The 5 Regrets Of The Dying: Life Lessons Everybody Learns Too Late... | Bronnie Ware

there's something about the truths that people share on their deathbeds that teaches us about life I mean reading them for me caused me to reflect on everything in my life not just my work family balance everything how am I living my life and I would also say that I think I came across it when I was ready to receive it yes and so I wonder could you just sort of outline those top five regrets of the dying and then we'll sort of maybe unpick them bit by bit sure sure well the most common I spent eight years looking after dying people and the most common regret during those eight years was I wish I'd lived a life true to myself not the life that other people expected of me and uh yeah like you say We'll unpack it it's it's a pretty powerful one the second most common was I wish I hadn't worked so hard and then the third was I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings and that came from a few different angles that we can talk about and then I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends and the fifth one I wish I'd allowed myself to be happier I mean there's so much there I was rereading them again this morning because for me I'm always trying to look at root causes so I'm trying to think what's the root cause of a particular problem not necessarily Downstream symptoms what's Upstream from that and I looked at these five regrets and asked myself the same question are they all separate or actually is one more of an umbrella where the other four feed underneath and to me at least I felt that first one you shared is almost like an umbrella I wish I had the courage to live a life I wish I had the coach to live my life not the life that other people expected of me to me at least I feel if we get that right like spending time with our friends not working so hard choosing happiness to me they feel Downstream of that kind of central idea now you wrote the book when I say that to you does that land or do you see it differently uh it absolutely lands and despite the amount of interviews and conversations I've had over the decade no one's ever put it that way before uh but it absolutely lands because if you are honoring that first one and living a life true to yourself you are going to prioritize life about work-life balance you're not going to work as hard you're going to do things that make you happy like stay in touch with your friends you're going to do those other things and so yeah I think that's that's very well perceived that if you're honoring your own life then you've you have certainly have less chance of having those other regrets as well I mentioned that these ideas came to me at a time in my life where I was very open to receiving them I don't know what would have happened had I come across these ideas when I was in the midst of caring for my father and having a young family and working and being stressed out burnt out I don't know you know maybe it would have landed maybe it would have helped me then but I get a sense from not only that book but your other books I've got here that I've read that you are very spiritual I don't know if you resonate with that term but you come across to me as someone who believes that life unfolds in the way that it's meant to unfold that we get the right message at the right time and so for me certainly this came to me at the right time yeah I believe strongly in Readiness and timing absolutely and it is a Divine thing it's definitely my my relationship with divinity that gives me the faith to to trust in that Readiness and timing and so it didn't come to you at another time it came to you when it was the right time and when you're ready to receive it and I know people that have received the book in their 80s and then I know Backpackers that have carried it around Europe in in their backpack in their 20s so I think it just lands where any message just lands when we're ready to hear it we can hear things repeatedly beforehand but sometimes like I'm sure in your time of looking after your dad raising your family working really hard there were other messages similar coming to you from different angles but you weren't ready to hear them and so sometimes the message has to be articulated in the right choice of words or in the right language for us to actually hear them and I think that's where the Readiness and timing lines up as well that life can be saying to you slow down for a long time but suddenly you hear it a certain way and it just lands and you think oh yeah okay and I think also we we get the messages that we're looking for right so let's look at this through a different lens many people know the idea that if they have gone to a car garage maybe to look for a new car and they're looking at a red car of a particular brand a particular make suddenly for the next two weeks they think oh wow there's loads of red cars on the street or that particular car is everywhere it's everywhere and of course it's not that magically over those two weeks suddenly that same car appears everywhere no you have directed your attention to that red car and that particular model so now your brain which is always filtering out so many inputs that come in is like going oh there it is there is that I'm interested in that and I feel it's the same thing here that actually if we put our attention to this and say you know what I'm slightly dissatisfied I feel I'm working too hard and maybe in my 40s and my job is not serving me I don't particularly enjoy it is this what life is I know for a fact this is how so many people feel Bonnie that often in mid-life that way as I say like something you know you're at school you're trying to strive in your 20s you're trying to find out what you're meant to do your career 30s maybe you have kids of course not everyone this is just you know I don't mean to cliche it too much but I I often find one people hit their 40s it's very much like is this it is is this all there is and so I think many people these days are asking themselves the question what does it mean to live a happy and consented life well and I think the conversation is a lot more public now which triple permission to question their discontent um back in the old days you'd stay in one job all year for your whole career and whether you are happy or not really didn't come into it you just stayed in that job and now because the dialogue is a lot more public then people can actually voice voice their discontent but prior to that it's