Living Without Regret

What does it mean to live without regrets? Miriam Webster defines regret as “sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one’s control or power to repair”.  That makes a lot of sense, as we think about regret to mean:

• Things I should have done
• Things I shouldn’t have done
• Things I’d like to do but don’t think I’ll ever have the courage/opportunity/drive to do

I don’t know about you, but all of these feel like we are giving the power elsewhere. We are sad for a past or future that doesn’t meet our expectations, and we are somehow powerless to right the wrongs. Regrets are also things/people/activities that haunt us and keep us imprisoned in cyclical thinking that can be fairly destructive to our progress. Rather than focusing on the future and our potential, we get caught in loops of regret, and Miriam Webster even says that regrets are beyond our control to repair. So, if we spend our time focusing on regrets, then we are essentially looping on things that keep us shackled in sorrow.

I found myself thinking about what people regret on their deathbed so that I can focus on making sure that I make the most of my life. I found Bronnie Ware wrote the book – “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” after spending time as a caregiver.

The top regrets of the dying:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

These themes emerged from her patients, and she has spent the rest of her life encouraging us all to live without regrets.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this list of regrets shared by people who have no more time. They don’t regret that they didn’t make enough money, or they didn’t get the house with the pool, or they didn’t get that job with that title that made them sound important. They don’t lay on their deathbed and wish that they had purchased the high-end stove and the marble countertops that the neighbors will envy. They don’t lay there in a state of terminal illness, angry that they didn’t go on that trip to Bali and stay in the fancy coastal resort. They’re not mad that they didn’t take the Alaskan cruise or that they didn’t buy the fancy handbag that the other ladies were carrying in 1996.

They wish that they had lived authentically, they wish that they had expressed themselves genuinely. They wish that they had allowed happiness, and not worked so hard. And these are all things that we have complete power over to prioritize in our lives. I don’t have to wait until I’m dying.

Let’s look at these in more detail and think about how we may be able to pivot now to avoid these regrets.

I wish I’d had the courage to live true to myself

Ultimately, this is what I think untying your lines is all about – living authentically to yourself. It’s about discovering your bliss, your purpose. It’s about realizing that we have this gift of life and we want to spend our time doing life in a way that is beautiful and real, rather than focusing on the things that we think are expected of us. It takes courage and risk to live this way, though, so it makes sense that it’s so hard.

I explore these themes in a lot of my posts here, but I don’t think that we can shift to living true to ourselves until we have some form of an awakening. I refer to these as the “driving force” – or the “unlocking event”. It’s like you wake up to your own life and you can’t put the blinders back on. Once this happens, there is significant unrest until things change. Many people have this awakening, though, and then continue to shove themselves into their current reality and become increasingly frustrated and depressed.

ACTION: There are ways to determine when it’s time to leave that I have written about previously. Assess your life situation for areas that need to change. Make a list of all the reasons that you can or can’t change that situation. If change is possible, make a list of small steps you can begin to take that will get you closer to the change you envision.

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard

We all have to work – at least most of us do. Working is our contribution to society, it’s how we keep the global machine running, and how we support one another. It’s also how we make money so that we can afford to live the way we want. So, it’s part of the fabric of our lives and the societies we live in.

But we get to choose HOW we work. We have choices about how much importance we place on our work versus other aspects of our lives. We can choose to let our work define us so that everything else is less important. Or we can choose to find purpose-driven work that makes us feel like we have made the most of our time. People on their deathbed wish that they would have chosen to work less, so we can use this to evaluate the role work plays in our lives.

ACTION: Make a list of your values. Determine whether you are able to live a life that supports your values or if work is in the way. What steps can you take to shift the priority level of work so that you are living more in alignment with your values? Are you willing to make those shifts?

I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings

We all have a complicated relationship with our feelings. I have a tendency to be overly open with my emotions, and (like many women) try to hush myself at times. But I can imagine that the opposite of this (not being able to freely express emotion) could be incredibly challenging, stifling and create unnecessary resentments. It takes incredible courage and vulnerability to express our feelings, and that’s scary.

It’s ironic that we choose to stifle our emotions to make sure everything stays peaceful and even. Because emotions are the mechanism by which we deepen relationships and our experience in the world. I guess this is why people regret not expressing their feelings more, because by the time we reach the end of life, we realize that it was silly that we stifled ourselves.

ACTION: Sometimes the biggest challenge with expressing our emotions is tapping into them to begin with. If you have spent your whole life quieting them, you may not even know how you feel. Many counseling centers offer simple steps for getting in touch with your emotions, such as the Bergen Counseling Center in Chicago. As you explore emotions that you are unfamiliar with, you may need to reach out for help. Thankfully, many employers offer counseling assistance and therapy is covered by most insurance companies.

I wish I had kept in touch with my friends

This one is fascinating because there has been so much research on loneliness in recent years. The American Psychological Association published a great article on why friendships keep us healthy.

As we age, it becomes harder to make friends and it takes a lot of work to keep friends. I tend to have a social battery that doesn’t last very long, so I have to go through periods of recharge. I think my friends interpret this as a lack of interest in investment in our relationship, when really it’s a form of self-care for me. But once I’m charged back up, I have to force myself to be social sometimes.

Friendships allow us to fundamentally be more satisfied with our lives and increase our longevity. We need healthy friendships to feel whole.

ACTION:  Make a list of your closest friends. Next to each person’s name, write the last time you saw them, then how often you saw them in the last year. Next, write the activities you enjoy doing with one another. Lastly, write a suggested cadence for spending time with that person doing the activities that you enjoy so that you can see how each person can fit into your life.

I wish I had let myself be happier

The way this one is worded is really interesting. It implies that happiness is available to us at all times, and all we need to do is allow it. And I’m not going to lie – I agree with this wholeheartedly. I catch myself focusing on the negative all the time. I get caught up in the little dramas of life, and I get bored and idle.

So, I suppose the trick is to choose the happiness. Get out of our own way and let the happiness in. It seems so simple, and I know it feels hard. But people on their deathbed seem to look back and think that it was attainable, so we can be motivated by that reality.

ACTION: Make a list of the things that get in the way of your happiness. Beside each one of them, write down what you could do to eliminate that happiness blocker. Identify if it is a self-limiting belief, then identify action steps to make the necessary changes that will allow you to experience more happiness.