THERE is an old quote attributed to John B Keane that goes: “A Kerry footballer with an inferiority complex is one who thinks he’s just as good as everybody else”.
I was thinking about that while reminiscing on my own sporting life, in particular the difference between what I thought I could have achieved if I put the right effort in and what I actually did achieve (the distance between the two gets proportionally wider in direct proportion to the amount of whiskey I’m drinking at the time).
What led me to that trip down memory lane was reading about some research done by Thomas Gilovich, which suggests that when it comes to regret, we tend to focus more on what we didn’t do, rather than what we did. Sure we will be short term annoyed if the new share plan we have invested in tanks, but the pain of that typically doesn’t last as long as the regret we would have watching a share scheme soar, which we had considered investing in, but chickened out from doing so.
Long term, it seems we suffer more from regretting inaction rather than action. The trips to the gym we didn’t take, the job we didn’t go for, the travelling we didn’t do, the friends we didn’t contact after university are regretted more than the football match we played poorly in, the crappy temp job we took one summer, the awful holiday in Benidorm we went on or the night out with a boring school friend.
A lot of this regret is grounded in the idea of the ‘ideal’ self; that person who we feel we should have become. The fitter, friendlier, kinder, healthier, wealthier person that we believe it was in our gift to develop into, if we had taken the right action at the time. And that can gnaw away at us over the years.
It’s important therefore to both recognise and address the potential for this regret. At work (this is a HR column after all) it’s imperative that you take the actions now to bridge that gap between the current and the ideal self.
If there is a position in your company you aspire to for example, a job you’ve always dreamed of, then don’t be afraid to reach for it. Don’t allow fear to hold you back.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you should start applying for senior management roles when you’ve just started as an admin temp, however you can always take action and plot your course. Figure out the steps you need to get to that level, the education, training and experience you will need and work on getting to each progressive new level on the way there.
It’s important that your actions lead to a specific goal, something you can measure and review. It means that you will know when you’ve achieved and can use it as a base to move higher again. You also need to make sure that what you are doing and the reasons you are doing it for matter to you, not others. Don’t try to climb the corporate ladder simply because it’s what your family expect of you; only do it if it’s something that you place value on.
And remember; with actions we can usually find some way of fixing things we regret right away; with things we didn’t do it’s impossible to claw back time. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
:: Barry Shannon is HR director at TSYS
