Book Review - "The Power of Regret"

I have to confess to being a bit of a Daniel Pink fan. His book on motivation, "Drive", is one that I regularly recommend to people when they are trying to work out why people on performance related pay don't seem to be terribly motivated. (It is also the reason that I have formed the view that the way the recruitment industry is remunerated isn't the best way to drive success, but that's a thought for another day...) Another of his books that is well worth reading for recruiters is "To Sell is Human", but this is supposed to be a review of his latest offering "The Power of Regret", so I shall get back on topic!

Everyone has regrets. Regrets come in all shapes and sizes, and can be painful. There are a whole host of PMA-promoters out there who encourage us to have no regrets, but this book is different. It posits that because our emotions inform our thinking, our thinking informs our actions, and our actions help us to survive and thrive, the emotions around regret are actually valuable teachers.

Putting Regrets into Boxes

Pink has conducted global surveys involving thousands of people to find out what their regrets are, and looked for patterns in order to categorise them. Fundamentally he has identified 4 categories of regret - foundation, boldness, moral and connection. Whether regrets are big or small, they fall into one of these categories.

If you're interested, when I asked myself about my regrets, a couple of examples were not dying my hair electric purple or blue when I was at Uni and didn't feel the need to conform to 'corporate dress codes', and not taking up the offer to have an audition set up for a West End casting director because I was 'too busy' in my sales rep job and lacking confidence in my appearance. Both of these are boldness regrets. They haven't had a terrible impact on my life, but the fact that they are both boldness regrets has encouraged me to reflect on other areas of my life where I need to be more bold.

Stopping Regrets Ruining Your Life

The book also provides 3 strategies for 'dealing with' regrets if they are causing you emotional pain - self-disclosure, self-compassion and self-distancing.

The second of these is one that I think we all need a bit more of in general. Why are we better at giving advice to our friends than we are to ourselves? Why are we less forgiving of ourselves that we would be of others? A great lesson from this section of the book is to give yourself a bit more love and kindness!

Planting Trees

The other huge message in this book is that if you have a regret that can be acted upon to resolve it, there is no time like the present. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. If you think about planting a tree but don't actually plant the tree, nothing will change. You will have no tree. And you will spend your life looking wistfully at the space where a tree could have been...

Disclaimer: I don't get paid to write book reviews, I just choose to write them when I have read a book that I find valuable or interesting in some way. My reviews will often have a recruitment or a leadership slant, because those are two of my key areas of expertise in the training that I deliver.

I share book reviews and recommendations because I love receiving them, so if you've got a gem of a book you think I should read - let me know!

If you're interested in talking to me about training, you can send me a connect request, email me on [email protected] or call/WhatsApp/text on 07944 673592