Why Most People Die With Regret

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, you'll probably love the video lesson about journaling that I just put up not long ago. And I will actually give you a free journaling lesson and 30 free journaling prompts if you go to mindsetmentorjournal.com. Once again, mindsetmentorjournal.com. You can go on that website, check it out, and learn about how you can become a better journaler absolutely free. Today, we're going to be talking about some really fun stuff.

0:41We're going to be talking about dying with regret. We're going to talk about dying with regret so that you don't have to. Because the last thing I want you to do is get to the end of your life. I would say one of the main reasons why I create this podcast episode is so that when you get to the end of your life, you don't die with regret. Hopefully, I give you some tips and tricks and ways to understand yourself better so that you can stop holding yourself back so that you can create the life that you want. And when you look at it, maybe you've heard me talk about this before, but the number one regret of people who are dying when they do regret is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me.

1:20And so we're going to dive into that one specifically and a couple different pieces of that one. But that comes from a lady who wrote a book called The Five Regrets of the Dying. And the number one regret that she found is when people were on their deathbeds and they had regrets, the number one regret was that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself self and not the life that others expected of me. And that really breaks it down into two pieces from one regret. We're going to go through both of them. The first one is people's need for acceptance, right? So we'll cover the first one, then we'll go into the second one, which is your need for acceptance is one of the things that will make you regret at the end of your life, wishing that you would have done something that was true to yourself and not what other people expected of you.

2:01Because from a young age, we develop a personal reality. And that personal reality that we create can be called a personality, right? And so you know this if you've been listening for a while. Personality, the Greek word for personality, it comes from the Greek root, persona. In the Greek theatrical days, the persona was the mask that people would wear on stage. And so your personality, who you think that you are, this thing that you developed from a young age is really just this character that you have made yourself into. And you have made yourself into a character to be who your parents want you to be, to be who society wants you to be, to be who people will love, to be who, if you're attracted to women, to be the person that women are attracted to.

2:53If you're attracted to men, to be the person that men are attracted to. And so we build ourself into who we think people want us to be, and we actually just lose ourselves. And so from a young age, we develop this personality. And we're told how we're supposed to act when we're young, what we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to be, and what we really do. And I don't know if there's a way. For years and years and years and years, probably 15 years, I've been thinking, is there a way to raise a perfect child, to not give them any trauma, to not have them break away from their true selves, to try to be someone else and develop a paradigm and a personality around the way that the world is.

3:37And I'll be honest with you, I haven't found the way to do it. And I think it's just part of the spiritual journey of being a human is you must lose yourself fully to decide this isn't who I want to be. And then you start to find yourself. It's the reason why people have quarter-life crises, mid-life crises, because they agreed and did what they thought everyone wanted them to do. They did what society wanted them to do because they wanted to be accepted. And then they wake up one day at 40, 45, 50 years old. And they're like, what the fuck have I done with my life? Whose life is this? I didn't want this life.

4:11I didn't want this job. I didn't want to get that degree. I didn't want to go to that college. I don't even know if I wanted to marry that person. I don't know if I want to live in this town. And people wake up and they're like, who am I? This isn't who I've always, this is just a fake person. It's a character I've been playing. And it's all because, one of the reasons why, it's because it goes back to our need for acceptance. We want to be accepted. And it's like Jim Carrey's famous quote where he says, your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world. Think about that one for a second.

4:40Your need for acceptance can make you invisible. And you weren't born to just be the same as everybody else. Your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world. And I get it. We feel like we need to be accepted. When we look back to a couple hundred thousand years ago with our cavemen and cavewomen ancestors, we needed to be accepted into the tribe because not being in the tribe meant absolute death. There was no way to survive without the tribe 200 ,000 years ago. But it's not 200 ,000 years ago. It's modern day. You don't have to be in the tribe. You want to be around people. You want to be around people that you love and stuff.

5:18But you really have to ask yourself, am I changing myself for other people? I was listening to a podcast the other day and it was Rick Rubin. He has a new book that's out. And he was in the middle of being interviewed. And in the middle of the interview, he's talking. And he says, hey, it's kind of cold in here. Could you turn the air off? And they pause him. and the guy who's interviewing him is like, I really respect you for that because I don't think that I'm the type of person to be able to say that. And he's like, why is that? He's like, I would fear that if I asked you to turn the air off, that you wouldn't like me as much.

