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W four WN Radio. Hi, welcome to Fearless Fabulous. You. I
am your host, Melanie Young, and you were listening to my show on
the Women for Men Network, which could be heard All my shows could be
heard on more than forty channels, including iHeart and Spotify. I love my
story and my thoughts on living life on your terms with you, my listeners,
particularly if you're over fifty or fifty five and looking at your life from
the rear view, mira and the road ahead. We all face choices in
life, and I certainly have faced many, particularly in the past ten years,
that have impacted my life and my husband's life, and have been very
open about sharing them all with you with the goal of helping you face choices
in your life. Today's show is a sensitive one for me because it deals
with an emotion that I actually don't like but I feel and I'm trying to
deal with right now, and I think that being open with you about it
may help me, but also help will help you. And it's living with
regret. I don't like living with regret. Always say regret is regress.
When you live with regret, you regrets in your life. You don't move
forward. Regret to me, the definition is feeling sad or disappointed over something
that has happened or been done, especially a lost or missed opportunity, as
in, she immediately regretted her words, she regretted her decision, she regretted
her choice, you regretted her action. Usually when you regret something, it
goes back to I wish I had never done that. I regret having done
that. I could have done better, I should have done better, I
wish I would have done better. They're all notes of sorrow over choices that
you made that you wish you had not, And it's not I don't think
there's anything healthy about regret. But we're gonna digging it to go a little
deeper, because it's a common feeling, particularly as you progress in life.
You know life, and we all don't make the best ones for ourselves or
family, and often we do As a result, many people feel regret over
decisions they made or did not make, actions they made and took or did
not take, and regret is very painful. It is hard to deal with
because you actually get into a cycle of inertia. You can't move forward,
you can't book meckward And as I said to someone recently, I want my
life to stop looking into the rear view, Mira. I want to look
in my rear view mirror less and look at the road ahead more. Now,
why do I say that? Because I sold my house in twenty twenty
something. I do. I regret, No because I was underwater, but
yes, because I regret that I couldn't do enough to keep the house and
living it the rest of my life. It was a beautiful house and I
miss it terribly, But I don't regret my decision to sell it because it
freed me up from a lot of debt. So I worked through that regret
fairly easily. But then when I moved back into take care of my mother.
I developed levels of regret that I'm still trying to peel away at.
I regret that I fought with my mother instead of had solid conversations with her
in the last year of her life because she was difficult and I was angry.
Do I regret that? Yes? But was it inevitable? Well,
it was coping with something that was a difficult situation he put on when she
died, I put the house on the market. Do I regret putting in
too soon? Or do I regret putting it in? You know, I
don't know. At the end of the day. Sorry, that's a buzzer
I can't control. At the end of the day, I don't regret selling
the house because I got money in the bank and the house was falling apart.
But the point of the matter is every decision I've made, I've always
had the second guess myself, and I guess. The question is what point
in your life do you stop second guessing yourself? At what point can you
just say I'm going to weigh my decisions carefully, make a confident one and
not look back in the rear Breumeira and say I regret making that decision.
I throw that out at you because I bet you're feeling that sometimes, particularly
as your life progresses. In fact, this is a very interesting So a
hospice company in Massachusetts listed the top regrets points of regrets. It's called Old
Colony Hospice in Randolph, Massachusetts. I have no relationship with them, but
I'm crediting them because the nurses. The hospice nurses did a list of the
top regrets emotion of regret that patients felt at the end of their life.
And I thought this was kind of interesting because it made me think about my
own life while I live in good health, and I want you to think
about your life while you are in good health, to see if you can
make sure that as you progress in life and go to the end of it,
you don't feel these feelings. Here are the top five that patience toward
the end of the life felt in regret. Number one, I wish I'd
had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others
expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When you
realize and you look back and that rear view mirrah, because the one ahead
is getting shorter on that road to life, and you realize that you didn't
live the life that was true to yourself, that you didn't honor your dreams
or pursue them, that you just accept it as is or what people expected
of you or what people told you to do, and you didn't stand up
for yourself and you didn't say I want to do it my way, which
we'll get into. Thank you, Frank Sinatra. So message number one is
today and moving forward, work harder to say, this is the life I
want and I envision. Look at your life in every season, in every
situation, when it rains, when it's sunny, when it's cold, when
it's hot, when you're alone, when you have money, when you don't
have money, when when you're loved, when you're hurting, and say how
do I want my life to feel? How do I want to feel,
and how do I want to be? What is it I want to be
doing in every situation? Because as you know, life is going to throw
you curve. How are you going to be prepared to deal with them?
