Anticipating regrets can often work to our advantage. It slows our thinking. It taps our cerebral breaks, allowing us time to gather additional information and to reflect before we decide what to do. But it should come with a warning label.---• Sign up for our newsletter where Michael shares his reflections every Friday (that's today!)

So, what can we do to turn our existing regrets into engines of progress? Science suggests a three-step process.

After analyzing thousands of regrets from people in more than 100 countries, Daniel Pink (”The Power of Regret”) has identified the four core regrets that haunt us most. Today, he explains what they are and how understanding these categories can help you make better decisions in the future.

Regret makes us feel worse, but it can make us do better. Indeed, the way it makes us do better is by making us feel worse.

It’s popular to claim you have no regrets. Popular, but perilous. Because regrets aren’t anything to be ashamed of — on the contrary, they’re an integral part of being human. When you deny their existence, you deny yourself the opportunity to look back on your missteps so you can chart a better path forward.This week on the show: Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink shares five key insights from his latest bestseller, “The Power of Regret.” In these episodes, you’ll learn how to use your regrets to make better decisions, improve your performance at work, and bring more meaning into your life.

Today, meditation expert Sharon Salzberg shares one final insight from her new book "Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom."

Today, Sharon Salzberg tells us how practicing loving-kindness meditation can change how we treat others and understand ourselves.

What if instead of demanding that a painful emotion disappear or becoming all consumed by it, you began to relate to your experience with spaciousness infused with kindness?

Society’s prescriptions for freedom, happiness, and abundance may not be your own.

Sharon Salzberg has been meditating since 1971 — “since before it was cool,” she likes to say. That practice has inspired a series of books, most recently “Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom,” which is all about using the power of mindfulness to confront, and ultimately overcome, whatever obstacles stand in your way. Today, she tells Michael how to transcend “contraction.” What’s contraction? You’ll have to listen to this episode…(Want the best books of the year — as chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink — delivered to your doorstep? Sign up for a Next Big Idea Club hardback subscription, and use the code DAILY for 10% off.)