just that quiet discontent to start with and we can only deny it in ourselves for so long and then either we find the courage to make the change or life throws a curveball our way which is really just our heart asking for a big change that we haven't given ourselves permission for and life will throw a curveball and pull out and break our life up and then we're like ah okay well I need to reset here and how am I going to find my way forward differently yeah let's go to the second regrets I wish I hadn't worked so hard now as a daughter I've been very alarmed for many years at the growing rates of chronic stress the increasing rates of burnouts and there was one I think recent UK study that suggests that 88 of UK workers had experienced some form of burnouts in the past two years now this is just one study right so I don't want to make a generalization but that's still a lot whether it's um slightly exaggerated or not that's an alarming signal in terms of what it says about our culture about the way that we're living Our Lives so there will be people listening or watching right now bronnie who probably feel that they work too hard how would you help that regret land for them I wish I hadn't worked so hard right so people say that on their Deathbed but for that person who can't see a way out how how is that regret going to help them a lot of people will think there's no choice but to work hard because of their responsibilities and you know I'm a mom I have to provide for my daughter and uh like I get that I get that there's there's responsibilities but around that regret was not making life not making work your whole life and that was the regret that the patients shared that they had let their work become their whole identity and their whole life and then when work was taken away there was nothing left and they hadn't spent the time with their family that they wanted or they hadn't achieved other personal dreams that they had hoped to and so I think it's a case of just creating a little bit of space and when you know I'm guilty of it you're guilty of it I think any of us who have really gone for our dreams or and or being having responsibilities we've all worked too hard and we've all worked ridiculously unhealthy hours at some point but it's about like navigating that pulling that in a little bit and thinking okay well I'm actually going to show up better for my work uh if I have a bit of a break sometimes so I find now I always say space is medicine so space is medicine to me if I leave space in and I actually have to schedule it in sometimes to have unplanned time that has no agenda just to allow myself to be in and let the day take me wherever it wants to when I do that I return to my work with so much more efficiency and Clarity so I get things done in a shorter time than what I thought I needed and so there's there's that aspect but there's also say um you know so you're working too hard as a doctor prior to you know you waking up to this [Music] um and you're wanting to spend more time with your family especially while they're young if you can at least just take an extra two or three hours a week off from work the world will keep going and the more you can do that and make a habit of that of honoring some part of your life that you're craving whether that's more time with your family whether that's getting out on a golf course whatever it is so if if you can just you know if if any of us can just think what would I love to do if I didn't have to work so hard and then cut out even if it's like three hours of fortnight or something like that but commit to it and create that habit of it then life tends to expand and support us because we've shown the courage and the commitment to actually having a better life and living how we want and so I found that in doing that life gives us with more space or more time to do those things and everything else copes and if it's a case of I'm working 60 hours a week if I don't work that I'm going to get sacked well you're probably in the wrong job yeah you know get sacked find a job that's 40 hours a week or 35 hours a week and actually try and create some space for your life I love the idea space is medicine it's mine it's like my medicine that's that's exactly how I treat it yeah it's really beautiful because there's a macro component to that and a micro one so as we're speaking I'm a couple of days away from taking my summer break now this is a big macro thing which I have fortunately been able to implement over the last couple of years before that I couldn't but I take a prolonged break now each summer and and as I say that I wanted to acknowledge that I fully appreciate that not everyone is able to do that I'm now in a place in my career where I can and it doesn't mean I completely you know don't do any work at all but I mean without going into all the specifics let's say this podcast for example the common narrative is that you can't break the online World demands content you've got to keep releasing you've got to you know back it up in advance so you can take your break and keep releasing it and that's what many content creators do I just don't want to do it well done I towns I don't know how relatable that is to people but for me and my world that has been a conscious decision to go I'm not buying into that there's only one way that goes that goes down to burnout right that is not the way I wish to live my life firstly my wife is the producer on the show so if we release all summer like as a family there's no switch off there right you would just be aware things are going out you've got to check various things there's you know a show like this is so many things to check before each show goes out so we just break for set Suites and people say oh you know you're going to lose listeners it gives someone else an opportunity to get another site and I'm like you know what I don't care I literally don't care because I have worked too hard in the past and now I realize that actually I want that space in my life my kids are young they're off for the summer holidays so you know in two days we're going off for three weeks or three and a half weeks and I can't wait there'll be no work it will just be spending time together swimming walking going out for meals whatever it might be yes and actually the truth is when I come back I'm I'm better able to have great conversations on this show and so when I hear that space as medicine term that comes up for me is work-life balance and I think I don't really like that term anymore work-life balance because as you say there are times in your life when you may have to go all in and that's okay I think I think the problem lies and I'd welcome your perspective on this especially you know having spoken to people at the end of their lives so much I think the problem is when that continues unchecked for too long like let's say you've got a business project or you write in a book and you're going all in for a year okay the problem is of that year becomes five years and ten years and for those 10 years you've never seen your wife or your kids but maybe for that one year that so that's one aspect I wanted to share with you but then there's also the micro of space being medicine whereby can you block out a better time each weekend where you're giving yourself that space can you block off a bit of time each day whether it's just 15 minutes to give yourself that space so I kind of feel it works on so many levels yeah it sure does sure does and you're right I mean if we're working especially Project based things we do go all in and we and we work like crazy but and often when we're getting towards the end of something the new ideas are already there for the next thing but what I found is I I don't jump straight into the next thing now I just trust in the that it'll be okay that if I don't have a new project lined up straight afterwards it's going to be okay um like like if if the if there's a gap in between the projects it's it's going to be okay I've come this far I'm I'm going to survive and and anyone listening has come this far and they're going to survive and so I think it's uh you know it's really important to acknowledge that that regret around not working too hard isn't about not loving your job it's just not making your job your your whole life and that you do you do take that other time off but then on the on the other levels the those those little bits of time like you just said 15 minutes or an hour or whatever it's a habit and it's like building a muscle and the more you do those little things and and when I say about this creating the space it's space with No Agenda so it's based to lie in your backyard in your back Garden or whatever and look at the sky or it's you might sort of feel like okay I've given myself two hours today I might just go to a cafe and not be on my phone just sit and have a couple and watch people go by or I certainly turn my phone off a lot me too and I'm actually off social media at the moment and for someone who you know I I have over a million books a million readers of five regrets and that's that's a huge success but in terms of my social media numbers they're really really small because I I love my social media audience but I've never prioritized it and I have a very devoted mailing list and I write my fortnightly newsletter no matter what but I I don't feel like I'm missing out I have tried you know doing the mass amounts of content and pouring it out there but I just felt like it was really out of alignment with who I am and how I want to live and so I'm actually off social media at the moment I've just said to my audience I'm just taking a break for a while and I don't know if that's I think it's been nearly a month already but I don't know if that's going to be a month or three months I just knew that I was sick of all that little micro you know just the busyness of the tech world and I think so I think there's an element of faith in there as well because whatever your faith is because you've got to believe or you learn to believe that you'll be okay if you do it your own way and the more that we can actually face the fact that you die and realize the sacredness of our time the more courage we have to trust in that and to actually think okay the world won't fall apart say if you don't have a podcast for six weeks if if people went off and listened to something else they're going to come back in six weeks they're going to be hanging out for you to come back and like you said you're going to have better conversations when you come back as well but also funny on that and we're going slightly off the truths here a little bit but in I think the book after the top five regrets are the dying your year for change 52 Reflections for regret free living one of the chapters that I really loved was called dissolving the ego so this is something I really think a lot about so let's just go to that point you just made let's say in those six weeks off right an avid listener finds a show that they prefer to this one that's okay isn't it of course it's okay that's okay yes maybe there's a better show maybe there's a Content which resonates with them deeper than mine does for where they're at right where they're at hands and and I I always ask myself this question if you're doing this for impacts not ego kind of doesn't matter no you make it matter in your head because you we often live according to the constructs that Society has conditioned us with that's the first regret right which had the courage to live a life live my life and not the life other people expected of me so if you're conditioned from a young age that as as I very much was that being the best is really important that external validation is how you measure your self-worth I mean these are things that I've uh really had to unpick over the past 10 years and now I will say feeling a very very good place most of the time I can still fall back into all patterns sometimes especially when I'm tired or overworked but generally I feel pretty good so if you go down that line of thinking in fact let's let's go to dissolving the ego because I thought it was a powerful chapter I think it totally plays into these top five regrets you say in that chatter that this is what we are here for to dissolve the ego and you shared how you initially used to feel when people would repost your work without giving you credits and then there's this beautiful idea that there's a legal ramification here and a soul ramification so one of you could share your thoughts on that yeah I still have readers write to me all the time and say this has been shared and they haven't credited you and da da and you'll have a very so they always bring it to my attention but I have to stop and think well I'm the messenger for this for the five regrets of the dying and I'm very honored to do that and I have to earn a living to support my child but not at the detriment of every other part of my life so if I spend and I have followed through legally on a couple of occasions but if I