Everything you do in life – every choice you make – comes with a cost. When we say yes to something, we are always and inevitably saying no to something else.
Is the choice you are making worth the price?
And when we get to the end of our lives, will we regret some of the choices that we are making and the price that we pay?
Will you regret not living a life true to yourself?
As I was musing last time, this is the start of a series looking at death bed regrets. There are a number of lists of common regrets of the dying available to peruse after only a short trawl online. But what really started me thinking along these lines is the profound and inspiring work of Bronnie Ware (see below for her bio) and her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.
The top regret listed by Ware is about wanting to have lived true to ourselves. So often we are hamstrung by worry of what other people think of us and how they want us to live our lives, and this stops us living in a way that is true to ourselves.
Every choice we make comes with a cost.
Oftentimes, those are small consequences and have little or no impact. But if we are repeatedly saying no to facing into our own feelings, or to what we need and want, or our own voice, then that can be a very high cost indeed.
We are saying yes, in effect, to someone else being in charge of our own lives.
The opinions of others are only as valid and important as we allow them to be. If we choose to let what other people think of us matter more than who we know ourselves to be then we are allowing other people to dictate what is going on in our own heads.
Of course, we need to know who we are, what is important to us and how we want to live our lives. And this can be quite a scary thing to face in to if we have been living reactively, busy on the treadmill of What-is-Next without pause to stop.
Stopping to reflect and re-evaluate is key.
Another way of looking at this is to ponder when you get to the end of your life, if you walked the walk.
This is always about awareness, and awareness generally starts with asking ourselves questions:
What is most important for me in THIS season? Because it may be very different from the season before.
Why am I doing what I am doing?
Am I living according to my values and priorities in this season?
What does that mean therefore for the choices I make today, tomorrow, this month?
Am I making time for that which I say is most important?
Do I do what I say I am going to do, if that is important? Or do I put it off, get distracted, lose sight of priorities?
Of course, life is not that simple and we are not always in control of what happens to us. But we ARE in control of how we respond and the subsequent choices we make. I have written on this often, and there is more here on how to look at control and where it lies, along with an incredibly helpful visual.
We can chooose how we respond to challenges, requests and demands on our time, other people’s expectations. We can choose whether we are floored by difficulties and give up on that which is most important to us, or choose to learn and grow in resilience through the process.
Choice will always remain our super power.
Because when it comes to living life true to ourselves, we are the only ones controlling what is going on in our heads.
Sometimes we talk big talk about what we are going to do with our lives, what our dreams are, but nothing comes of it except lots of hot air. And sometimes this is fine, as the dreams might be too much like pie in the sky.
But sometimes, the cost is very high indeed. So this week, notice how you are living your life and using your time. Who is in charge? What does it mean for you to live life true to yourself?
What is one thing you can do differently?
Bio: Bronnie Ware spent several years caring for dying people in their homes. Her full-length memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, shares further wisdom from dying people and how Bronnie’s own life was transformed through this learning. It is available in 32 languages. http://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying