In an effort to trigger you to take action, think bigger, and finally go after your dreams, motivational speakers and self-improvement experts will often suggest imagining what you would do if you only had a specified (and usually short) time to live. Our behavior is often dictated by our circumstances, but it is our perceivedcircumstances that has the most power over what we do and do not do.
I’ve seen many patients neglect their health… eat too much, drink too much, exercise too little, get too little sleep, live high-stress lives… until they had a health scare. A mild heart attack, an alarming finding on an x-ray, or a bad report from bloodwork has a way of rocking a person onto a path of better, healthier, and grateful living.
A key to optimal living is to live with the intensity, passion, and awareness that someone would have if they are expecting a short life span when you may actually still have a long life ahead of you. Fortunately, you can increase your motivation without actually having to experience a life-altering event. The human mind has an incredible ability to be tricked. It doesn’t know the difference between an actual event and one vividly imagined. This is why we must think ahead. My favorite “habit” from Steven Covey’s great book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is habit number two… Begin with the end in mind. We must imagine ourselves down the road, think about where we want to be, and visualize the life we want to live.
Imagining that we only have so much time left on earth can be very powerful. It is the illusion that we have all the time in the world that prevents us from laying out a plan, taking action, and really going for the life we’ve always dreamed of. This is why so many people, once older, in a crisis, or hit with a terminal illness, get stuck having to say “I wish I would have…” or “I really should have…”
One thing that drives me is the super strong desire to have no regrets at the end of my life. I try to live knowing that when my time is up, no matter when that is, I have gone everywhere that I have gone, experienced everything that I’ve wanted to experience, said to others anything I wanted or needed to say, and sucked every last drop out of life. Almost any time someone tells me about a loved one that has died, I instantly reflect on my own life. I take just a few seconds and ask myself… Do I love what I am doing for a living?… Is there anywhere I really want to go?… Is there anything I need to say to anyone?… Is there anything I need to change in my life to make it better?
Another thing I do is pay attention to my older patients. They have a plethora of information to share. They are the future us. Their fears will be our fears. Their regrets will be our regrets. So, I note the common mistakes they’ve made, observations they share, and the regrets they have. The best way to begin with the end in mindis to seek out wisdom from those actually nearing the literal end.
After working in palliative care and caring for so many at the end of their lives, Bronnie Ware wrote a blog post, titled “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” I read it (along with her book by the same title) and have used it to shape how I live my life. Here are those five regrets… (1.) I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me; (2.) I wish I hadn’t worked so hard; (3.) I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings; (4.) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends; (5.) I wish that I had let myself be happier.
We can wonder what we might regret on our deathbeds, but it’s safe to say that if these are the top five Bronnie Ware heard in her time around so many just before dying, they should be a good start. Because we know, with certainty, that we will all die one day, it is critical that we take time to think about how we want to live so that we can take our last breaths without regrets. With that certainty of death comes the uncertainty of when, which is why we must think about these things right now. We cannot wait. Time is ticking. Let’s start living the life we’ve always dreamed of, one filled with more passion, more love, more connection, more happiness, more adventures… and less regret.
