The Mindset Mentor - Don't Regret Your Life

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

In this episode, I am going to teach you the 5 most common regrets of those that are dying so that you can avoid those regrets and live a life you love! Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast. And if you're out there and you love this podcast and you've never given us a rating review, please go to Apple Podcasts on your phone or iTunes and give us a rating review.

The more positive reviews that we get, the more that iTunes and Apple actually shows us to other people so that this podcast can grow organically and more people can find us. So if you could do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Today, we're going to be talking about how to not live a life where you die with regret. And we're going to be talking about the five regrets of the dying. There's a really good book. It's actually called The Five Regrets of the Dying, where there's a nurse, her name is Bronnie.

And Bronnie actually works in something that's called hospice care. Hospice, here in America at least, is when somebody knows they're going to die. They know that they're on their way out and they go to hospice care to actually help facilitate it and make it more comfortable for them. And so this lady was always around people

who knew they were going to die. And they were all terminally ill. And over a period of eight years, the times that she worked there, she noticed some very common regrets that people would have. And she would say that people would open up to her more than they open up to most people in their lives because they knew that they were at the end of their life

and they didn't have anything to hold back anymore. And it's a great book to learn from, or at least this podcast would be great to learn from, from that book so that we can take this and understand if this is what most people die with this regret, maybe we should actually listen to this, take this and realize that we don't want to die with these regrets knowing that it is so common.

And so we're going to go through the five different regrets that people have when they're on their deathbed that are the most common. The first one, which is the one that she found the most, was I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expect of me. So I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expected of me.

This is the most common one. Most people lived lives that just allowed them to fit in. They did what they thought they were supposed to do. They lived a life they thought their parents wanted them to live or what society wanted them to live or what would give them enough money to be able to fit in with the Joneses.

And people don't follow their passions because they're too afraid of what other people might think. They're too afraid of what other people might say. And the main reason why they have this regret is because they lived a life that wasn't true to themselves. They might've had these dreams or these aspirations, but they decided not to follow those dreams or those aspirations or those passions, those things they truly wanted to do simply because a lot of times they were just worried about what other people would think with them. And isn't that, if you actually think about that,

isn't it crazy that we allow ourselves and the way that other people think to drive away what we truly want and we do what we think other people want us to do? Like we have, just think about how crazy this is for a second. We have one life and we're floating on a tiny rock through infinite amount of space that continues to get larger. And there's billions of stars and billions of planets. There's more stars than there

are grains of sand on the earth. And we let the opinions of other people floating on this organic spaceship, traveling 22,000 miles an hour through infinite space dictate what we're going to do with our lives. Like it's really actually crazy if you think about it. And so the thing I want you to realize is if most people that she saw died with the regret of, I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expected of me, what can you get from that? You know, she said before she died, there was a lady named Grace that passed away. And one of the regrets that she had was she said, that she said to Bronnie,

so the lady who was dying, Grace, said to Bronnie, who is the lady who is the nurse, she said, live true to your own heart. Don't worry about what other people think. Promise me that before I die. And she made her promise her before she died that she would live a life that was true to herself and not the life that other people expected of her. So what can we learn from this? We need to learn that we are tribal beings and that we do want to

fit in and that we do want other people to accept us. But we can't allow that animalistic part of our brain to hold us back from living a life that we really want. This is your one shot. Why don't you do what you're truly passionate about? What is always in the back of your mind, but you just haven't had the courage to do, or you know you have this gut feeling that this is the thing you're supposed to be doing, but you went to school for something completely different, and you don't know what your family would think about you if you decided to switch. There's a great quote that deals specifically with this. If you can't stop thinking about it, don't stop working for it. And so take that as the first tip. So that's number one. Number two is that I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

She said a lot of men said this to her. And she said, although, you know, the people would come in and they would have these great lives, they thought to themselves, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I would have enjoyed my life a little bit more. And realize I do talk about how you should enjoy your life and you should work really hard. But you also have to realize you need to have some fun. You can't be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. And she tells us one story inside of the book. She speaks of a man who worked really hard for 15 years with a company. And he worked and he worked and he saved and he saved

and he saved up for his retirement so that he could travel with his wife. And then his retirement came up and he looked at his bank account and he's like, man, I probably have enough in here. But if I were to be able to work one more year, we'd definitely be good. And then, so he was supposed to retire,

but he decided to stay one more year just to make sure they had enough money. And then after that year, they would have enough money and they would go travel the world together. He figured it's been 15 years, what's one more year, right? So his wife waited this whole 15 years while he was working for him to finally retire so she could enjoy life with him.

