Go to the End and Look Back

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:08  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy, while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:30  

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today, on this week two of 2024. Last week, I talked a bit about goal setting for the year and kind of looking forward. I also talked a little bit about doing the exercise of looking back on the previous year. And this week, I want to talk about going way out into the future. And looking back, we can only imagine what that will be like, of course. But I think it's an important exercise to do to just kind of widen our lens and add a new or different perspective, that is a pretty important one. So if we imagine ourselves at or towards the end of our lives, and we're looking back on our lives, what are we going to think about it? How are we going to feel about it? Are we going to believe that we lived it the best way possible? Are we going to be satisfied with how we use our talents? Are we going to feel fulfilled by how we chose to spend our time. I like to imagine this. And I mean, obviously we can't change our past. So I'm saying this not so much to focus on the past, but more to think about how we're living in our present and how we are setting ourselves up for our future, because that's what we have control over, of course, right is our present and planning for our future.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:13  

And so I wanted to share, I read this book last year, and it was called the Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. And it was really eye opening for me. So Bronnie was a palliative caregiver, and palliative nurse. And she did some work in nursing homes, but for the most part would work with people privately. So if someone was toward the end of their life or had been given a diagnosis, where you know, they were getting much closer to the end of their life, and had probably not too much longer to live here on earth, then Bronnie would be hired by, you know, the family to go in and care for that person. And so during that time, she had all kinds of time to talk to these people. And I think whenever you get that diagnosis, or you get that news, where you know, you have that realization that you're much closer to the end than you are to the beginning or the middle, then it causes quite a bit of a perspective shift. And so a lot of these patients would share with her some of their regrets just reflecting on how they live their lives, what they were most proud of what they wish they had done differently. And I think that the reality is, in our high achiever achievement oriented perfectionist brains, we want to say that we lived our lives exactly perfectly. And if we are listing out what we're happy about versus what we wish we had done differently, like we want definitely that to be weighted way over to you know what we're happy about, right?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:11  

I think the reality is, is that no matter what, at the end of our lives, we are going to have some regrets. We're going to wish we had done some things differently, no matter what. And I think that what's important is that we were really clear on what's really important to us and that we are choosing to prioritize our time and spend our time in ways that align with our values and what is most important, knowing that we can't do it all we can't do everything. And we have to make some choices. So I want to share the Top Five Regrets of the Dying I highly recommend reading the whole book, but this is kind of the summary and you can find this I'm not taking this actually directly from the book, I found this on the internet, there's a PDF of it. So if you just Google Five Regrets of the Dying, you can also find it.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  5:08  

Number one is, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life that others expected of me. And this was the most common one. And I think it is so common for us to try to conform to other people's expectations, be living in somebody else's story for our lives. And we kind of don't always realize that we didn't write it. So I think a good reflection point here is just spend some time looking at like, who's authoring our lives? Are we living the lives that we want to live? Or are we living the lives that we think we're supposed to live based on somebody else's, or society's expectations of us? I think that's a really important one and one that I am so overly cognizant of making sure that I am living the life that I want to live and crafting, and creating my own course and my own journey, rather than what is expected of me or trying to people, please everyone around me and make sure that everyone else is happy with me, in my life, at the end of the day, I think that's what turning 40 has done for me is to kind of let go of that quite a bit more, and be able to be a lot more clear, and a lot more present with what it is that I want and how I want to live my life. And I wish that for everybody. And also, I know that I still think about what other people think and worry about it. And it's not like that's gone. I think that as we get older, we can release that even more and more. Because as we come closer to the end of our lives, we realize just how little importance that is.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  7:02  

Number two is I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And this one she said came from every male patient that she worked with, they talked about missing out on their children's young lives and their partners companionship. And just an important note is that the author worked with, of course, women from kind of an older generation. And so most of them were not working outside of the home. And they were not the breadwinners for their family. And so I think that it'll be interesting to see what that's like, you know, with our generation when we are both working and caretaking. And you know, when women are also in the workforce. But I think that this notion of just, again, it's like what are our priorities, and we have an expectation of ourselves to prioritize work, because that's what we did before we had kids. And then we have kids, and we're like, oh, we're still expected to work like we don't have children, as a parent, like we don't work. So I just think that that's an interesting one to reflect on. Of, am I spending the amount of time working that I want? Or does this feel out of balance for me? Am I getting to enjoy and experience the people around me, my my family, my children, my partner, my aging parents, my siblings, etc? Am I getting to enjoy those moments too? Or am I spending them all working? And again, we get to decide, but I think that it's an important perspective to consider is thinking about ourselves at the end of our lives. Looking back and wondering, did I spend my time the way I wanted to was it in alignment with my priorities and my values?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:07  

The third one is I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I think this one's really interesting, because what the author observed is that many people held back or suppress their feelings in order to keep peace in their homes or with others. And so they ended up harboring a lot of resentment, and bitterness. And many of them actually, like that's where their illnesses came from, were from all of that resentment from not expressing their feelings. She didn't specify, but I wonder if this impacts women more because, you know, we are taught to be more polite and not necessarily to impose our will on others, especially women of an older generation. But I think that it's an important thing to reflect on is like Where am I holding back? Where am I not expressing something that I'm feeling? And here is it causing resentment or bitterness for me.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:10  

The fourth is I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Man, this one I feel like I already feel. And I already have this wish. And so I can only imagine what that's going to feel like at the end of my life, if I don't make some changes with how I prioritize maintaining old friendships. So I think, again, it gives us an opportunity to step back in and decide if that's a priority, maybe it's not a priority, maybe we don't have friends that we want to stay connected to. Or maybe we feel like we want to bring new friends into our lives. But I think that's an interesting one that is very prevalent, because sometimes, like, you know, we just get so caught up in our own lives that we neglect or don't prioritize, maintaining those friendships.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:02  

And then the final one is I wish that I had let myself be happier, I want to actually read what the note is on this on the PDF, because I think it says "this is a surprisingly common one, many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits, the so called comfort of familiarity overflowed into their emotions as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves that they were content, when deep within they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again." I just wonder how many of us feel that already. And I know from coaching, a lot of people this past year, that that's something that people are already feeling, not just at the end of our lives. And so what can we change there? You know, what opportunities do we have to make changes now, so that we don't end up having this regret at the end of our lives? What would we do differently if we wanted to let ourselves be happier? What changes will we need to make? Where are we choosing comfort over what we truly want?

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:23  

So I hope that some of these ideas and questions are giving you the opportunity to do some reflection, I love reflecting at the end of the year. But with the madness of the holidays, I don't have to actually really get to my reflections until January. And so that's what I'm doing here in the first few weeks of January is kind of reflecting back and reflecting forward. And so I think this is an interesting reflection practice is just to really think about being at the end of your life, looking back, and what do you notice? What do you notice about your life? What would you want to change and just make the change now, because that's what we've got here on this earth is time during this one and only precious life. So I just hope that we are all living it in the way that we want to live it so that at the end, we can look back with pride and joy and fulfillment. So thank you for tuning in this week, and we'll see you next week. Bye.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  13:37  

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai