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Regrets

Regrets—Text to Corinthians

by Ron Potter April 14, 2022

We started off these two blog series with Paul’s text to the Corinthians. He listed the following items:

Afflicted but not crushed
Perplexed but not driven to dispair
Persecuted but not forsaken
Struck Down but not destroyed

We then looked at Daniel Pink’s book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Pink identifies the four core regrets:

Foundation
They begin with an irresistible lure and with incredible logic.
Boldness
Thwarted possibility of growth. The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved, than we could have been.
Moral
Deceit, infidelity, theft, betrayal, sacrilege.
Connection
Meaningful relationships.

Together, they make some interesting connections. In Paul’s letter, we experience great difficulties and painful points in our lives. But in the end, they don’t break us. We are not crushed, driven to despair, forsaken, or destroyed.

In Pink’s book, the four regrets of foundational, boldness, morals, and connection are capable of breaking us and in all cases are self-inflicted. In Paul’s writing, the pain and suffering are no more or less than those identified by Pink. However, in Paul’s letter, there is a sense that these things happen in everyday life. While we should examine our own behavior and beliefs to determine if we are contributing to the affliction, perplexion, persecution, and personal destruction put forth by Paul—in the end, it may have nothing to do with our own behavior. Daniel Pink says that it essentially has everything to do with our personal behavior.

Regrets: Self-Inflicted

If you look at each of Pink’s regrets, there is a self-infliction:

- Foundational: It starts with an irresistible lure. This may be food, sex (also mentioned in the moral section), or materialistic desires. I’ve mentioned that my irresistible lures are new cars (I’ve had a new one every three years over the past 50 years). And watches. The self-inflicted part happens when we let our logic run ramrod over knowing that certain things are just wrong. I have an incredibility logical mind. I can convince myself that almost anything can be explained through logic. And I’m good at it. My self-infliction is in allowing my logical brain to convince myself that my logic overrules irresistible lures. I’m just too “smart” to be dictated by my feelings.
- In the boldness category, Pink makes the point that we’re just not bold enough to try new things. I’ve had three major careers since graduating from engineering school. The first was walking steel 160′ in the air. The second was developing a software company at the beginning of the microcomputer age. The third was TLC (Team Leadership Culture) consulting all over the world. A lot of people would say to me, “I couldn’t do that, I was never qualified. How were you able to accomplish three different careers and work all over the world?” It’s because I was bold and willing to try new and different things. I never felt qualified either. It just seemed like the new and bold thing to do at the time. Our lack of boldness is self-inflicted when we feel that we must be qualified first. If you’re bold in trying new things, you’re never qualified.
- Moral. In this one, I focused on sacrilege. It doesn’t have to be a religious issue. Sacrilege means “violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred.” What do you consider as sacred? Violating it will cause suffering.
- Connection. I have at least three groups of good friends. Two of the groups are (or were) centered in Ann Arbor where we lived for 35 years. One group is built around our GPS4Leaders App. We’ve gone through good times and bad but have stuck together for several years. The second ground of guys have given ourselves the name “Space Cadets.” This is a group from several professions and we spend our time discussing clients and how to add the best of who we are to help them grow and become better. I feel very close to this group. We also moved to Grand Rapids, MI, a few years ago to be close to one daughter and our two grandchildren (our other daughter and grandkids live around the world and are currently in Tunisia). We are now a part of a Grand Rapids church and have developed several friends there. We’re very blessed with all of these connections.

Pain: Everyday and Self-Inflicted

Paul talks about the difficulties that we face in this world. If we have examined ourselves and feel we’re seeing everything clearly, these are difficulties that we face just because we live here.

Pink, on the other hand, talks about regrets being self-inflicted. We can avoid that by examing ourselves and our motives. It often takes that close friend who we trust who is not afraid to point out our flaws and shortcomings. But we must have someone that we’re that close to and who is willing to tell us what they are seeing in our behavior. Avoid self-inflicted pain—the world is full of enough pains for us without the ones we cause ourselves.

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Blog Regrets

Regrets – Connection

by Ron Potter April 7, 2022

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, Pink lists four core regrets:

Connection seems to me to be one of the most impactful of the regrets. It’s the time you never spend on those relationships.

My Friend

I had a friend who was the oldest friend of my life. Our parents were friends after WWII. We knew each other from the time we were months old. Then our lives took different roads. While I was off to engineering school, he ended up in Viet Nam. While I didn’t think bad of those guys who ended up there, it did take our lives in very different directions. Our paths never seemed to cross much after that. Until one day he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He ended up at the Univerisity of Michigan hospital near where I was living at the time. After that, our lives crossed many times as I visited him in the hospital and those old feelings of friendship returned.

