Managing “Decision Regret”
When we’ve made a decision, one of the things that impacts our ability to fully get behind that decision and move forward with intention is our tendency to experience decision regret.
And we generally experience decision regret because as soon as we make a choice, we start to process new inputs, emotions, and experiences that come with that choice, and if we experience any kind of resistance, or if our experience doesn’t match what we had envisioned our life would be life after making that choice, then our mind immediately starts to question the decision.
And we also start to romanticize what it would have been like to live out other options, the ones that we didn’t choose. We start to build a story about “how good life would have been” had we chosen option 2 or option 3.
So in this episode, I explain how to recognize when you’re sitting in a place of decision regret, and give you a few ways to pull yourself out of it, gradually and judgment free.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
When we’ve made a decision, one of the things that impacts our ability to fully get behind that decision and move forward with intention is our tendency to experience decision regret.
And we generally experience decision regret because when we make a choice, we’re start to process new inputs, emotions, and experiences that come with that choice, and if we experience any kind of resistance, or if our experience doesn’t match what we had envisioned our life would be life after making that choice, then our mind immediately starts to question the decision.
And we also start to romanticize what it would have been like to live out other options, the ones that we didn’t choose. We start to build a story about “how good life would have been” had we chosen option 2 or option 3.
So in this episode, I want to explain how to recognize when you’re sitting in a place of decision regret, and I’ll give you a few ways to pull yourself out of it, gradually and judgment free. Here we go.
Main:
I want to explore this pesky, counterproductive, limiting feeling that follows us when we make decisions, and it’s the potential for us to experience decision regret.
When we’re faced with an opportunity to make a decision, one of the things that impacts our ability to get behind that decision, or to make a choice with clarity and confidence, or to enjoy and live fully in the moment and celebrate a choice that we have made, is our fear that we’re going to make the wrong decision.
So I want you to just picture a time when you’ve been faced with a decision. Maybe it was a career choice, a choice about what school to go to, whether to move to a new house or apartment, whether to end a relationship - and I think we all can call to mind that feeling where when we’re confronted with a decision, we play out in our mind what it would look like if we made the wrong decision.
We see ourselves sitting in this deep place of regret for having made a particular choice, and we do that before we even make the choice at all.
We also have the tendency once we’ve made a decision, to look back and experience regret about not having made a different choice or the “right” decision.
How often does your mind draw you back to a decision you’ve made in the past and you end up beating up on yourself for not having made a different choice.
We say things like “If I had only known . . . . . “ or “If I knew then what I knew now . . .”
And I think if you look closely we do this on a micro and macro level all the time - from bigger decisions like “I wish I had taken a different job” to smaller decisions like “I wish I had ordered the ravioli instead of the lasagna.”
So there are all sorts of things we could discuss related to decision making, but what I want to talk about in this episode is this second part I just mentioned, which is experiencing regret after we’ve made a decision.
And specifically I want to walk through how we often handle our thoughts post-decision, and then I want to give you a new way to reframe your thoughts around decisions you’ve made.
Let’s use an example here to illustrate this point.
Imagine for a moment that you want to make a career change. And you’re plugging along in your current position, and eventually you reach the point where the pull of wanting to make that career change becomes so strong that you find yourself faced with a decision.
And let’s just say for the sake of this example that you narrowed it down to three options:
First - leave your current job and pursue your own business.
Second - leave your current job and go to work for another company.
Third - stick it out at your current job a little bit longer.
And let’s also say that you decided to go with option 1 - you’re going to leave your current job to start a new business.
As soon as you make that decision and start down the path of pursuing option 1, this is where we often start to experience decision regret.
And we experience decision regret because upon making a choice, we then start to engage with the new inputs, emotions, and experiences that come along with that choice, and if we experience any kind of resistance, or if our experience doesn’t match exactly what we had envisioned or dreamed it would be like to pursue option 1, then our mind immediately starts to question our decision.
That feeling of doubt creeps in and we begin to imagine what it would have been like to pursue option 2 or option 3.
And in many ways what happens when we start to think about options 2 and 3 is we romanticize what it would have been like to live out those other options. We start to build a story about “how good life would have been” had we chosen option 2 or option 3.
So in our example, when I choose to leave my current job and start my own business, as soon as I give my notice, create a business plan, and form a company, and build my own website, and start to think about how I’m going to acquire clients, and how I’m going to generate revenue each month - the friction that comes along with having to follow through with those things causes my mind to yearn for something simpler or an experience that might be frictionless.
