In life, what the soul tells us to do often conflicts with what we "should" do. For example, your parents and friends tell you you you should find a stable, well-paid job. At the same time, your heart tells you that you should become a musician or an entrepreneur. You should save money for a down payment on a house, but at the same time, you daydream endlessly and waste your savings on long trips.
When these inevitable crossroads arrive, you need to choose between the path to reason and anticipation and the path to crazy dreams, which path should you choose?
This may sound entirely personal (and it does, eventually), but recent science can actually provide some guidance. New research suggests that if you're like most people, you'll regret not fulfilling your dreams, not regretting not doing what you "ought to do."
There's already a lot of anecdotal evidence about people's regrets in life, from testimonies from those who care about death to multiple social media posts dedicated to sharing regrets and helping others avoid similar regrets. But scientists at Cornell University and the New School of Social Studies want a more rigorous exploration of what people really regret.
To achieve this, they recruited hundreds of participants to share their regrets. They then divide these answers into two categories: one that deals with the "ideal self," i.e., who you dream of being, or what you want to be deep down to, and the one that deals with the "supposed self," i.e., those that involve not meeting the expectations or ideals of others. Which regrets are more common?
The ideal self regrets to win with an overwhelming advantage. "Participants said they felt more often sorry for their ideal selves (72% vs. 28%); when asked to list regrets in their lives so far, they mentioned more 'ideal self' regrets than 'should have been' (57% and 43%, respectively); when asked to say their biggest regrets in their lives, participants were more likely to mention regrets about not achieving their ideal selves (76% to 24% mentioned that they should regret themselves)," the British Psychological Society Research Digest blog reported.
The researchers did notice that individual preferences varied. Some people meet expectations more easily than others. But their final conclusion is very clear: "If a person is an adventurous soul guided by an ideal self, then she may really become happier by seizing the day without looking back." As we showed in this study, a person who is focused on her ideal self is more likely to lose sleep because of her "willingness" and "potential" than because of her "should."
If you're eager to avoid too many regrets in your life (who aren't?). It's also worth noting that these aren't the first researchers to study this issue. Other scientists have looked at the same problem from a slightly different perspective. A few years ago, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management conducted a similar study and found that people regret much more about what they didn't do than what they tried but failed.
So, if you're looking for regret minimization rules, this new study suggests that you should consider your own ideals before considering the expectations of others when making your decisions. Earlier research has shown that if you want to choose between seemingly safe inaction and jumping into something that might fail, be bold and try.
Pay attention to @Linyuan recommended books to take you to see a more beautiful world~
Like it, just like it [a flash of inspiration]