spend every single minute chasing up every single misuse of my work well then I'm wasting my sacred time on things that aren't lighting me up and so if I can let go of having to be credited for every single thing and realize that I'm honored to share this message life is looking after me my my daughter and I haven't had to go hungry yet you know where we're doing fine I've gone hungry before she came along I know what it's like but life is supporting me enough and so I just trust that the message will reach who it needs to reach and so there's the physical side if I chased it all up I may get some more Book Sales because people who don't know the work yet may be drawn to me and get to know me through through whatever platforms I'm on but on a soul level I just feel honored that I've been chosen as a messenger for this that I got to live those experiences that have then shaped my own life massively and that does it really matter like I don't want to miss the present moment of my life the present moments of my life unfolding of my daughter growing up of all her little nuances changing just because I need to prove that hey hang on a sec that's my work and I deserve to be credited for it yeah yeah thank you for sharing that that the key word that for me keeps coming up here is Choice the choice of how are you going to live your life what are you going to put your attention on Focus your energies on because you're right you could actually Chase up every single one of them but at what cost yeah yeah exactly you know and I I kind of feel strongly that this is something we all need to consider in our own lives just this idea that every single thing in life that we choose to do or not choose to do there's a price whether it's a financial price whether it's a Time price and I don't think we often look at that yeah like I honestly I think about this a lot and I'm writing about this in my next book at the moment this this idea that the very best things in my life they can't actually be measured by the societal definition of success the amount of time I spend with my children each week I have no metric I can show people and go hey look at me the intimacy or connection I have with my wife I don't have a metric I can share with people to show that right so the the culture incentivizes a lot of things that don't bring us happiness like if you have so many more followers and believe me I know a lot of influencers who are deeply unhappy genuinely I've met so many yeah but you would think from the outside looking at the numbers that would be incredible and so it's it's great to hear you as a very very successful author who's made a conscious choice so you know what I I don't have time or energy for social media you know I'll do what I can when I can but that's not the best use of my time yeah well the thing is though wrong and you know at the end of our life it's it's our own reflection those people who uh 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 they'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 it's you that will be judging your life at the end yeah and 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 you've prioritized the price on that and I I agree I I remember one time I was really nomadic I had no 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 and I there was one and most of the time I loved it but there was also a real emptiness driving me in those years and and a loneliness and I was listening to the Chris Christopherson song um 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 just free as the wind but I had nothing to lose and I realized in that moment just driving along and listening to that that freedom had a price and I was glorifying my freedom and I 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 realized then it was becoming detrimental so if you can realize that every choice you're making does have a prize you just think well do I want to pay that price and also it's what works for you at that time in your life right we can change our priorities you know maybe going around in a van being nomadic was great at a particular point in your life until it wasn't that's right right yeah and I think all of us have this stuff going on in our lives there's there's choices we make there's behaviors we do that work until they don't until they died 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 and you know I'm sure that that would have come up many times for you absolutely I think also that conversation about ego I think it's so important you know I face similar things I have abusively loyal audience who will say hey wrong and listen they you know shared your work and they don't give a new 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 and then I very quickly thought wait a minute wrong this is a school right they're taking these ideas to help the kids with their physical well-being and their mental well-being and you know what mate you didn't kind of invent this stuff yourself you've been influenced by the books you've read that people you have followed over the years and yes you try 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 gonna get a bit frustrated with the school for sharing material that's going to help them when I get it it's easy you know as a successful author to say oh you know that doesn't matter I imagine someone else at a different stage in their creative life for example it it may be problematic so I I do want to acknowledge that but but there's something there isn't there about are we going what's really driving us yes yeah I think so and and it is wrong if people are intentionally stealing your work and not crediting you and it is wrong but if if you can like follow up sometimes if it needs to be followed up and and let people know hang on I'm not cool with this but at what price like R is stopping them worth what you've got to give up to do that and and so it's just weighing though constantly weighing it up in life and and we are always at different stages and so initially yeah I would have been rapable 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 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 Bonnie because you're using her work but most of the time I just I just want to focus on what I'm where I'm at now and I'm working on other things now yeah I guess the deeper more spiritual question is is any Fair really our work that's right is it no of course it's not 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 your 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 so make sure you're taking action after watching this video I have created a free breathing guide that's going to help you reduce stress calm your minds and boost your energy in this guide I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference to receive your free guides all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below 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 it just came through me that's right and I think we're not only gifted with being the channel for any 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 it's 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 the guts to do things like that is a personal reward anyway and expands us on a spiritual level so I just always feel grateful and honored when stuff comes through me and and delighted because it's it's so fun creating and uh but I've reached this 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 are released 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 and 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 and it'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 so 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 gonna land right it wouldn't have worked there's a 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 no so I wrote the blog and it took about oh six to eight months it's all done 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 and what was regrets of the dying in there yeah yeah because I 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 and 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 I'll start a blog and then I've Googled good blog topics and it was stuff like sensationalism like Angela 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 a day or two later I was just sitting there in a real calm moment of space watching a good 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 I've been transforming my own life through those regrets being exposed to those regrets for the last eight years and so I wrote the article then and 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 um 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 uh and then the blog took off and so then an agent came to me said you want to write a book I'll represent you and I said yeah sure everyone's got a book in them I 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 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 uh 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 my daughter as I went into labor first time Mom at 45 like really blessed to conceive naturally and quickly at 44 and so about to become a mum and then the book took off the guardian quoted it and it just went ballistic so I was doing emails from in labor 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 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 hey how Strang me and said we'd like to offer you an international deal so you know that's what 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 sorry I don't know it's lovely so much I want to ask you about um you used to go to a market and sell these kind of inspirational quotes yeah you remember one of your favorite inspirational quotes oh I had this um snow gum which is the 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 but there was one um of this this red in the back the snow gums have have these really bright colors in them and and I'd taken it at a certain angle and it just said uh it's only through stretching ourselves that we can reach the sky and uh that was one of the most popular ones yeah yeah I love it um you mentioned before writing the blog you 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 stops and reflected on your own life I thought wow I'm sort of guilty of that I could maybe make a change here do you remember that first moment yeah I definitely it was with Grace who was one of my my favorite patients and she had stayed in a very unhappy marriage for decades and she'd wanted to travel around Australia 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 mid-80s went off to a travel agent and picked up a catalog at 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 and uh and 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 uh 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 bronny that 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 [Music] um the same message but in different words through other people to come other patients to come and 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 my father was 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 I 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 Innovative Commerce I had a good job good career I 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 um thankfully my mum 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 uh and I did have faith in me but it was I think that time with Grace was a real turning point because I stopped in question 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 the door doesn't it yes it's a start just it's a little door to go oh wow that there may be another way hmm you know I I'm I guess biased 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 not necessarily because it was their calling you know 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 yes right and it may be true that people don't want to hear or acknowledge but it but it's honestly it is the 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 Brony 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 there's always a choice it doesn't mean it's easy significant change but there's always a choice do you need to living do you need to live in such a big house do 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 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 reevaluation isn't it yes yep you know when you were sharing the story of Grace actually started thinking of my dad's because dads Dad's work and his overworking chronic stress for 30 years very 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 had always planned in retirement you know so at 65 I'm gonna go back to India and set up some Street clinics and help uh kids and families who don't have anything it's actually quite emotional thinking about it now because I think he fell into I I I can't say fell into the Trap because I can't speak to his motivation if that was still alive now I I would have to ask him was it worth it you know he may say actually you know what 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 I can't be arrogant enough to speak for him I