What will be your biggest regret when you reach your deathbed? Or are you living your life so that when you get to the end of your days and look back at your life, you are able to say that you went after your dreams, lived the life you wanted and there are no regrets? Bronnie Ware writes in her book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” about people’s most common regrets about their lives when they reached the end of their days. These top five regrets are based on true stories of people in palliative care who Bronnie looked after.
THE TOP FIVE REGRETS OF THE DYING
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 I had let myself be happier.
All these regrets sound scary. Imagine a situation where you stuck to a career your whole working life that you never really enjoyed. But that career was something, that other people expected you to do. You lost connection with your friends because you worked so hard, and you never truly felt happy with your life. But you never took action to change your life as you were too afraid to express your feelings about how unsatisfied you were because if you had done that you would have let other people’s expectations of you down. Unfortunately, many people go through this scenario in their lives and never have the courage to make a change.
Sometimes, we simply get stuck in life, not knowing which way to go. It’s so easy to let the days go by, stay in the same job we have been doing for years, eat in the same restaurants, spend time with the same people, live in the same neighbourhood, and do the same things over and over again. One day blends into another and you may feel like you are living a Groundhog Day on repeat. There is nothing wrong with this if you are happy and enjoying your life. But if you are not, it may a sign that a change and a new direction are needed.
So my question to you is, are you living the life you truly want to be living? Are you happy? Is it you defining how you live your life? Or are you feeling unhappy and letting other people’s expectations define how you live your life? You could be, let’s say, an accountant, engineer, lawyer, doctor, nurse, taxi driver… But in reality, you could just want to live a simple life and run a coffee truck by the beach. The only problem is that your dreams do not meet the expectations of what others think of how you should live your life.
“Are you living the life true to yourself and letting yourself be happy? Or are you letting fear and other people’s expectations stop you?”
HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE AND GO AFTER YOUR DREAMS?
Going after our dreams may feel scary and uncomfortable, so we stay in our comfort zone and don’t go after, what we truly want to achieve in life. We let our own fears or other people’s expectations stand in the way.
So how do you transform your life and go after your dreams so that you can be truly happy and live the life you want? One of the main keys to transforming your life is to get comfortable with the uncomfortable as change and growth are supposed to feel uncomfortable. Otherwise, you are staying in your comfort zone and not growing. You may find that once you take that uncomfortable action, which seemed so scary, it wasn’t that scary after all.
Another key element in transforming your life is to find people who support you along your transformation journey. Getting a coach or a mentor is a great idea as they support you and hold you accountable when things start feeling uncomfortable and you want to give up. Unfortunately, not everyone will support your change journey, and you often find that the people closest to you do not support your growth and transformation journey. That’s not because they don’t care, they just don’t want to see you failing or “killing” the old version of you, who they love. So you need to surround yourself with people, who want to see you grow and support your journey.
ARE YOU TAKING THE UNCOMFORTABLE STEP TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE?
I’m going to leave you with a question: are you going after your dreams and the life you want to be living? If not, what are you waiting for and what is the cost if you stay the same? When you are in palliative care, it’s obviously too late. So, do you want to be on your deathbed looking back at your life and having regrets about the things you didn’t do in your life? Or will you be looking back at your life peacefully, knowing that you gave a life a good crack? The choice is yours.
Read more about how to transform your life, health and wellbeing in the Aloraway Transformation Blog.
