Episode 161: How to Live Your Life Without Regret With Bronnie Ware, author of The 5 Top Regrets of the Dying

There’s a little trick I started using in my twenties to determine whether or not I should do things, especially things I was afraid of doing:

I would project myself into the future and ask if my 80-year-old self would be happy that I’d done that.

Somehow adopting the mindset and life experience of a well-experienced lady crystallized exactly what my not-so-experienced current self should or shouldn’t do.

This week is Thanksgiving in the USA, and I find this time of year to be incredibly nostalgic as we meander toward the close of one chapter and the opening of a new one with the new year.

There’s a fine line with nostalgia, though.

If our lives aren’t what we’d expected, nostalgia can morph into bitterness or regret really easily.

And honestly, whose life is exactly what they’d expected?

So how do we avoid the spiral of what could have been that tends to stall us out from enjoying the what is that’s right in front of us?

We ask older people, specifically people who are on their way out of this particular lived experience in a human body.

We ask people who are dying.

There’s a woman who has spent a lot of time with people who are dying. She took care of them for 8 years as her career.

Her name is Bronnie Ware and when I spoke with her, I found my entire system slowing to the speed of presence. As someone whose tendency is toward action and the next thing, it’s always wild to be in the presence of someone whose mere way of being shifts my whole vibrational rate.

This week we have Bronnie on The Kate & Mike Show to talk about regret-free living and what she learned about how to live from spending so much time by the side of people who were dying.

She wrote a book about it called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, and this feels like the perfect conversation to have as we head toward the close of a decade and prepare to start a new one.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• The critical ingredient you need to alchemize an experience from something you regret into something that you learn from and let go of

• The most helpful way to be around people who are dying

• How to live regret-free so that you’re making the most of your precious time here on Earth

While our culture tends to be really squeamish when it comes to talking about death, I absolutely love how Bronnie teaches us how to live through talking about this subject.

None of us knows how long we have here. You don’t have to have more than one loved one gone too soon to realize this.

I’d love to know what this episode stirred up for you. You can get your own copy of Do Less and still receive incredible bonuses at http://katenorthrup.com/book! Kate wants to hear from you, and you can post about your #DoLess experiences on Instagram, DM her (@katenorthrup) or email info@katenorthrup.com.

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Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast.