Good Life Project - Bronnie Ware: Beyond the 5 Regrets of the Dying

Episode Date: November 16, 2015

In November 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.She had noticed that the same basic set of profound regrets kept coming up, 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 to an international bestselling book, The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, along with a frenzy of attention, travel and the start of a new career as a writer.Those regrets have since been discussed and deconstructed many times. They are important reminders of what truly matters in life.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 Bronnie 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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 if we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need them. Y'all need a pilot? 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. Today's guest, Bronnie Ware, kind of exploded into the public's consciousness a couple of years back with a very simple blog post that she wrote. She had spent a number of years in palliative care, and she started noticing that there were common patterns,

that there were common things and stories that they would share. And among them were a series of common regrets. And she shared the most common regrets in a post that absolutely exploded. It resonated so powerfully with millions and millions of people in the online world, which then turned around to become this huge internationally bestselling book. And I had the opportunity to actually sit down with Bronnie as she came to New York and dive not just into the five regrets, because those have certainly been covered a lot. But I got really curious. What's the deeper story here?

What was her journey? What brought her to that point? How has that changed her? And what does she plan to do moving forward? And it really turned into a beautiful conversation where I learned a ton, not just about her, but about what really matters in life. I hope you enjoy it as well. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. It's so fun to be hanging out with you. I'm trying to remember. I think I posted something that referenced something from you, right?

And then you chimed in in the comments. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. Do you remember what it was? I wonder if, Bronnie, it was something about how I structured my article and whether I was perceiving how, considering how it would be perceived afterwards when I named it what I did. And then someone brought it to my attention, one of my friends. And when I looked on board, then I emailed you and said, no, I wasn't. You were right. I wasn't actually thinking that.

That's right. That's right. I think was uh the post on moving people versus creating content that's it that's it right you're right yes yeah and I was referencing all these you know like beautiful creators who really did it you know not because they thought to themselves well would this be a good formula like would the five regrets be like yeah I'm gonna do that because maybe it should be seven regrets. So it goes more viral. And it was none of that at all. I was just writing it and wrote what I was guided to write.

And that was it. The seed was planted. Yeah. How did I know? That's so beautiful. So 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. 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, really 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, it's a pretty good way for a teenager to spend their evenings instead of running crazy in the wrong crowds or whatever. So even out in the country, 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 lived so far from the bus stop that all the farm kids surrounding, there were 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 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 it was a simple upbringing in those ways. It was beautiful.

Big sunsets, big sunrises. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's funny, too, because we're sitting here recording this in my home studio 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. I've recently, in Australia, I've recently moved to an area that's quite residential because I want accessibility and but still within 10 minutes drive I can be in cane fields by a river so it's not extremely residential but there are neighbours 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.

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 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 in the 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 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, you know, be away for a week to kind of just, 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 the madness.

Indeed. So speaking of losing yourself in the process of madness, you went, 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. Yes. 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 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. I 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 a 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 went 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 Dad had a Monday to Friday job. But then on weekends or 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 I got used to um not studying and earning money and 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 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 that okay if we send Bronnie to Sydney for a job and they said oh okay, okay, fine, yeah. And so pretty much two weeks after I finished school, 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 a deeper call about? Did you feel that even from the time before you made that decision about banking? I think, well, the call wasn't that obvious to me at the time. 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 people, 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 moved a lot and just ran away from this restlessness until it caught up on me. And yeah, 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 finally yes 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 just had this enduring sense of restlessness it's like it sounds like your approach to trying to to resolve it was to you 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, you know, like, why? Why? Like, 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 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 um who did influence me in those days and people in the family and and other people and and it took a lot of a lot of courage and a lot of pain you know to actually realize that the pain was 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 to make the changes yeah in in your in your story in your journey was there a moment of sort of reckoning or awakening, or was it just sort of a slow building and you hit a point where you just said no more? Oh, there were a lot of moments, but a lot of slow building also. I think the turning point 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 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 realized that the only two things that fell in both were writing and photography that I was I consider 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 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. 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 for another 14 years then I kept going with that until 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 that was a long journey as well.

But I think all of it was possibly, that was probably the main turning point, was acknowledging that 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. But at the same time, I guess the way you described it, you also saw him essentially give up the pure artistic life in the name of the nine-to-five, the business life, as soon as it was time to, 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 it seems like that still wasn't enough to sort of 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 enjoy it. 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 mould.

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 yeah you're right i i did have to um have to break those molds and and it was hard work yeah and 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, which very often involves struggle. And there are a lot of people who feel like to the extent where 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 and how.

Yeah, well, I didn't realize, and this is where we need to be reminded that life really is perfect. You know, 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 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 received 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. That's, 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 know you you would imagine so many people it would just be so both profound yet 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 at night and come back at 8 in the morning which is pretty much living there anyway and uh but like i say in those last in the last week or two they often wanted me around the clock so it was um it was an enormous personal toll but the richness of my experiences kept that subdued until towards the end when i i actually started heading to quite a big burnout yeah understandably yeah i mean that's people who do that for life i just i'm kind of awestruck by um even and even for the amount of time that you did yeah 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. 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 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, almost on the level they feel it, you'll be similarly incapable of action to remove yourself from that.

