Ditch Regret

tl;dr: Regret is an atavistic mechanism which is painful and largely useless. We have better tools to guide our actions. Regret doesn’t depend on what you do: it’s a habit of mind. Ditch it.

Look around and you’ll see fellow humans wallow in regret.

Regret is a self-inflicted wound, a mechanism powered by suffering that is meant to influence our decision-making.

Get rid of it. You’re better off relying on different mechanisms: your moral compass, your rationality, your self-interest, you (com)passion, whatever. Hone those other mechanisms, but ditch the regret, the unnecessary suffering that doesn’t do anything for you anyway.

Regret is especially counter-productive if you’re a glutton for punishment and pain, and there are a lot of pain junkies out there. A pain junkie can seek regret-inducing behaviors so that they can then wallow in the pain of regret.

Here’s a dose of stupid: the phrase “I’m going to regret this”. Hey, you are regretting it already, experiencing your potential future as something in the past.

Not only regret is suffering, regret is a poor guide for actions. Because it does not depend on the actions you take or don’t take. This is exemplified by the funny phrase “it’s better to regret something you did than something you didn’t do.” See how this presupposes that you’re going to regret something either way? It’s best not to regret at all.

Regret is about your attitude toward outcomes of actions. Regret itself is not an inevitable outcome of actions, it’s merely a habit of mind. To get rid of the regret you merely need to change the attitude toward outcomes and actions.

That’s not to say you should go ahead and do all the stupid shit that regret is possibly stopping you from. Just use other mechanisms to make better decisions while sparing yourself some pain.

And for the pain junkies out there, just use the newfound reserves of pain tolerance on something more productive.