Good Life Project - Bronnie Ware: A Life Beyond Regret [Best of].

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

In November 2009, Bronnie Ware (http://bronnieware.com/) published a short essay entitled Regrets of the Dying (http://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/) It revealed the top 5 regrets people had shared with her in the final days of their lives, when she worked in palliative care.That short essay went massively viral, leading to an international bestselling book, The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying (https://goo.gl/eWJr2t) along with a frenzy of attention, travel and the start of a new career as a writer.But, what about Bronnie? Who was this Australian artist turned banker turned palliative care-worker? What led her to do such soulful work, in a field so many others could never imagine embracing? What were the deeper drivers, hidden passions, big dreams and, also, profound and dark struggles? What happened to her after the global phenomenon took hold, shaking her existence in a powerful way, both for the better and for the worse? And, what is she up to now?I asked Ware these questions and more when she came to the Good Life Project studios in NYC during a monthlong trip from Australia. The conversation got very real and deeply truthful. She was incredibly generous with both her inner thoughts and beautiful lens on life.I'm so excited to share this timeless "Best Of" episode with you now, as we reflect on the year that is winding down and explore how we want to create the year to come.--------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In November of 2009, Bronnie Ware published a short essay entitled Regrets of the Dying. It was a reflection on the years she worked in palliative care, taking care of people in the final days of their lives. And she'd noticed that the same basic set of profound regrets kept coming up over and over and over again, as those in her charge would lie waiting for the end, often sharing the deepest parts of themselves. That short essay exploded online. It was shared, reprinted, and read millions of times, leading then to an international bestselling book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, along with a frenzy of attention and travel and the start of a new career as a writer. Those regrets have since been discussed and deconstructed many, many times. They're important reminders of what truly matters in life. And we'll

talk about them a bit today. But what about Bronnie? What about the woman who actually brought these regrets to our lives? Who was this Australian artist turned banker, turned palliative care worker? What led her to do such soulful work in a field that so many others could never imagine embracing? And what were the deeper drivers or hidden passions, her big dreams, and also profound and dark struggles? And what happened to her after the global phenomenon took hold, shaking her existence in a really powerful way, both for the better and for the worse? And what's she up to now? So I asked Bronnie all of these questions and more when she came to the Good Life Project studios

in New York City during a month-long trip from Australia a little while back. The conversation got really deep, really truthful, really quickly. And she is incredibly generous with both her inner thoughts and beautiful lens on life. And I wanted to share this conversation. We aired it a couple of years back now,

and it feels like we have been through a year and it is a time of year where it's really powerful moment to reflect on who you are, what you're doing, how you're devoting your energies in your life, and how you might want to be intentional about the way you really wake up in the morning and live

each moment. Really excited to share this best of episode with you with my friend and guest Ronnie Ware. I'm Jonathan Fields. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10,

available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. I want to take a little step back with you because, of course, you sort of exploded into the world's consciousness when you wrote about these top five regrets of the dying. We'll talk about them a bit, but I'm also really just curious about you as a person and your journey. My understanding, you grew up on a farm in Australia. Yes. What part of Australia? It's called Northwest New South Wales, so the New England area.

And it's about halfway between Sydney and Brisbane on the inland highway. So Australia is, the east coast of Australia is separated by a mountain range called the Great Dividing Range. And on the right-hand side, on the east side, it's lush rainforest down to the coast. The moment you get onto the west side, it's farming wheat country, wheat-growing country, and very dry, and so we're on the west side of the range. But, you know, beautiful area, big mountains,

and big skies, huge skies. You know, it's funny. I have many years ago, I spent about three months backpacking and diving down the east coast of Australia. Oh, fantastic. I flew into Cairns and we went up to Cape Trib and just slowly worked my way down. And when we hit Brisbane, I went about three hours inland to a sheep station and just stayed there for, I think it was probably around a week. And I remember being there and just one night, literally just walking out into the open,

lying on my back and staring up and being just gobsmacked, watching the stars literally like drop down to the ground, you know, with no light around. That's right. And you see stars from horizon to horizon and it's it's just phenomenal i used to do that as a child with my dog and we'd just go outside of a night and just lie there for hours even as a teenager it's a pretty good way for a teenager to spend their their evenings instead of running crazy in the wrong crowds or whatever so so even out in the country in in Australia, they had the wrong crowds.

Oh, sure. They're everywhere. Tell me a little bit about what it's like growing up there because it's so foreign to my experience. I grew up in a suburb of New York City. Well, it was fantastic from when I was seven. I knew how to drive. I was driving a tractor from when I was seven years old no and we live so far from the bus stop that all the farm kids surrounding there

are only two farms on our road and that was about four miles long but all the surrounding farms as well they're all so far from the bus stop that we all used to drive old unregistered cars and park them at the bus stop so from when I was 10 or 11 years old I was driving a car to the bus stop illegally but everyone was doing it and the and at the bus stop there'd be six or seven old battered cars and they'd just be left there on the side of the road for in a paddock for the day and then we'd get off the bus and drive home again and so you know it was fantastic and I always had a horse and could just jump on a horse and ride whenever I wanted to and you know for me there was always a longing to discover the world beyond that but at the same time the way that love of space and the sky has affected my essence it it's quite essential for

my balance these days to to be able to have some sense of openness and i'm very grateful for that but it was it was a simple upbringing in in those ways it was it was beautiful big sunsets big sunrises yeah yeah it's a i mean it, too, because we're sitting here recording this in my home studio in the smack in the middle of Manhattan. We were just having a conversation before going on air about just the almost like mass chronic level of overstimulation that exists in a city like this. And when you come up in a place where there is such stillness and such openness and such space, how does it affect you when you move into a place like this? It's affected me a lot more than I realized the last few days. In Australia, I've recently moved to an area that's quite residential because I want accessibility.

But still within 10 minutes drive, I can be in cane fields by a river. So it's not extremely residential but there are neighbors and suburbia and the sound of traffic in the distance and I didn't think it bothered me that much we've only been there a few months but after four days so far in Manhattan I'm just longing for silence absolute silence and I'm thinking about my home and thinking can I actually settle there forever because I'm realizing how strong that longing for silence, absolute silence. And I'm thinking about my home and thinking, can I actually settle there forever? Because I'm realising how strong that longing for silence is.

I thought that my desire for accessibility was stronger than my longing for silence. But after four days in Manhattan, I'm starting to think, oh, I just want to be in the bush somewhere. So I think that to live here, you know, thankfully we're staying near Central Park. You have to make that conscious effort to get grounded in nature as regularly as you can. That's the only way you can stay balanced, I think, in this environment. And it offers so much, so many fabulous other things that we're here for a month,

and I'm certainly going to embrace it as much as I can. But already in this first week, I've realized how important it's going to be to reconnect with nature as regularly as possible. Yeah, I so agree with that. I mean, it's one of the reasons why we picked where we live in the city is because we have both the water and, you know, one of the largest green parks in the world, two, three blocks from me. But even with that, we've been working really hard on a bunch

of projects on our side. And we literally, we got in a car two weeks ago and just, we rented a barn out in Woodstock, New York, you know, two and a half hours out in the country with a couple acres of land. And we were still working. We weren't taking a vacation. But we just needed to get out of the stimulation of the city to just be away for a week. I think we're feeling it in our bones, in our body, in our nervous system. Yeah, and I think we have to listen to our bodies with that. We certainly do because they're warning signals and if we can maintain that sense of balance then we can really embrace all of the wonderful things cities do offer but at the same

time not lose ourselves in the process of of the madness yeah. So speaking of losing yourself in the process of madness, you, and tell me if I'm correct here, if I'm missing steps, please feel free to let me know. You grew up in all this beautiful open space in Australia and then somehow found your way into the world of banking, which I had when I first became aware of you. When I first saw that, I was, wow, it kind of came out of left field to me. Yes. Well, my dad was a songwriter and an accountant. And in those days...

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can't just let that go. So you grew up on a farm with a dad who was a songwriter and an accountant. Yes. Take me a little bit deeper into this. And a farmer as well. Started off being a songwriter and a guitarist. He was a very well-known guitarist in the 1950s in the Australian,

one of the pioneers of the Australian country music scene. But he also had a great head for numbers, so he was an historian as well and then became an accountant. And so his main jobs were, his main income was through accounting because initially he was gigging six days a week and then Mum had a whole tribe of kids and she needed him home more regularly. And so he let go of a lot of his life performing

and then became an accountant and just did songwriting on the side for a lot of the other musicians. And he was also a radio announcer as well. And so we had this very conservative, structured lifestyle in some ways. We had the freedom of the farm but but dad had a monday to friday job and but then on weekends or um for extended times we'd get all these what we call hillbillies country music singers turning up and camping on our farm for three to six months oh my god how amazing was that yeah it was it was fabulous it's like your own mini wood star yeah all the time as soon as one caravan would go it'd be only a few months

and there'd be someone else staying and these were some of the most famous people in the country music scene in say the 70s and in those days they used to just travel australia in their caravans and they'd stop for three months write new songs regroup themselves a bit and then off they'd go again that was the lifestyle and so they'd all come into the house and say oh I wrote a great song last night and dad would get out his guitar and they'd play and then he'd interview them on his shows or he'd play their music on his radio shows and then they'd disappear and then we'd just be this family with no music because dad was really closed with it when other people weren't around and so then we'd just be this regular family with

an accountant as a father and then all all of a sudden they'd come back again it's like oh this is fantastic you know so so i had those influences those real polarities of of the artistic life and the corporate conventional life and so when i left school in those days you pretty much got married and had children or you went to college and you know i finished school in 1984 and so that they were sort of the options and my intention was to get a job for a year and then go to college. But in that year I got used to not studying and earning money and moving in a whole different crowd. And so that first year, my job, I just got a job straight from school. I went into a bank in my hometown and I said to them,

I want a job in Sydney with your bank. And apparently my determination was I don't know what it was that the guy just knew that I'd be okay with it and interviewed me rang my parents said is it okay if we send Bronnie to Sydney for a job and they said oh okay fine yeah and so pretty much two weeks after I finished school I I moved to Sydney and lived with my grandmother and started my banking career and then spent the next 15 years fighting this call to be an artist and a creative person all because I thought I was meant to be a banker. So what was that deeper call about? Did you feel that even from the time you you know you before you made that decision

about banking i think well the call wasn't that obvious to me at the time what it what was obvious was my dissatisfaction in working a monday to friday life and a life where i loved banking in the sense that i love customer service so i loved, but I didn't love the sales aspect of selling products I couldn't care less about. And so there was just this growing discontent and very painful discontent after years. And so I kept moving from town to town. I became very nomadic, and I think I didn't spend anywhere longer than two years in 27 years so I I moved a lot and just ran away from this restlessness until it caught up on me and yeah so so I think it was just that discontent was was my calling and it wasn't until I started

working through that that I realized my calling was to write and inspire. And yeah, and thankfully, I finally faced the courage to do that. Yeah. What's interesting to me, too, is that, I mean, we tend to spend so I think we're so ingrained to follow the expectations of others, that even when we know that something's not quite right, and it seems like clearly, I mean, if you've just had this enduring sense of restlessness, it's like, it sounds like your approach to trying to resolve it was to, you know, geographically move. Yes. Figuring like maybe that's what's actually going on here. But, you know, I've had so many

conversations with people where we endure some experience of restlessness like that or dissatisfaction for so long. And I often wonder, why? Why do we so often endure that for such an extended period of time? I think what happens is we've got to wait until it becomes too painful we don't allow ourselves to be pulled forward by the thought of pleasure as much as be pushed forward by the feelings of pain and you know it's it is so much shaped by the expectations of others and I knew if I left the banking industry that I'd be up for for criticism and strong opinions from people who did influence me in those days and people in the family and other people.

And it took a lot of courage and a lot of pain, you know, to actually realise that the pain was unbearable so that it was time, no matter how painful the opinions of others were going to be, they were never going to be as painful as my own pain in not being true to my own calling so I think pain is is the bigger catalyst than pleasure rather than try and focus on how great it would be to have a job I loved it took in my case and I think in most cases I've come across, it was actually when the pain becomes unbearable that you finally find the courage to make the changes. Yeah.

In your story, in your journey, was there a moment of sort of reckoning or awakening or was just sort of a slow building and it just, you hit a point where you just said no more? Oh, there were a lot of moments moments but a lot of slow building also i think the turning point was was one day i was reading creative visualization by shakti goen and i think that's how i pronounce her name i think so too but i don't know for sure at least we're together on that yes yeah i was. I was living in Perth in Western Australia at the time, and I was shopping every week. I'd buy a book from a shop called The Inspiration Factory, and I was catching a train back and forth to whatever my banking job was at the time,

but it meant that I was reading a lot of books. And so in that book it said make a list of what you're good at and what you like to do, and the only things that really fell in both were creative things like photography and writing and, funnily, counting money, but that was more to do with maths. I enjoyed maths. But it was clear that mathematics wasn't actually making me happy because I was doing plenty of counting in banks.

And so when I eliminated that, I realised that the only two things that fell in both were writing and photography, that I considered myself good at them, you know, and even admitting that to myself took courage. And I loved doing them both. And it was a turning point because I thought, dare I think I could actually be a creative person? Like, am I one of, you know, do I fit in an artist category here? Hang on, you know, I've just spent all these years in

banking and did really well in banking I actually moved up the ranks quite fast because I because I changed banks and locations so often I had this vast experience and so I was very employable in every new town so I actually had quite an accelerated career path. And all of a sudden I just thought, you know, I might be an artist. You know, could I really be an artist? And, yeah, so from then I began collating all my photos and writing quotes with them and selling them at markets. And from that point it took a couple of years, another year or two to start selling them at markets.

And then, yeah I think it for another 14 years then I I kept going with that until I I actually started making a living as a creative person but that led me through looking after dying people to fund my creative journey it led me through being a songwriter teaching in a women's prison teaching songwriting in a women's prison and becoming an author so it was that was a long journey as well but I think all of it was possibly that was probably the main turning point was was that acknowledging that I I'm actually an artist not a corporate person I mean it's so interesting, too, because you were brought up in a house with a dad who was essentially this role model of living both lives. know the nine to five the business life as soon as it was time to you know quote be a grown-up and take care of the family with the exception of these artists who would pass through for a window of time and then kind of vanish into the ether but that it it seems like that that still wasn't

enough for to sort of like allow you the internal permission to say well i could actually step into this full time it took quite a journey you're spot on there because he didn't give himself that permission to yeah it was almost like the it was almost like the opposite yeah and so for me to do that it was basically going against everything all of the examples that had been set for me growing up and it was new territory it was shattering the family mold and all my siblings were in corporate roles as well. There were no artists in the family, despite all of that, that Dad was an artist. And a fabulous one, you know.

