This post is dedicated to Dr. Wayne Dyer who recently passed away at the age of 75. As Wayne said, “there are no accidents. Everything, down to every chance encounter, every situation, and every event in your life, happens for a specific reason.” Dr. Dyer has inspired me to share my own content and to stop worrying what other people think of me.
Avoid the Biggest Regret of All
Regrets are a normal part of life. Small regrets, medium-sized regrets, even sometimes big regrets – in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing society – are inevitable. It’s part of the human experience and anyone who tells you otherwise probably hasn’t lived enough.
With that said, there are steps you can take to avoid arriving at the end of your life and regretting what you’ve done. Small and medium-sized regrets (and mistakes in general) may be to a certain degree unavoidable, but the biggest regret of all – feeling as though you didn’t live the life you were meant to live – is thankfully largely under your control. You always have a choice as to the kind of life you live.
Consider That…
You may not always necessarily have control over your given set of circumstances. And I know, as well as anybody, the struggle to pay down debt and get your finances under control, having wracked up $100,000 in debt from graduate school at Johns Hopkins (definitely not complaining, just stating facts). I’m suggesting that you can always choose how to respond to any given set of circumstances and, equally importantly, you can always find time for the important things in life.
One more thing before diving into the five biggest regrets of the dying, which I arrived at through seven years of reading, research, study, and heart-to-heart conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers: if you find yourself not in alignment with avoiding one or more of these regrets, please DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and no one on this planet is always in perfect alignment all the time. The goal of this post is not to make you feel badly in any way whatsoever. I, like many others, am working on improving on these all of the time. We are all works in progress. The goal is simply to bring to your awareness common regrets so that you can avoid some or all of them as you continue to age and move forward with your life. Again, you don’t have to be perfect on every one of these – hell, you don’t even have to agree with my educated opinion that these are the top five regrets of the dying – I just ask that you consider these points in your awareness as thoughts many people have.
Common Regret #1: I Wish I Stayed in Touch With my Friends
A big truth I’ve learned and applied over the last year is that you absolutely cannot be around people who are going to unfairly criticize you, bring you down, and/or tell you that you can’t do something. You must be around the right people, so don’t stay in touch with anyone who stabbed you in the back, lied to you, or otherwise revealed to you their poor character. At the same time, there are a lot of people out there with good hearts who probably would be happy to connect with you further if you made a little effort (think reaching out is a bad thing? I understand that feeling, but check out Presiyan Vasilev’s award-winning speech and you might change your mind).
Don’t have the time to make long phone calls due to your hectic and demanding schedule? Fair enough; instead, start small. Shoot an innocent text to someone. Compose an email to an old friend. Even consider writing a letter or sending a card to someone you know – I promise you that they will appreciate the thought!
Common Regret #2: I Wish I Took Better Care of Myself
If you are like me and you don’t like to cook, you struggle with this one. Eating out or picking up food to go – and I mean this sincerely – is one of the great joys of life. And I’ve failed at this one as I recently broke my rule of only eating McDonald’s once a month by choosing to eat there for the second time in two weeks (no big deal, just need to watch myself moving forward). My one redeeming quality is that I exercise a lot, so although I may not be the healthiest eater I end up sweating off the calories.
Rather than making a drastic change to your eating and self-maintenance schedule, try making small adjustments. Do you eat out four nights a week? Cut back to two. Do you only cook on weekends? Try cooking on Fridays and weekends. Little things like that can make a big difference over time. My expertise is not in cuisine or healthy eating, so I will leave it to the experts to tell me what kinds of organic and healthy foods to buy.
Mickey Mantle, one of my all-time favorite heroes, said word-for-word as he was headed to his premature death:
Had I known I was going to live this long, I would have taken much better care of myself.
It’s a catch-22 because you don’t know how long you will live, but you increase your chances of living longer if you take better care of the temple known as your body that you are temporarily housed in.
Common Regret #3: I Wish I Lived the Life I Wanted to Live Instead of the Life Others Wanted/Expected From Me
This is a tricky one as there is no black and white here. There is a gray area when it comes to learning to trust ourselves and knowing when to take advice from others. And the last thing in the world I’d ever want someone to think is that they are a failure because they didn’t go after their childhood dream of becoming a star athlete or politician – after all, sometimes the most noble and important thing we can do is to pay the bills and provide for our families. As Viktor Frankl says, no two situations (even very similar ones) necessarily require the same response and every circumstance is unique unto itself. Your true power lies in properly assessing your current life situation, being honest with yourself, and determining your next best course of action, whatever may be best for you. This next best course of action may agree with what people around you are telling you to do, but oftentimes it does not.
