Last week we talked about making decisions, so it seems appropriate that what is on me this week is the weight of regret, the costliness of decisions gone wrong.
If you’re the kind of person who cruises through life without regret, this column isn’t for you. But if, like me, you have tangoed with regret before, this simple advice can transform the way you live:
Murder your darlings.
You heard me.
In 1916 Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote this advice in a book called On the Art of Writing. He says that in order for his best work to come, what an artist has to do is take what he’s proudest of and get rid of it.
Take your beautiful little turns of phrase behind the shed and shoot them.
Weird advice, right?
What Sir Arthur knew is that a writer’s greatest asset is his objectivity, his ability to hear what he says through the ears of his readers, and there is no way that happens if he forces his beautiful turns of phrases to fit.
We impress ourselves with things that aren’t actually impressive, so in order to impress others we have to take our prized possessions and sacrifice them to get clear again.
Sir Arthur is obviously writing metaphorically, and specifically about art, but that doesn’t mean it won’t apply to the business of life.
After all, science and art are not that far apart.
He says, “Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man’s thought and emotion about things.”
Science is the rationale behind our decisions; art is the way those decisions make us feel.
Of the two, I’d say art is most important.
People don’t jump off of buildings because of the numbers; they do so because of how the numbers make them think and feel.
The market isn’t navigated by a strict adherence to math, formulas, and ratios, but by understanding the behaviors of investors.
Families’ finances aren’t run into the ground by parents with bad math skills, but by parents who fail to think clearly and cause themselves discomfort by living according to a frustrating budget.
There is just as much art as science in the skillful navigation of life’s rough waters.
Which is why, when it comes to the biggest decisions we phase, half the job is making sure the numbers make sense, of course. But that’s just half the battle.
The other half is getting clear in this weird artistic sacrifice of what you love.
Whatever you think or feel, take it behind the shed and see if ain’t worth shooting, otherwise, if it comes back on you, regret will jump all over you like a pox on the skin.
So if it feels like the right decision, shoot it, and start over. Odds are if it’s the right one, it’ll be back.
If it doesn’t feel right then move on; it’s not a threat to your livelihood and deserves to live.
The best case scenario is we murder our darlings, and then they come back to us, free of any hopes and dreams upon which we have burdened them.
Then, and only then, if the deal goes south and the car isn’t what we hoped, or the investment isn’t what we dreamed, or the deal isn’t what we were told, then we can walk away without regrets.
After all, we took it behind the shed; it’s its own blame fault that it came back.