He just denied himself that pleasure. Yeah, so, yeah, you're right. I did have to break those mould, and it was hard work. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. What's interesting also is that, you know, a lot of artists feel like for them to have the raw material to create their great work, whether it's writing or painting or photography, they've got to live a raw, tough life. They've got to endure life unfiltered and which very often involves struggle. And there are a lot of people who feel like to the extent where, you know, they need to actually, if they don't wander into deep struggle, they need to create

it and to really do their best work and to be exposed to suffering, deep personal suffering. You took an interesting route. You chose for the better part of 10 years, eight years or so from what I remember, to place yourself in the realm of intense suffering of others. Yeah. Well, I was doing some intense suffering of myself at the time as well. Talk to me about how these play together. Yeah, well, I didn't realize, and this is where we need to be reminded that life really is perfect. I had no idea that when I went to work with dying people

that it was actually hooked up to my creative journey. I initially became a carer so that I didn't have to pay rent or a mortgage so that I could work on my creative journey, and I saw them as two very separate things. One was to earn an income by doing a job with heart, and then the other was my creative side. And so through all of these years of looking after dying people, I was trying to build myself up as a songwriter and working through my own healing.

But as the dying people shared their regrets with me and their own pain, I was healing levels of myself that I didn't even know needed healing. And their regrets gave me permission to break free of the boundaries that were holding me you know all of the the locks I had around myself because I could see their anguish and their own suffering and so because I was exposed to these lessons repeatedly over the years I was able to incorporate them into myself and my own being. And it was just incredible the level of healing I went through with them without even being conscious of it, always conscious of it at the time. Sometimes I was, but at other times I'd look back and realize

I'd actually broken through another level of hindrances in myself all based upon what they'd been sharing with me. Maybe we should just get a little bit of context before for those who sort of don't know your name or don't know your broader journey. You spent some eight years or so in palliative care, literally living with people who were in the final stages of their life, first as a companion, and then eventually even receive training in palliative care, which is literally being the person who's with somebody near around the clock as they're leaving the earth.

Yes. I mean, there's so much to learn and so much to dive into in that experience. But one of the things that comes to me immediately is just the personal toll that it can take on you to move through that process once. You would imagine so many people, it would just be so both profound yet deeply emptying at the same time. But then to actually build a career where you do it over and over and over and over talk to me about this a little bit I don't think I realized the personal toll it took to the full I didn't realize to the full extent how much a toll it was taking until after towards

the end of that time those years each time I'd be with someone I knew that I gave my all and I felt so blessed and honored to be doing the role so there was a lot of receiving as well it wasn't all all giving and because the people I was caring for were dying and they were often fed up and certainly ready to die by the time they died it made it easier for me to let go because i knew they were free then their their bodies had stopped causing them pain and so in that sense there was always an element of relief for them and happiness for them and there were always tears for me once they had died but i deliberately would take a bit of time off one sometimes a few days, sometimes at least a week or two weeks even, before I'd take on another client. I was working for an agency and so I would make myself unavailable immediately after that.

Because often once it got really close to the person's passing, they didn't want the other carers, they just wanted their main carer, which is the role that I played. And so it was around the clock and really enormous, an enormous demand. But I wanted to be there because I grew to love them. I was with them for some people only a few weeks, but for most of them between 8 and 12 weeks and so in those few couple of months we got to know each other really well because we weren't there's no room for trivia you're just straight to the core of important things and so I did grow to love my patients so individually as as well as you know as my role as their carer but I did have that break in between

and then I'd go back and do some more go and look after the next person and then I'd have a break and then occasionally I'd just take a few weeks off and I was also doing a lot of house sitting at the time so I was relocating regularly and so if a house it didn't come up it often happened that I had nowhere to live after the person died and so I'd just take a few weeks and go and visit someone and really recharge and then I'd go back into the city for the next client and the next house sit and some of the clients I was staying with overnight but a lot of them I'd just do 12 hour shifts and then go home and come back again so I'd go home go home at night and come back at 8 in the morning,

which is pretty much living there anyway. But like I say, in the last week or two, they often wanted me around the clock. So it was an enormous personal toll, but the richness of my experiences kept that subdued until towards the end when I actually started heading to quite a big burnout. Yeah, understandably. Yeah, I mean, people who do that for life, I'm kind of awestruck by, even for the amount of time that you did.

I think it's a great practice of detached compassion. Yeah. You have to learn detached compassion where you certainly feel compassion, but you have to understand that that's their path and even the suffering at the end is a part of their journey and it brings its own lessons. So, yeah, I think that that's really the only way you can look at that and not take it all, not take everything on.

