What will your end of life regrets be?

When you are approaching your own death, and assuming you have the option to, what will you most regret?

Our household has faced a series of major events in a short few months. The death of a loved one after a short, difficult illness, an unexpected fall necessitating surgery, and the ending of a long career have all visited this house. 

Part of my role as a life coach is to ask clients about their life experiences, and what they are learning about themselves as they reflect on where they are and where they have come from. As I often quote:

“We don’t learn from our experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences.”

John Dewey, 20th Century American Philosopher, Psychologist and educational reformer.

Taking the time to stop and reflect and ask ourselves questions is an important way we grow in self-awareness. It is only when we are armed with the knowledge and awareness of how we are living our lives at present that we can step outside of our lives for a minute and see if how we ARE living fits with how we WANT to be living. 

We cannot change anything until we face it.

And sometimes it takes a major event like the death of a loved one or a career change to make us stop and face directly into what it is that we want to change.

I had a conversation recently, prompted by talking about my own experience of changing career in my mid 40s, with someone who had reached crisis point in their own career. This person had become aware that at the stage in life when he should have been at the peak of his career, he was actually miserable. Miserable enough to give up the job without the security of having a job to go to. It was a wake-up call that life, family, friendships, were more important than work and money.

This is often what prompts people to get in touch with me about coaching. 

We need money to live on, of course. But how often do we get sucked onto the consumerism treadmill? Or measuring our worth based on our productivity, salary or status?

These are potentially inflammatory observations I know. But I like to make you – and me – think. 

What will your end of life regrets be?

Because ultimately, this is where my musings this week are heading. I love a podcast, and recently listened to Dr Rangan Chatterjee on his podcast Feel Better, Live More interviewing Bronnie Ware talking about the Top 5 Regrets of the Dying. It is a fascinating listen (albeit a long one) and certainly raises food for thought. 

Bronnie Ware’s list of regrets of the dying is not the only one to be found on a quick trawl of the internet. And it is not an exhaustive list. But it does provide some interesting points of reflection and challenge. We can listen and simply enjoy dispassionately the observations of others end of life regrets. 

Or we can choose to pause and pay attention. 

How does this apply to me? Where do I stand now as I think about the life I have lived thus far? What do I want the rest of my life to look like?

What do I have control over and what can I change?

These are all questions that I will be musing on with you over the coming weeks as we explore some end of life regrets. 

For this week, perhaps stop and ask yourself: what do I need to face up to this week about how I am living? And what is one simple thing that I can change?