regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.

If Only and At Least offered a faster route to meaning than the direct path of pondering meaning itself.[16]

This process begins with two abilities—two unique capacities of our minds. We can visit the past and the future in our heads.

Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term.

This combination of time travel and fabulism is a human superpower. It’s hard to fathom any other species doing something so complex,

These seventy years of research distill to two simple yet urgent conclusions: Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better.

“People’s cognitive machinery is preprogrammed for regret.”

they’ve discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people’s lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

get tattooed today!” So, they climbed into the car and rolled to