You’ll Never Have This Day Again. Make it Matter.
00:00Hello and welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host Sarah Micatel, and today I am sharinga mini episode of my deep summer thoughts. Summer is in the air, at least in my part of the world,and this has always been my favorite season. Summer meant no school, swimming, no cold weather,my birthday, vacations, barbecues. Now as an adult, I also appreciatethe joy that I see in other people at this time of year. People are happier. They are out and aboutdoing communal activities like open-air cinema or hanging out at an outdoor bar or a cafe orsimply just going to a beach or a park. I mean, can you beat those things? They are out theregoing places and living a life and I wish that we could maintain this vibrancy all year long.
01:02As I'm recording this, we're heading into August, which is kind of like the Sunday night blues month of the calendar year.September is right around the corner, back to the real world.For a lot of people, this means heading to work and then heading home.But what if it wasn't like that?What if we could keep living our best lives all year long?And this doesn't have to mean globetrotting non-stop or packing our days full of activities.but what if we remembered to prioritize simple pleasures and stopped wasting time, stuingin anger, regretting things that we can't change, canceling plans with people that we actually
01:43care about, and this big one not going after what we really want, because we'll get to itsomeday, right? What if we remembered to have fun and actually prioritized and planned for this in life?What would your day look like if you want to be?woke up feeling in your bones that you will never have this day again. How would you treat people?How would you treat yourself? At a certain point in my life, the thought of doing something likegoing to the movies by myself sounded insane. But why? Are we worried strangers might think wedon't have any friends? Why do we care what they think? I mean, we do care usually, but why? Do we thinkthey are doubting our self-worth, that they are feeling sorry for us? Some people might feel sorry for
02:34a solo traveler eating alone, and they might also feel sorry for that couple that's glued totheir phones, not talking to each other, and for the mom who's screaming at her four childrenwho are running around. But most people who we think are worrying about us or judging us,they're not paying any attention to us at all. We are creating all of this drama in our heads.There is a quote that is falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, but I love it, so I'm going to share it with you.When you're 20, you care what everyone thinks.When you're 40, you stop caring what everyone thinks.And when you're 60, you realize that no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.
03:14Our lives are going to be over soon, sooner than you think, maybe even tomorrow.Do we want to spend our final days hiding because someone we don't know might not?like the sound of our voice on a podcast, I hear that one a lot. Or what would people say if I leftthis comfortable job to go work at a cafe in Mexico? They would think I was crazy. Or I really want todate this person, but I am afraid of what people will say because of X, Y, Z. Other people don't have avote on how we live our lives. And we can't live for them because the adage is true. Our biggest regretsin life are not going after what might have been.A number of years ago, a woman named Bonnie Ware nursed patients in the final weeks of their
04:05lives.In that brief time she had with them, she really connected with them on a very powerful level.I mean, facing death is obviously a very complicated and emotional transition.And Bonnie talked to her patients about their biggest regrets and what they would, theywould do over if they could, and she published their responses in an article and then later a bookcalled Regrets of the Dying. Here are the five most common regrets. I wish I had the courageto live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
04:53I wish that I had let myself be happier.Bonnie ends her article by saying,Life is a choice.It is your life.Choose consciously, choose wisely,choose honestly, choose happiness.Did this give you chills?Happiness is a choice.
05:15You can choose to be brave.Changing how you act changes who you are.Do something this week that scares you.a little, let yourself be happy, call a friend, express your feelings, stop working so hard andnone of it is going to matter in the end anyway. Be true to yourself and don't worry about what otherpeople expect. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot?I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you canrespond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it
06:04at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.
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