Regret: The Cruelest Emotion

Friday, October 27, 2006

REGRET: THE CRUELEST EMOTION

Are there times when you find yourself wondering if you took the right fork in the road? Do you occasionally replay decisions you made some years ago, thinking what if…? You’re not alone if at this stage of your life you wonder and think about decisions you made or didn’t make earlier in your life.

Often we look back on some of the decisions we made with varying degrees of regret.

Regret. It’s a powerful emotion that is often more powerful with the passage of time. Regret means not only different things to different people; it means different things at different stages in our lives. Sometimes reading other’s people’s stories about regret stories about regret and the impact it has had on their lives can be a catalyst for change, providing us with a different perspective and offering us new insights.

A year ago we began to collect regret stories to learn more about the impact it has on people. We realized that there was no more to our research than fact gathering. We realized there were lessons to be learned in the stories people told us. And that’s what prompted us to write a book about “regret” calling it Regret: The Cruelest Emotion.

We believe every life is a story, and we’d like to hear your personal stories about regret. We invite you to participate in a project that may help others deal with regret – the cruelest emotion.

The information you provide us will help us tell our story. We guarantee your anonymity because no names will be collected… and no names are needed to participate in our project.

You have a number of ways you can share your regret stories.

Mail your stories to either Dr. Larry Force or Paul Schwartz at Mount Saint Mary College, 330 Powell Avenue, Newburgh, NY 12550

Email your stories to us at either force@msmc.edu or schwartz@msmc.edu

Go to www.msmc.edu/regrets and complete the online information form.

Thank you for your willingness to participate in what we believe will be a worthwhile book. We appreciate your interest and support.