Regret and rumination. Welcome to the dark side of decision making.
This is the LEAST talked about, but perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT part of decision making: what you do and how you treat yourself AFTER making a decision.
One of the things that holds people up in the decision making process is the FEAR of regretting their decision.
But what would happen if we eliminated that fear all together? Like… what if you simply didn’t fear making mistakes and regretting decisions? Let’s give it a try, shall we?
So when we’re talking about making mistakes, there’s something you need to know. This is an idea that I got during my very first coach training program1:
You can’t MAKE a mistake. Each choice you make is made with the information you have at that particular time. Deeming something a mistake only happens when you look at a past decision that didn’t go the way you thought it would (or wanted it to), and JUDGING it with the BENEFIT of HINDSIGHT.
You don’t SET OUT to make mistakes. Mistakes are a function of reflection combined with judgement.
Each and every single decision you make could turn out to be a ‘mistake’ simply because no-one has a crystal ball to see into the future.
Decisions are really just a fancy word for betting that what you do next will have a certain outcome.
So let’s then talk about regret and rumination. When it comes to decisions, regret is the expression of your emotions, while rumination is the “actions” of the mind.
Regret, according to Brené Brown2, arises when an outcome was not what we wanted, counted on, or thought would happen. Unlike disappointment, which occurs when we believe the outcome was out of our control, with regret, we believe the outcome was caused by our decisions or actions.
Regret is majorly uncomfy - partially because it causes intense sensation in your body - and partially because it causes upheaval in your mind.
Let’s take the sensation first. As with all emotions, regret is the label we place on a physical sensation. For me, regret feels like cold fingers around my heart. For you it might feel different.
But the very first part of dismantling the fear of regret when making decisions is to recognize regret for what it is: sensation. Just like running your fingers under cold water, or the loop-de-loop feeling you get in your stomach on a roller coaster, regret is a sensory experience. And you can survive sensory experiences. Some are more pleasant, some are less, but you have ALWAYS gotten through ALL of them.
Let’s go back to the pre-decision phase. Anxiety about the possibility that you’re going to regret your decision is really just you not wanting to feel the uncomfortable sensation of regret in your body.
So you resist making the decision in hopes of putting off or avoiding that uncomfy sensation.
But you feel TONS of sensations in your body. You always move through them. Always. You are bigger than that sensation. Remember that.
TIP: One way to make intense and unpleasant sensory experiences (aka “bad” emotions) less overwhelming is to create some linguistic distance between you and them. You can do this by saying “oh! There’s regret present with me right now3. That regret feels like cold fingers around my heart.” Doing so requires you to separate from the emotion JUST ENOUGH to make it less overwhelming and all consuming.
If you’re a visual person, I like to imagine that I’m standing behind a waterfall. I imagine I’m safe and dry in a little cave carved into the rock and that the waterfall rushing down in front of me is made of emotions: loud and heavy but fleeting. As the water rushes past, I’m reminded that the sensory experience of the emotion is MEANT to pass through us at an average rate of 90 seconds per emotion4
Okay, so what makes the emotion of regret stick around for longer than 90 seconds?
Your brain. That’s what’s coming up tomorrow.
xx,
Elizabeth
https://www.ipeccoaching.com
definition from her book Atlas of the Heart
Instead of saying “I’m regretful.” Another example is saying “oh, there’s a lot of sadness here” rather than “I’m sad.”
Isn’t that wild?! Emotions have a natural shelf life of 90 seconds, which a.) means we are SUPPOSED to experience a TON of emotions each day and b.) when we get stuck in an emotion, it’s a function of our MINDS holding onto the emotion.