Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying: Life Lessons Everybody Learns Too Late with Bronnie Ware (Re-release) #610

31:09At the end of our life, it's our own reflection. Those people who may be giving us validation because we've got so many followers or, you know, those external rewards, they're not there at the end of your life when you're reflecting back. And there'll probably be new regrets down the track. I wish I hadn't spent so much time online because those things that you're saying can't be measured, the time, you know, the beautiful relationship with your wife and with your children, they help you show up in the world as a happier person or as a more peaceful person. And either way, it's you that will be judging your life at the end.

31:55And so the opinions of others are only as valid as you allow them, as anyone allows them to be. And those people are going to die too. So, you know, they're going to have to reconcile their own choices along the way as well. but for ourselves if we can realize the sacredness of our time and realize that as you said about choice like every single choice has a price everything has a price definitely and if you can realize that every choice you make or you don't make has a price then you actually start looking at is this worth the price yeah and so in your case you're saying it's not worth the price of going gung-ho and losing time with your family.

32:43You've prioritised the price on that. And I agree. I remember one time I was really nomadic. I had no responsibilities at all. I was living in the back of an old four-wheel drive that I'd just taken the seat out and thrown a mattress and curtains in. And most of the time I loved it, but there was also a real emptiness driving me in those years. and a loneliness. And I was listening to the Chris Christopherson song. I think it was me and Bobby McGee. He says, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. And that's where I was. You know, I was as free as the wind, but I had nothing to lose.

33:25And I realised in that moment just driving along and listening to that that freedom had a price. And I was glorifying my freedom and I still, it's one of my highest values, I still love freedom but it had a price and I started weighing it up. Is this price worth it for me now? Like am I at the point where the cost of this is actually detrimental or advantageous to me and I realised then it was becoming detrimental. So if you can realise that every choice you're making does have a price, you just think, well, do I want to pay that price? Yes. And also, it's what works for you at that time in your life, right?

34:11We can change our priorities. You know, maybe going around in a van, being nomadic was great at a particular point in your life. For a while it was. Until it wasn't. That's right. Right? And I think all of us have this stuff going on in our lives. There's choices we make, there's behaviours we do that work until they don't until they don't yeah and so i feel it's a constant i feel one of the most important skills we can we can learn is the ability to re-evaluate you know we all sometimes as we've said have to overwork or we feel we have to but there's a price to that and maybe that price is worth it maybe that gives you a better job that allows you to take care of your family and yourself in a better way great but unfortunately many people keep doing that and they retire at 65 and realize they have no relationships left.

35:01And, you know, I'm sure that that would have come up many times for you. I think also that conversation about ego, I think it's so important. You know, I face similar things. I have a beautifully loyal audience who will say, hey, Rogan, listen, they shared your work and they're not giving you credit. And once I got an email or a message on Instagram saying, oh, this school has basically taken your four pillar plan and put it on their website without giving you credit. And then I think self-awareness is such an important skill. So if I look back at that honestly, my initial feeling was, oh, they've not credited me.

35:42And then I very quickly thought, wait a minute, Rangan, this is a school, right? They're taking these ideas to help the kids with their physical wellbeing and their mental wellbeing. And you know what, mate? You didn't kind of invent this stuff yourself. You've been influenced by the books you've read, the people you have followed over the years. And yes, you've tried to put it across in your way. For some people, it's been helpful. For others, maybe not so much. I think there's a real humility to go, I didn't invent this stuff, right? I'm just a messenger of things that I think are useful. So what would it say about me if I was then going to get a bit frustrated with a school for sharing material that's going to help them?

36:29And I get it, it's easy, you know, as a successful author to say, oh, you know, that stuff doesn't matter. I imagine someone else at a different stage in their creative life, for example, it may be problematic. So I do want to acknowledge that. But there's something there, isn't there about our ego and what's really driving us? Yes. Yeah, I think so. And it is wrong if people are intentionally stealing your work and not crediting you. And it is wrong, but if you can, like follow up sometimes if it needs to be followed up and let people know, hang on, I'm not cool with this, but at what price? Like, is stopping them worth what you've got to give up to do that.

37:12And so it's just constantly weighing it up in life. And we are always at different stages. And so initially, yeah, I would have been ropeable if people were sharing my work. And I had worked so hard to even get the book out there. It had taken me 14 years to become an overnight success. And so if people were sharing my work then, yeah, I would have been like a vigilante and been after them. But then I started coming back to what I'd learned through my meditation practice that we are here to dissolve the ego and and now you know occasionally my team will send a message to someone and say can you please credit Bronnie because you're using her work but most of the time I just I just want to focus on where I'm at now and I'm working on other things now yeah I guess the deeper more spiritual question is is anything really our work that's right is it no of course it's not it's and i say that as a as a challenge to to ourselves and to all of us like none of us come out we're all influenced aren't we you're influenced by those interactions yes you know and i i find that's just a for me personally a very helpful way a very calm way of interacting with the world that hey listen you know the best you're a songwriter I'm also a songwriter and so many songwriters will say that it's not my song.

38:44It just came through me. It just came through me. That's right. And I think we're not only gifted with being the channel for any expression, any creative expression, but in doing so, we're gifted with the courage that we've had to find to bring it through and release it into the world. And so we're sort of receiving indirect rewards besides the monetary side as well. And because you're very vulnerable when you release something into the world and you have to break through the resistance of how it will be received or will it even be received, just having the guts to do things like that is a personal reward anyway and expands us on a spiritual level.

39:27So I just always feel grateful and honoured when stuff comes through me and delighted because it's so fun creating. But I've reached the stage where I now create regardless of what outcome. And I still need to earn money. I still need to support my family. I've got big dreams like everyone else. But some things I'll release into the world won't really become big incomes or even incomes really just very small things but I've really enjoyed doing them and having them out there and then there's other things that I'll do that will actually make me really good money that I my heart was into but not massively it was just like oh yeah I feel called to do this now I'll do that that's like oh okay that's that's surprising I guess one of the ironies is that when you wrote your blog the top five regrets of the dying yes you probably never ever imagined that this would turn into a worldwide sensation, selling millions of books.

40:31So it's funny, we can say that actually some things I'm just going to put out there for the joy of them rather than because of what will come on the back of it. But I guess maybe the best art is the art that we put out without any expectation at all, because that landed in a way that you can't predict. You couldn't have got together with a branding team and figured it all like, oh yeah, this is going to land, right? It wouldn't have worked. There's a certain beauty to the fact that you just put it out there and it blew up. I don't think it blew up initially, right? No, I had 25 rejections for the book.

41:08No, so I wrote the blog and it took about six to eight months. So hold on. So when did you write the blog? In 2009. So you wrote a blog called the top five regrets of the dying in 2009? After I googled good blog topics. Okay. So what was regrets of the dying in there? Yeah. Yeah. Because I, I just finished teaching songwriting in a women's jail. That was what I did after working with the dying. I wanted to work where there was some hope. And so I had this random idea. I'm going to teach songwriting in a women's jail. Never been inside a jail, had no skills in teaching, but somehow managed to get some funding through a philanthropic mob and set up this program.

41:48And so then a music magazine asked me to write an article about that experience. So I wrote that blog. And then I thought, why aren't I writing more? I love writing. I always had pen friends as a kid. I'll start a blog. And then I've Googled good blog topics. And it was stuff like sensationalism, like Angeline, jolly and you know some sort of gossipy thing it's like whatever was hot at the time and I was just like oh no I certainly can't write about Hollywood sensationalism and uh and then I a day or two later I was just sitting there in a real calm moment of space watching a bird sitting on an outside lounge and uh and then I just got this really clear guidance right what you know and I thought okay well I know about dying people and I know about the regrets they shared with me because because I've been transforming my own life through those regrets, being exposed to those regrets for the last eight years.

42:46And so I wrote the article then. And so then it took about six to eight months to actually go crazy, go viral. And it was actually during that time that I sunk into a really heavy, my only and first experience of depression. And so as I was coming out of that, and I just said to life, I'm bored of being sad, just show me a new way forward. I can't look after dying people anymore. I certainly can't go back to being a bank manager, which I was, you know, decades before that. And then the blog took off. And so then an agent came to me, said, do you want to write a book? I'll represent you. And I said, yeah, sure, everyone's got a book in them.

43:26I can write about the regrets of the dying, but I can only do it in a way that it's a memoir because people aren't going to buy a book about death. They need, you know, no one wants to just open a book and read just about death. And I also wanted people to see how hard it is to break through your resistance and actually allow yourself to live according to how you want to live. And so that was rejected by 25 publishers. And then so I thought, well, you know, I've been an independent singer songwriter or tried to be and I'll put it out independently. So I did that in the October of 2011. and then in February of 2012 in the same 24 hours as I went into labour, first time mum at 45, like really blessed to conceive naturally and quickly at 44 and so about to become a mum.

44:18Then the book took off, The Guardian quoted it and it just went ballistic. So I was doing emails in labour from my hospital bed and that night I closed the lid of the computer and I sent a prayer out I said, send me help now because I'm going to quit because I had worked so hard to get my message out there as a singer, songwriter or whatever. And before that I was doing like inspirational quotes. This is all before the internet, selling them at markets with my nature photos. And I was ready to quit. And then the next day my daughter's born and Hay House rang me and said, we'd like to offer you an international deal.

44:55So, you know, I think that's why I'm so strong about timing and readiness as well, because I genuinely was going to quit. I mean, there was so much there. I want to know. It's lovely. There's just so much I want to ask you about. You used to go to a market and sell these kind of inspirational quotes. Can you remember one of your favorite inspirational quotes? Oh, I had this snow gum, which is a beautiful gum tree, but it's got red. They're about 35 in my range. and I used to cut the matting myself and everything for the frames and make the cards and glue the photos onto the cardboard cards. It was all, you know, very manually and I was showing my commitment.

45:36But there was one of this red in the bark. The snow gums have these really bright colours in them and I'd taken it at a certain angle and it just said, it's only through stretching ourselves that we can reach the sky and that was one of the most popular ones yeah yeah love it you mentioned before writing the blog you were talking about writing what you know you had already experienced changes in your own life from working with dying people do you remember one of the first moments when you heard something from someone who was dying when you actually stopped and reflected on your own life and thought, wow, I'm sort of guilty of that.

46:27I could maybe make a change here. Do you remember that first moment? Yeah, definitely. It was with Grace who was one of my favourite patients and she had stayed in a very unhappy marriage for decades and she'd wanted to travel around Australia and her husband didn't want to and he was a bit of an ogre and he ended up going into a nursing home and so she went straight off to the travel agent. She was in the mid-80s, went off to a travel agent and picked up a catalogue, a brochure for bus tours around Australia but it turned out that she had lung cancer and she'd never smoked and he'd smoked in the home all those years.

47:05And so I was looking after her. She never went anywhere. She hardly even left the house after that or didn't leave the house once I arrived. And so she squeezed me. She was a tiny little lady and she squeezed me in my hand in her tears and said, promise me, Bronnie, promise this dying woman that you'll always have the courage to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expect of you. And it was my first awakening to the fact that, you know, that's why my ears were open to hearing similar sort of the same message but in different words through other people to come, other patients to come.

47:44And that's when I sort of really stopped and thought about it and I was really trying hard to get going as a singer-songwriter then. And so I was doing gigs at singer-songwriter nights and open mic nights while I was looking after the dying people. And I didn't have a lot of confidence. I was a non-drinker. My father had been a very successful musician. He was just knocking me down like crazy and telling me I was a waste of time and wasting my time and I was a dreamer and, you know, all those sort of things you don't need to hear from the people you want to please. and but I remember the anguish and the heartache of grace in that moment and I thought what does that mean like what does that look like to live a life true to myself not the life that other people expect of me and because I'd left the banking industry a good career I'd sort of been really condemned in the family from that as well and good in a bit of commerce I had a good job.

48:42I had a good job and a good career. You know, what are you trying to do now? And, you know, it used to be a running joke. Oh, where is she now? What's she doing now? You know, and, and all I was trying to do was find my way. And thankfully, my mum always, always believed in me. And even at one point, she was so scared. And I said to her, if you can't have faith in me, have faith in my faith in me. And, and I did have faith in me. But it was, I think that time with grace was a real turning point because I stopped and questioned what does that even look like for me and I thought well dear I think I could be a creative person and make a living as a creative person because that's that's what I want to do yeah it's so powerful I guess just that experience whether it causes us to overnight transform our lives which it probably doesn't for anyone it just opens a door doesn't it yes it's a start just opens a little door to go oh wow that there may be another way you know i i'm i guess bias in terms of my friend circles and how i grew up um but of course i know a lot of doctors and i know a lot of doctors who went into medicine because it is a good job to do.

50:04Not necessarily because it was their calling. And certainly in Indian immigrant families in the West, it is highly valued being a doctor. So many of us end up in medicine, not always because we have a deep desire to be a doctor. That's the truth. And it may be a truth that people don't want to hear or acknowledge, but it is a truth. so the way I see the world it's the truth and okay let's play this out let's say there's a doctor listening to this right now who's 44 right let's say they're married let's say they've got kids they've got a mortgage but they don't like their job and they feel trapped and they feel hey listen Bronnie these these um these regrets all sound pretty cool I get what you're saying you know but I have no choice here right I've got a mortgage I've got children to feed this is what I train to do I've been doing it for 15 years now there's nothing else I can do what would you say to them I'd say there's always a choice it doesn't mean it's easy making significant changes but there's always a choice do you need to live where you're living do you need to live in such a big house?

51:24Do you need to have such a big mortgage? Could you sell your practice and work, what's called a locum? Like, could you go part time while you start studying for something else or start, or could you drop one day a week to start, you know, putting your toe in the water of some other direction? It doesn't have to be the shock of dropping everything in one go. But could you drop one day a week or could you reduce your mortgage or you know could you relocate and choose a simpler life how much of what you're doing is the responsibilities that you've created for yourself or how much is it because you're worried what other people will be thinking of you if you're not a doctor anymore yeah wonderful advice so many questions there that i think i think relate to all of us i think all of us can think about those and reflect because it's not a one hit where you just read the book and suddenly change everything it's a constant re-evaluation isn't it yes yeah you know when you were sharing the story of grace i actually started thinking of my dad because dad's

52:37dad's work and his overwork and chronic stress for 30 years where he effectively only slept for three nights a week for 30 years he was working that hard day job night job to provide for his family and you know all kinds of things which I've spoken about on the show before it was only towards the end of dad's life that I learned I think from dad or from mum that I think it was from mum actually I think it was after dad died that dad had always planned in retirement you know so at 65 I'm going to go back to India and set up some street clinics and help kids and families who don't have anything.

53:20It's actually quite emotional thinking about it now because I think he fell into, I can't say fell into the trap

53:32because I can't speak to his motivation. If that was still alive now, I would have to ask him, was it worth it? You know, he may say, actually, you know what, it was worth it to leave India, to come here, to set you and your brother up, to be able to provide for my family back at home. Yeah. Getting lupus, kidney failure, nearly losing my eyesight, all that stuff. He might say it was worth it. So I can't be arrogant enough to speak for him. I have to respect that he made choices. But so instead of saying falling into the trap, what I can say is that he made the assumption that many of us make, which is we'll have time in the future.

54:16In fact, you, where was it in your book? I think you say something about assumptions. Can I find it? I think it was page 30. Yes. Okay. I've got it. This is in your year for change, right? I scribbled all over your book because I thought it was so key. It is easy to assume that you will live with great health to a ripe old age And then die peacefully in your sleep wearing your favourite pyjamas It doesn't work out this way for most people however No one wants to face the fact that they may not live past 60 They may not even live past 40 But this is the truth of life Yeah it is and we all assume we're going to live a long time We also assume we'll have time to reflect and make changes and that sort of thing.

55:09And it's not the way of life. I mean, you look at animals, there's always young ones die, there's old ones die, there's middle-aged ones die. And it's exactly the same with humans. And so when a child dies or a young adult, everyone says they died too soon. And of course, you know, it's heartbreaking. I've had friends that have lost children under 10 and it's just devastating. dating. But that is actually how life works. And I've had quite a few friends die in their 30s and 40s. And one of them, he rang me and he'd just been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. He was a songwriter. And he said, when I get through this, let's write some songs together.

55:52And I said, sure, you know. And so he'd been diagnosed three weeks earlier. Three weeks later, he was gone. And he was like, I'm going to get better. I've got two teenage boys, you know, I'm not going to leave them without a father, everything else. He was gone. He was just like that. And so the more we can actually understand that we may not have those years in retirement and retirement may not look how we think it's going to look anyway, because what plan in life ever turns out exactly as we think anyway? Life always throws some curve balls to stretch us and help us grow and help us prioritize things that light us up.

56:30And so we can sort of think, yeah, at 65, I'll be all cashed up and I'll retire and I'll go off and play golf or travel the world. But a year before you retire, you may end up in a wheelchair for some reason or you may end up dead. Yeah. We can hear that. Someone's out for their run or walk right now. They've just heard that. What's going to change that person? Not that we can change anyone else, but I guess what I'm trying to get to is we can hear these things. We can watch films where we see this stuff and then we can almost compartmentalize it and get back on with our lives and then not make a change.

57:17But that is so real. The fact that you could step out your front door and get knocked down by a car. Yes. It's by acknowledging that you're going to die. Yes. That you get to truly live life. And what's really interesting when I read your work, is that I don't think I was exposed to death growing up. I had a complete disconnection with where my food came from, right? Complete disconnection. And I think until my dad died, I don't think anyone close to me had died. So I think that's why I found it so difficult and why it changed me so much. Yeah, sure. Whereas you write about your childhood growing up on a farm and how you saw death all the time with animals.

58:03So how do you think your childhood experience there with animals has potentially influenced the way that you see death now as an adult? Well, it was just a part of life. and so it helps me realise it is a part of life. I'm going to die, you're going to die. The person listening to this jogging with their headphones on, you're going to die, you are going to die. And so none of us get out of it. And so we not only saw a lot of death but my parents would have a butcher out and I'd see the cows or sheep in the yard in the morning and by the night time we were riding on the cut of meat while it was still warm, put it in a plastic bag and writing what cut of meat it was and then putting it into a huge freezer.

58:50And so it just made me realise that it can be over just like that. I'm in these warm slabs of meat. I'm a vegetarian now and you understand why because it was a bit too real. But those, seeing the cows or seeing the animals of a day in the morning alive and of a night in the freezer, it just became a way of life. And I think it helped me on levels I didn't even grasp as a child then. And there were dead birds, there were dead snakes, there was dead animals all the time. And so we were also the same. We weren't exposed to death very much at all. And it really wasn't until I went into working with the dying that I was exposed to death on a regular basis but even with the first person I looked after Ruth that I speak about in the book even though it was a shock to me to be find myself in palliative care unexpectedly I still that knowledge of growing up on the farm and knowing what a dead body looks like helped me not um helped it not be too weird yeah yeah it's really fascinating would you say maybe because of that experience and your life experience that like how do you see death do you do you fear your own death so for me I don't have a fear of death at all not the physical and not the after because I've seen enough people in a state of joy right at the moment before they've died.

1:00:33And not a lot, but enough to realise there's something to return to. There was such a state of recognition. Tell us about that. Go on. That is so fascinating to me. So you are sitting with them in their final moments. Yes, yeah. And what have you seen? Well, say in the case of Stella, so she had been in a coma for a couple of days and all her feet and hands had gone cold. You know, the organs aren't reaching the extremities so well and so when they... So this is what the palliative doctor who used to come in and check on the patients explained to me that the organs aren't pumping to the extremities anymore, they're closing down.

1:01:18So you sort of know... I mean, the fact that she was in a coma was enough of knowledge, enough to indicate she was close to the end and she'd been in a coma for a couple of days and so I'd called the family in and her husband was sitting on one side of her holding her hand, her son was sitting on the other side holding her hand, I was sitting down the other end holding her foot just wanting to sort of be there and let her know that she was there and looked after and loved and she just opened her eyes and looked up at where the wall joins the ceiling up at the cornice up there and she's just looked up and opened her eyes and like this is after a couple of days of complete coma and she's just opened her eyes and gone, oh, and it was just bliss and it was bliss and recognition and joy, just absolute joy and this elation on her face and her son and husband are looking at me and I'm looking at her and then she's just sort of like done that and then she's gone, ah, and her eyes rolled back and she was gone.

1:02:23and she was gone and I just, like it was really, it was life-changing for me. In that moment though, she was only the second person I'd ever looked after. So then the family is saying, is she gone, is she gone? And I'm trying to feel her pulse because like I wasn't even a nurse. I'd just gone in as a companion and ended up in palliative care. And so I'm trying to feel her pulse, but my heart is just jumping out my chest and I don't know if I can feel her pulse or whether that's my heart beating or whatever. And then I just got a really clear feeling from her, you know, that she's gone. And I just said, yeah, yeah, she's gone.

1:03:00And, and I just, oh, I still remember her husband just like running out of the room and just sobbing. And he, you know, he was like in his seventies at the time and they'd been married since their twenties. And I can still hear that, that raw grief that, but for me personally, that helped me see, And I did see other similar things, not as glorious as that, but where people just found this beauty in their death. And so that just helped me enormously. So I'm not scared of the transition of death. I'm not scared I have enough faith and I've witnessed those sort of things to not be scared beyond that.

1:03:42What I would be more scared of, and I make sure that I don't have to be, is not facing the fact that I'm going to die. and living with the regret of not having honoured whatever my dreams are or at least given them a go. Even if I don't see all of them realised or life changes direction, at least I can die knowing that I've given them a go. I would be more scared of that, of delaying my dreams and of not honouring it when I've witnessed the anguish and pain of regret. And, I mean, they just sound like words, but when you've witnessed this is anguish, like full-on heartache, when you've witnessed that repeatedly, and then you don't find the guts to follow your dreams, well, you'd have some pretty big self-accounting to do at the end.

1:04:33So for me, that would be a bigger fear than the actual death. What does the word regret mean to you?

