The Failures Won’t Haunt You — The Hesitations Will

You will regret almost none of your failures.

You will regret nearly all of your hesitations.

My friend, welcome aboard to The Daily Podcast.

I'm your host, Jonathan Doyle.

Great to have you with us today.

We're gonna talk today about studies done at Cornell University by a

Professor Gilovich who figured this out.

It's very, very interesting.

Over a lifetime, regrets of inaction outnumber regrets of action

roughly two to one, and this is important, the gap widens with age.

So these are studies done over an extensive period of time with a very

big sample size that show that over the course of your life, regrets of

inaction, things you didn't do, are going to outweigh the things that you

did do by nearly two to one, and it's gonna get worse as you get older.

I don't know about you, but this is actually an exciting insight.

This is gonna give us all a bias towards action.

As I was looking at the notes in the studio, I remember a book I read

years ago, and I cannot remember who it was, who the author was.

I'm sorry.

That doesn't help you.

But it was a biography about a guy who basically had a habit of just saying

yes, and each time an opportunity came up, he just said yes to it and ended

up becoming a, literally a billionaire.

I'm gonna have to dig out which book it was.

But he, like, he was doing these most amazing things.

Like, he was a real hippie, and he went away and bought a tiny piece of

land out in the forest and started building a little house for himself,

and it was a really nice house.

And then eventually, this, uh, police officer comes out because there'd

been, you know, some concerns about somebody building in the forest,

and they just wanted to come out and check what he was building and,

you know, they wanna check that it's following all the planning rules.

So he gets talking to this police officer, and it's pretty serious

for a while, and the police officer starts to see what he's building.

It looks amazing.

The police officer says to him, "Do you think you could build me one of

these?" And the guy said, "Yes." And true story, long story short, he ended

up starting a construction company that made hundreds of millions of dollars,

and then he had a similar experience with a piece of software he designed.

I always loved that story because he just had this disposition of, of what we

call a bias towards action, just a yes.

So here's the setup for this episode, that the things we

don't do are gonna haunt us more.

The risks we don't take are gonna haunt us much more as we get older

than the risks that we do take.

Why is it actually like this?

Well, according to the research, the mechanism is this: action regrets close-

So if you take action in something, and even if it doesn't work out the way

you want, you don't tend to regret it.

Over time, that closes down.

Why?

Because if you take a decision, if you risk something and do something, then

even if it doesn't work out, what happens?

You learn, you repair, you rationalize, and you recover.

So rationalize means you might have done something that didn't

work out, maybe it even cost you.

But you can rationalize.

You can say, "Well, you know, at least I had a shot." What's that old

famous saying from Wayne Gretzky, the greatest ice hockey player of all time?

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take." I always liked that.

So even if you get, get it wrong, you learn things from it.

I, I teach when I'm coaching people, I, I always help people understand

this simple idea, failure is not failure, failure is feedback.

I just drill that into people relentlessly.

Failure is just feedback.

It's amazing how powerful the experience of failure can be for some people.

They absolutely identify with it.

They, they globalize it.

They make their whole life about something that they got wrong.

Whereas I'm all for like feedback.

I tried this, this didn't work out.

I do this differently next time.

So the problem, as we go back into this mechanism, is that inaction…

So remember, action regrets close.

Why?

Because we learn from them, we apply meanings to them, we

explain them away to ourselves.

But inaction regrets, things we didn't do, the person we never

asked out on a date, the business we never started, those remain open, my

friend, because your imagination will endlessly furnish what might have been.

So what, if, if, if what might have been was a, was a room, your brain is gonna

furnish that room for a very long time.

I wonder, I wonder what it would have been like if I had.

And that can go on for a very long time.

You can keep playing that game indefinitely.

So it's the unstarted business, the unsaid words, and even as a parent, sometimes

there's things that you do say that you regret, and sometimes there's plenty of

things you didn't say that you regret.

The words that we didn't say, these things compound, whereas the failed attempt,

something you tried, fades over time.

So Let me share with you a couple insights on this.

I would like to say that, can I share with you a particular memory of this?

I, I remember… I'll give you, I'll, I'll take you straight to a couple of examples.

So one that I shared in my first book was my experience in the end

of high school, really wanting to play for a particular team.

It was in a pretty elite team, and I gave everything to it, 150%.

I tried so hard, gave it everything I could, and didn't get selected.