Then one day the doctors declared that he was in full remission and was able to go home. Unfortunately, the cancer soon returned and other seemed to be nothing left to do. But, I felt very blessed that we had connected again and many of the old memories of growing up returned.

Then I received a call from his son that my friend was dying and only had a few days left. I immediately headed for his home and got there in time to be with him in his last days. My friend slept most of the time that I visited and his wife told me that he didn’t recognize his surroundings or the people around him. However, with I went in to see him and stroke his forehead it seemed to me that he recognized me. It may have been wishful thinking on my part but I did feel like he knew I was there. The next day his son called again to let me know he had passed away.

Connections

This is what Pink was referring to when he identified the fourth regret as connections. They’re fleeting. They slip away easily. They take an effort to stay connected. Here was my oldest friend and, just because our lives took different directions, we lost some of that connection. I’ve made many new friendships around the world since then but, because I didn’t make the effort, I regret that I let one of my oldest relationships slip away. Like many of these lists, the last is often the most impactful. It’s that way with this list of regrets. Letting connections slip away from us created the most regret in the end. Don’t let it happen. Evaluate your connections. Some of them are shallow and the effort is never made to develop a strong bond. However, others are worth the effort to put in the time, make that call, and keep the connection alive.

Worth the Effort

As I said, I have worked all over the world and made “friends” in many corners of the world. But with a few of them, I have developed long-lasting relationships. I was having dinner with one connection that I cherish and have developed over the years. During dinner, he began to cry because of a tragedy in his life. When we finished dinner and he got his emotions back under control, he admitted to me that I was the one person he had cried with about the tragedy. I felt connected.

Another client was having difficulty talking with me about a certain topic. She finally admitted that her boss (years ago) had raped her and she had never been able to share that with anyone except me. I felt connected.

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Blog Regrets

Regrets – Moral

by Ron Potter March 31, 2022

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, Pink lists four core regrets:

Items included in Pink’s book on moral regrets include:

Deceit
Infidelity
Theft
Betrayal
Sacrilege

For me, I can eliminate infidelity from my life. I worked all over the world with many leaders and never once was drawn to infidelity. Part of it may have been my low self-esteem when it came to my own looks, not thinking about why any woman would be attracted to me. Most of the time I just felt God made me invisible so there was no temptation. In any case, I was never drawn to infidelity.

In My Life

However, the other four seem to have been present through most of my life. Deceit can either be not telling the truth or not committing the truth. I have several regrets about the commission of truth mainly as one of my regrets.

Theft is one thing that was not prevalent in my life but one of my earliest regrets is taking a candy bar from the local drug store fountain shop where we all seemed to congregate as kids. I felt so bad about it that I purchased a candy bar and put it back on the shelf when no one was looking.

There were a few instances of betrayal when I would “throw my best friend under the bus” so that I wasn’t blamed for something.

Sacrilege is an interesting one. Most of us think of it in religious terms. But it’s not. The dictionary says it is the “violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred.” What do you consider as sacred?

Self-Examination

This one takes a lot of self-examination and honesty with yourself.

I once had a client that I had a hard time connecting with. He then explained that he was a player! I didn’t know what being a player meant so I asked him. He said it meant that he had affairs with numerous women. The number was astronomical to me. When I asked about his wife, his response was that she knew the kind of person he was when she married him. He had spent very little time self-examining.

Are you a truthful person? If not, then what? Does that make you an untruthful person? A liar? Then you should probably spend more time in self-analysis. With a trusted friend if that’s possible. Have you developed that kind of friend who can tell you anything that causes you to self-exam yourself? If not, what have you been avoiding? We’ll talk about this one in more detail in next week’s blog on connection.

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Blog Regrets

Regrets – Boldness

by Ron Potter March 24, 2022

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, Pink lists four core regrets:

While I haven’t fully read this book yet, it seems like the perfect next sequence after the series of being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down that I recently wrote from Paul’s ancient text to the people of Corinth.

In this second of Pink’s regrets, Boldness talks about the lack of boldness to “accomplish a few important goals within the limited spat of a single life.” This lack of boldness seems a lot more urgent at age 74 than it did at age 24. That’s not unexpected because of the age difference but it’s important to be aware that accomplishing some things will only happen at a younger age. At some point, it becomes obvious that there is just not enough time to accomplish some things that you had intended to accomplish all of your life. So it’s important to begin those things that you would like to or intend to accomplish in your life when there is still time to accomplish them.

Why Boldness?

It takes boldness to start early because:

It’s difficult to carve out the time to accomplish something out of the ordinary when it seems like your everyday life is overtaking you at the moment.
It also means that we must overcome the fear of failure when we start a new venture early in life.

You might be saying to yourself, “I’ll be more equipped to do something bold when I have a little more experience.” Or you might be thinking, “Once I get through the busy part of my life I’ll have more time to dedicate to that bold idea.”

