Daniel Pink - The Power of Regret

Summary

Podcast Summary: Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen
Episode: Daniel Pink - The Power of Regret
Release Date: June 18, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, host Chrissy Teigen engages in a profound conversation with bestselling author Daniel Pink about the intricate nature of regret. Drawing from Pink's book, The Power of How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, the discussion delves into the paradoxical role that regret plays in personal growth and decision-making. Chrissy and Daniel explore how embracing regret, rather than dismissing it, can lead to a more purposeful and fulfilling life.

Rethinking Regret

Chrissy opens the conversation by challenging the ubiquitous "no regrets" mindset prevalent in modern culture. She observes, "It's one of those phrases that is everywhere these days... it seems like solid advice" (00:03), yet questions its true effectiveness. Daniel Pink responds by highlighting the paradox of regret's prevalence despite its negative connotation, asserting that regret is a "critical element of the human experience" that, when properly understood, can be transformative (02:05).

The Ubiquity and Utility of Regret

Daniel emphasizes that regret is one of the most common emotions experienced by humans, supported by decades of scientific research. He states, "We have evidence showing that if you do things like record people's everyday conversations, one of the most common emotions they'll express... is regret" (02:05). Pink argues that instead of viewing regret as purely toxic, it should be recognized as a powerful motivator for change and personal development.

The No-Regrets Philosophy

Chrissy challenges Pink on the prevailing "no regrets" philosophy, suggesting that completely avoiding regret may hinder personal growth. Pink concurs, expressing concern that the "no regrets" attitude might be delusional and prevent individuals from learning valuable lessons. He critiques the American cultural emphasis on perpetual positivity, stating, "It's actually unscientific advice" (03:19) and advocates for a balanced approach that acknowledges negative emotions like regret.

The Dual Nature of Counterfactual Thinking

The conversation delves into the concept of counterfactual thinking—imagining how past events could have unfolded differently. Pink distinguishes between "downward counterfactuals," which make us feel better by thinking things could have been worse, and "upward counterfactuals," which foster regret by contemplating how things could have been better (04:47). He explains that while downward counterfactuals offer comfort, upward counterfactuals, despite their negative feelings, drive improvement and better decision-making.

Social Implications of Regret

Chrissy explores how sharing personal regrets can influence social connections and perceptions. Pink reveals that disclosing regrets often leads to increased admiration and empathy from others, countering the fear that vulnerability might lead to judgment. He notes, "They admire our courage, they admire our candor" (05:12), suggesting that openly discussing regrets can strengthen social bonds and foster a supportive community.

Bottling Up Regret vs. Confronting It

The discussion highlights the dangers of suppressing regret. Pink warns that bottling up regret can lead to intensified negative emotions and hinder personal progress: "Bottling it up will, over time, push people into stewing in their regrets" (06:19). He advocates for confronting regrets directly, using them as informational data to drive future decisions and personal growth.

Age and Regret: Insights from the World Regret Survey

Daniel Pink shares insights from his World Regret Survey, which accumulated over 26,000 regrets from individuals across 134 countries. He identifies a significant trend: as people age, their regrets increasingly center around inaction rather than action. For instance, younger individuals often regret both what they did and what they didn't do, while older adults predominantly regret missed opportunities and failures to act (11:15). This shift underscores the importance of proactive engagement in life to minimize future regrets.

Strategies to Reframe Regrets for Personal Growth

Pink introduces practical strategies for transforming regret into a tool for personal development:

1. Self-Compassion: Treating oneself with kindness rather than contempt when dealing with regrets.
2. Disclosure: Talking or writing about regrets to unburden and make sense of them.
3. Lesson Drawing: Extracting actionable lessons from regrets to inform future decisions (14:53).

He emphasizes the importance of "self-distancing," where individuals view their regrets from an outsider’s perspective to gain clarity and insight.

Building Empathy through Regret

Regret, as Pink explains, enhances empathy and compassion. By understanding and processing their own regrets, individuals become more attuned to the struggles of others. This heightened empathy fosters stronger, more compassionate relationships and contributes to a more supportive societal environment (16:17).

