How Regrets Can Blind Us From Success?
Discover the psychological effects tied with regrets and how we can work around them to bounce back stronger
“When one door closes, another door opens.”
Most of us have probably heard, at least once, this famous adage from the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, which simply means that if we miss an opportunity or fail at seizing it, it creates space for new ones to arise.
The issue is that we rarely know the remaining part of this saying, which is:
“But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
This second part is meant to warn us.
As we dwell on what is forever gone, we are blind to other avenues we could explore.
This behavior can be partially explained by one of our cognitive biases called attentional bias.
It’s like, we are so focused, consciously or even unconsciously, that we develop some sort of filter to pay more attention to some things while we completely ignore others¹.
We develop a “tunnel vision”, like the expecting parents who suddenly see visual cues everywhere, reminding them they will soon have a baby.
