As the holidays approach, thoughts begin to turn to the new year and to New Year's resolutions. That often leads us to think more about the things in our lives we regret. After all, a strong impetus to change is to identify those aspects of our lives that we would do differently if we could.
In a post I made last summer, I pointed out that psychological research suggests that younger people tend to regret actions they had taken ("I should not have insulted that girl."), while older people tend to regret actions they did not take ("I should have learned to play a musical instrument."). Previous research on regret suggests that one important reason for this effect is that younger people have many more opportunities to act in the future, while older people may feel that more roads are closed off to them in the future. Thus, actions may weigh more heavily on older people than on younger people.
A new study by Ian M. Davison and Aidan Feeney in the December, 2008 issue of Cognitive Psychology suggests another factor that influences regret. They find that when people think about their lives specifically, they tend to regret actions. When people think about their lives generally, they tend to regret things they did not do.
This influence of generality or abstractness affects the kinds of regrets you have at different ages. When you think about things that are relatively close in time, you tend to think about these things more specifically than when you think of things far off in time. At the age of 18, you will think about a fight you had with your parents in terms of yelling at them because they would not allow you to go to a particular party. When you look back on that event from a perspective 50 years later, you may think of it more in terms of tension between you and your parents.
So, how should this affect your New Year's resolutions? If there are aspects of your life you would like to change, then you have to consider both changes in actions you take that you would like to do differently, and also actions you typically do not take that you would like to make a part of your life. The research on regret suggests two ways to form New Year's resolutions.
First, spend some time describing the things you like about your life as well as the things you don't. Many of those elements of your life are probably specific things that you do that you might like to do differently.
Next, project yourself into the future. Imagine yourself years in the future looking back at your life right now. Have that future-you describe your current life. Have that future you think about all of the things you wished you had done at this age. You may find that your descriptions of your current life are more general and abstract when you look at them from this future vantage point.
Once you have thought about yourself both from the perch of your present-self and your future-self, pick one (or perhaps two) things that you would like to change. One of the problems with New Year's resolutions is that you tend to bite off more than you can chew. One big reason for that is that you may try to change too many things at once. Changing actions and inactions is hard work. Pick one. Remember, if you succeed at making a change in your life, there is always next year to make another change.