Yeah. Yeah. A friend of mine is a neuroscientist and a physician and a psychiatrist. And he once described to me, he said, you know, what a lot of people don't understand is there's a difference between, and I don't remember if I'm going to get his languaging right, but I believe he called it cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. Sure. Yeah. I believe he called it cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. Sure, yeah. And he said emotional empathy is that you literally feel what the other person is feeling. Cognitive empathy is that you understand cognitively what they're feeling.

You may have felt it yourself before, but you don't feel it simultaneously with them. He said it's important to understand that that distinction and to then be able to cultivate the cognitive and not just the emotional because if it's emotional and you feel what they feel on the almost on the level they feel it you know you'll you'll be similarly incapable of action to remove yourself from that whereas you know on the cognitive side you can still be in service of you know you can feel it sounds like still be in service of you know you can feel it sounds like that's a lot of what you're talking about i think i grew from one to the other i certainly started off with the emotional empathy and i carried it in some ways i think that's what made me a good carer because i i could relate to them on such an empathetic level but at the same

time if i was going to endure and look after myself and truly be a good carer then I had to learn the other way and so over the years I certainly wouldn't say my heart hardened if anything my heart opened and softened even more but yes I did grow more from the emotional empathy into the cognitive I think which is in some ways just another form detached compassion another word for detached compassion. Different language, same experience. So through that experience, and you write about one of the people that you cared for, you became very close to, a woman named Grace.

And it sounds like that may have been a bit of the touch point that really started you thinking about what are some of the big shared lessons, an experience that she shared with you and then a promise that she had you make to her would you mind sharing a bit about that no for all of the patients that i looked after she still remains my favorite you know or one of my most favorite i just loved her dearly and she had stayed in an incredibly happy marriage under quite a dictatorship sort of relationship and and then within a few weeks of her husband having to go into a nursing home into

because he was too frail she was diagnosed with terminal illness and so she never actually got to do anything that she wanted in her life. And she had always thought that perhaps once he died, she might get to do a bit of travel with her family or whatever. And she was 86, I think, when I met her. Yeah, and her illness was very aggressive as well. And there was just no time. She didn't have even, you know, really a few weeks to go shopping or plan a holiday. It all just happened.

By the time the dust settled from her husband going into care, she was not feeling well and she was diagnosed and it just took hold and she was in a huge state of anguish for not having had the courage to live how she'd wanted to live. And she'd stayed with the expectations of her generation and never really ventured out of that. And she held my hand so tightly and fiercely one day and made me promise her that I would never do the same, that I would have the courage to live a life true to myself

and to do whatever my heart called me to do. And we were both crying at the time and and I promised her that I would and even without the promise I would have anyway because I could feel her intense anguish and heartache it was just wrenching and just she was just in so much pain and regret for the way she she'd chosen to live her life or not made the choices you know and just let life carry her along that that had a huge enough effect on me that I would have honored that anyway but then I did also commit to promise you know to a promise with her and yeah there's there's no way I could have not honored that promise because I I've learned

through the pain of not only her but including her of people having that regret of just not honoring what their heart's calling them to do and I've seen how how painful that is and there's no way I'm going to subject myself to that so you know being shown that firsthand has helped me has given me the courage to to break through whatever fears and conditioning I I had around my own path um to actually be now living an incredibly true calling yeah it's uh it's it's yeah that that day changed my life forever yeah yeah it's um yeah i think in our culture we're so terrified of thinking about death visiting in it in any way acknowledging that you know it it is the only thing we know for certain. Yes. Death and taxes, right? Taxes, yeah. You know, and Steve Jobs' sort of famous Stanford Commencement speech is referenced oftentimes that, you know, death is life's greatest creation.

Yes. Because it reminds you that we are impermanent and the time you spend on the planet, it's got to be spent well. But we don't like to go there. We really just, I don't know whether it's, it feels too morbid to me. I don't like to go there. I don't like to dwell on it. But I do remind myself on a pretty regular basis just of the notion of impermanence, not just of me, but of those around me.

Because you don't, you just don't know. Well, you don't. And it's, you know, it's great to face it. It's such a gift to ourselves if we can face the fact that our time here, whether you believe in reincarnation or not, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are beyond. The facts are that our time in this lifetime is finite. You know, it doesn't go forever.

