Turning Regret Into A Superpower!

Regret can be weirdly specific: the message you sent too fast, the moment you stayed quiet, the choice you can’t stop replaying. I’m Corey Kennard, and I’m making a case for something most of us never hear. Regret isn’t a glitch in your brain. It’s proof your mind can do something advanced: build an alternate reality, compare it to your life, and use the contrast as feedback. We dig into the neuroscience of regret, including counterfactual thinking and why decision-making and emotional pain light up together in the brain. 

Then we zoom out to the psychology of regret across time. Why do our short-term regrets obsess over actions, while long-term regrets focus on what we never did? We connect the dots with self-discrepancy theory, the tension between your actual self, ought self, and ideal self, and why playing it “safe” can quietly haunt you for years. If you’ve ever wondered why missed chances stick longer than messy attempts, this will land. 

We also break down Daniel Pink’s World Regret Survey and the four most common regret categories: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. From there, we tackle the real threat: rumination that fuels stress, raises cortisol, and freezes future decisions. I share a practical three-step protocol to convert regret into a strategic tool: self-compassion, self-distancing, and extracting the value while throwing away the shame. If this helps, subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a review, and tell me: what kind of regret are you ready to turn into your next move?

Transcript

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Regret Hits Hard And Gets Specific

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever bought a piece of home exercise equipment that immediately turned into a twelve hundred dollar clothes rack? Or stayed silent when you should have spoken up, only to replay the perfect comeback in the shower three years later. Today we're talking about regret, that hyperspecific emotional tax we pay for being human. But here's the plot twist. Science shows that regret isn't a design flaw in your brain. It's actually a superpower if you know how to decode it. Welcome to the Do to Expire Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Kennard. Now, let's grow

Sponsor And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_00 1:10

up. Before we get started, I want to let you know that this episode is presented by the No Negative Energy Life brand, a life coaching resource and media edutainment outlet that seeks to help human beings to consciously expose and diminish the impact of negative thoughts and ultimately replace them with positive ways of thinking that will increase one's ability to thrive. Check us out at nonegative.energy. That's no negative, all one phrase.energy. Who

Why Regret Is Brain Power

SPEAKER_00 1:44

listening to me now has ever sent a text message, immediately thrown their phone across the room and prayed to the cell tower gods to bring it back? Congratulations, every single one of you has a fully functioning brain. We tend to talk about regret like it's a glitch in our psychological hard drive. We buy books on how to live no regrets. We get no regrets tattooed on our shoulders, ironically running the risk of regretting the tattoo. But neuroscientists see it very differently. Regret isn't a design flaw, it's a high-level cognitive privilege. To experience regret, your brain has to perform a complex mental stunt called counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking is the ability to look at reality, construct a completely imaginary parallel universe where you made a choice and then you compare that imaginary universe to your real life and then feel terrible because the fake world looks better than the real one. Now that takes massive computing power. In fact, neuroimaging studies show that when you experience regret, your orbital frontal cortex, the area right behind your eyes that handles your decision making, and your anterior cingulate cortex, which processes emotional pain, light up simultaneously. Your brain is literally running two simulations at once. Now here's the fascinating part. Young children don't experience true regret. Developmentally, the neuropathways required for counterfactual thinking don't mature until around age five to seven. So if a four-year-old eats an entire tube of Vaseline, they aren't regretting the choice. They aren't thinking, ah, if I had only chosen the yogurt instead. No, they're just confused why their mouth feels weird. You see, regret is an adult privilege. When you feel that sting in your stomach after a bad decision, I don't want you to beat yourself up. What I want you to do is congratulate your orbital frontal cortex for doing its job. Regret proves your mental engine is firing on all cylinders.

Why Inaction Hurts More Over Time

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Now let's address how regret actually plays out over time. Because regret plays a trick on us. And psychologists have mapped this out over decades of research. In landmark studies conducted by psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvetts, they tracked what people regret across different time horizons, and they found a striking split. In the short term, we regret our actions. Buying that outfit we know that was a stretch. Eating the fourth slice of pizza at midnight. Saying the sarcastic remark in a staff meeting, these are actions that we can truly regret in the short term. Actions burn bright and hot in our immediate memory. But here's the twist. Over the long term, the pattern completely flips. When you ask people near the end of their lives what they regret most, they almost never talk about the things they did. They talk about the things they didn't do. They regret not action, but inaction. The business they never started, the trip they didn't take because the timing wasn't perfect. The phone call they never made to patch up an old friendship. Now, in your twenties, you can regret staying out until 4 a.m. But when you're in your 50s, you can regret not being able to stay out until 4 a.m. Why does this happen? Psychologist E. Troy Higgins created what we call self-discrepancy theory. He suggested we all carry three versions of ourselves inside our heads. The actual self, who we currently are, the ought self, who you think you should be based on rules, duties, and social expectations. And then there's the ideal self, who you could be, your ultimate potential, your passions and your dreams. When we break a rule or fail our ought self, it hurts quickly. But we usually fix it and we move on. But when we abandon our ideal self, when we play it so safe that we never test our potential, that regret settles into the floorboards of our minds and stays there for decades. You see, an action haunts us because an unmade choice keeps infinite possibilities alive in our imagination. When you try and fail, you get data. But when you never try, your brain fills the void with fantasy. Author