have to I have to respect that he made choices yeah okay 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 in fact you where was it in your book I think you say something about assumptions can I find it and it was page 36 yes okay I've got it this is in your year for change right I I I I scrub it all over your books 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 favorite pajamas 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 going to assume we'll have we'll have to reflect and make changes and that sort of thing and it's not the way of life I mean you look at animals there's always young ones die there's there's old ones die there's middle age 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 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 he rang me and he'd just been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer he was a songwriter and uh and he said when I get through this let's write some songs together and 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 gonna 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 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 what plan in life ever turns out exactly as we think anyway life always throws some curveballs to stretches and help us grow and help us prioritize things that light us up and 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 you retire you may end up in a wheelchair for some reason or or you may end up dead we can hear that right someone's out for their run or walk right now they've just heard that what's gonna 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 but 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 brownie is that I don't think I was exposed to death growing up I 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 whereas you write about your childhood growing up on a farm and how you saw death all the time with animals so how do you think your childhood experience there with animals has potentially influenced the way that you see death in Amazon adults well it it was just a part of life and so it helps me realize 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 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 the cut of meat while it was still warm and put it in a plastic bag and writing what cut of meat it was and then putting it into a huge freezer and so it just made me realize that it can be over just like that I mean these these warm slabs of meat I'm vegetarian now and you understand why because it was a bit too real but those um seeing the cows or seeing the animals every 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 um 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 find myself in palliative care unexpectedly I still that knowledge of growing up on the farm and knowing what a dead body looks like help 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 how do you see death do you do you fear your own death so so for me I don't have a fear of because I've seen enough people in a state of Joy right at the moment before they've died and not a lot but enough to realize there's something to return to there was such a state of recognition um tell us about that what go on what that is so fascinating to me so you are what's sitting with them in their final moments yes yeah and and what have you seen well say in in the case of Stella so she had been in a coma for a couple of days and um at all her feet and um her feet and hands had gone cold you know their organs aren't reaching the extremities so well and so when they so this is what my palette the palliative doctor who used to come in and check on the patients explain to me that their organs aren't pumping to the extremities anymore they're closing down so 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 and 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 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 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 and it was just Bliss and it was Bliss and recognition and joy just absolute joy and and this Elation on her face and and her son and husband are looking at me and I'm looking at her and and then she's just sort of like done that and then she's gone uh and her eyes rolled back she was gone and she was gone and I just like it was really um 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 she's gone and she gone and I'm trying to feel her pulse because like I wasn't even a nurse I 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 and um and I just oh I still remember her husband just like running out of the room and just sobbing and you know he was like in his 70s at the time and they'd been married since their 20s and I can still hear that that raw grief that um but for me personally that helped me see and I did see other similar things not as as glorious as that but where people just found this this beauty in 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 what 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 honored whatever my dreams are or at least given them a go even if I don't see all of them realized 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 not of delaying my dreams and of not honoring 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 then and then you don't find the guts to follow your dreams well you're not you'd have some pretty big self-accounting to do at the end so for me that would be a bigger fear than the actual death what does the word regret mean to you self-judgment because all of us make mistakes that's part of part 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 get 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 honoring our dreams and then well there's a mistake in itself but if we're actually going to have a go at Living our our dreams and finding and when I say living the dreams it all sounds you know all very trendy and cliched but it's different for everyone it 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 be the 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 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 I'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 set opposite you today in 2023 say I don't have any regrets that does not mean I haven't made any mistakes and 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 didn't quite see it like that I 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 don't there's many things I hope if I was in that position again now knowing what I know now I would act differently yes but bad that 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 