And as you say, the same of those we love. And if we can actually recognise that time is a gift, you know, it's such an immense gift, and it's not an ongoing gift. And so from that perspective, if we can face those facts, and for me, you know, being around dying people has made me look at the fact that, sure, I'm definitely going to die. I'm not going to waste a minute of my life doing anything other than honoring where my life's calling. And the beauty is that not only does our heart call us to a place that can offer us immense happiness, it always calls us to serve anyway but first we need to learn how to honor our own calling because serving without honoring our own happiness is not balanced it's not going

to bring happiness and life wants us to be happy so you know if we can face the fact that we are going to die and that now is is so this moment of now is is so important every moment of now not just when we've done this or when this happens but right now this is this is a a time of possibility this this very ball of time we've got in our hands right at this moment so you know by facing death it's it really can be a fabulous tool for living yeah i want to go into what you also just shared which is you make a distinction between that which you're called to do and serving or being of service talk to me more about that yeah sorry i did go just because it's interesting but i think it's i think i know what

you mean by it but i just want to make sure and i think it's really important distinction well you know a lot of people feel that if they do what their heart want what they want which is what you know their heart's voice is is their their calling and so if they honor that that desire they feel it can be selfish and and it's not at all because if you truly honor it each step reveals the next you don't know have to know all the the journey you just you know follow the next step in the next step and as each step reveals itself the more you're able to honor that voice of that that calling from your heart the more it then calls you to serve anyway because our happiness ultimately lies in helping others.

And we may not go into it with such noble intentions. We may just go into it thinking, well, I've always wanted to travel to this country. I can't shake it there's just something about this country that makes me want to go there and so eventually you you you go there and whatever feeling that's going to give you that's going to lead you to the next step it may help you realize okay you know i've got that out of my system now i'm free to actually do this or it might be what i've learned about myself through doing this trip is going to lead me to the next step ultimately it doesn't matter

ultimately every step you take in honoring your heart's voice in some way or another will pull you to serving other people but if you just have a call to serve other people but you you suppress all the desires in yourself then you will burn out i did that i i say this from firsthand experience because i was i was serving without honoring all of my own needs i was trying to and it and eventually as i said earlier i did but yeah it's just one step at a time follow Follow your heart's voice, and it will call us to serve because that's the way the world works. We're here to serve, and in doing so, we become our best self, and that's what life wants from all of us.

But we can only become our best self by honoring our heart and serving. 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So at some point, your creative world and your service heart also merge. And you're living a fairly private life, serving these people who are in their final parts of life. Also, as much as you can with whatever you have available, trying to honor that artist in you, that inner creator, the writer and the photographer.

And it seems like those two worlds meet when you decide to sit down one day and write about these patterns that you're seeing, the shared regrets of the people who you've served for so long, which then you shared online and it massively exploded into the world's consciousness as the only top five regrets of the dying. What was it that moved you at that moment in time to say, I've seen this process enough times, I've seen the pattern enough times, that I need to sit down and use my writer's mind and my writer's voice to put these together and to turn around and

share them? It was life signposts, really. I had just finished working with dying people. I'd wanted to work where there was some hope. And so through one of the friends from one of my dying patients, I was able to secure funding to set up a program to teach songwriting in a women's jail, which was completely different, but I thought at least I was earning doing something creative. That was the next step. And so I'd just begun teaching in a jail, and was playing, I was a singer-songwriter by then and I was playing at a festival and an editor of a music magazine said,

write me a story about teaching in the jail and we'll publish it. And so when I wrote this article, I thought to myself, why aren't I writing more? I love writing. You know I this is crazy why I've always written as a child and why aren't I writing I was a songwriter I was writing quotes that went with photos but I'd never seen myself actually as a writer until that moment and

so I thought oh well I'll start a blog and uh and so I put that article about the songwriting on as my first blog and then it took a little while to set the blog up over a couple of weeks. And then I just thought, well, what do I write about now? And I was sitting outside on the veranda one day. I was living in the Blue Mountains at the time, just west of Sydney. And I thought, what am I going to write about? And I just got very clear guidance write what you know and I thought okay well what I know is the effects that dying people have had on me and

that's how it actually came up it wasn't that every person had regrets a lot did more did than didn't but it was that the regrets that dying people had shared with me were what had the most profound effect on me for all of those years of looking after them. So there was no consciousness at all of how the article would be received. It was just, OK, well, I'll write a blog. And when I wrote down all the regrets, and I'd also written a journal for all of those years while I was looking after the dying people,

so I had I had you know books and books of things they'd shared with me and uh yeah so I just sat down and wrote about their regrets because that is what had affected me most personally and and that was it and I posted it thought no more of it got on with teaching and burned out a bit. And then about six months later, the blog took off. And yeah, the rest is history. And just for those who haven't read, I've just printed out quickly what those five were, just so that I can share with people. I should have brought my reading glasses.