Whereas on the cognitive side, you can still be in service of. You can feel it. 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 of 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 sort of like 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 made to her would you mind sharing a bit about that you know 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 um stayed in an incredibly happy marriage um under quite a dictatorship sort of relationship and uh and then within a few weeks of her husband having to go into a nursing home into um 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 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 she the dust settled from her husband going into care she was not feeling well and she was diagnosed and and it just took took hold and she was in a huge state of anguish for not having had the courage to

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 had a huge enough effect on me that I would have honoured that anyway. But then I did also commit to a promise with her and, yeah, there's no way I could have not honoured that promise because I've learnt through the pain of not only her but including her of people having that regret of just not honouring what their heart's calling them to do and I've seen how painful that is and there's no way I'm going to subject myself to that. So being shown that first hand has 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 day changed my life forever. Yeah. Yeah, I think in our culture, we're so terrified of thinking about death, visiting it in any way, acknowledging that, you know, it is the only thing we know for certain. Yes. Death and taxes, right?

And 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 is, 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. It's, I 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. It doesn't go forever, and as you say, the same of those we love. And if we can actually recognize 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 honour our own calling because serving without honouring 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 so... This moment of now is so important, every moment of now, not just when we've done this or when this happens, but right now, this is a time of possibility, this very ball of time we've got in our hands right at this moment. So, you know, by facing death, it really can be a fabulous tool for living. 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 off a little bit there. It's interesting, but I think I know what you mean by it, but I just want to make sure. I think it's interesting, but I think I know what you mean by it, but I just want to make sure. I think it's a really important distinction. Well, you know, a lot of people feel that if they do what they want, which is what their heart's voice is their calling,

and so if they honor that desire, they feel it can be selfish, 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 um 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 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. 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 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 um it was life signposts really i had just finished working with dying people i 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 and which was you know completely different but i thought at least i was earning doing something creative that was that was the next step and so i'd just begun teaching in in a jail and uh i was playing as a singer songwriter by then and um and i was playing at a festival and a 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, this is crazy. 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 um took you know 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 uh just west of Sydney and uh 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 uh and I thought what 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 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 yeah and then about six months later the the blog took off and uh yeah the rest is history yeah and 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, you'd 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 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 it, taught in the jail, coming from dying people to teaching in a jail,

I then burnt 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 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 I didn't have any more to give and had the article taken off when I first wrote it it would it would have killed me emotionally because I just didn't have anything else to give and in that six months of of burning out I I had I wasn't capable of doing anything but learning how to nurture myself instead of giving to everyone else I had to to learn to give to myself and uh and 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, OK, life, I'll do whatever you know, whatever you want, God, just 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 it was almost instant after that the article took off and took off and took off. In a huge, huge, huge way. It had something like 8 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? you into that place then and and how did you how did you move out of it what what were what made the transition i i think that i i had so much um pain i was still carrying burdens of pain from my past i'd been a black sheep and and i i had to give myself permission to be the black sheep

what do you tell me what you mean by that um the it might be an aust 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 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 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 i had to i had to 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. And I just moved with the days and the rhythm of nature i cried solidly you know i think or 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 uh my counselor said to me um you me, you've obviously got depression. And I'm like, I haven't got depression, you know, and I'm crying. And I said, oh, the doctor reckons I've got depression, I don't have depression. And she's saying, well, is this happening? Is this happening? And I said, yep, yep, yep. You know, 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. I mean, that was the hardest bit that I would 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 I just decided to be around children and and just did much more positive things and then my blog took off I ended up writing a book yeah and uh went from there yeah it's amazing the way that when um I'm not an overly metaphysical person but when you hear certain things you're sort of like where the

timing is just yes too too much yeah you're kind of like, okay, there's something bigger going on. Sure, yeah. 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 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. Yeah, so I think it was just a fact of loving my work. But what you said about timing is crucial. You know, I wasn't ready before. And as 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. But in the month or two before my baby was due, my independently published book, Five Regrets of the Dying, had taken off like crazy. And then 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 labor and there was 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 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 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. 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 you had two babies i do both birthing and you know again it comes down to that readiness and timing because i was doing it all on my own and not realising how much I needed help as my work was 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 more, I need help here. And I was never that determined prior to that that i thought i wouldn't mind help but finally i reached that crucial point where i just said no enough i'm not doing this anymore and so yeah what you say about timing yeah so here's here's where my mind is going with this i mean other than the visualization of you being in labor 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 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 honor 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. Like, 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. reach a place where we give ourselves permission yeah does that does that make sense yeah i mean that it's funny you you use the word earlier in a conversation shattered yeah and that that exact word has come up many times in conversation and it's almost like the pieces have to come apart

like you 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. Yes. the pieces and all of them have to end up on the floor you can't just have one yes you know so i guess but then the question is you know does you know that so that'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, 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 all it is. And, you know, when 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

you 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 you know, which is the bottom line, then there's always going to be pain. So perhaps that shattering is an essential part of it, of the journey, yeah, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, fortunately. 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 so agree it's where possibility oh it's just terrifying but it's where possibility yes yeah when i think of how how i live now and how many blessings flow so easily and naturally to me without much conscious thought at all um it just makes me immensely grateful that i face going through that time you know and let myself be shattered yeah which uh is a beautiful place i think for us to come full circle so 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. 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. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks so much for joining in this week's conversation. You know, if you've actually stayed till this point in the conversation, I'm guessing there's a pretty good bet that you've gotten something out of this episode, some nuggets, some idea. If that is right, and you feel like sharing, then by all means, go ahead. We love when you share these conversations and get the word out. And if you wouldn't mind,

I would so appreciate if you would just take a few seconds, jump onto iTunes or use your app and just give us a quick rating or review. When you do that, it helps get the word out, helps let more people know about the conversations we're hosting here, and it gives us all the ability to spread the word and make a bigger difference in more people's lives. As always, thank you so much for your kindness, your wisdom, and your attention. Wishing you a fantastic rest of the week. I'm Jonathan Field, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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