Lost possible selves

I'm reading a paper by Laura A. King (!) and Joshua A. Hicks on the topic of lost possible selves. The premise is that thinking about a lost possible self ("what might have been") leads to near-term regrets, but if the person really thinks about that alternative self in detail, while disengaging from the related goals, they are helping to develop cognitive complexity, which leads to greater overall satisfaction with life.

Useful aspects for me are:

• their coding scheme for narratives and self-descriptions


• the methods they use to measure cognitive complexity


• the links they make between cognitive complexity and overall life satisfaction