My husband and I are house hunting right now because we don't have a home
once again, and I'm looking at a home in New Orleans and I'm thinking,
what do I want my life to look like when it's cold, when
it's wet, when it's hurricane season, when it's hotter than hell? How
do I want to live my life? So again, I wish I'd had
the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life others expected
of me. That means maybe you choose a career you want and not what
your parents wanted. Maybe you choose a life you want not what your spouse
wants. Maybe you go into your boss if you're employed, and say I
want to make a change, or maybe you just say I no longer want
to work for anybody else. One of the best decisions I did make in
my life, and I'm so proud of it, is I walked away from
being an employee and became self employed and started a company. Now, I
had a wonderful father who guided me along the way. Because I had no
business sense, I just knew how to sell. But that was the best
decision I made, because I called my shots and I will never regret that.
Even though it was a tough business to be in public relations, but
I loved every minute of it and it was a great choice and I'm so
proud of it. So again, think about your life and think about what
you have achieved and what you love about it, and then think about what
you don't love so much, and what you wish you were still could do,
or maybe what you regret you haven't done yet, And now today,
put on paper, create a vision board, write in your journal, do
something, Do one thing toward those goals, one step at a time.
But do it, just one thing today, and you'll feel better. The
next regret that patients made elderly people made toward the end of the life was
I wish I didn't work so hard. This came from every male patient.
They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women spoke of regret as
well, but they were at a different generation where they were not the breadwinner.
Well, having come from a generation where I felt compelled to work and
needed to work and was programmed to work. I had parents that brought me
up to be successful and expected me to be success. I was like a
racehorse that had to win every race. Do I regret that? No?
Do I regret working as hard as I did? No? Do I now
not want to work as hard? Yes? I want to work less and
enjoy life more. But I'm learning to and you need to learn too too.
If you've been a success focused on success all your life, is how
do you reprogram your brain to focus less on success and more on just finding
peace? And you got to find your own piece. Maybe being successful and
working hard is your piece. I don't know. I have a friend who
is working really hard right now, but would also like to spend more time
with her husband, who has found his piece, doing recreational activities that he
truly enjoys while she works. I don't know. I don't have advice for
you on that, other than you need to decide when the work you're doing
and the work as hard as you're working, as creating diminishing returns on your
health mentally and physically. If the work you're doing is creating diminishing returns,
and why are you doing it, find something else to do that maybe is
less challenging or upsetting or gives you more fulfillment, and that's okay. It
may be in a different profession, it may be doing something else. Yesterday
I was talking to someone in New Orleans and he said, I think you'll
probably be overqualified for anything I would want you to do. And I said,
test me. You don't even know who I am. You don't know
what my you don't know what my qualifications are, nor do you know what
I really want to be doing right now. And frankly, it's okay to
say I want to work less. It's perfectly okay. Hey, if you
can do it. So regret too, I wish I didn't work so hard.
Well, maybe that's okay. You know. I know a lot of
people that have been diagnosed with cancer and they don't want to work as hard
anymore. They want to just chill and enjoy the life they have and the
help they have while they have it. Number Three regret, I wish I'd
had the courage to express my feelings and not suppress them. Many people suppress
their feelings as they don't want to be criticized or thought of negatively, or
maybe they're afraid to express their feelings. Maybe they're afraid that someone will judge
them as being weak or selfish or anything other than acceptable. But that's not
good either. You need to be open about how you feel about things and
speak your truth. I think about the recent revelation that the Princess of Wales,
Catherine Mendleton went out and publicly announced that she had cancer. And I
know how hard that was to speak that truth publicly, much less to your
family, and I respect her decision to speak it publicly. She almost was
forced to because people were judging her for so many things, going into a
hospital thinking she had a tummy tak, judging her for photoshopping her kids.
