 Stop. It's not too late. You have now woken up from the slumber that you're in. Don't go back to sleep. Don't go back to sleep. Today we're going to be talking about how to die with regret. Hopefully you're not one of the people that does die with regret, but I'm going to talk about why 90% of people end up living their lives and then dying with regret. Now I'm going to talk about it so that you don't have to. That's an important thing. You have to learn from other people so that you can improve your life. There's an incredible book called Five Regrets of the Dying in the number one regret. Actually before I go about the number one regret, let me tell you about what the book is about. The book is a lady who lives in hospice or works in hospice for people who she's a nurse there and she's around people who are dying all of the time. She starts to notice that there's five really common regrets that people have as they're dying. The number one regret, which is what we're going to talk about today, the number one regret of people who are on their deathbeds, they've lived their entire lives and they're at the very end. There is no way out. Their number one regret is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me. Let that sink in for a second. The number one thing that people regret when they're at the end of their lives is that they wish they lived a life that was true to themselves and not the life that others expected of them. And there's a couple reasons why this exists. And I'm going to talk about two reasons. Number one is our absolute need for acceptance from other people. That holds us back. I'm going to talk about that. And number two is I feel like most people don't know who they truly are. And if you don't know who you truly are, then you don't know what you truly want. And so let's go over the first one first. People's need for acceptance holds them back from everything that they want. There's an incredible quote that Jim Carrey has when he's giving a commencement speech that he says, your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world. We learn from a young age, whether it's our parents or society or our family or our friends, we learn that we have to act a certain way and we have to fit in into society. And so from a young age, we develop what's called a personality. Now, just so you know, personality comes from the Greek word persona. The Greek word persona is actually the mask that people would wear when they were acting on stage back in ancient Greece. So that personality that you have is a mask that you're wearing so that you can fit in with what you think you should be or what you have been raised to be. So ultimately what happens from a young age is we make ourselves into a character of who we think other people want us to be, whether that's our parents, whether that's society, whether that's fitting in with our friends, whatever it is, we make ourselves into a character of who we think other people want us to be. It starts off as everything does with our parents. If you had great parents or terrible parents, we still as children mold ourselves into what we feel like our parents want us to be, how they want us to act, how they act. And sometimes it's not even what they specifically say to us. It's also what we watch them doing. Have you ever noticed one time where you're just doing something you're like, Oh my God, that was exactly like my mom. Oh my God, that was exactly like my dad. It's not that they forced that onto us. It's that we learn the world by learning from what they say to us, but actually more than anything else is watching them. So if your parents have a personality, a persona, a character that they've developed, children tend to take on their parents' character as well. And so what happens is when we act a certain way as we're young, we figure out what we're supposed to do, what we're not supposed to do. Right? We learn it from our parents and we start to develop that personality. And then what happens? We start to hang out around other children and we want to be around other children. We want to be accepted by other children. It's built into us to be tribal beings. So we want to be accepted. We don't want to be kicked out of the tribe because 100,000 years ago to be kicked out of the tribe meant certain death. And so it's built into our brains to have the need for acceptance from others around us. So it starts with our parents and then we get older. And then as we're, you know, five, six, seven, eight years old, we start to develop a personality, a character, a mask, a persona of what we think other people want us to be. And then what do we do? We start acting a certain way so that we fit in. I still remember. I still feel bad. I'm 30, about to be 35 years old. I still feel bad for calling a girl named Tracy on the bus on the way back from school in middle school on Inamory Island, a name that I thought was really, really harsh. And after those words came out of my mouth, I was like, that wasn't me. I can't believe I said that, but I can't take it back. And the only reason why I said it was cause I remember that I thought other kids would think it was funny. I developed a, I said something that was completely out of my character to her, and I still feel bad about it. Like 28 years later, 20 years later, whatever, 25 years later, I still feel bad about it because that's not who I am, but it's who I thought I needed to be to be accepted. So let me take a step back. Who did you need to be or who did you think you needed to be in order to be accepted by your parents? Have you ever thought about that for a second? Who did you need to be or who did you think you needed to be to be accepted by other children when you were younger? Who did you need to be or who did you think you needed to be to be accepted in high