The first was what we had actually just spoken about, which is I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. The second was, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. The third, I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. And the fourth is, I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. And finally, I wish I had let myself be happier. Rather than sort of going into each one of those independently, because I'm guessing at this point, you've probably had that conversation to death. I've been on the other side of the microphone sometimes. And I think, you know, each of the five are beautiful. They're fairly self-evident,

and there are gorgeous stories around each of them. I'm curious. I love the fact that you wrote this and you put it out there also and then it just sat. Yes. You know, and then just sort of out of the, had you largely just forgotten about it

and then out of the ether? There were a couple of people in the first few months found it and asked could they share it and I said yes, as long as it comes back with a link to my blog and i just kept writing i think a lot of things come in life or everything in life comes down to readiness and timing at the time that i wrote it i wasn't ready for the success that it was going to offer me so after i looked after the uh taught in the jail coming from dying people to teaching in

a jail i then burned out and went through a period of suicidal depression so it was a huge burnout and so it was only after i was pulling myself through that and and in that time i moved to a farm and lived by a creek and really dropped out for a while so it was only as I was coming through that and I was I'd been writing a blog all the way through and I was a lot clearer in my writing journey then and that's when it took off and so I wasn't I had to go through that catharsis of healing before I was ready to deal with the level of exposure that the article was going to bring my way. I didn't have any more to give. And had the article taken off when I first wrote it,

it would have killed me emotionally because I just didn't have anything else to give. And in that six months of burning out, I wasn't capable of doing anything but learning how to nurture myself instead of giving to everyone else. I had to learn to give to myself and fight all those parts of myself that didn't know how to receive. And so it was only once I reached that place of readiness to receive and to be able to accept that life was calling me into a more public role, that then the doors opened.

And it was pretty much as soon as I said, okay, life, I'll do whatever you want, God, I'll be your instrument. And whatever message I'm meant to share with the world bring it through let's do it and little did i know it had already been brought through i just and and it was almost instant after that the the article took off and uh took off and took off in a huge huge way something like eight million views in the first three years. Wow. Yeah, which is astonishing. It's surreal, right? Are you open?

Because I'm curious what you said you moved into a place during those six months of suicidal, I guess what they would now call suicidal ideation and deep depression. Yeah. Because it seemed like you had already made a decision to leave the thing that had really been emptying you and try and transition to. Yes. What was it that kept deepening you into that place then? And how did you move out of it?

What made the transition? I think that I had so much pain. I was still carrying burdens of pain from my past. I'd been a black sheep and I had to give myself permission to be the black sheep. Tell me what you mean by black sheep. It might be an Australian thing like the black sheep in the family, the one that stands out amongst everyone else, that you're different to the rest of the clan. And so, you know, I was the sheep in the family the one that stands out amongst everyone else that you're different to the rest of the clan and so you know I was the artist in the family I was the nomadic

one I wasn't settled I was restless I was all of these things which in hindsight now it's like as who I am now it's like great fantastic you know but back then I was so shaped by the expectations of others and the fear of more ridicule if I dared to step out and be who I was that I had to be completely... I had to be shattered completely to really get rid of those, that shell around me and to let my true light shine. And so I think that's why I did slide down that far, even though I thought I was already moving forward by teaching in the jail.

It was only, yeah, just a temporary medication on top in a way. I had to go through, I had to go to the bottom to come to the top, you know, to start a brand new path. And I did. And what I did through that time was I wrote a lot I hung out with the seasons you know I just I had a creek flowing I was on a 2,000 acre farm found an amazing little cottage to rent um and I just moved with the days and the rhythm of nature I cried solidly you know I think well with depression you know I didn't

didn't realize I had it I was just had a lot of tears and then I went and sought help and my counselor said to me you've got you've obviously got depression and I'm like I haven't got depression you know and I'm crying and and I said oh the doctor reckons I've got depression I don't have depression. She's saying, well, is this happening? Is this happening? I said, yep, yep, yep. I don't have the energy to give anymore.

I just can't be bothered. All I want to do is cry. I don't want to eat properly, whatever. I wake up crying. That was the hardest bit that I would, before I'd even had a conscious thought for the day, I would already before I'd even had a conscious thought for the day, I would already be crying. The minute I woke up, I was crying. And that was, you know, that's healing from a level well beyond your consciousness. It was such a cleansing time. And, yeah, and I just worked my way through it

and lovingly looked after myself in a way that I had looked after my patients. I started nurturing myself with that same level of tenderness and gentleness and I swam a lot. I found an ocean pool, you know, a pool with ocean water coming in and I went there a lot and swam and walked and, yeah. And then once I was ready to get back into life, I started playing music at children's preschools instead of pubs and clubs to a whole different audience.

In prisons. Yeah, in prison, that's right. So I just decided to be around children and just did much more positive things. And then my blog took off. I ended up writing a book. Yeah, and went from there. It's amazing the way that when, I'm not an overly metaphysical person, but when you hear certain things, you're sort of like, where the timing is just too much.

Yeah, you're kind of like, okay, maybe there's something bigger going on at the moment, when you decided, when that took off, was that also something where you wanted to really spend a lot of time now writing and creating and make that the focus? I just wanted to love my work more than anything. That was the driving force. I just wanted to love my work. And I loved the idea of working from home. That was a big part of it too because home was becoming a stronger and stronger desire after so many years of moving around uh yeah so I um I think

it was just a fact of of loving loving my work and but what you said about timing is is is crucial you know I wasn't ready before and as that that took off, I then wrote my book. I released it independently. And I ended up meeting a partner and falling pregnant the second month we tried. I was 44 at the time. So it was a whole life-changing time and but the um in the month or two before my baby was due the my independently published book five regrets of the dying had had taken off

like crazy and uh and then i was doing the night before she was born i was it took off to a whole new level the few days before she was born and so i was um doing interviews from my hospital bed while i was in labor like all around the world and i'm doing like email ones with the phone you know all of it and i turned off my phone at 11 o'clock at night and I was in labour and there were still more interviews to do and I was so I was so sad because I'd worked for 14 years as an artist to start making a living and finally I was given that opportunity but now I was a mum I was about to become a mother and that was way more important to me and I wanted to be present with that. So the night before my daughter was born, I just sent out a huge,

well, it wasn't even a prayer, it was a demand really. It was just like, I need help now. This is too much. I can't do this on my own anymore. And then my daughter was born the next morning while the midwife's getting me ready while I'd finished off the last couple of email interviews. Well, you know, it was just awful.

It was just the whole trying to serve two masters of career and motherhood. And then I gave birth to my baby, my darling little girl, Eleanor, and within 24 hours of her being born, Hay House rang me up out of the blue, who was my dream publishing house, and offered me a contract, an international publishing contract. And my book is now in 27 languages. And so I was in hospital for five days. And so by the time I left the hospital, I had a baby and a publishing contract.

Yeah, you had two babies I do they're both birthing and you know again it comes down to that readiness and timing because I was doing it all on my own and um not realizing how much I needed help as as my my work was growing gaining momentum and then finally you know it got to that point where the pain of having too much going on was you know where i've just said no no more i i need help here and and i was never that um determined prior to that i thought i wouldn't mind help but finally i reached that crucial point where i just said no enough i enough, I'm not doing this anymore. And so, yeah, what you say about timing, yeah. So here's where my mind is going with this.

I mean, other than the visualization of you being in labor or on the phone doing interviews. It was shocking. It was awful. Here's the question that comes to me which is because it's been a pattern a couple of times with you and it's also it's been a pattern through

so many of the conversations I've been blessed to have with incredible people over the years now and the question has stayed with me and it's coming up again in this conversation with you which is do we have to reach that point in order to make the decisions and take the actions that allow us to live from that moment forward differently and or for the universe to rise up and support our desire to do so? Or can we somehow move through those moments with more ease

and still end up in the same place? I'm curious what you think about that. I love that question. We don't have to go through all that pain, but what we do have to go through is a place that brings us to that realization so that I don't go through that pain now to make such decisions. I know that I have to honour myself and in doing so things just come to me faster and faster

by honouring myself without all that pain of reaching breaking point. But I had to go through an awful lot to reach that point in myself where I give myself that permission and so yeah we don't have to go through the suffering and the pain to make those decisions but you know I'm not going to say we have to go through the suffering and pain to reach that place, but I am going to say that. We have to go through whatever our growth is to reach a place where we give ourselves permission. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. You used the word earlier in our conversation, shattered. Yes. And that exact word has come up many times in conversation. And it's almost like the pieces have to come apart. You can't reassemble a puzzle that's already whole. Even if it's whole and the picture on the puzzle

is one of torment. You can't take that puzzle and move the pieces around to create a picture of joy or grace or ease when the puzzle remains whole. It's like you have to shatter the pieces and all of them have to end up on the floor. You can't just have one. So I guess then the question is,

so it's like the shattering, the breaking apart of the current reality has to happen but then the question is can you do that through you know what is the the inciting incident and does it have to be one of great pain or can it be one where in some way you experience it more gently you know uh i don't know the answer to that i've seen a lot of examples of pain yes the pain all comes down to the willingness you know the resistance to surrendering yeah you know that's that's all it is and you know and we can reach that place where we are willing to surrender and most of us only reach it through pain then there's yeah there's there's no resistance because

you know you're fine if you've surrendered you you go with it and you give yourself permission and your trust and and get on with it but until we reach that place where we're resistant to to surrendering to our better self you know which is the bottom line then there's always going to be pain so perhaps that shattering is is an essential part of it of the journey yeah unfortunately well fortunately fortunately yeah maybe the shattering is our surrender to the truth of uncertainty absolutely and we think we've got it all worked out before that perhaps but um but the uncertainty is where the magic happens yeah Yeah, so agree. It's where possibility lies.

Oh, it's just... Terrifying, but it's where possibility lies. Yeah, when I think of how I live now and how many blessings flow so easily and naturally to me without much conscious thought at all, it just makes me immensely grateful that I face going through that time, you know, and let myself be shattered. Yeah. Which is a beautiful place, I think, for us to come full circle.

So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Just be happy. Just be happy. Give yourself permission to be happy. Just be happy. Yeah. I could go yourself permission to be happy. Just be happy. Yeah. I could go on and on about happiness, but that's the bottom line.

Make a choice every day as best you can towards happiness. Yeah. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool

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