We've all heard the cliché "no regrets." But what if we're supposed to embrace regret, stare it right in the face and choose to learn a thing or two? What if regret is one of the most positive driving forces to living your best life?

In Daniel Pink's latest NY Times bestseller, The Power of Regret, he began his journey to understanding regret by interviewing 16,000 people from around the world. He asked, "what do you regret most" with the belief that someone's regrets help bring clarity to what they value the most.

He distilled the results of the interviews into four core categories:

1. Foundational regrets: These all circle around the decision to create a stable platform from which to live life. In financial terms, did you save enough money over the years to be comfortable during retirement? When stated, this regret sounds like, "If only I had _____" followed by a course of action that didn't occur.
2. Boldness regrets: These focus on actions that never took place, where you played it safe instead of being bold and taking the plunge. Many of the population toil in jobs they don't like but never decide to do anything about it to change their life. An exciting facet of the interviews was that when people did take a chance that didn't work out, they rarely regretted doing so. This regret sounds like, "I was too scared to _____" followed by the action not taken.
3. Moral regrets: These are typically focused on a decision to do the right or wrong thing. When faced with the choice, those who took the "wrong" path regretted that decision for a lifetime. Older adults spoke of grabbing a chocolate bar as a child or bullying another child when they were young as regrets that still haunted them into their senior years. This regret sounds like, "If only I had done the right thing when _____."
4. Connection regrets: These focus on relationships you had or should have had during your life that fell apart for no dramatic reason. People drifting apart was the most common occurrence, and the regret came from not overcoming the feeling of awkwardness to reaching back out to the other party due to fear of vulnerability. The fear of rejection kept people from making themselves vulnerable enough to rekindle or establish a connection that they felt was or should have been influential in their life. This regret sounds like, "I shouldn't have let my pride get in the way and _____" followed by the effort to make a connection.

Every human being on the planet can identify with that list, and there are likely a few things that stand out. At Allan Bush Investment Team, we also realized that any of these regrets probably also positively impacted how we lived our lives following the instance of regret. More than anything, it also gave us some good insight on what matters most. And that is invaluable.

Daniel Pink finishes the book by encouraging people to be bold and reconcile themselves with their regrets. It may be too late to change our path, but it's never too late to move forward despite them by recognizing our regrets and giving them a voice in an effort for good.