at 20 years on which is kind of ridiculous yes but if I believe no actually you know what you wrong and 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 it's kind of a it's a it'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 of 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 uh and we're allowed to do that yeah yeah we just have to give ourselves permission and uh break through the resistance like have the courage to break through the resistance and yeah give ourselves permission the user would courage there and when I was writing out the regrets this morning in in this book which I you know 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 okay I wish I had the courage to live my life not the life others expected of me and I wish it had the courage to express my feelings so the obvious question is what does the word courage mean ah for me it means breaking through the resistance 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 the dismantling of the walls that stop us doing things and what stops US from having courage I'm being scared of our potential receiving uh being as amazing as we can be yeah so 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 it 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 of anything like that so I mean it's 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 and 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 or 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 because we can look back to our youth and think oh it's just stumbling along and didn't know what I was doing or I could have achieved this or that in 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 recognize that then you're right it's not yeah it's not a waste of time there's an Aussie singer-songwriter who's one of the country's favorite 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 and you know he's he's an older man now and uh and I I really love that sort of play on play on words but that aside I just had to drop that in because it is a really um great way to put it but I do think that if we're kind enough to ourselves we can realize 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'd 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 regrets that's right yeah which is a really beautiful way to look at it to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make short-term change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take that really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below 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 and 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 it will be the freedom we've gifted ourselves or the permission that's 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 if you go in a different direction and it's 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 what how you get to know yourself and the pride in 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 although 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 but then you got two months later which actually right it's 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 I 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 said oh you're doing this so you can become a speaker and an author yeah I'd just be like no I'm going to be a singer-songwriter no 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 trying to 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 read me to led me to writing the next article which led me to becoming an author and a speaker so I I would never have consciously chosen that I'd have been like I'm not qualified in writing I hate being on stage now I love speaking I've written books and made a living out of it for over a decade yeah it's you don't know have a trust in life life will unfold the way it's meant to unfold right yeah and let yourself be surprised you know that was advice given to me in my 20s let yourself be surprised yeah yeah that's Johnny Wilkinson the rugby player once said to me on the show he said make friends with the unknown yeah which again is 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 could 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 hmm are 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 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 uh they they didn't 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 their in their life another was humor 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 and 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 so um 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 but 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 exhibits 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 wardinger from the Harvard study of Happiness whoever 85 years they say the number one factor for health and happiness is the quality of your relationship relationships right so we can see that from scientific studies we can also feel it intuitively ourselves we kind of know you don't almost need the science to teach us that right so that makes sense humor I guess that's not what I thought about but that's really interesting to to hear that that's what that's a commonality you found why'd 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 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 it can be for some people through religion if other people through spirituality for some people it's through nature it's true nature that's right you know when um this amazing professor in America called DACA Keltner came on this show about six months ago and he wrote a book on or and the eight different ways that humans can experience all and one of them is nature right and he he talks about the power of or 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 chancer that birth and death are also human experiences where we really feel all I love that 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 facts that fall I I love the fact that despite our supposed Evolution as humans but we still can't explain it no I love it thank goodness thank goodness I 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 we would as a culture as as individuals as a species everything we would 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 aging 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 and 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 off 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 people at different stages in their life it may not be on their deathbed necessarily but I still I think