't listen to my own inner voice, my own instinct about it, and I listened to everybody else. And every time I've ever made a mistake that I regretted, either large or small, and this was the biggest one, any time I've done that is when I diverted from listening to the still small voice that lives inside of all of us. And I did the thing that everybody said, "Well, you have to launch now and you have to do it now and you have to..." And I have regretted it. For 14 years, I've regretted it.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  And as singular as that is...

• 39:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  It's prevalent. And if I were to go pull up this database right now and look for the phrase, "listen to a voice," inner voice, whatever, you would see dozens upon dozens upon dozens. That we have this intuitive sense of what's right, that we want to listen to ourselves.

• 40:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And I do, and I believe in that and I follow that. And the one, the one time I didn't, I deeply regret it.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's almost at the core of a lot of these, that at some level, we know what the right thing is to do. We know that we should be bold. We know that we should be responsible. We know that we should be moral. And our little, our inner voice is telling us that, and yet, there's noise on the outside or countervailing voices on the, coming at us, and we don't do that and then we regret it.

• 40:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Then you manage yourself.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  And arguably, you should be. Because you do better.

• 40:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I agree, because you knew better.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Now, you don't have to be, now, you should be constructively mad at yourself. You shouldn't, you know, it shouldn't be self-flagellation. It should be, it should be sort of irritation in the service of action.

• 40:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and I, I am compassionate enough with myself to know it was a mistake, and I understand what the real mistake was. The real mistake was, you heard the voice, you felt it inside yourself, and you acted differently than what you knew to be true.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Right, right, you also had, I mean, again, you also, there's also a lot of momentum behind that.

• 41:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  And so, when you do something for a long time, particularly at the level, obviously at the level that you did it, there's a lot of momentum carrying you forward.

• 41:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  And it takes actually greater force to stop the momentum and go in the other way.

• 41:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And go in a different direction, yeah, yeah. Well, in all of your work, seven books, what do you know for sure that matters the most?

• 41:30Speaker 04

  That...

• 41:31Oprah Winfrey?

  To you and to other people?

• 41:34Speaker 04

  I have to say, like, I like to think of my books in some level about science and economics, but every single book that I've written has come back to meaning. Peoples want meaning in their life. They want to figure out why they're here, they want to actually spend their time wisely.

• 41:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, it's why I'm doing this podcast at this stage in my life, is because I know how important meaning is, and I think we're at a, we're at a time where some people are lost and still trying to figure that out, and you're trying to get meaning, meaning from social media, and, you know, oh, I see that, oh, oh, right.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and that's what we are, you know, we are here on this planet for a vanishingly short amount of time, we really are. And at some level, all of us, either consciously or unconsciously, are reckoning with their mortality. And, and you want to have, you want to have spent your time in a meaningful way. And so, stuff that I've written, looking at like economic research and neuroscience research... So much of it comes back to the fact that we are mortal creatures looking for a sense of meaning and a sense of love.

• 42:38Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why we're here.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:40Oprah Winfrey?

  And in the end, it... What really matters, and I've heard this over and over and read it, and I remember a wonderful Toni Morrison novel, The Song of Solomon, where in that book, one of the characters, the granddaughter dies, and the proclamation that the grandmother makes at her funeral is, "And she was loved." And I remember the first time I read that, I thought, "That's really all that matters." All the awards, all the attention, all the things that people are striving to get and have, do and be. In the end, what you want is to know that you were loved.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  And that you, and I think also that you loved other people.

• 43:25Oprah Winfrey?

  And that you loved other people.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  Because it's like a cascade out there.

• 43:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  It all, it all works together.

• 43:29Oprah Winfrey?

  It boils down to who did you love and who loved you.

• 43:32Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 43:32Oprah Winfrey?

  I love the, the last paragraph of The Power of Regret. You say, "After a few years immersed in the science and experience of our most misunderstood emotion, I have discovered about myself what I've discovered about others. Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. And regret gives me hope." Thank you for The Power of Regret.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 43:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you for coming to the Tea House.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  All right.

• 44:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so I love when a conversation inspires us to live more intentionally. And those of you who've listened, I, I, I know that many of you are going to be inspired by what you've heard from Daniel and our other guests today. Thank you all for sharing your stories. The Power of Regret is available now anywhere books are sold. And The Life You Want: Becoming Unstuck Journal is available on Amazon. Thanks, everyone, for listening and watching us on YouTube. I hope you'll subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And we'll see you next week. Go well, everybody.