The Four Biggest Types Of Regret

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Daniel Pink conducted a massive study called the World Regret Survey. He collected data from over sixteen thousand people across one hundred and five countries. He asked a simple question. What do you regret most? Out of thousands of distinct stories ranging from career choices to romance, the research revealed that human regret overwhelmingly falls into four distinct categories. Let's go over them. Regret category number one, foundation regrets. With this category, there's a core underlying need, and that is stability and security. The internal script that we say to ourselves is if only I had done the work. And then regret category number two is called the boldness regrets. The core underlying need here is growth and possibility. The script is we say something like, If only I had taken the risk. And then there's category number three, moral regrets. The need here is integrity and goodness. What do we say? If only I had done the right thing. And then the fourth category is what we call connection regrets. The core underlying need here is belonging and love. The script that we say in this category is, If only I had reached out. Now let's break these down because I guarantee that every person listening has a favorite category that I just mentioned. First, there's the foundation regrets. This is about basic stability, saving money, looking after your health, getting an education, saying something like, if only I hadn't smoked, or if only I'd saved ten percent of my paycheck, I would be way ahead right now. Then there's the boldness regrets. Now this represents over 70% of long-term regrets. We say something like, if I only had asked them out. Or if only I had pitched that idea. Oh man, I know it was a billion-dollar idea. Notice how I wish I had stayed in my comfort zone more, doesn't make this list. And then there's the moral regrets. These are the quietest, but they weigh the heaviest on our self-worth. It's the time you cheated on a test, you lied to a friend, or you stood by while someone was bullied and you did nothing. And then fourthly, the connection regrets. These are broken or drifted relationships. And here's the sad part about connection regrets. Usually, both people want to reach out, but both are paralyzed by the fear that it will be awkward. Now let's do a quick check poll right now. Nod your head if you really identify with the boldness regrets. Now I'm going to guess that probably more than half of the people listening right now identify with this the most. You see, we are far more terrified of temporary embarrassment than we are of permanent regret, even though the math says that this should be flipped. So what

When Regret Turns Into Rumination

SPEAKER_00 13:56

do we do with all of this information? If regret is natural, scientific, and inevitable, how do we stop it from crushing us? Left unchecked, regret turns into rumination. Psychologist Marcel Zellenberg established what is known as decision justification theory. Showing that when we endlessly replay a bad choice, our brain floods with cortisol, driving up chronic stress and paralyzing future decision making. We become so afraid of making another mistake that we stop making choices altogether. How many of you feel what I'm saying right now? You see, to convert regret from a toxic weight into a strategic tool and a superpower, we can use a three-step reclamation protocol. Are you ready for it? Here it is.

Three Steps To Reclaim Regret

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Or here they are. Step one, practice self-compassion over self-esteem. When you mess up, self-esteem says I'm better than this. However, self-compassion says I'm human. And humans can make mistakes. Research by Dr. Kristen Neff shows that self-compassion releases oxytocin. It lowers heart rate. And it actually increases personal accountability. Treating yourself like a friend isn't soft. It's neurobiologically necessary for learning. Step two is self-distancing. Now you say, well, what is that? When you're trapped in regret, talk to yourself. However, talk to yourself in the third person. Treat the decision like an external case study. Instead of asking, why was I so stupid? Ask why did Corey in the past make that decision with the information he had at the time? Distance removes the shame so you can inspect the data. And then step three, we have to learn how to extract the lesson of regret. Regret is not a judge sending you to prison, it's a compass pointing toward what you value today. If you regret a missed career leap, it means that you value growth. If you regret an argument with a friend, it means you value connection. Extract the value and throw away the shame. Let me say that again. Extract the value and throw away the shame.

Let Regret Point To What Matters

SPEAKER_00 17:40

As we close this episode, I want to say this. We spend so much of our lives trying to build a shield against making mistakes. But a life built entirely around avoiding regret is just a life built around avoiding living. Regret isn't standing behind you, pointing at your past to shame you. It is standing in front of you, pointing at your future to show you what matters. So listen to it. Thank your brain for its high-level computing power and then go ahead and take the shot.