5:55Like maybe you're high, maybe you run hot. And by me turning the air off, then I'm making you not like me as much. And Rick Rubin said something I thought was amazing. I think every person should write it down because if you can live your life with this viewpoint of the world, well, I don't think you're going to die with the need for other people's approval. And what he says is, he's like, because I just want you, you know, the guy who was interviewing recruitment was like, I just want everyone to like me. And he goes, I don't care if you like me. I want you to like me, but I will not change myself for you to like me.

6:28And I was like, those three sentences, if everybody could get that tattooed on their face, I think so many people would have so much better lives because we just are dying for other people's acceptance. So he said, I don't need you to like me. I want you to like me, but I won't change myself in order for you to like me. And I think that those three sentences just really wrap up. We do want to be loved. We do want to be accepted, right? But I'm not going to change myself in order for, if I'm not hurting anybody, why would I try to fit into the box that you want me to fit in, right? And so we're taught how to fit in when we're younger.

7:06And then at some point in time, we have to wake up and realize that there are some aspects of ourselves that we love, and there are some aspects of ourselves that we need to change. Some people become bullies as they get older. Some people become victims as they get older. Do you want to stay that way? Do you want to change? You're growing up, you're told what college to go to sometimes. You're told what degree to get, what job to get to make your parents feel a certain way. And then you wake up, you're 45 years old, and you feel like you can't turn, you're too far down the road, you can't turn back now.

7:37Too much time has been invested. I get messages all the time for people that are in their 40s, like 45 years old. And they're like, Rob, I went to school. I got this degree. I got this job when I was 22. And I've been in this industry for 23 years. I don't want to be here anymore. But I feel like I've invested too much time and I can't leave now. And I'm like, you're 45 years old. 45. If you just live to the average age, which I believe is around 72, you have to realize you have what another 20, 27 years that you're going to be living. So because you invested 23 years into something, you're going to hate the next 27 years of your life because you're quote unquote, too far down the road.

8:20What if you live to a hundred years old? You still have 55 more years. If you have to a hundred years old, you're not even halfway through your life if you're 45. So you're telling me because you invested a little bit of time, you're just going to continue down this road where you freaking hate what you do and you hate the life that you built, that's dumb. You got to wake up one day and be like, what makes me happy? What is it that I want to do with myself? So that's the first piece of that need that we really have is that my number one regret is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not what other people expected of me.

8:52The first reason why that is there is because we feel like we need to be accepted. And the second reason why, and this is a very important reason and hopefully a wake-up call for a lot of people is that people don't know who they truly are. And because they don't know who they truly are, they don't know what they truly want. You think you know who you are. I'm here to tell you that you don't. You kind of know who you are. But one of the crazy things, I used to hear it all the time when I worked with people one-on-one and I used to give them journaling lessons and journaling assignments and all that stuff.

9:21And they come back and after a few months of working with me, and this isn't like me talking about how great I am, but this could be with anybody. Once someone starts going on a self-development journey, is they would always say, I thought I knew myself and I realized I didn't know myself for the longest time. I thought I knew who I was, but now I'm realizing I'm somebody else. I'm realizing who I truly am. Like rarely do we ask ourselves, like rarely do we stop and ask ourselves, what do I want? Like, what do I want? And really figure that out. Like, what do you want? What do you want from your life?

9:52A lot of times we don't know what we want, but we sure as hell don't know what we don't want or do know what we don't want. And then we can start to kind of go on the path of self-discovery. What is it that I want? And then what's crazy about it is you might know what you want, but you still might not be going for it. The hell are you doing then? So we live a life based off of what we think other people want from us. One of the scariest moments of my life was deciding that I was going to leave a job where I was making over six figures salary plus commission at 26 years old, I was making that money.

10:28And then I leaving that job at 29. And I was just terrified. And I remember after I left, because I really wanted to follow my passion, which is this, which is this thing that I do now. This is back in 2000. It's November, 2015 is when this all happened. And I was so terrified of what might happen. I started thinking to myself after I quit and I left that job, started thinking to myself, oh my God, I might have to get another job. Like I just got a brand new house four months ago. I got to pay my mortgage. I have bills I have to pay. I have things I have to do. And I had some money saved up and everything.