Practical Tools: Failure Resume and 90-Year-Old Me

Daniel Pink shares two actionable exercises to harness the power of regret:

1. Failure Resume: Inspired by Tina Selig, this exercise involves listing personal failures, the lessons learned from each, and the actions one plans to take to address them. Chrissy exemplifies this by reflecting on past mistakes and identifying actionable steps to prevent their recurrence (19:28).

2. 90-Year-Old Me: This technique encourages individuals to imagine conversations with their 90-year-old selves to gain perspective on current decisions and regrets. By envisioning how future selves would view present actions, individuals can prioritize what truly matters and make more meaningful choices (25:08).

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reinforced understanding that regret, when approached constructively, serves as a catalyst for personal growth and improved decision-making. Daniel Pink’s insights underscore the necessity of embracing regret as a natural and beneficial aspect of the human experience. Chrissy Teigen leaves listeners with practical tools to transform their regrets into positive forces, thereby leading healthier, happier, and more purposeful lives.

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Notable Quotes:

• Daniel Pink (02:05): "Regret isn't something to be avoided or buried, but rather a critical element of the human experience that... can propel us toward a richer, more purposeful life."

• Daniel Pink (03:19): "We've been indoctrinated into this belief that the way to lead a good life is to be positive all the time, never be negative."

• Daniel Pink (04:47): "Downward counterfactuals... is a way to do better... but they come packaged with the feel worse part."

• Daniel Pink (06:19): "Bottling it up will, over time, push people into stewing in their regrets... This negative emotion is actually a transformative emotion."

• Daniel Pink (14:53): "Treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself with self-compassion."

• Daniel Pink (25:37): "The point of this exercise about 90 year old you is that... certain things that matter a lot. So get those right or else 90 year old you is going to be pissed."

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Practical Takeaways:

1. Embrace Regret: Instead of suppressing regret, confront and analyze it to extract valuable lessons.
2. Practice Self-Compassion: Treat yourself kindly when dealing with past mistakes.
3. Use Regret as Data: View regrets as informational tools to guide future decisions.
4. Engage in Reflective Exercises: Implement techniques like the Failure Resume and 90-Year-Old Me to gain perspective and foster growth.
5. Foster Empathy: Processing your own regrets can enhance your ability to empathize with others.

By integrating these strategies, listeners can transform their perception of regret from a source of pain to a powerful engine for personal and emotional development.

Transcript

[Chrissy Teigen]

You're listening to Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, an Audible original podcast. Join me as we explore the cutting edge of health, wellness, and personal growth with the world's leading experts and thinkers. From inspiring stories to actionable insights, our conversations aim to help you lead a healthier, happier, and more productive life. No regrets. It's one of those phrases that is everywhere these days, shorthand for a life lived boldly and without hesitation. Emblazoned on T shirts and bumper stickers, tattooed on forearms and written proudly in Instagram bios, it seems like solid advice. After all, regret is often seen as something toxic. It conjures up images of sleepless nights spent replaying past mistakes, of anxiety and second guessing. Conventional wisdom says let it go, don't look back. The past is in the past. But what if this mindset is actually what's toxic, and instead of pushing us forward, it's holding us back? My next guest, author Daniel Pink, invites us to reconsider these questions. In his best selling, the Power of How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, Pink argues that regret isn't something to be avoided or buried, but rather a critical element of the human experience that, when properly understood, can propel us toward a richer, more purposeful life. Pink challenges the cultural narrative that regret is purely negative, showing us that it's actually a powerful motivator for change. By confronting our regrets head on, we can learn valuable lessons, make better decisions, and ultimately lead lives that are more aligned with our true selves. In today's episode, we'll delve into the science of regret, discuss its psychological impact, and uncover practical strategies for transforming regret from a source of pain into a catalyst for growth. Daniel Pink, welcome to Self Conscious. Why do you believe regret is such a universal human emotion, and what does that tell us about its role in our lives?