school, in college, in your first relationships? You develop a persona and a lot of times what happens is we do what we think other people think that we should do. So we go to college when in reality, some of us don't want to go to college because we feel like that's just, I don't know. I'm 17 years old. I'm 18 years old. I don't know what the best decision is, but it seems like what everyone's telling me is that I have to go to this college. And so we go to college, even though sometimes we might not want to go to college or maybe we go to college and we get a degree or start studying for a degree that we don't truly want, but it's what our parents tell us is the safest route or we get it because we know that, that job's going to make the most money. And so we go on a pursuit of not what we truly want, not what we truly desire, but we go on a pursuit of what we feel other people want from us or what we feel will get us accepted or what we feel will make us more money, which will make us more successful, which will then change other people's perception of us, make us feel a certain way. Then we keep going. We get out of college. We get a job. And sometimes we get a job just because we want other people to think of us in a certain way. Oh, I'm going to get this job. I want to be a doctor so that people think of me in a high way. They think that I'm a great person or whatever it is. Then we get a job and we do what we think other people want us to do when in reality we still don't know what the hell we want to do. And then what happens? There's something called the midlife crisis for a lot of people. Some people have theirs. I'm on the midlife crisis of 24. I had a quarter life crisis. Some people have it 30, 40, 50, 60. And we wake up from this, this sleep that we've been in, this autopilot that we've been working on, and we're, we get the feeling of this isn't what I want. But am I too far down the road to turn back now? I can't tell you how many messages I got from people that are 40 years old, 35 years old, 30 years old, 50 years old, and they want something completely different than what they have. They have awoken from the dream that they have been in, the autopilot. But they say, I don't think I can turn back now. I'm too far down the road. I have a family to support. I have this I need to do. And what happens is that they stay in a job a lot of times that's slowly killing them. They're too far down the road is what they feel. I've invested too much time. I don't want to get out of this now. I've invested way too much. I'm so far down the road. You might be 40 years old right now. And you might feel like you've invested so much time into your career, into your college, into your degree, into everything, but it's not fulfilling you. It's not what you want, but you might think, it's too late. I've missed my shot. So many people feel that way. If you're 40 years old, the average person's living to about 85 years old, you're not even halfway through with your life. So you're going to waste the next 85 minus 40, 45 years of your life doing something that you don't want to do because simply you made a decision when you were 17 years old to do something and to go study something and you got a job in it. That's freaking bonkers if you think about it. You're not too old. It's not too late. You can change at any time. And you don't have to change right now, but can you start to make a transition plan over the next two years? I'm going to leave my job, I'm going to do this, make sure my family's set up, make sure financially I'm good to go. I'm not saying just leave at this very moment, but you can make a transition plan. I understand some people listening to me have people mouths to feed. So I'm not saying just up and leave and quit and go become an artist, but whatever it is you want to do, it's truly possible for you to make money doing it and for you to be fulfilled and to live your passion and to still feed your family. What would that transition plan look like? It's not too late. Stop telling yourself you're too late. You have now woken up from the slumber that you're in. Don't go back to sleep. Don't go back to sleep. So that's the first thing is that people have the need for acceptance. And so they do all of these things to be accepted for so long and then sometimes they wake up. And that's one of the number one reasons, that's the number one reason why people obviously hold themselves back and they get into this life that we're talking about. And the second reason why is because people don't know who they truly are and what they truly want. So we rarely ask ourselves, what do I want? What if you started waking up every single morning to ask yourself a question? What do I want? What is it that I want? What is my dream life? What is this dream job, this dream profession, this dream family, this dream happiness, this dream mindset? What do I want? Do you ever ask yourself that? What do you want? What do you want in life? What do you want? Go for it. And then what happens is some people will wake up to what they want and they still don't go for it. Right? So we live a life based on what we think other people want from us. One of the scariest moments of my entire life was leaving my job that I felt like I'd worked forever at. You know, I was 26 years old when I got the job, 29 when I was leaving the job. I was making over six figures base salary plus commission on top of it. That's a lot of money for a 29 year old. And I remember I was like, I felt literally, I felt like my, my, I felt like my soul was dying. Like I felt like I could feel myself slowly slipping into a depression. Like I was on the edge of going into a depression. I could feel myself slipping into habits that I didn't want to have in habits that I realized would not create the life that I wanted