Yes, sometimes living your life the right way may mean something drastic like striking out on your own and deciding to travel the world or doing whatever it is that you’re meant to do. But it’s definitely not always that drastic or cut and dry. As a general rule of thumb – and I’m 100% aware that this doesn’t apply to every case out there, but rather the majority of cases – listen to others and respect people no matter what, but in your daily life always put your own well-being first. I know that may come off as you being selfish, but it’s really not because the only way you can truly serve and help others in this world is when you are firing on all cylinders as a human being and connecting with your own inner wisdom. The surefire way to stress is to be overly concerned with what other people want and expect from you.
Are you in a career that you don’t want to leave? Well, you could decide to leave anyways, but all of our paths are unique and that may not be the best choice for you. Instead, try growing your passion on the side by learning about it and sharing it with others on evenings and weekends. If it’s really meant to be your full-time career it will blossom into that, but even if it just remains a hobby you will still be a success because of the way you are helping others, or, at the very least, productively and happily occupying your time. Even if your hobby only pleases you and no one else, consider that you are ahead of the game because there are many people in the world who can’t seem to find what makes them happy.
The overall theme of this post is obviously outlining the most common regrets people face when they’re dying, but a strong undercurrent running through each regret is the idea that small, tiny, present-moment changes lead to massive, incredible long-term results. Be more concerned about your habits today than about your habits tomorrow and when you get to tomorrow, strive to improve upon yourself instead of comparing yourself to others.
Define your own version of success, not someone else’s version.
Before we leave this regret, one more quick thing – consider the possibility that, like my good friend Brian Olds said to me at a diner one cold February morning in Baltimore earlier this year, you can find your passion and joy at your current job; you don’t necessarily have to start a business or leave where you are to find happiness. For example, at my current role I love the way I do a mixture of marketing and analytics and it’s the kind of job I was always looking for. I had a job like this while working for 2iventures in Budapest, Hungary, but it took me a while to make my way back to this industry. I’ve been blessed and lucky to find a job that merges my passion with my day-to-day activities and I can then go ahead and continue to market myself as a professional speaker on my own time (the marketing of myself is always done outside of work, never during work, as I 100% respect and appreciate the time I am paid for at my job and will always do everything I possibly can within my power to make my clients successful while I’m on the job).
You may not need to sacrifice for years and “someday” be happy. If you hit the pavement hard and sell yourself well, it’s possible that you can find your dream job or a job better suited for you.
Common Regret #4: I Wish I Let Myself Be Happier Each Day
Stress, overwhelm, and fatigue are all normal parts of life. It’s 3:13 AM right now and even though I’m an author working on another book (the book is on a different subject from this blog post), I definitely didn’t expect to be up this late. But I gathered some momentum and after making a lot of progress on my book, I realized I had it in me to also write this blog post. The point is doing this – as crazy as it may seem to an objective observer – makes me happy. That’s really what counts in the final analysis – your happiness.
Brian Tracy, a goal-setting expert, suggests that you set peace of mind as your highest priority and then organize your entire life around that. If something isn’t making you happy then consider cutting it out of your life if you can. Life is just too short to go around being miserable. Every second spent in unhappiness is another moment away from the joy that is rightfully yours.
There’s really no other way to say it: just let yourself be happier each day! It’s sort of like learning to let go – you can read and talk about it until the cows come home, but you really don’t know what it feels like until you do it. This is what Heather Hansen O-Neill talks about in her insightful, enlightening, and amazing TEDx talk. Take it from someone like myself who spent way too many days of my younger years in self-created misery and caring what other people thought a little too much: there are more reasons to be happy than you may have initially thought. Choose happiness and gratitude over anxiety; the power is within your own heart, mind, and soul. If you are still struggling with finding peace, try implementing some of the powerful exercises and tips Heather talks about in her talk.
As my good friend Harvey Bailey says (who I also chatted with in Baltimore earlier this year on the same day I spoke with Brian, but at a different time in the day):
It’s impossible to argue with someone who is fully at peace with themselves.
What a powerful quote! Take Harvey’s words of wisdom to heart and watch as your relationships improve.
Common Regret #5: I Wish I Didn’t Focus So Much On Trivial Matters and Instead Focused on What Truly Mattered
This is the perfect extension of common regret #4 because when you choose peace of mind over anxiety you will naturally stop focusing on trivial matters. When it comes to projects at work and school, the devil is indeed in the details and it’s important to sweat the small stuff. But when it comes to what other people think, say, and do it’s best to let go of all of that and instead focus on the big picture of your life.
Make it a point to focus on the important few rather than the trivial many. Prioritize your life and get your values in order. Trust yourself and reach your mountaintop, your own version of success, by being quintessentially you.
There’s Still Time
Remember – we’re all human and we all make mistakes, but there is always time to turn things around. A plane is off course 99% of the time, but will still usually take off and land on schedule. You too can make continual course corrections to make sure that you live your life the best you possibly can!