11:01But I started thinking like, I'm terrified. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make money. And a few weeks later, about three weeks later, I was at my sister's house and my sister brought out this box and she was like, Hey, have you ever seen these, these things from dad? And I was like, no. And I don't think so. And you know, there's like his glasses, there's his watch, there's all these different things, books, like t-shirts, all of this stuff. And there was all these letters. You know, I don't talk about a whole lot, but one of the things, my dad was in jail when I was a kid for getting too many DUIs.

11:30And so he would write us letters. And so he wrote a letter to my sister on her 21st birthday, I'm sorry, on her 19th birthday. He wrote her a letter and it was, you know, I read through the whole letter. It was all nice. And then the very last line of the letter said, I hope you live your life with courage, love, and laughter. And I was like, I was reading it And it was like that line and the thing that was written to my sister, you know, 15 years prior, that line, I feel like was written for me to read at that moment. Because I was so terrified that I wouldn't be able to pay my bills that I was about to give up on my passion to go back to working for someone else so that I can make money so I can pay my bills.

12:11And then go back to doing what I don't want to do and not following the life that I truly wanted to live. and I was so I was scared right that was the main piece of it and in that letter it said live your life with courage first it said courage love and laughter and so for those of you guys it's funny because I can go into google and I could type in Rob Dial and uh one of the things that always pops up is Rob Dial tattoo so it seems like people are googling my tattoo because I've talked about this a couple times but it's on my left arm and it's my first tattoo that I ever got and it says it's in my dad's handwriting and it's blown up on my arm and it says live your life with courage love and laughter because I was so, it was like the message I needed to hear.

12:48And I was like, I'm going to get this fucking tattooed on my body because then I can't give up on this dream. I can't go back to what I was doing because if I have this tattoo, I'm going to have this tattoo forever. And so if I'm going to really step in and fully commit to doing this podcasting thing, to being somebody who talks about mindset, to growing a following, to trying to impact people, to coach people, I'm going to have to go all in and getting a tattoo is pretty all in. And so I got that tattoo to remind me to be courageous when I felt fearful, right? And really what it came down to is I forced myself out of the company.

13:24I was afraid. And then I just forced myself to take more action because that was what I wanted. Now, what I did is not necessarily what you should do or what you might want to do. But what do you want? Like if money were no object, what would you be doing? What is it that makes you feel the most alive? what makes if your soul could smile what makes your soul smile do you know if you do follow it maybe you can make money doing it maybe you can't if you can't make money doing it how could you figure out a way to make money pay your bills and spend the majority of your time that you possibly can when you're awake following that thing that really makes you happy if you don't know what it is search for it find it i always say like it's okay not to know your true purpose right now.

14:08But if you now are sitting here right now and you know you don't know your true purpose, it is not okay to not be in constant search for it. So it's okay not to know your true purpose, but it's not okay not to be in constant search for it. You have to go find it. You have to figure out what it is. Because there is a true purpose. There is something that really makes you come alive. And especially if you know what it is, if you know what it is and you're not following it, I love this phrase. And I heard somebody say something like this before. There's no exact quote. But when you find your purpose in life, if you don't find your purpose, I'm sorry, when you find your purpose in life, if you don't follow your purpose, your purpose will eventually destroy you because you can't stop thinking about it.

14:49And your soul's going to start dying and slowly feel like it's withering away. Like I felt like I was doing when I knew that this podcast and doing what I'm doing now is like the reason why I'm alive. And I kept working the other job. I literally started to get more and more depressed doing it because it was starting to destroy me that I was not putting all of my effort into growing this thing, right? You might be 40 years old now and feel like you've gone too far down the road, but people are living to 85, 90, 100, 110 years old. Very often, you're not even halfway through your life. It's time for you to figure out what it is that you want.

15:21Stop paying attention to what other people say about you. And there's not regret when you get to the end of your life. The number one regret is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself. And there's two pieces of that. Number one, your need for acceptance. And number two, you don't know who you truly are and what you want. So go on this journey of self-discovery, figure out who you truly are, what you truly want, and then spend your time and energy following that so that you don't get to the end of your life and regret your life. So that's what I got for you. If you love this episode, please do me a favor.

15:48If this impacted you, there's probably other people out there in this world that would impact as well. So do me a favor, go ahead and take a screenshot of it, take a video of you listening to it somewhere, whatever it might be, and share it on Instagram stories and tag me at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.