Why your gardening regrets are actually a cognitive trap
In short: Huw Richards explores how to break the cycle of past mistakes to improve your current harvest. By shifting from wallowing in what went wrong to extracting actionable data, you can transform last season's failures into this year's success.
Regret is often a 'counterfactual emotion,' meaning it stems from the cognitive ability to imagine how things could have been different. Unlike simple disappointment, regret requires a sense of personal agency—the belief that you could have taken a different action. This mental loop can cause significant stress and anxiety if left unaddressed.
To move forward, experts suggest identifying what specific information was gained from a mistake. Instead of dwelling on the 'what ifs,' focus on how to apply those lessons to future growth. In gardening, this means treating a failed crop not as a personal failure, but as a data point for better soil health or pest control in the next cycle.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Regrets from Last Growing Season Must Stop! The 2019 Mindset
- Also: Breaking the regret cycle — Harvard Gazette
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