Daniel Pink

Ample research shows that people who accept, rather than judge, their negative experiences end up faring better.

When feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.

Our lives require some basic level of stability. Without a measure of physical well-being and material security, other goals become difficult to imagine and even harder to pursue. Yet sometimes our individual choices undermine this long-term need.

Our actions give our lives direction. But other people give those lives purpose.

over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.

Connection regrets arise any time we neglect the people who help establish our own sense of wholeness.

Foundation regrets arise from our failures of foresight and conscientiousness. Like all deep structure regrets, they start with a choice. At some early moment, we face a series of decisions. One set represents the path of the ant. These choices require short-term sacrifice, but in the service of a long-term payoff. The other choices represent the path of the grasshopper. This route demands little exertion or assiduousness in the short run, but risks exacting a cost in the long run.

Foundation regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the work.

Our brains therefore play a double trick on us. They entice us into valuing the now too much and the later too little. Then they prevent us from understanding the nonlinear, compounding effects of our choice.

Foundation regrets are not just difficult to avoid. They are also difficult to undo. That is especially the case for financial regrets