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1:06:43Self-judgment. Because all of us make mistakes. That's how we learn. We learn by our mistakes. and it's part of the imperfection of being human. And so, you know, none of us are going to go through life without making mistakes unless we don't live a life, unless we don't live, we just stay on the lounge and watch Netflix and we don't have a go at honouring our dreams and then, well, there's a mistake in itself. But if we're actually going to have a go at living our dreams and finding, and when I say living the dreams, it all sounds, you know, all very trendy and clichéd, but it's different for everyone.

1:07:24It could just mean living a slower life, living a simpler life. It might be traveling the world first class, but it may just be to be more present with your child or to be a happier person or to learn an instrument in old age, whatever. But, you know, you're going to make mistakes if you're going to grow and try and become the best person you want to be or as close to that as possible. But whether a mistake turns into a regret is really only our opinion on it. That's all it is. It's us beating ourselves up for years and years and years over a mistake. And all of us have made mistakes. We can all look back and cringe over stuff we've done.

1:08:07I'm sure I certainly can. But it's only self-judgment. And so if we can have a bit of compassion for our younger selves then they're just mistakes they're not regrets yeah i really appreciate you sharing that perspective ever since i had dan pink on this podcast after he wrote a book on regrets maybe a year or two ago it really caused me to think deeply about what regret is because i can hand on heart sit opposite you today in 2023 say i don't have any regrets that does not mean i haven't made any mistakes

1:08:49and i first of all i think dan's book is is really really great so i think we were both saying the same thing in different ways in in dan's book he talks about regret being human it's the most human thing there is it's what makes us human or one of the things that makes us human I don't quite see it like that I think this whole piece of compassion and judgment plays into regret so if you are deeply compassionate for yourself and you believe that you are always doing the best you can based upon your experience based upon what you know then I actually feel there's kind of no room for regrets. Because if I regret, let's say something in my 20s I did, and there's many things I hope if I was in that position again now, knowing what I know now, I would act differently.

1:09:46But back then I didn't know, right? So beating myself up for a decision that I may have made in the past, in many ways it's the height of uncompassionate behavior to yourself. You're kind of believing that you should have been this perfect person who should have known the wisdom that you've now gleamed 20 years on, which is kind of ridiculous. But if I believe no, actually, you know what? You genuinely did do the best that you could. With hindsight, you could have made a different decision. Okay, next time something like that presents itself to me in my life, I'll try and make a different decision.

1:10:28It's a different flavor. and I guess you know does it really matter no you know but people can perceive regret any way that they want I guess but that's why I was so fascinated because I think I think all your books are great I think the top five regrets the diet I can see why it has changed so many lives and sold as many copies as it has because it kind of gets to the heart of what it means to live a meaningful and contented life doesn't it yes yeah it does and And we're allowed to do that. Yeah. Yeah, we just have to give ourselves permission and break through the resistance, like have the courage to break through the resistance and, yeah, give ourselves permission.

1:11:13You used a word courage there. And when I was writing out the regrets this morning in this book, which I always just write down some ideas before I have a guess, it's a way of imprinting them into my brain, I noticed something that I hadn't noticed when reading, and that was this. two of the regrets, the way you've written them down at least, have the word courage in them. I wish I had the courage to live my life, not the life others expected of me. And I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. So the obvious question is, what does the word courage mean?

1:11:56I think it just for me it means breaking through the resistance and any fear is just resistance to either what is or what could be and so to me courage is that force that can say I'm scared but I'm still going to do this. It's like the dismantling of the walls that stop us doing things.

1:12:25And what stops us from having courage? Being scared of our potential, being scared of receiving, being as amazing as we can be. Yeah. And that can be being scared of what other people think of us. It can be scared of failing, which really just comes down to what other people think of us. It can be scared of wasting time, trying for something and not landing how we think. But we're still going to grow through that and we're still going to become a better person as a result of anything like that. So, yeah, I mean, it's an abyss. There's just one layer after another after another. wasting time you just mentioned again something i've been thinking about a lot recently is is it possible to waste time because again the term wasting time is a negative judgment right ultimately we we spend time the way we spend time has consequences yes like whether you call it a waste or not depends on, I guess it depends on how you look at life because you could make the case.

1:13:47And I guess I haven't fully got clear on my thoughts yet. So I'm kind of working it out as we go here. But I kind of feel it is possible to look at life in a way where you never waste time, where actually any time that you spend on anything is a learning opportunity. If, for example, you do something that you could consider wasting time, you could go, no, actually I've learned that when I spend two hours scrolling social media mindlessly, I don't feel great afterwards. Because if you say wasting time, it's almost like a self-judgment. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I do. And I think that the more present and mindful we become, the more we're probably likely to have that judgment.

1:14:35because we can look back to our youth and think, oh, I was just stumbling along and didn't know what I was doing or I could have achieved this or that in my youth that I didn't. And so that can feel like you've wasted years and everything else. But if you're experiencing life and it's brought you to this point where you can be discerning enough to recognise that, then you're right, it's not a waste of time. There's an Aussie singer-songwriter, He's one of the country's favourite singer-songwriters, Paul Kelly. And he's got a song that says, I've wasted, I think it's I've wasted time or whatever, but the line in it is, I've wasted time, now time is wasting me.

1:15:15And, you know, he's an older man now. And I really love that sort of play on words. But that aside, I just had to drop that in because it is a really great way to put it. but I do think that if we're kind enough to ourselves we can realise it's all a part of the fabric of our life and as long as we can look back with kindness for our younger selves and like you said if you could go back you'd hope that you could you do things differently again but we're all doing the best as who we can in the moment and if we're not that's where we've got the power if we're if we're sort of thinking okay I'm probably capable of a little bit more than this but I'm too lazy or scared to have a go then maybe you know it's time to motivate yourself and say I may not have time to do this later I won't have time to do this later I've got to get on with it now there's never a perfect time to start anything other than right now yeah this idea of doing your best i once heard you say in an interview if you have done your best there's no need for regret that's right yeah which is a really beautiful way to look at it i think in that same interview you said courage is always rewarded but not in the way we expect right so you've expanded on what you mean by courage yes but i wonder if you could just speak to that you know how can it be rewarded in unexpected ways sure okay so say you're going for a dream and you've had to find so much courage say um say that example of the doctor who's overworking has the big mortgage everything else and so that person decides i'm going to change direction and i probably shouldn't use such a specific example it's for anyone so you want to change direction.

1:17:10And so you have the courage, you've made these significant changes, you've gone out on a leap of faith, you've taken risks and everything else, and you haven't landed where you thought you'd land. But what you've learned about yourself in that process is the reward in itself, because it sets you up for the next step. And so there's plenty of times we think we want one thing, and we think it's going to look a certain way, but it's the feeling we want. It's not necessarily the physical reality of what we're dreaming of. It's the feeling that we're aiming for. And so the reward may not be the picture perfect result that we thought we were working hard towards.

1:17:51It will be the freedom we've gifted ourself or the permission that set us free from other things that have been holding us back or weighing us down. So courage is rewarded. And that's not to say if you go in a different direction and the physical doesn't turn out, it's not to say that something wonderful is not waiting for you. It may just look slightly different to what you thought. But the other reward is how you get to know yourself. And the pride in having a go just makes you have so much more self-respect, but also so much self-kindness because you've faced all these fears and you've learned to love yourself through that and still have a go yeah yeah I love that or the the job you go for that you don't get but then it's actually a good thing because had you got it you wouldn't have got the job that then you got two months later which actually is nourishing you yes yeah and didn't look anything like what you thought it was going to look like yeah it's like me as an author instead of a singer songwriter I was like I tried so hard to get going as a singer songwriter I hated going to gigs at 10 o 'clock at night playing in pubs.

1:19:04I hated being on stage, like, you know, trying to get over my nerves and everything else. But that, those years set me up to be a speaker and I can walk onto a stage now and not the slightest nerves, just walk out, connect with the audience, have a great time, you know, give them an empowering session, whatever, and, and enjoy every minute of it. But if someone had have said, oh, you're doing this so you can become a speaker and an author, I'd just be like, no, I'm going to be a singer-songwriter. No way, I'm going to be a singer-songwriter. And so when I didn't make it as a singer-songwriter, that led to me setting up the thing in the jail so I could earn money from my music, the songwriting program, which led me to writing an article, which led me to writing the next article, which led me to becoming an author and a speaker.

1:19:53So I would never have consciously chosen that. I'd have been like, I'm not qualified in writing. I hate being on stage, da, da, da, da, da. Now I love speaking. I've written books and made a living out of it for over a decade. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know. Have a trust in life. Life will unfold the way it's meant to unfold. Yeah. And let yourself be surprised. You know, that was advice given to me in my 20s. Let yourself be surprised. Yeah. As Johnny Wilkinson, the rugby player, once said to me on the show, he said, make friends with the unknown. yes that's lovely which again is uh i think a beautiful sentiment that speaks to the the same kind of philosophy but it's interesting to me that you've written these five powerful regrets of the dying each one of them i think can help us reflect on our own lives and encourage us to make some maybe gentle changes that over time can become bigger changes i also know though that not everyone you cared for in their dying days had regrets.

1:21:03Are you able to articulate what the difference was in people who did have regrets at the end of their life compared to those who didn't? Sure. Yeah. I noticed three things and I didn't realize at the time they were just, but there were three common things. And one was their relationship with their family. If they had good communication with their family, then they weren't in that category of regrets. I think just the support of family perhaps helped them have a go at their life or they were content in the life. Another was humour, that they could laugh at their mistakes, that they could laugh at the winding road that life can become without taking it on too heavily.

1:21:53And the other was faith that they just trusted. There was a, in the bigger picture, that everything was fine the way they'd lived and they had a faith to go home to sort of thing. Do you mean religious faith? Yes, yeah. And so I'm not saying that every person who had faith didn't have regrets. there were plenty of people that had regrets that had a religious faith but of those who didn't have regrets they believed in something larger and not always religious but a spiritual belief and humor and family connection yeah which is interesting like you know it's a whole so relationships yeah humor yes and a belief in something greater than themselves yes yeah it's really interesting to me because I always wonder about how we can tackle issues like are there ways we can focus on particular ones or can we still address those issues by focusing on something else so I wonder if instead of focusing on those five regrets which I think would help anyone anyway.

1:23:06But as a thought experiment, if you didn't look at those five regrets and instead you looked at what are the three qualities that people who have a regret-free life exhibit, I find it really interesting to go, okay, number one, I need to focus on my relationships. How many times do we need to hear that relationships are what make up life? Yes. You know, whether it's Robert Waldinger from the Harvard study of happiness, who over 85 years, they say the number one factor for health and happiness is the quality of your relationships. Right. So we can see that from scientific studies. We can also feel it intuitively ourselves.

1:23:48We kind of know you don't almost need the science to teach us that. Right. So that makes sense.

1:23:57humor i guess that's not what i've thought about but that's really interesting to to to hear that that's what that's a commonality you found why do you think that is well they just had a different approach to life so they didn't take life as seriously yeah and so if you're not taking life so seriously then you're not judging yourself so harshly either got it yeah so that makes sense so we can focus on bringing that into our life and i think that last one a belief in something greater than yourself i mean again how many times do we need to hear that it can be for some people through religion for other people through spirituality for some people it's through nature it's through nature that's right you know when um this amazing professor in america called Daka Keltner came on the show about six months ago and he wrote a book on awe and the eight different ways that humans can experience awe.

1:24:53And one of them is nature, right? And he talks about the power of awe and what it does to us. But I guess that kind of speaks to point three. And what we're talking about is a belief in something greater than yourself. Interestingly enough although when many of us think of all we think of nature he also shared in a different chapter that birth and death are also human experiences where we really feel all i love that yeah and i can understand that too i mean we can understand it from from birth but from death as well because how incredible that the spirit can be extracted from a physical body and leave that body behind and it is an extraction and you know that one minute there can be a life force inside this collection of cells and the next minute it's just a vessel an empty vessel like that in itself is absolutely worthy of all yeah yeah and i love the fact that for i i love the fact that despite our supposed evolution as humans that we still can't explain it no i love it thank goodness thank goodness i don't want us to be able to explain that scientifically i love the fact that there's a mystery there it's like i don't know i think it adds to the magic of life yeah and that that in itself becomes worthy of all you know that that it's just it's too big and beautiful and magnificent to be able to articulate into little words into language do you feel that everyone would benefit from spending time with people who are dying Oh, yes.

1:26:57Yeah, yeah. We would, as a culture, as individuals, as a species, everything, we would be so much more on track if we were all around dying people more or if we at least had some direct exposure to it more regularly. And I'm not saying everyone needs to go into eight years of palliative care, but rather than wait until your ageing parents die, which is when most people are subjected to death or a lot of people are subjected to death for the first time, if we could all do, you know, a week, a year or a few days, a year or something like that and actually witness a death, then I really believe it would probably, it's such a great question, wrong and that I just think it would totally change the direction of humanity because we would let go of all the nonsense of all that empty achieving and um and prioritize what's truly important and then we would work as a team rather than against each other I mean even this idea of intergenerational connections I think speaks to that And what I mean by that is, in the era of nuclear families and in the era that we live in now of incredible loneliness and isolation, I think there's something incredibly special about transgenerational communities, friendships, you know, kids spending time with their grandparents and their great grandparents, you know, holidaying together all of you where you're experiencing.

1:28:44experiencing people at different stages in their life. It may not be on their deathbed necessarily, but I think even that gives a richer perspective to life that we often lose when we're just with one generation. I agree. Yeah, I agree. And the intergenerational doesn't necessarily need to be family either. It could be neighbors or some sort of community. And like my daughter at the moment, and she's with her grandmother and they're shocking together. There's so much mischief and sugar and stuff that I just, you know, but I've just got to let it go and, you know, they're both so excited to be hanging out together while I'm away and my grandmother had such a beautiful influence on me as well and I just, we're not meant to do it just singular like that.

1:29:37But it really not. No. something i've been thinking about bronnie about your experiences is to do with mental faculties so my understanding is that most of your experience with dying people was with people who did not have alzheimer's so it was with people who were able to clearly articulate to you the things that they wish they had done differently. First of all, am I right in that assumption? Most of them. Occasionally, if there were no shifts, I would take on like a shift in a nursing home or I did have one woman who had Alzheimer's at home. But yeah, 90 % of the people I looked after were exactly that they could converse.

1:30:25Because I think that gives you one perspective. one of the things that many people now are experiencing is family members or parents with alzheimer's so they're dying but they're not necessarily getting the wisdom from them that you received they're not getting the you know the life philosophy at the end because some of the mind or some of the personality that we have known and associated with that person is no longer there. So I guess I'm really interested in how your experience might help someone. If there's someone listening who is in that situation right now, let's say their mom or their dad has Alzheimer's and they're not the person they used to be.

1:31:17Is there anything in your experience do you think that could help them? Firstly, I just, my heart aches for them because that's almost worse than losing them suddenly to actually watch the demise of someone you love. But in my experience, I actually had a patient who I was looking after and she was all mumble jumble, you know, and the words don't make sense at all. They're not even words anymore. They're like syllables from one word matched with the syllable of another. and she hadn't been coherent at all for well over a month that I'd been working with her. And then just one day I was with her and I used to always put lotion on my patient's hands and give them feet massage and brush their hair and that sort of thing.

1:32:07And one day I was walking her back to the bed and she had a bed that had the walls up so she couldn't get out. She was pretty much locked in the hospital bed at home. and I was getting her back from the shower and we were walking along and I had some cream that I was going to do her feet and I dropped it and I bent down and I sort of laughed and said, oh, hang on a sec, hang on, and I've picked it up again. And she just looked at me as clear as you and I and just said, I think you're lovely. And I just said, I think you're lovely too. And she gave me a hug and then I said, shall we get you back to bed?

1:32:42and within two seconds she's blah, blah, blah, back to the Alzheimer's language. So I guess what I would say to anyone is that even if they can't express themselves in a clear, coherent way and maybe they can't always receive what you're saying, don't stop saying it because there could be a moment of clarity that they actually hear you say I love you or they're very present with you even if they can't articulate it. And so don't stop loving them and don't stop communicating with them just because they can't reply. Yeah, that's beautiful advice. and it it also i think speaks uh how little we really know about the mind and and what it is this makes us who we are like are they still the same person well to the outside maybe not but maybe in their own experience they are who knows we don't know that it's oh it's an endless fascinating field it isn't yeah I don't want to speak too much about um my mum because I don't feel it's my place to say but one thing I will say is that this year has probably been the most difficult year I've had in over decades because mum was admitted to hospital on Christmas day night last year she was in for three weeks and you know she's back at home but she's not the same person that she used to be.