She was getting criticized for so many things that were so frankly nobody's business that
I'm sure she felt she had to speak out about having cancer because otherwise people
are just constantly going to be second guessing everything she was doing. And I
feel for her for that. I mean, gosh, she's a public figure,
and I know it's important to acknowledge the public figures have to be more
public about everything than others, But sometimes don't I just wish you could just
also be private And why can't people respect privacy? And I think it's okay
to say that too, Like if you don't want people to pry, say,
I really want to keep things to myself, it's none of your business.
I mean, I can't even agin to tell you when I sold my
house, how many people asked me how much I sold it for like it's
none of their business. And you know what I've learned to say to people,
I appreciate your interest in my life, but there are some things I
would like to keep personal in private, So let's talk about you instead.
That's how I spin it around. You know, you don't have to talk
about anything you don't want to, or you could say, I'm not happy
with the situation. You're making me uncomfortable. This situation is making me uncomfortable.
I'm not comfortable, and that's important too, because if you suppress those
feelings, it will only make you angry and it will go back to that
feeling we started with, which is regret. And you don't want that,
so express yourself. Thank you, Madonna. Just say I need to get
let this off my chest, as in my book Getting Things Off my Chest.
That's what I did. I let it out. And even now when
I say I think I need to get something off my chest, I think
the people who know me well know she's about to lay it out there.
And you know, it feels really good when you do. And I've had
to do that a lot recently. When I was going through my state sell
and selling my mother sayings. People were like, can you get better?
Can you go lower? Can you do better? I want to pay less
And I finally let people say it's worth more. I'm worth more at this
place is worth more. I'm better and I will not accept anything less than
this. And I had to say that very firmly to people, and I
felt good about it and I have no regrets about it. So speaking your
truth, expressing your feelings, making choices that are your choices, not choices
made for you are always not to have regrets. Number four and they are
five points. Again. Elderly people on their deathbed said I wish I had
stayed in touch with my friends. Many became so caught up in their own
lives that they let golden friendships slip by over the years, and there were
deep regrets about giving friend not giving friendships the attention they deserve. Well,
I can tell you I have no regrets over that, because I love staying
in touch with my friends and I'm a big believer in picking up the telephone
and saying I just called to say hello and see how you are. You
can take texts all you want, but I'm not a texter. I like
to pick up the phone and say I'm thinking of you. One of the
things I loved about my mother and I inherited this is we love to give
and write notes. I love to take cards, funny cards and send them
and handwritten notes. My handwriting is so good now, but I sure love
to send notes just to say I'm thinking about you, or sending a little
poem. And one of the things I did is we were moving out of
the house the very last day. We were in an empty house, and
what I had left on the dining room table were these greeting cards. I
couldn't bear to throw them all away. There were bags of them, boxes
of them, funny ones, serious ones, pretty ones, and I did
not want to throw them away as much as my husband wanted me to one.
They were really pretty, and I thought maybe I could create collages out
of them too. I thought they're so great, I want to send them
to people. So I spent an afternoon creating little packages for friends who live
elsewhere. And I took those cards, and I found photos, and I
found a little just Chatchika's memorabilia about my mom and me, little things,
and I created little care packages and I wrote personal notes and each one saying
thank you for being my friend. I miss you, I want this to
be I want to share this part of my life with you. And I
mailed them all to each friend and they loved it. They were so grateful,
and I thought, yeah, we don't really do that very often these
days. We're so busy sending emails and texts and talking on social media.
But that little care package really met a lot. And these are friends I've
had for many, many years. So I have no regrets about that.
And I hope that you today call a friend you haven't talked to in a
long time, or sit down and write a note and say I'm thinking about
you. You will never regret that. And then the final one, which
is Frank, the other one I'm probably dealing with right now. More than
anything, I wish that I had let myself be happier. This is a
common regret many don't realize, and this is from this hospice group, that
happiness is a choice. Now. I never thought about that, Like I
didn't think about choosing happiness. I just thought it's a feeling that they always
say, it's like a butterfly that lights on you. That happiness is just
a feeling, but there are a lot of things that are impediments to happiness.
A lot of it is fear, fear of change, feeling false about
yourself, not being true to yourself, putting yourself in situations that make you
uncomfortable, pressuring yourself to do things that you don't want to do or you're
too tired to do, and more importantly, living with regret, which goes
back to the topic here. You can't be happy if you live with regret.
