Practice gratitude for what you chose

Counter maximizer regret by actively appreciating the option you took.

Why it works

Maximizers suffer because attention drifts to the forgone alternatives and how the choice fell short of the imagined best. Deliberately directing attention to the good in the chosen option counteracts that comparison habit, and gratitude practice has solid evidence for raising well-being — so it targets the exact attentional pattern that drives maximizer dissatisfaction.

How to do it

1. After choosing, name what is genuinely good about the option you took.
2. When the mind drifts to "the best one got away", redirect to the chosen option’s merits.
3. Make this a brief, repeated habit, not a one-time pep talk.

Evidence

Gratitude interventions have reasonably strong support for improving well-being and satisfaction. Applying gratitude specifically to a chosen option to counter maximizer regret is a sensible combination of that evidence with the maximizing literature. Davis and colleagues’ meta-analysis of gratitude interventions confirms a reliable — if modest — benefit to well-being across studies, moving this practice’s grounding beyond a single experiment. (rct)

Gratitude’s general benefits are well supported; its specific use as an antidote to maximizer regret is an applied extension, not a separate trial.

Sources

• Emmons & McCullough (2003), "Counting Blessings Versus Burdens", J. Personality & Social Psychology
• Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389.
• Davis, D. E., Choe, E., Meyers, J., Wade, N., Varjas, K., Gifford, A., Quinn, A., Hook, J. N., Van Tongeren, D. R., Griffin, B. J., & Worthington, E. L. (2016). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20-31.

Common mistake

Dwelling on the alternatives you didn’t pick, which keeps the comparison alive and feeds the regret gratitude is meant to dissolve.