to. And so what happened was I created this podcast, I started a business and it didn't go really well for a while. That's what I don't talk a whole lot about. Like I wasn't making much money. I wasn't, you know, like, oh my gosh, I'm super successful from the very beginning. And I was terrified because I left my job to make a business out of it. Terrified, scared, list, right? And I went back home and this was in November of 2015. I'm sorry, December of 2015. I went back home and my sister asked me a question. She goes, Hey, have I ever shown you the box of dad stuff? I was like, I don't know what you mean. She's like, I have a box of dad stuff. My dad had died 14 years ago. She still never showed me all this and she finally brings out this, this box and it's got like old shirts. It's got his glasses. It's got his watch and it's got these letters. My dad was, when I was younger, my dad was in jail for a little while for multiple DUIs. And he wrote us letters and he wrote a letter to my sister on her 19th birthday and it was this beautiful letter. He was a great writer. And then at the end, he said, I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter. And then it was a little bit more. And I was like, holy s**t, I feel like he's speaking to me right now. Like this is a letter from my sister in 2000 and would have been 2000. He wrote this letter to her. And in 2015, I'm reading the letter and it says, I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter. And the number one thing that I was feeling at that moment from starting a business is should I shut down my business and go back to sales, go back to doing what I was doing because I knew that that money was guaranteed. I had so much fear inside of me. And the opposite of fear is courage. I needed some courage. And on it, it said, I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter. And I had never had any tattoos in my entire life for that moment. But I was like, I feel like I'm about to slip into massive amounts of fear and anxiety around not having the money that I want to coming in with this business. And I'm going to burn the ships. This is the only thing that I'm going to do. And I'm going to get this tattooed on me. And so if you guys, you guys that are on video can see it, it's literally on my arm. It's my dad's handwriting that has blown up on my arm. And it's in his handwriting, it says, live your life with courage, love and laughter. And I made myself look at it every single morning of I'm scared list list list of losing everything that I have, but I know that this is what I truly want to do. So I'm not going to give up. So I have to live my life with courage, right? So I literally had felt my soul dying at this job, had to leave. I felt myself slipping into depression. I left there, which was scary as hell. And it wasn't going the way that I wanted to wanted to from the very beginning. But then what happened was I was like scared and thinking about going back. And I had to get a tattoo on my, on my arm to show me this is stop, like stop living in fear, stop making your decisions out of fear, start making your decisions out of a place of power versus a place of scarcity. And luckily I was able to make it work. Did it take time? Yes. Is it working better than I could have ever possibly imagined? Yes. But I almost went back to what was killing my soul, but I didn't think about that in your situation that you're in. Does that hit home in any sort of way? What do you want? If money were no object, what would you be doing? What makes you feel the most alive in this world? What makes your soul smile? Do you know if you do know, follow it, do it, put every waking ounce of energy that you have into it. If you have a full time job at nine to five, whenever you get home, put every ounce of energy after that into it. Don't use your job as an excuse as to why you don't have enough energy to follow your dreams after your job. Sure, you can pay the bills, but then follow your dreams until your dreams can then pay your bills. So if you do know what it is, follow it. If you don't know what it is, search for it. If you've been listening to my podcast long enough, I always say this, it's okay not to know your true purpose right now, but it's not okay to not be in constant search for it. It's okay not to know your true purpose right now, but it's not okay to not be in constant search for it. Wake up every morning and ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want? What do I want? Set your reticular activating in your system to find what it is that you want. You might wake up today and you might say, what do I want? That answer might come to you right away. Probably not going to them. It might take a week. It might take a month. It might take 10 months. It might take a year. It might take five years before you finally get the answer as to what it is that makes your soul come alive. It's not okay to not be in constant search for what that is if you don't know what it is. So what do you want in your life? Stop doing what you feel like you're supposed to be doing. Stop following what other people say that you should be doing because what happens is if you do stay in the route that you're in, if you don't love what you're doing, if you're not following your purpose, if you're not finding your dream, if you're not doing exactly what you want to do, then the worst thing that could happen is that you could be like 90% of people, like they say in this book, they get to the end of their life. They're on their deathbed and they wish they lived a life that was true to themselves and not the life that others expected of them. What do you want in your life? All that matters is what you want, not what other people want. What do you want? Figure it out, find it, follow it, and don't stop until you get it.