In 2022, the American writer Daniel Pink published the largest ever survey of human regret — more than sixteen thousand people in one hundred and five countries, asked one simple question: 'What is the biggest regret of your life?'. What he found surprised almost everyone.
Across every culture, every income group, every age, the same four kinds of regret appeared again and again.
FOUNDATION regrets are the boring ones: I wish I had saved more, exercised more, gone to the dentist. They're the regrets of not doing the small, unglamorous things that quietly build a good life. They rarely feel urgent — until they do.
BOLDNESS regrets are the opposite. I wish I had taken the risk. I wish I had spoken to her. I wish I had started the business, quit the job, moved to the other city. Pink's research is unambiguous: in the long run, people regret the risks they DIDN'T take far more than the ones that failed.
MORAL regrets are the heaviest. I wish I had been kinder to my brother. I wish I hadn't cheated. I wish I hadn't stayed silent when I should have spoken. These don't fade with time — they harden.
But the deepest, most painful regret of all — the one that turned up most often, in every language — was the CONNECTION regret. I wish I had stayed in touch. I wish I had said 'I love you' more often. I wish I had called Dad the week before he died. Not a single one of Pink's sixteen thousand respondents said, at the end of a long life, 'I wish I'd worked more hours at the office'.
The comforting news, Pink argues, is that most connection regrets can still be repaired. Send the message. Make the call. Buy the plane ticket. In his data, more than seventy per cent of the awkward 'sorry it's been a while' messages got a warm reply within a week. Regret, he concludes, is not the enemy of a good life. Ignoring it is.
