The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

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This week, all right, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you the headline here and then I want to explain where I'm going with this. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Wayne, that is so morbid. That's so uncool. What are you talking about here? Well, over the holidays I was driving and I was listening to a podcast by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, it's called Feel Better Live More. And he had an author on named Bronnie Ware. And she wrote a remarkable blog years ago now, I think it was 2012 or something like that, that was viewed by eight million people. She had been a palliative care nurse and she observed all these people in the end stages of their lives.

She wrote a blog that became viral. And then she wrote a book on the subject, and the book has now been published in 27 different languages, which is amazing. So The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Why am I bringing this up? What about this is important to you? You can't do anything about the past. And the pain of regret, to me, is one of the worst kinds of pain. "I should have done that. I shouldn't have done that." Whatever it happens to be, and I just think life is so short and so precious to live with regret. Especially at the end stage of life, when there's nothing you can do about those regrets anymore, is a real human tragedy.

So I'm going to try to turn this into a positive. This is a little uncharacteristic, but it really was a great podcast. I haven't read the book, I have to admit. But I think there's something to be said about living a life without regret. Okay.

What are the top five regrets? Number one, "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Number two, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." Uh-oh. Number three, "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings." Number four, "I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends." And number five, "I wish that I had let myself be happier." Okay? All serious regrets for people from palliative care.

Now, I also looked at an infographic. I've done vlogs before about George Stern and he does these terrific infographics in his blog. So I've got one here as a crutch. Okay. Avoiding these regrets. Number one. "I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Stern's tip is, say no. Say no to more things. Reflect on yourself. What do you want to do? What do you want to be? Who do you want to become? What are your personal goals? What are your personal values? If something isn't consistent with your values and who you want to be, who you see yourself as, as a genuine human being, just say no. Don't let others put that kind of pressure on you. Your life and your time is your own. Don't succumb to the pressure of others.

Number two, "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." Well, obviously this is a slap in the face for most of us who've built businesses over the years, and especially contractors who work so very hard. One of the great pieces of advice that I got from Dan Sullivan ages ago was schedule your personal time first. So get your calendar out. We do this once a quarter. Get your calendar out and schedule your vacation time with your family, your visits, with your friends, your social experiences. Schedule all that first. Believe me, work will fill in the rest. You're not going to have any trouble with that. Schedule time away from work first on your calendar and make that sacrosanct. And then there's plenty of time. The work will fill in. And there again, say no. Say no to things at work that allow you to have life and a balance outside of work.

Number three, "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings." Well, we have to communicate better, don't we? Especially half of the population. I won't say who. But communicate honestly and get help. Lisa and I went to marriage counseling a bunch of times. We sort of test drove a bunch of marriage counselors until we found one that gave us really good concrete actions that we could take to communicate better and to avoid falling into the pattern, the traps that we had set for ourselves. So if you don't communicate naturally, and a lot of us don't, get some help. There's nothing shameful about going to marriage counseling. We'd probably all better, be better off if we did a little more of it.

Okay. Number four, "I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends." Join things. Join things. You're going to make new friends. I had advice from a very wise client ages ago. He said, "If you want friends, be a friend." It was that simple. Join things, join groups of like-minded people. Before my son died, Lisa and I joined Al Anon and it was a lifesaver. We would have gone insane if we hadn't had the support of the like-minded people in that group who were experiencing the exact same things that we were experiencing. If you like tennis, I'm a tennis player. Join a tennis club. It's a great great thing. If you play golf, join a golf club. Join things so that you can make new friends and sustain something outside of work. Have a social life, go to dinner once in a while, et cetera, et cetera. It's well worth it.

And the fifth thing, "I wish that I had let myself be happier." This is an easy exercise for me. And the cure to being happy to me is to be grateful for the things you have. And so each week at work, I've talked about this a million times. We log the good things that happen to us, even if they're small, because these little things add up into big things. And I was reading a book yesterday and they said, "You should do this every day." Why wait? Why do it once a week? Why not do it every day? And so I wrote that, the idea is you write down three good things that happened to you during the course of the day. And it could be anything. I scheduled an appointment with my doctor to see about something. It could be anything. And I left work walking on air. I mean, I felt like a million bucks. I just wrote down three things, three good things that I was grateful for that happened to me during the course of the day. They don't have to be work things, they can be. What a practice. What a practice. You want to be happy, express gratitude first, and that most noble of emotions will attract more and more happy people into your orbit.

Find things outside of work that spark joy in you. Some people like gardening. I can't stand it. It's torture for me. But if you like gardening, by gosh, get outside more and work on that kind of stuff. Regret is an anchor. Regret is a brutal anchor in life. And if you can find ways to avoid these top five regrets, you're going to be happier, you're going to be better at work, and you're going to be better at home.

What do you think? Let me hear from you, [email protected]. This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.

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