Hey friends,
During the week, I was thinking about a few random things. One thing which outrightly popped up was the concept of regret which is very prominent in us as humans.
Anytime you make a decision or choose a path and it does not turn out well or you find an alternative that would have turned out better, you’re a candidate for regret.
Actually, regrets are uninvited guests and irrespective of our willpower, they somehow sneak into our lives. I find two reasons which affect us the most and these are ‘Opportunity Cost’ and ‘Nearness Effect’.
There is no denying that pace of life is invariably decided by the decisions we make on regular basis. But the hard reality is that there is no model or machine in the world which can offer you the best decisions/ options at all times.
The quality of any given decision/option can not be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. One of the “costs” of any option involves passing up the opportunities that a different option would have afforded.”
For example:-An opportunity cost of taking a job near your romantic partner is that you won’t be near your family. Every choice we make has opportunity costs associated with it.” The Nearness Effect happens, when we come very close to achieving our desired result. The aptest example is from the Olympics where the bronze medalist is the happiest and the silver medalist is internally unhappy. This aspect also percolates in our respective professional lives wherein halfway through we hit a bump and find ourselves hanging in the middle with no apparent forward movement until we decide to do something else all over again. We start to have second thoughts, convincing ourselves that there are better alternatives out there that we haven’t yet explored.
In fact, regrets come to us in many ways, one of them can be ‘post-decision regret’. A regret that occurs after we’ve experienced the results of a decision. But there is also something called ‘anticipated regret’, which rears its head even before a decision is made. For example:-How will it feel to buy one thing only to find a nicer, cheaper one in the next store? How will it feel if you take a job only to have a better opportunity appear next week?
The problem with regrets is that they will raise the emotional stakes of decisions. Anticipated regret will make decisions harder to make, and post-decision regret will make them harder to enjoy.
Eventually, they will produce not just dissatisfaction but causes paralysis in our personality. The most viable solution to handle regrets is to truly acknowledge that sooner or later they are going to find their way into our lives. Focusing on a life to live more meaningfully and removing the phrase – ‘IF ONLY ??..is the new smarter way of living healthy and peaceful.
Take good care & enjoy reading your dose of mindful productivity!
JOE
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