Regret. Generally, it’s looked at as something bad. You made a decision, now you regret it. “How I wish I had not done it that way.”
Eric Barker has written a newsletter about regret in general. It also discussed Daniel Pinks book called The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward
The premise behind Barker’s newsletter is that regret is good. In a 2008 study, psychologists asked people about negative emotions like anger, anxiety, boredom, disappointment, fear, guilt, jealousy, regret, and sadness. The one they experienced the most? Yup, regret. And which one did they value the most? Once again, regret.
Did you know tattoo removal is a $100 million dollar business in the US alone? Regret.
Having regret is an opportunity to re-think.
So how can regret help you with your money decisions?
Regret is a powerful emotion to help you re-think your past decisions. It allows you to learn about the decisions you made to help you not to make the same mistakes again. Regret helps kick start a feedback loop.
Yet wealth managers don’t want you to feel regret. All wealth managers are friendly, welcoming, smart, confident…in fact almost perfect! They want to make sure you don’t feel any pain. The last thing they want you to feel is regret. If you can stay invested for multiple years, with no regret, that’s a brilliant outcome for the wealth manager. If you don’t regret it, you’ll not ask the really hard questions. If you don’t regret it, you’ll not check out alternative choices.
If the wealth managers don’t do anything to prompt your regret, you are faced with being more mindful of yourself.
It means you need triggers to get you to re-think your decisions. To expose yourself to the potential feelings of regret. All of which means you have to take action.
Yet action can mean pain today. In the same way, to improve your fitness, you have no choice to feel pain today, because you know tomorrow you’ll benefit.
Finding out today your investments are not quite what you expect…it’s painful. It causes regret. The benefit, however, is you can take action.
You invest in yourself before you invest your money. And regret can give you that impetus to invest in yourself.
Let’s talk.