And then one more year on top of that, in three months before that final year that he added, that he didn't have to take, but he added three months before that was over, she ended up dying. And he never got to travel with his wife. And he was filled with all of this grief because all she wanted was just time with him.

And she never got the time that she wanted with him. And she died three months before he was supposed to be done, which was actually nine months before he was originally supposed to be done. And so there's a quote that's inside of the book. And he actually says to her, he says, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I was a damn fool.

I worked too damn hard and now I'm a lonely dying man. The chase of closing another deal became addicting to me. And this wonderful woman waited so patiently for me to retire. And now, of course, as I sit here dying, I see that just being a good person is more than enough in life. So why do we depend so much on the material world to validate us? It's simply a chase for more and the need to be recognized through our achievements and our belongings that hinder us from the real things in life. Like times with

loved ones, times doing the things that we love. There is nothing wrong with loving what you do, but now I see it's really about balance. And so what can we learn from this knowing that this is the second most common one? It's okay to love what you do. It's okay to work really hard about what you're passionate about, but you have to realize you still have to live a life and not just make a living. And so you have to, like one of the things that I realized when I was first starting my business was like, I had no life. My business was my life.

And when you do that, you'll burn out, right? And so you don't want to work hard just for material things. Like never let those things be the drivers in your life, like cars and a house and a phone and watches and all of those things. And, you know And advertisements are built to make sure that they keep you locked in to buying more things all the time. It's like Fight Club says, you know, in Fight Club, he says, advertising has us chasing cars

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All right, so that's number two. Number three is that I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. And she gives an example in this of a man who went through the Holocaust. He was a Holocaust survivor. And because of the Holocaust, understanding it makes sense, he had trauma from it. And because of that trauma, he really closed up himself physically and emotionally to his wife and to his children. And he realized at the end of his life that he never really let his armor down. And he knew who he was, but he wouldn't let other people see that. And he regretted that his entire life, his wife and his children never got to see who he was. And he's sitting there and he's on his deathbed and he's realizing, oh my God,

I'm about to die. And these people who I love more than anyone else in the world don't even know who I truly am because I had too much of a guard up. I never expressed my feelings. And so what can we learn from it? One of the things that I think isn't spoken about enough in our society are our feelings. We should speak more about our feelings. And I want you to realize that your feelings are valid. All of your feelings, no matter how you're feeling, are valid. But we need to learn to express them in a safe way with people that we love and not hold back what it is we truly want to say. Because the third most common thing that people died with is that they wish they had the courage to express their feelings, to tell that person that they love them, to tell them what they wanted and tell them what they needed, to

allow themselves to truly be vulnerable and not be somebody that acted tough or seemed tough to everybody else. So that's number three, is to have the courage to express your feelings. Number four is that I wish I stayed in touch with my friends. The author talks a lot about people towards the end of their lives start to realize that they worked a little bit too hard sometimes and they lost touch with the people who really mattered the most.

They lost touch with their friends and they were on their deathbed thinking, man, I haven't seen him in 17 years. I haven't seen her in 20 years. We used to have so much fun. I wonder what she's doing right now. And they're sitting in a bed with not a whole lot of people coming to visit them.

And they were lonely at the end of their lives because they let some friends slip away. So another point as far as getting busy with work and with life is don't get too busy with working with family that you forget to actually hang out with people who are outside of your family, that are outside of work,

that you actually love to spend time with and are people that you enjoy actually being in the vicinity of. They regretted not keeping in touch and letting everyday life get in the way and hold them back from developing deeper relationships that they have built over the years. And one of the things that there's a 75-year study that was done that's still going on by Harvard on happiness. And they said the number one indicator of people in their lives and how much happiness they would have, but also how long they would live

was the depth of their relationships. And so you have like your spouse, you have your children, all of that, but there's also people that you're really close to as well, your friends. And the people who had the really deep relationships ended up actually living longer. And the people who had less deep relationships or didn't have as many relationships that were deep,

and it wasn't just about how many relationships, it was about the depth of the relationship. If they didn't have really deep relationships, they ended up dying earlier. So what can we learn from that? Stay in touch with the ones that matter the most, not just your family, not just your spouse. And don't let everyday life get in the way and being busy get in the way and raising your children get in the way of having friends and doing stuff that you actually truly want to do or taking trips with your friends, whatever it might be.