[Daniel Pink]

Well, first of all, let's establish that regret, for you, for me, for everyone is one of the most common emotions that human beings have. We have all kinds of evidence of this in 50, 60 years of science. We have evidence showing that if you do things like record people's everyday conversations, one of the most common emotions they'll express in everyday conversation is regret. One of the most common negative emotions they'll express is regret. It is truly ubiquitous in the human experience. And your question? It makes a lot of sense because here's the thing, I don't regret. It makes me feel bad. So there's a puzzle here, right? It's like, why would something so unpleasant be so ubiquitous? And the answer is, cause it's useful if we treat it right, and the big problem is we haven't been treating it right.

[Chrissy Teigen]

You challenged the no regrets philosophy. Can you explain why you believe this mindset can be harmful rather than empowering? And let me tell you, my whole, my age bracket, I don't know what it is, but people want to live in this time of, yeah, it happened. And no, I don't regret it. But I believe that if you didn't, if you don't regret it, you're not going to learn about it and learn from it. But I do feel like it's this empowering thing that people want to say to themselves now just to not to have to go back and address it fully.

[Daniel Pink]

I think that's exactly right. I hope that it's empowering. I fear that it's delusional. People sometimes will say, I don't have any regrets. Everything happens for a reason. And I understand why that is, I understand why they do that. But I think it's largely a performance. And I think it's a performance rooted in some bad guidance that we've gotten, especially Americans have been indoctrinated into this belief that the way to lead a good life is to be positive all the time, never be negative, to always look forward and never look back. And that's just not good advice. It's actually unscientific advice. The better advice is to be positive most of the time. But negative emotions are part of our life and to look backwards sometimes, not all the time. And so the key here is not to. What we have to do is we have to come up with a third way. Some of us do what you're suggesting, Chrissy, which is you feel that spear of regret and you say, no, I have to be positive. No, no, I don't want to deal with this. No regrets. You plug your ears and imagine that your regret isn't happening. Others of us go too far the other way. We get captured by our regret. We wallow in our regret. We stew in our regret. That's a bad idea, too. What we should be doing, what science tells us to do, is to think about our regrets, confront our regrets, look them in the eye. You use them as information, use them as data. And when we do that, this negative emotion is actually a transformative emotion.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Yeah, I guess you always layer it with I can't change what happened, I can't change the past. But through what you are saying, you can at least help change the future a little bit.

[Daniel Pink]

Bingo. You can look backward in order to help you move forward. That's exactly why regret can be an engine for progress.

[Chrissy Teigen]

How does disclosing personal regrets to others impact our social connections and the way we are perceived by those around us?

[Daniel Pink]

It's an interesting question too. See, sometimes we fear that if we reveal our mistake or our regret or our vulnerability, people will think less of us. And we have a lot of evidence now that's completely wrong, that it actually, people think more of us. They admire our courage, they admire our candor. And so one of the important things in reckoning with individual regrets is disclosing them, talking about them, writing about them. What that does, that can offer a kind of unburdening. It also offers a way to make sense of regrets. One of the things about negative emotions in general and regret in particular, is that it is. It's blobby, it's amorphous, it's a cloud over you. And when we write about those things or talk about those things, we convert that amorphous blob into something more concrete. Words, and those words are less menacing. So disclosure is also a way to defang that regret. And it's an important step in both making sense of it and drawing lessons from it.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Yeah, I guess the hardest part for most people is having to go back and live in that time again. What are the potential risks of bottling up regret? And how can expressing these emotions lead to better mental and emotional health?

[Daniel Pink]

I think that there are a couple of dangers in bottling it up. One danger would be that you can't do it for too long and eventually the bottle explodes and. And now you're drowning in a sea of regret. That is, you're wallowing in it. So not reckoning with it. Bottling it up will, over time, push people into stewing in their regrets, wallowing in their regrets. So that's one downside. The second downside is that you're leaving progress and improvement and, well, being on the table. That if you bottle it up and don't acknowledge it, you're gonna sacrifice the ability to learn more, to solve problems better, to think more clearly, to find more meaning in your life. That this negative emotion is a source of positive progress. And here's the thing. It's like the conundrum about this regret. When we look to the past, there are two different ways that we can look to the past. This is what's called counterfactual thinking, where our brains are incredible. Go in a time machine, go into the past and imagine the past and put ourselves back in that past and then actually get back in our time machine and come back to the present and imagine how the present would be different if we had acted differently in the past. All right, so there are two different kinds of counterfactual thinkings. One is what's called a downward counterfactual. A downward counterfactual is when you imagine that things could have turned out worse. So what we have and some of the regrets I've collected are people who say, it's usually women. Actually, I regret marrying that idiot, but at least I have these two great kids. All right, I have. You have a. I hear that often. You imagine how things could have been worse and you feel better. An upward counterfactual is how you imagine how things could have been better if only I had studied art history like I really wanted to, rather than accounting, I would be happier and perhaps better off in my life. Downward counterfactuals, saying, at least that makes us feel better and it's okay to feel better.