1:34:22And I found it really hard, particularly in the early part of this year. I would, I would even go as far as to say it's only in the last two or three weeks that I feel a degree of acceptance and peace with the new normal. But I've been asking myself these questions a lot. You know, what, what is it that, what is it that makes up mom? You know, is the fact that she maybe can't articulate herself in the way that she used to. Does that make her any less? Does that make her different? And I think half the time it's our own issues we have to get over. And I say that with compassion because it's hard.

1:35:03You know, I went through all kinds of stuff. Will I ever have a conversation with mom again in the same way that I used to? and then some days you know i've made some changes there's some really quite remarkable improvements but maybe that's for another podcast but you know wimbledon's on at the moment and mum is a mega tennis fan and so on saturday i just went around and she wasn't talking that much she was actually a little bit to be fair but nothing like she used to yes yeah i would have sat there and I held her hand and we were watching a game together and I just don't know how can I know what impact that is or is not having on her but I think it speaks to what you're you're saying it's kind of like don't don't stop loving them yeah don't write them off don't write them off yeah yeah while you're saying that I also thought about um do you know the book my Stroke of Insight by Jill Balte-Taylor.

1:36:05She was a brain, some sort of brain specialist, and she had a stroke. And she said her mum was coming in to visit her and she didn't know everything that was going on at the time. She's since become a highly creative woman. She's gone from science into creativity. But she said she remembers that everyone was getting excited about her mum coming in to visit her in hospital. And she also gives like advice, you know, like close the blinds and how oversensitive people are in that situation. But in terms of her personal experience, when everyone was getting excited, she didn't know who this person was in that moment, she now does, and she didn't know what the excitement was, but she knew when her mother arrived that she was loved and she felt really safe and loved by this person.

1:37:02And she couldn't conceptualise that that was her mother at the time but she knew that she was loved and it left her feeling really safe when everything else was overstimulating while she was sort of finding her new way forward. And just that feeling of everyone being excited made her happy and she just sort of thought, okay, this is, and all the energy sort of shifted like this is lovely and then the love she felt from her mum carried her through to come out the other side. Wow. I think about what you just said earlier as well, Rung, and that sometimes it's about our own perception of it all and what we have to change to adapt to those changes and it is what it is right now.

1:37:47It's a part of life. Yes. Right? Yeah. And what's that phrase? you know when you can't change a situation you're forced to change yourself yes or something like that yeah and again just referencing that daca kelter conversation and this kind of idea that we don't have death front and center in a way that possibly we should possibly if we were all exposed to death a bit more that we'd realize this is a part of life and actually in daca's book he shared the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is this idea that all living creatures, living things go through a five-stage process. Creation, birth, growth, decay, death.

1:38:41And I was reading that in February of this year. So things were very, very raw for me, but I've got to say, reading that helped me. Yes. Because there was a brutality, there was a brutal honesty to it. It's like, oh, decay. Yeah. Mum's body and brain is starting to decay. And so you could start accepting the changes. Yeah. And it's slightly counterintuitive because you're like, oh man, that's too much. But I actually found it really helpful. I thought by putting words to what this is, I was like, yeah, mum's had creation, birth, growth. now she's on the final path of decay before at some point it will be death yeah doesn't mean i find it easy no but it helps you but it has helped intellectualize it a little bit yeah intellectualize it yeah i mean bronnie listen there are just so many concepts that come up from you where we could speak for five hours i know you've flown to the uk for just a few days i don't know how you're dealing with jet lag given that you come from Australia.

1:39:43How are you doing with your chat lag? Oh, not too bad. I'm just going to bed a bit earlier and still waking, you know, about five, whereas I normally would wake about six, but I'm okay. You're okay. Australians have, Australians have a different concept of distance and because towns are a long way away. And, uh, you know, like for me, I think, oh yeah, mum lives just down the road. It's an hour and a half drive down the road and we'll drive down us for lunch some days and come back. And so I won't say I'm invincible, but yeah, I mean, the second leg is only from Dubai to England. So that's like six hours after a 14 hour first leg.

1:40:22So it's like, I'm fine. I survived that one. I'll be right. So yeah, I'm doing okay. And I do live very gently. I very much honor my limits and without using them as an excuse for lazy or anything like that. But knowing that, okay, if I'm going to show up, well, I have to have a good night's sleep or I have to not overload my days and that sort of thing. I'm very, very, I've learned to be very good at honoring limits. Yeah. The intention at the start was to unpick each one of those five regrets and we got waylaids. Maybe it's my fault, but that's the way these conversations go. I kind of feel though, we pretty much covered them all through our wandering conversation and of course the books there where people can read about them in detail and the various people you sat with and the things you learned it's an incredible book I can see why it's been so impactful and continues to do so this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our lives.

1:41:33Now, of course, when we can appreciate, like really appreciate the idea that we're going to die, arguably that's the most important thing we can do to help us be present and get the most out of our life. So right at the end, Bronnie, I always love to leave a few actionable ideas that people can think about maybe they can't apply them straight away but at least if it helps them change their perspective a little bit and just encourages them to reflect on maybe there's a different way of doing things i wonder right at the end then you know do you have any final words of wisdom for people who may feel a bit stuck and a bit lost yeah i would just say that they're allowed to be happy, that they deserve their own permission to be happy and more than anything to realise that they are going to die, that you are going to die and every single day is a gift.

1:42:42There's people that can't even get outside today, they're not well enough and they don't even get fresh air. So if you can find gratitude in whatever is going on, find some sort of gratitude in your life right now, then you're already on your way to living a regret-free life. Bronnie, you're doing incredible work. Thank you for coming on the podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure, Ongan. Thank you.

1:43:13Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect.

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