So think about that for a second. Who is a friend that you haven't seen in a long time that you miss and you're like, damn, it'd be really good to talk to them? Think of that person. Who is it? Pull them up in the front of your mind right now. Who is it?

My assignment for you is to reach out to that person today and find out what's going on with them. Reconnect, see how they're doing. If there's any relationships that maybe went stale or maybe you wish you would have done differently, reach out to them. Just see what you can do. Have a conversation.

So that's number four. And number five is I wish I let myself be happier, which is interesting. It's challenging because with all of the advertisements constantly telling us that we're not good enough and smart enough and thin enough and pretty enough and that you need more cars and clothes or else you won't be good enough. It's easy to feel like we're not enough with Instagram and with comparing ourselves with other people. easy to feel like we're not enough with Instagram and with comparing ourselves with other people. We could feel like we're not enough and that can strip away our happiness.

But you have to realize that, you know, if you're not going to live a happy life, like what's the point of it? The great thing is that happiness is a choice. It's not some lofty BS, fairy dust, sprinkling phrase that I'm just saying, but happiness is actually really, truly a choice. And we can allow ourselves to be happy at any moment. We can think about how the person we're becoming and all the things we have to be grateful for and realizing that

what we have is enough and learning to love ourselves through the way that we talk to ourselves and self-talk and learning to let go of the past and seeing that the past is holding us back because we can't change anything in the past. And we can learn, hey, you know, what do I need to do right now to be happy? What is it? So the assignment that I have for you is this. Make a list of everything that makes you happy.

It could be big things. It could be small things. Make a massive list. I got this from a friend of mine who was trying to pull himself out of depression. And he ended up doing it through this. And he called it his happy list. Make a list of every single thing that makes you happy. It could be puppies. It could be ice cream. It could be traveling. It could be, you know, flying on

planes. It could be, you know, watching rom-coms, whatever it is. Find out as many possible things that actually truly make you happy. Make a list of everything. Like, brain dump. Take 15 minutes and say, is there anything else? Is there anything else? Is there anything else? And then every single morning, what I want you to do is, as you're drinking your coffee and you're planning for your day and you're thinking about what's coming up in your day, look at that list of things that make you happy. Look at every single one of those things and say, okay, looking at what my schedule looks like today and looking at this list, I can take this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing, and I could put all of these into my day. What you do is you actually start figuring out how you could take as many

things from your happy list and put it into your schedule so that therefore you can make sure you're literally, your goal for the day is to make yourself feel happier. My friend used this when he was in depression. He said it was the number one thing that got him out of depression. And one of the things that he said that was so important, he said that I'll never forget. He said, I will not allow my happiness or my depression to be left up to chance.

And so he was going to do everything that he could to pull himself out of the depression. And this is how he did it. So if the number five regret of the dying is that I wish I let myself be happier, hey, why don't we just learn from all of the things that these people said, take what they said and actually start to plan our lives so that we don't get to end up our lives in regret.

So once again, number one is that I wish I had the courage of a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me. So what do you want? What do you want in your life? And how can you start to actually work towards that thing that you are passionate about? Number two is that I wish I hadn't worked so hard. So what can you do to enjoy your life, to not work so hard, but to also have some time off? To work hard, but also to play

hard. Number three is that I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. What are you doing that's holding your feelings back? Your feelings are valid. Do you need to express them more? Do you need to talk about them more? Who do you need to talk about them with? Who is a safe person to talk to about the way that you feel? Are there certain people that you want to tell how you actually feel to them, right? Can you be more vulnerable? Number four is that I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Who is that one friend that you need to connect with today? Go ahead and connect them. Number five is that I wish I let myself be happier. So allow yourself to be happier. Take these five regrets of people who are on their deathbeds so that when you get to end of

your life, you don't look back and have any of these regrets and you live a life with no regrets. And when you do end up getting to the end, as we all will, you can look back and be like, hell yeah, that was amazing. So that's what I got for you for today. If you'd love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So the more that you share it, the more that I greatly, greatly appreciate all of you because it gets the word out, more people can find it, and then therefore more people can be impacted. So once again, if you could share it and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode,

making sure mission makes someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.