[Chrissy Teigen]

At least I'm alive.

[Daniel Pink]

Upward counterfactual, the regret. If only those make us feel worse, but they help us do better. And here's the conundrum. Everybody wants the do better part, but it comes packaged with the feel worse part. It's a combo platter here. It's surf and turf. It's fries in a sandwich. You gotta get them both. The only way to move forward is to actually contend with that negative feeling. And that's where we. We've run aground. We think that negative emotions are a problem. Always. That negative emotions are a sign there's something wrong with us, that everybody else is positive, but we're the only ones who are negative. And that's a mistake. What we should be doing is looking the devil in the eye when those negative emotions saying, I'm not freaked out by you. You're just a knock at the door. You're a piece of information. Your data. Let me think about it and use you to make better decisions in the future.

[Chrissy Teigen]

We just spoke to somebody about discomfort and how we need to live in being uncomfortable and being okay. Being uncomfortable. Because now we're in this world where all of us are so used to taking the easy way out or knowing that we just aren't or just literally not being cave people anymore. And now everything comes so easy to us. And also mentally living in the discomfort and living in the uncomfortable. So it's very similar to that.

[Daniel Pink]

I guess there are some things we can do with. There's some interesting research on this very topic of discomfort that has been really useful to me, which Is essentially a reframing exercise when you feel discomfort, and we tend to shy away from that. Oh, my God, this is uncomfortable discomfort. I gotta run away from it. Is that when you feel that emotion of discomfort, you reframe it and say, this is not discomfort. This is learning. This is what it feels like when I learn. And that kind of reframing can be very helpful in dealing with discomfort. But again, the broader thing here is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods. We shouldn't be positive all the time because we're gonna have negative moments in our life. What we shouldn't do is learn how to deal with those negative emotions and enlist them to do better in the future.

[Chrissy Teigen]

I love that you're a believer in toxic positivity.

[Daniel Pink]

You know, I want everybody to have more positive emotions than negative emotions. But here's the thing. I don't wanna have only positive emotions. Think about it. Think about if we had only positive emotions. Think about it. Okay? Think about an emotion. Think about an emotion like fear. That's a negative emotion. It makes us feel bad. Imagine someone offered me the ability to eliminate fear from my brain. Would I want to do that? Hell no. Because if this house that I'm sitting in is on fire, I want to be scared, because that's going to get me out the door. Right? Negative emotions can be useful. Think about something like grief. Grief is a horrible emotion. It's a horrible, horrible emotion. But why do we grieve? We grieve because we love. And what we need to be doing is having a portfolio of emotions that are mostly positive, but some negative emotions in there. Because negative emotions help us live a better life.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Yeah, I guess they always say you should have a healthy amount of fear. We can have a healthy amount of regret.

[Daniel Pink]

Exactly.

[Chrissy Teigen]

How does our understanding of regret change as we grow older?

[Daniel Pink]

So I did some surveys on this and looking at differences in regret from based on race, based on gender identity, based on a whole bunch of other things. And what I found were not that many differences based on those demographics. However you identify the one where there is a big difference, and that is age. There is a big age difference in regret. And here's what it is. And I think it's. I think it's a huge lesson here. Chrissy. If you look at the architecture of regret, there are essentially two kinds of two broad categories of regrets. One are action regrets. I regret something I did. Another one are inaction regrets. I regret something I didn't do. People in their 20s tend to have equal numbers of regrets. Of action things I did and regrets of inaction things I didn't do. But as people age in their 30s, it's more inaction than action. As people age even more 40s, a lot more inaction than action. When you get to my age, 50s and beyond, wow. The inaction regrets outnumber the action regrets by about three to one over time. Here's the punchline here. Over time, what we regret is what we didn't do. We didn't reach out to a friend. We didn't tell somebody we love them. We didn't ask somebody out on a date. We didn't start that business. We didn't go on that trip. We didn't speak up for something that mattered to us. Over time, what sticks with you are the inaction regrets.

