Rejection and Regret

The 1995 film Before Sunrise follows two young strangers, Jesse and Celine, that meet on a train traveling from Budapest to Vienna.

The two forge a connection and an undeniable spark.

When the train arrives in Vienna, Jesse tries to convince Celine – who is set to continue to Paris – to hop off the train with him.

He poses his request in terms of future regret.

"Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, ya know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys.”

Despite Celine’s initial hesitations, she eventually agrees. The two embark on a night of adventure, exploring Vienna and getting to know each other intimately.

***

This scene is a powerful reminder of the importance of taking risks, despite the potential for rejection or disappointment.

And as Jesse argues to Celine, sometimes it’s worth taking a risk to avoid the pain of regret later on.

While the pain of rejection is short and intense, the pain from never attempting to even try never really goes away.

“Rejection is sharp pain that dulls over time. Regret is a dull pain that sharpens over time.”

***

Jeff Bezos famously used what he called the regret minimization framework to help decide whether or not to start an online bookstore in the mid-1990s (ya know, that thing called Amazon).

Just as Jesse encouraged Celine to do when persuading her to join him in Vienna, Bezos envisioned his life many years into the future.

“I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and look back on my life and have minimized the number of regrets I have,” Bezos said. “And I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this…

But, I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. And I knew that would haunt me every day.”

Surely, Bezos doesn’t regret his decision now. But, let’s say, even if Amazon had failed, I’m sure he would’ve been devastated at the time – but by age 80, I’d bet he’d be laughing about it with no regrets.

Why?

In the long-run, nearly all people regret the things they didn’t do much more than they regret the things they did.

“Our biggest regrets are not our failures, but our failures to try.”

***

But, why exactly do people regret inactions more than actions?

One possibility is that our mind has a much more difficult time creating positive and credible views of inactions than actions.

When our action leads us to take a new job that isn’t a good fit or start a business that fails – we can analyze what went wrong, reassess and do things differently the next time.

When our inaction causes us to stay at our job or not start a business – well, we can’t console ourselves with all the things we learned because, well, there wasn’t one.

With inactions, we can’t play back in our head what we might have done differently.

Instead, years later we’re left wondering “what if?”.

In fact, one of the largest studies on regret showed that while 24% of participants regretted things they did, 76% of participants regretted things that they could have done, but did not.

Action-related regrets provide a learning opportunity in which to grow from.

“Often times, the worst-case scenario and the status quo are the same.”

***

So, while Jesse would have been hurt had Celine rejected his request to join him in Vienna, that pain, surely, would have quickly faded away.

But had he never mustered up the courage to even ask…

Sure, things probably would’ve worked out just fine. And he may not have regretted it much at the time, but maybe, just maybe, he would have months and years later…and for the rest of his life.

So, instead of playing it safe and wondering what could have been – what if you took a chance and embraced the unknown?

Your future self will thank you.

At worst, it will look back and laugh…

With no regrets.