And so I start to think about option 2 which was taking a new job at a different company: “hmm, taking that other job sounds pretty good right now. I probably would have liked it there, the people seemed nice, I could have used the benefits, and I really liked the team I”d be working with.” And I tend to romanticize what that reality would have looked like.
Or I start to think about option 3 which was to just stay at my current job, and I start to say things like “ya know what, it wasn’t really that bad after all. The company was growing, I probably was about 6 months from a promotion, maybe I could have gone to my boss and negotiated a higher salary. Who am I to try to start my own thing?” And again, my mind begins to romanticize what that reality would have looked like.
So what I want to invite you to think about is how my view of option 2 and option 3 are grounded in a reality that never has and never will come to pass.
The entire foundation for my romanticism of those options, and my thoughts about what it would have been like to make a different decision are rooted in assumptions and conjecture and a longing for something that appears like it would have been better for me, but that I have no basis in reality to assume or believe it actually would have turned out that way.
These alternate paths don’t mean anything. They’re a projection of an alternate reality that will never come to pass - and I have to understand that my mind is taking me there because the thought of what it would have been like to make these other choices feels safe and comfortable because I can make up any story I want - any story - about how great they would have been - and my mind leaves out the part about the costs or the friction that I may have experienced had I made those other choices.
And what happens is because we romanticize these alternate realities, we end up living in a state of regret which includes not only beating up on ourselves for not making different decisions, but also depriving ourselves of the ability to (1) get fully behind the decision we did make, and (2) think clearly about our current circumstances.
In other words, every moment we spend sitting in regret about a past decision is a moment that we can’t devote to making an informed, clear decision about what I want to do next.
So. How do we start to address decision regret, and our tendency to romanticize a false reality that exists on some other universal plane that will never come to pass. I want to give you three things to think about here.
[First
First, we have to “Recognize when we’re sitting in a place of decision regret.” Catch yourself when you’re looking forward and you’re already experiencing anxiety or regret about a decision you haven’t even made yet and how that might be paralyzing you. Or, how you might be looking backward at a decision you’ve already made and continuing to beat up on yourself for a past choice.
We do this all day long at the micro and macro level, and changing our thinking patterns around this begins with catching ourselves when we’re doing it.
Second: When you catch yourself experiencing decision regret, shift your focus toward this concept: How can I make my next decision based on the best information I have at that moment?
So moving forward, when you’re confronted with a decision, instead of letting your mind take you to a place where you’re paralyzed by the feeling that you have the potential to make a wrong decision, remind yourself that all you can ever do is make a decision based on the best information you have at the time.
Also recognize that when you make a decision and take action on that decision, you will inevitably learn new pieces of information and have experiences that color your current reality - but that you never could have accounted for had you not had those experiences.
In other words, you can’t try to justify a past decision based on a current set of information. Those are two different realities that will never sync up and we shouldn’t let ourselves play that game of wishing we had made a different decision based on what we know now - it’s an unfair comparison that will always lead to disappointment.
When you realize that all you can ever do is make a decision based on where you are in that moment, then you can shift your focus to an understanding of who you are and what you need and want - in that moment.
So you flip from being a passive participant and feeling paralyzed by fear to someone who is actively trying to gather as much information as possible so that you can make that next decision with confidence about who you are and what you believe is best for you in that moment, given the information you have in that moment. That’s all you can ever ask yourself to do.
Our job is to approach decision making with a present intention.
Making a decision with intention means we operate from a present place of clarity, gathering as much information as we can, in this moment, and letting go of any judgment or anxiety we feel during the process.
So we certainly can use prior experience and our vision for the future to inform our decision, we’re not controlled by the fear or regret that may come with exploring them.
They’re simply data points we can use, among others, to make a decision with intention.
Making a decision from a place of intention can be challenging because it often requires us to dig below the interference caused by the fear we associate with the potential to make a “wrong” decision.
But below this interference is the kind of information that helps us act with clarity and confidence.
Third and finally, remember to ask: what did I learn that will help me make an even more informed decision the next time?
So the idea here is to move from regret to a place of openness acceptance, so that instead of sitting in a place of fear you become someone who is constantly processing that new information to make an even better, more informed next decision.
Our day to day experience is really just a set of decisions and choices that we make - one thing leads to another which leads to another.
So if you can become skilled at taking fear and regret out of the equation and replacing them with the ability to use what you learn to make decisions, then pretty soon you start to rely more on your instincts and less on your thinking brain.
And when you can cut through the noise and you start to rely more on your instincts and less on your thinking, the decisions begin to make themselves.
Go have a great workday.