even that gives a richer perspective to life that we often lose when we're just with one generation I agree or some sort of community and like my daughter at the moment she's with her grandmother and they're shocking together there's so much mischief and sugar and 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 and my grandmother had such a beautiful influence on me as well and I I just we're not meant to do it just singular life and it really not no something I've been thinking about Ronnie 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 uh am I right in that assumption most of them I 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 ninety percent of the people I looked after were exactly that they they could focus because I think that gives you one perspective one of the things that many people now are experiencing is family members or Parents Without simers so they're dying but they're not necessarily getting the wisdom from them that you received they're not getting their 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 mum or their dad has Alzheimer's and they're not the person they used to be is there anything in your experience do you think that could help them firstly I just [Music] signs 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 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 and one day I was with her and I used to always um put lotion on on my patients hands and give them foot and feet massage and and brush their hair and that sort of thing and 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 like she was pretty much locked in the bed in the hospital bed at home and uh we were getting her back I was getting her back from the shower and we're 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 well shall we get you back to bed and 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 in a clear coherent way and maybe they can't um 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 or they're very present with you even if they can't articulate it and so don't 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 speeds the how little we really know about the minds 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 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 a decades because Mom 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 and 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 mum 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 a difference um and I 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 you know I went through all kinds of stuff will I ever have a a conversation yeah with mum 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 right 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 round and she wasn't talking that much she was actually a little bit to be fair but nothing like she used to yeah I would have sat there when I held her hand in Washington 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 here 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 ride 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 bolte Taylor um she was a brain some sort of brain specialist and she had a stroke and she 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 um 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 this in in that situation but in 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 and she didn't couldn't conceptualize 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 over stimulating 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 this is lovely and then the love she felt from her mum carried her through to come out the other side yeah wow I think about what you know what you just said earlier is well wrong and that sometimes it's about our own perception of it all and what we have to change to to adapt to those changes and it is what it is right now yeah it'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 or your perspective on your perspective yeah and again just referencing that DACA counter 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 dhaka's book he shared the Japanese concepts of Wabi Sabi which is his idea that all living creatures living things go through a five-stage process um creation birth growth decay death and I was reading that in February of this year so things were very very raw for me but I gotta say reading that help 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 it's slightly counter-intuitive 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 it doesn't mean I find it easy no but it helps you but it has helped in textualize it a little bit Yeah intellectualize it yeah I mean Bonnie listen they're just so many Concepts that come up from you where we could speak for five hours I know I know you've flown to the UK for just a few days I don't know how you're dealing with jet lag when you come from Australia yeah how 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 your mum lives just down the road it's an hour and a half drive down the road and we'll drive down just for lunch some days and come back and so I won't say I'm Invincible but um yeah I mean the second leg is only from Dubai to England so that's like six hours after a 14 hour first leg so I was like I'm so relative yeah it's like I'm doing okay and I do live D and um without without using them as an excuse for laziness 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 whale AIDS maybe it's my faults 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 now 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 bronny 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 um that they deserve their own permission to be happy and uh and more than anything to realize that they are going to die that you are going to die and every single day is a gift there'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 and then you're already on your way to to living a regret-free life Brony you're doing incredible work thank you for coming on the podcast ah it's been an absolute pleasure Ryan thank you if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one from Jay Shetty on five powerful life lessons that people often learn too late just let that blow your mind for a moment I will explain it I promise I'm not what I think I am I'm not what you think I am I am what I think you think I am which means

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 88,012

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: DN9CEPrpmm0

Length: 96min 58sec (5818 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023