[Chrissy Teigen]

How did the findings from the World Regret Survey shape your understanding of regret? And did you have any surprising insight?

[Daniel Pink]

So the World Regret Survey was this. I set up a website called World Regret Survey where I invited people around the world to submit their biggest regret. And as I mentioned a moment ago, we have a database now of over 26,000 regrets from people in 134 countries. It's really extraordinary, these little kind of mini stories of people's lives. It's breathtaking in many ways.

[Chrissy Teigen]

It's like chicken soup for the soul.

[Daniel Pink]

Except that it's a very bitter chicken soup. Among the things that I guess the biggest surprise, to answer your question directly, is how universal the regrets were. So that if I were to show you this database and block out the field for where it came from, I don't think you could tell whether the regret came from Milwaukee, whether it came from South Carolina, whether it came from Argentina, that around the world people seem to have the same four core regrets.

[Chrissy Teigen]

What are those four core regrets?

[Daniel Pink]

As I mentioned, we have these foundation regrets, if only I'd done the work, the boldness regrets, if only I'd taken the chance, moral regrets, if only I'd done the right thing. And finally, the connection regrets, which are if only I'd reached out. And how do they influence our in an ideal world, the way that they would influence our decision making is in two ways. Number one, it clarifies what we value. That's really important that these regrets, if we take them seriously, they clarify what we value and they instruct us on how to do better in the future.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Hey, it's Chrissy. Dig deeper with today's guest and hear more from all our groundbreaking guests on Audible. From best sellers and new releases to podcasts and Audible originals, Discover the next step on your journey. Go to audible.com chrissyonaudible what strategies can individuals use to reframe their regrets in a way that promotes personal growth rather than self criticism?

[Daniel Pink]

Yeah, well, think of it. I think of the way of reckoning with regret in sort of three stages. Inward, outward, forward, inward is treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. Treat yourself with self compassion outward is to talk about it even privately. Write about it even privately. There's evidence that writing about Our regrets for 15 minutes a day for three consecutive days is helpful for us because writing helps us unburden ourselves. Talking helps us unburden ourselves. It also helps us make sense of it. And then the final one is to, you gotta take a step back and draw a lesson from it. You have to be explicit. You have to ask yourself, what did I learn from this and what am I going to do about it? And in some ways, we're not very good at doing that for ourselves. One of my favorite strategies for doing that is to ask yourself if you're stuck on what to do. It's the best way to give advice to people. It's the best, most effective, easiest way to give advice to people. If someone comes to you for advice, they say, oh man, I don't know what to do. Say, what would you tell your best friend to do? And inevitably they know, oh my God, I tell my best friend to do. And I'm like, all right, that's the answer right there. All right. It's called, as I said before, it's called self distancing. And so when we take a step back, when we treat our own problems as if we're seeing it from afar, we tend to be very good problem solvers.

[Chrissy Teigen]

How does regret make us more empathetic and compassionate in everyday life?

[Daniel Pink]

It begins with becoming. It helps us teach us to become more compassionate to ourselves. And it also, when we're more compassionate toward ourselves, we're more empathetic and compassionate toward other people. And one of the things that you. One of the things, if somebody comes to you with a regret, I think that most of us naturally will deal with it empathetically. And I do think there can be something when we start talking about our regrets in a normal, honest way, okay, not a weepy, self flagellating way, but in just a normal, direct way. We have this kind of cascade of compassion, this kind of wave of empathy. If more of us start treating ourselves and others with compassion, then other people will start treating them other people with more empathy and compassion. And then we have this kind of cascade of, we have this kind of cascade of good feeling. But if we are more in touch with our own feelings, we're going to be better able to understand other people's feelings.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Walk me through some effective strategies for really analyzing our regrets and using them to inform future decisions.

