Love the deeper insight to books I know and love and the exposure to books I have not experienced yet. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys getting deeper insight into books.
Daniel Pink is the author of seven books, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell Is Human. He is also one of our curators here at the Next Big Idea Club. Listen to or read the 5 key insights from his book, The Power of Regret, narrated by Dan himself.
Regret is universal.
No regrets. We hear it everywhere, in hit songs on tattoos, in celebrity interviews. The message booms from every corner of the culture. Forget the past, seize the future, bypass the bitter, savor the sweet. A good life has a singular focus (forward) and an unwavering valence (positive).
Now, this philosophy makes intuitive sense, but there’s just one problem: It’s dead wrong. Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness; it is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Everyone has regrets. In one study from the 1980s, regret was the second most common emotion expressed in interviews, trailing only love. In 2008, social scientists found that among negative emotions, regret was both the most experienced and the most valued. And in my own survey of nearly 4,500 Americans, 99 percent of people admitted that they do at least occasionally experience this emotion.
Regret is a universal human experience. The only people who don’t have regrets are five-year-olds, people with brain damage and neurodegenerative disorders, and sociopaths.
In other words, the inability to feel regret—in some ways the apotheosis of what the “no regrets” philosophy encourages—isn’t a sign of psychological health. It’s the sign of a grave disorder.
Regret is universal.
Done right, regret makes us better.
To understand what people regret, look beneath the surface.
Science offers a systematic way to deal with our regrets.
Anticipating our regrets is useful, but this medicine should come with a warning label.
Love the deeper insight to books I know and love and the exposure to books I have not experienced yet. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys getting deeper insight into books.
There are so many book summary apps out there and I love some of them, like Blinkist and Uptime. NBI is different. NBI's summaries, or Big Ideas, are written and narrated by the authors so you get the main points that the authors of the books want you to get. I also love listening to audios narrated by the authors themselves.
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