And I remember being utterly devastated by this.

And for, it went on for a long time.

I was really down on myself.

And in my book, I wrote about this simple principle that as I

look back over the years, I see that experience very differently.

I don't see it as failure.

I can see myself so clearly in that season, and what I learned to do was

to try in a way that I'd never had to before in my, you know, teenage years.

I'd never had to really push myself and go after something.

So at the time I was like, "Oh, why did I bother?

This was, why did I do this?

I'm terrible.

This is gonna be the worst thing ever." But now I look back, and

this is this mechanism, right?

You look back and you rationalize, you explain it to yourself, you

put a different meaning on it.

And I'm actually really proud of what I did.

I tried really hard, and I learned that so, like a skill that I've

carried the rest of my life, this kind of ability to grind it out,

to endure just about anything, to persevere when it's difficult.

That experience was a real kind of seed of that character trait that I have.

So you see what I'm getting at?

That I, that I took an action, I took a risk, and all these years later, even

though technically at the time I failed, I'm really glad I took that action.

It's part of my life that I can look back at and be proud of.

But so what's the contrary example of times that I didn't act?

I remember many years ago, uh, I'm blessed to be a member of a pretty fancy golf

club, and when I, when you get, um, when you go for membership there, you get

interviewed, and it's pretty fancy, and, and eventually I, I got accepted in.

It was very exciting.

And the manager, the general manager who'd interviewed me, 'cause we

talked about business and stuff that I was doing, and he, he rang me and

he said, uh, "Look, we're, we're playing this, uh, special tournament,

and we'd love you to come and play.

I'd love you to introduce you to a couple of people." And he wanted

me to play with a guy who was a very, very successful businessman.

I was a lot younger then, right?

So I was kind of overwhelmed.

There were two problems.

There was, like, one that I hadn't been-- I mean, I was, I'd played a

lot of golf, but I wasn't confident.

Hadn't played in a lot of tournaments and was worried that I'd get out there and

shank it into a tree, which unfortunately I still do from time to time.

Actually, no, I don't.

But I turned it down I turned it down.

At the time, I was like, I gave some lame excuse about why I couldn't do

it or, you know, I was busy or…

And I, I look back, and I, I'm accepting of my life now, and I think

some of you will relate to that.

You, you eventually cut yourself some slack and you go, "Well," but

I look back and I wonder, what if?

I wonder what doors would have opened.

I wonder what conversations or relationships might have happened if I'd

said yes, if I'd taken the action rather than choosing inaction or avoidance.

So there's two examples.

A, a time when I did act and it looked like failure but turned into a great

memory and a great source of character that built up over the years, and a time

when I didn't act that's led to regret.

And so now, my default setting now is pretty much yes.

I'm like that guy I talked about at the start of the podcast

where I'm just like, "Yes."

If it looks interesting, if there's interesting people, if it could

be uncomfortable for me, if it looks like I might have to grow,

I'm like, "Yes." You know, I just say it's an automatic disposition.

So here's the summary of this message for you today.

You at the end of your life, and I know from my younger listeners that

seems like some distant kingdom, but we're all gonna get there.

And as we face the final curtain, so to speak, we'll look back over our

lives, and what this research tells us very clearly is that you will

regret almost none of your failures.

You will regret nearly all of your hesitations.

And over time, they get worse, and it compounds as you age.

So why don't we all save ourselves a lot of pain and learn to say yes more often?

I don't mean being frivolous.

I don't mean doing dangerous things.

I don't mean like, you know, abandoning your family and going, uh, to join a

salsa class on the Copacabana Beach.

Maybe, maybe, but just take your family with you.

So w- isn't that interesting that we are gonna get to the end of our

life, and it's the things we didn't do that are gonna be most interesting

and most challenging for us?

So my friend, God bless you.

Uh, please come and follow me on Instagram, jdoylespeaks, on YouTube

at Jonathan Doyle Speaks, and on the website at jonathandoyle.co.

I'd love you to get in touch there.

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, share it with people.

I'm gonna have another great episode for you tomorrow.

Every day, 365 days a year, just offering you insights

and ideas to move you forward.

Why?

Because I want you to win.

I fundamentally want you to win.

Whatever time I've got left in this world, I just wanna help as many people

as possible to achieve their potential and grow, and I want you to be one of them.

All right?

When in doubt, take the risk toward the version of

your story where you chose to act.