Looking Back

The subtitle of Pink’s book is “How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.” This seems evident to me now that I’m in my mid-70s. It’s easy to say that “This is something I might have accomplished 50 years ago.” It’s more difficult to think that I should have started five years ago. There’s still a lot of time left to step out and accomplish that bold idea. After all, if I could accomplish the task in 40 years, I could surely accomplish it in 35 years. This is just an excuse for not stepping out in boldness and pretty soon that 35 years turns into 30 years until it’s too late to accomplish it at all.

I have a grandson who is a world-class bicyclist and I would like to go riding with him. But today that would be impossible. And yet, I’ve seen some 70-year-olds who could at least stay with him for a while. The difference is they started when they were young. They didn’t put it off.

Moving Forward

Plan. Start. You want to be better athletically, pick your sport and start today. You want to be better at chess, start today. You want to be healthier, start today. Whatever it is, start today. Don’t put it off until next year or when you turn 40 or sometime in the future. Don’t put it off. Don’t expect to accomplish your end goal immediately. Start small. Pink says “accomplish a few important goals.”

This means you know what is important. This means you’ve planned. This means you’ve taken that first step today. You’ll be able to look back a year from now and be astonished at how far you’ve come. You’ll be amazed at what it looks like in a decade or two. But if you don’t start today, you’ll be looking back on that year, decade, two decades from now thinking “what if?” Or thinking “I could have.”

Decide, Plan, Start

First, you need to decide what will be important to you.

Then, you need to build a plan for accomplishing your goal.

Finally, start today. Just small steps. But start!

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Blog Regrets

Regrets – Foundational

by Ron Potter March 17, 2022

A friend of mine recently sent me Daniel Pink’s latest book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. (Thanks, Chris.)

While I haven’t fully read this book yet, it seems like the perfect next sequence after the series of being afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.

Four Core Regrets

Let’s take a look at the Four Core Regrets that Pink identifies:

Foundation

Foundational regrets begin with an irresistible lure and end with inexorable logic.

Boldness

At the heart of all boldness regrets is the thwarted possibility of growth. The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved—one could have been. The failure to accomplish a few important goals within the limited span of a single life.

Moral

Deceit. Infidelity. Theft. Betrayal. Sacrilege. Sometimes the moral regrets people submitted to the surveys read like the production notes for a Ten Commandments training video.

Connection

What gives our lives significance and satisfaction are meaningful relationships. But when those relationships come apart, whether by intent or inattention, what stands in the way of bringing them back together are feelings of awkwardness. We fear that we’ll botch our efforts to reconnect, that we’ll make intended recipients even more uncomfortable. Yet these concerns are almost always misplaced.

Unavoidable Foundation Regrets

We start with the foundational regrets. Like the issues identified in Paul’s letter to the people of Corinth in the last several blogs, these seem to be unavoidable. I believe I am an honorable person with good intent. But as I look back over my life, the first thing that comes to mind is my many regrets. I am reminded of regrets in each of the four core regrets identified by Pink.

Irresistible Lure. Irresistible means impossible. Have you been drawn to something that just seems irresistible? Fortunate for me, immoral things haven’t been irresistible. However, two material things have seemed irresistible to me. One is a nice car. I’m not talking about super-expressive cars but I am talking about the top-of-the-line American cars. I decided with my first new car in 1969 that I was not going to resist a new car every three years. Both of my daughters and sons-in-law find that rather extravagant because they are into decent used cars.
My other irresistible lure has been nice watches. I think it was because my father bought my first new all-electric watch for my high school graduation. I’ve been in love with nice watches ever since.
Inexorable Logic. The word inexorable means impossible to stop or prevent. I have been a very logical person all my life. I can convince myself of almost anything. The logic of my own reasoning becomes so strong and sound that it becomes almost impossible to resist or deny. Unlike automobiles where I made the illogical decision to lease a new car every three years (knowing it is illogical), I talk myself into the new watch with pure logic (or at least I think so).

Convincing Ourselves

My regrets tend to be more materialistic. But I know that some people deal with immoral issues. Like the new car in my case, I openly admit that a new car every three years doesn’t make sense. But if you reached an immoral decision and don’t openly admit it as being immoral, then it tends toward the evil side of human behavior. You know that it’s immoral but you decide to do it anyway.

For those issues where you’re convinced in your mind (through logic or ignorance), you need that trusted friend who is capable of saying to you, “You know that’s wrong, don’t you?”

Dealing with Foundational Regrets

Don’t be evil. The world knows it, and more importantly, you know it. Evil will eat at your character and humaneness. Evil will become one of the more painful things in your life.

Don’t let your bad logic overcome your wisdom. You need that trusted friend who will say, “You know what you’re doing is wrong and unwise.” Listen to them. Examine yourself and your motives. Allow them to be that trusted friend you need.

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