I'm really torn on whether or not I think The Inner Light should've had more of an effect on him.

The crux of the issue is that in his actual life he was a career guy who never made time for a family.

So, on the one hand, living that life could've fulfilled his dream and made it so he could dedicate himself to being Starfleet with no regrets. In a real way, he got to have both.

But on the other hand, if he dismisses that entire life as a hallucination and doesn't embrace how it felt, it could make his longing-for-a-life-he-never-had that much worse.

Seeing as we never saw him have a complete breakdown over it, and only mentioned it later on in First Contact that he had any regrets about being the last Picard, I can only assume the former was true. (Leaving aside Generations. Why are the odd-numbered Trek films always so goddamn weird?)