If you were at the end of your life now, looking back, how would you feel about the choices you made?
I know it sounds a bit morbid, but bear with me.
This is a powerful exercise that I do with my clients. I ask them to consider if they had one year left to live, what would they do differently?
It's a question that I've often asked myself since I read a powerful blog post by palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware called The top five regrets of the dying, which went viral in 2009. Want to know what the no.1 regret was?
Not living a life true to yourself.
She says in her blog post, that many of her patients had not even honoured half of their dreams, and now that their health had gone, it was too late.
And they knew that it was down to choices that they had consciously made.
This is such a powerful reminder that we are in charge of our own destiny.
We can choose to do the things we love, with the people we love. We don't have to let others dictate what we do.
How do you want to feel when you look back at your life? Do you want to have regrets?
Sometimes we forget that we are in control of our lives. We don't have to let fear decide what we do, or more importantly, what we don't do.
And those fears are powerful. Fear of changing jobs. Or losing a job. Or having less money. Or fear of failing. And feeling that way is reaaaaaally uncomfortable.
But the discomfort is just temporary, and if you can overcome it, the rewards are tremendous. The reward is living a life without regret. What could be greater than that.
I'll leave you with that question: If you were are the end of you life now, looking back, how would you feel about the choices you made?
Speak soon,
Juliette xx