[Daniel Pink]

Again, what you want to do is go through this relatively simple process where you feel the regret. You don't freak out by it. Think about a regret as a knock at the door. You can have different response to a knock at the door. You could say, you could put your fingers in your ears and say, I don't hear anything. Bad idea. You could dive under the couch because you're nervous. That's a bad idea too. That's it.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Okay, that's me.

[Daniel Pink]

What you should be doing is opening the door, saying, oh, hey, what do you want? Looking at it, looking at it in the eye. So what we should be doing is confronting our regrets. Treat again. I keep coming back to this idea of self compassion. Treat yourself with compassion rather than contempt. Treat yourself with kindness. Treat yourself with kindness. That is not a cop out. That is not a sign of weakness. It's actually a strength. It's a more effective strategy. Show a little vulnerability, because vulnerability will help you make sense of your regret. And it actually signals to other people what kind of person you are and people think more highly of you. And then do some of the self distancing things that we've talked about, which is think about that regret. Draw a lesson from it. Take a step back and say, what did this teach me and what am I gonna do about it? And when we do these kinds of things, we end up, we have all this evidence out there that people who confront their regrets rather than shy away from them are better negotiators, they're clearer thinkers, they make fewer thinking mistakes, they're better problem solvers, they're better strategists, they, they find more meaning in life. That again, what we have in our brains, as we've been talking about in our gut, in our soul, is this emotion that is on its face menacing. But if we're willing to look that devil in the eye, it's a transformative emotion.

[Chrissy Teigen]

And now for the toolkit. Each episode, our guests distill their expertise into practical and actionable insights. Today, Daniel Pink teaches us strategies for making regret a positive and productive force in our lives.

[Daniel Pink]

This exercise is called a failure resume. Now, all of us have resumes. We have a list of all of the accomplishments and accolades and things. They sparkle, they make us look good. A failure resume, which is an idea from Tina Selig at Stanford University, is the exact opposite. Where you list your failures, your screw ups, your setbacks, your mistakes. But you don't stop there. What you do, and we can work, we can do this together, Chrissy, is you can pick, say three of your failures, setbacks, and mistakes. You list those. Then we can go through and say, what lesson did you learn from them? List. What are you going to do about it? If you're like a wonky person like me, you can do it as a spreadsheet. You can list like five mistakes, screw up setbacks in one column, you can list the lesson you learn from it. Then the next column, and in the final column, you list what action you're gonna take to deal with that.

[Chrissy Teigen]

How broad is it allowed to be? Like, would I be allowed to say, being a people pleaser or no? Should it be a situation where I was a people pleaser or exactly the second one?

[Daniel Pink]

Definitely think about an action or inaction where you screwed up. You either did something you shouldn't have done or didn't do something you should have done or didn't do something the way you should have done it.

[Chrissy Teigen]

I guess I have a big regret that there was actually a White House correspondence dinner where I was surrounded by really influential, amazing, smart people. And I drank way too much and made an ass out of myself. And I just feel like that must be the only way that they imagine me now, even though it was a really long time ago.

[Daniel Pink]

So that's basically, that's your failure, your screw up. So again, what I would suggest to you in general is to treat yourself with kindness rather than compassion. Who among us has not drunk too much and said stupid things? Nearly everybody who's not a teetotaler has done that. But. So what lesson did you learn from it? Tell me what lesson you learned from that.

[Chrissy Teigen]

That I don't need to drink to think that I'll be funnier or better or smarter, obviously. And that I don't want to drink when I go to events like that because the regret to it doesn't compare.

[Daniel Pink]

Easy one I get out of it.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Does not compare to the amount of regret.

[Daniel Pink]

Yeah, exactly. So the lesson I think is pretty straightforward. So the failure is I drank too much at the White House Correspondent's Dinner and made an ass of myself. The lesson is don't deal with what seemed to be high stakes situation by bombing yourself with alcohol. That's the lesson. And then what are you gonna do about it? So what's the next kind of high stakes situation that you're gonna, that you're gonna confront?

[Chrissy Teigen]

I'm gonna go to it again and I'm not going to drink.

[Daniel Pink]

Bing. Or you're going to have. Or you can have. You're going to. Next time you go to that kind of event, you're going to have one drink or zero drinks. And so that's the kind of thing. So here's the thing. You could say, obviously it bugs you and you could say, oh, no regrets. That's a bad idea. You could say, oh my God, I'm the biggest idiot. I am a horrible person. That's a bad idea. What you should be doing is confronting it. And a failure resume allows you to do that. List the mistake, list what you learned from it. List what you're going to do about it. Is there another one?

[Chrissy Teigen]

It's probably that I wish I had confronted an abuser of mine by going to my parents or telling somebody and therefore maybe helping other people along the way.

[Daniel Pink]

The regret is that you didn't speak up when you were younger in the face of abuse, first of all. Again, that's another one. It's a perfect example of why one needs self compassion. Because in that kind of situation, you should treat yourself with kindness rather than contempt. That is completely unworthy of contempt. So what lesson did you, what lesson did you learn from that?

[Chrissy Teigen]

That's the hard part. I don't know if I learned a lesson. It's just that like, I, I think you did.

[Daniel Pink]

What lesson? I think you did learn a lesson.

[Chrissy Teigen]

The situation that I was in, I couldn't. I didn't want to worry my parents or put anything on anybody else. So the lesson, I just live with the regret. I don't know if I've learned a lesson, honestly.

[Daniel Pink]

Really. Let's move to the third column, which is what are you gonna do about it? I'll ask you that question. Let's use the self distancing technique. If your best friend came to you with this regret, what would you tell that person to do?

[Chrissy Teigen]

Follow her heart with it and know that you don't owe anybody anything and whatever is going to make you feel better.

[Daniel Pink]

Bingo. I don't know if you necessarily have to undo that one. Basically, the regret is that you didn't speak up, understandably in the face of abuse. And the lesson you learn is that it's important to speak up in the face of abuse. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good idea to go back and blow the whistle on that it might be, I don't know enough about the facts there, but I do think that the lesson that you've learned is that the next time you're in a situation where you have the chance to speak up, especially now where you're not that person, you're not a person without power, then you actually have an obligation to speak up. And actually telling your story about speaking up is a way to cascade that lesson to other people. So I think that the lesson is speak up in tough situations, even when it's uncomfortable. But the lesson for you is that the next time you are in that situation, say something. Speak up. This Exercise is called 90 Year Old Me. And one of the things that's interesting as a way to make better decisions about our lives is to use our brain's incredible time travel capacities and have a conversation with someone who you haven't met yet, but who cares deeply about you. And that's the you at age 90. So if you're at a. Is there a decision that you're trying to make or regret that you're trying to make sense of right now?

[Chrissy Teigen]

I really do have a huge regret that I didn't publicly speak up when I knew there was a large injustice happening in the world.

[Daniel Pink]

So that's a regret. So now the question you're looking for guidance on what to do with that regret. All right. And imagine having a conversation with 90 year old you. Imagine talking to Chrissy of who's 90 years old. Imagine having that conversation.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Yeah.

[Daniel Pink]

What's she telling you to do? Is she telling you to beat yourself up over this or is she telling you something else?

[Chrissy Teigen]

90 year old Chrissy would give her grace and extend her kindness, not be judgy.

[Daniel Pink]

What advice would you give her?

[Chrissy Teigen]

Always stay true to yourself.

[Daniel Pink]

Bingo. The point of this exercise about 90 year old you is that when we again we want to use our brain's incredible time travel capacity when we go forward in age to age 90, we realize that most of the decisions we make don't actually matter all that much. That we make lots and lots of decisions in the course of a day, a week, a year. But most of them don't matter that much. But some of them matter a lot. Your 90 year old self is not going to give a shit about what color car you bought this year. Your 90 year old self is not going to care what you had for lunch today. But your 90 year old self is going to care about whether the next time around you spoke up for injustice. The 90 year old you is going to care about whether you reached out to somebody whom you cared about and whom you love. The 90 year old you is going to. If you have to have a conversation with a 90 year old you and in the rest of your time you don't act boldly and try stuff, the 90 year old you is not going to be happy. We can have a kind of an imagined conversation with our future selves. And our future selves are interesting because we don't know them, they're a stranger, but they actually care a lot about us. And ultimately, I think the lesson of this 90 year old you exercise is that many of the decisions we make on a day to day basis don't really matter that much. Good enough is fine, but there's certain things that matter a lot. So get those right or else 90 year old you is going to be pissed.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Oh my God. Yes.

[Daniel Pink]

So this exercise is called. This is a good business exercise. It's a good family exercise. It's called a pre mortem and it comes from a psychologist named Gary Klein. And a pre mortem is. Think about a postmortem. A postmortem is when the body dies and we try to figure out how the body died. A pre mortem is that when we do that in advance. So let's say you have a big. Do you have a big project coming up?

[Chrissy Teigen]

I do, yes. A complete redesign of my cravings brand.

[Daniel Pink]

You're going to do a redesign of the cravings brand. Here we go. Here's what I want you to do. We're going to keep using that mental time machine that we have. A pre mortem is this. You go forward in time. It's a year from now. And the redesign was a complete failure. A complete, abject disaster. You're a year from now, it's a colossal failure. Tell me what went wrong.

[Chrissy Teigen]

We went too outside the box. We tried to be too cool. We tried to be everything to everybody. We picked the wrong color palette, our recipes weren't good.

[Daniel Pink]

I could go on, okay, but that's excellent. But that's really excellent. So that's what we're doing. We're imagining it's a complete failure a year from now. All right, so you said we went too far out the box. We tried to be too cool. What was the other one? We weren't simple enough.

[Chrissy Teigen]

We tried to be everything to everyone.

[Daniel Pink]

Okay, that's a really good one. We tried to be everything to everyone. All right, so you're going forward in time. All right, again, it's a pre mortem it's not a postmortem, as you can take a dead body and figure out what the heck happened. A pre mortem, you're doing that in your head. You run forward in time. You just told me three ways this thing could go wrong. Three ways this thing could go wrong. All right, so you have that. You have a list of what went wrong. Now get back in your time machine, Chrissy. Come to the present. Don't do those things.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Yes.

[Daniel Pink]

Word.

[Chrissy Teigen]

That's so good.

[Daniel Pink]

But it's really helpful. I do a pre mortem on every. I do a pre mortem on every big project that I do because at some level, we don't know everything that's gonna go wrong, but we have a sense. For me, I think the revelatory thing here on a business level is your admonition to not try to be all things to all people. So thinking about that now, imagining yourself in the future, doing that pre mortem and then coming back to the present, you can have that in your head. Say, you know what? Our job is not to be everything to everybody. Our job is not to try to be too cool. Our job is not to go too far out of the box because people won't understand what the heck we're talking about. And so this exercise, imagining how a project went south on you in the future and then coming back to the present and not doing those things is. I'm surprised that every team doesn't do this for every project.

[Chrissy Teigen]

It's like such common sense now that you said it, but I would have never thought about that. I think often my spaceship will travel to. To thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong, but then it doesn't return to Earth and understand that we haven't done those mistakes yet.

[Daniel Pink]

It's a round trip, man. Take a round trip down a one way.

[Chrissy Teigen]

That's so good. Round trip. Okay. Oh my God. Really? I think one of the best pieces of business advice I've ever heard in my whole life. That's amazing. Daniel Pink, I want to thank you for joining me on Self Conscious. It was wonderful to talk to you and my God, I have a lot of good takeaways from this. So thank you so much.

[Daniel Pink]

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

[Chrissy Teigen]

Daniel Pink's the Power of Regret is available on Audible. Until then, tune in, turn on, and feel better. This is Chrissy Teigen and you've been listening to Self Conscious, an Audible original podcast. This has been an Audible original produced by Audible and Huntley Productions, hosted by Chrissy Teigen Executive producer for Huntley Productions Chrissy Teigen Executive producer for Audible Stacy Creamer Recorded and engineered by Alex Skye Mixed and mastered by Jeremiah Zimmerman Edited by Lisa Orkin Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navin Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazzi Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, LLC.