You can't be happy. If you live with anger, you can't be
happy. If you live with self doubt, you can't be happy. If
you're jealous, you can't be healthy, if you're wishful or wistful, and
living with again regret, should have, would have, could have? So
how do you change that into can? How do you change that could into
can? That should into shall, and that would into will? Well,
it starts with will power. You've got to sit back and reframe your life
and realize that everybody is human and we all make mistakes, we all make
choices that we have to live with, and some of them cannot be reversed,
some can, some can't. But you have to learn with acceptance that
you're not perfect. You have to learn with acceptance that shit's going to come
your way that you're going to have to deal with whether you like it or
not, and you're going to have to live with acceptance. The people that
you love aren't perfect either, and they're going to make you really mad sometimes,
whether it's your mother or your father, your brother, your sister,
or your husband, your wife. They're gonna make it your kids, but
they're still part of your family, and you know you can't divorce most of
your family. You can talk to them lass and spend less time with them,
but then you'll one day to regret that too. So how do you
deal with choosing to be happy? Well, I don't know. I don't
have a lot of solid I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a professional psychologist.
I'm a health coach. But I'm a human. I'm a human that
is dealing with her own emotions about dealing with regret and learning to be happy
again when you lose a part of your life, and in my case,
I've lost my parents. I now have no home. I didn't you know,
I choose. I chose to give it up and sell it. So
that's not a bad thing. There are people who lose their home to fire
or foreclosure. I chose, but it's still giving up a part of your
life that you no longer have. I can't go back to that house.
I can't go back to having parents, I can't go back to my home
in New York. I can't go back to things I chose to give up,
or who had life chose to give up for me. So how do
you choose to let those things go in your head so you can stop looking
in the rear view Mirra and choose to be happy again. Well, many
psychologists say, first of all, one step at a time and tune out
things that trigger the negative feelings. So what are things that trigger negative feelings?
Well, first of all, it's just about everything on television, just
about everything in advertising. If you have ever thought about all the advertising on
television, it's all about getting sick and getting well by taking medication and pills.
It's all about the news. It's all about things that are not even
in your control half the time. So what I'm learning to do is stop
watching television, stop watching the ads, getting outside more. I'm sleeping more.
I'm trying to tune out things that trigger negative emotions. Now that's not
always good because sometimes you just can't tune everything out, but you can turn
off things that you seem to be listening to, whether it's trolling social media.
That's a big one. I'm learning to tune into friends who are really
fun and are fun to be with, and to stop talking about me,
but talking about them. Learn more about your friends, See how they're doing,
go out for a laugh, go out for a walk. Think about
that, and then learn to reframe everything in a new way. So I
sold a house. I don't have a home anymore where I grew up,
but I'm going to make a new home somewhere else. I no longer have
parents, but I have a wonderful husband, and I have wonderful friends,
so I'll be able to spend more time with them. I don't have much
to do work wise. I'm practically retired other than this wonderful podcast. But
that frees me up to explore my creativity, so I can get back into
journaling. I can create a new life. It's like a new chapter.
So that's exciting, and then you go, wow, you can choose to
do that if you're not in a situation like I am right now, and
you are still taking care of children, and you still have a home to
care for in a job you still could do with some amazing things in your
spare time. You can take up a hobby. You could take take piano
lessons if you have a piano. You could take an art class. You
can try a new sport. You can plan a trip with your husband or
your family or some girlfriends and go somewhere you've never been before. It doesn't
even have to be a lot of money. We recently. One of the
things we did when we left Chattanooga, which was my home, and that
last day was hard. As I said, I create a care package just
for friends to mail them, and that was really fun. I visited my
parents' grave at the National Cemetery to say goodbye. That was very hard.
Then I took a fun gift to a friend of mine at her house as
if goodbye, and she loved it and that made me happy again. And
then we hit the road and we decided that we would drive to New Orleans,
where we were resettling, by making it an adventure, because here is
what the best that you can do when you're feeling low and down and full
of regrat and little not yourself, create an adventure for yourself. So we
had a car, we had two suitcases each and we hit the road and
we drove through Alabama and Mississippi one day at a time, deciding where we
were going to be each day, and it ended up being an interesting journey.
We went to Florence, which is part of the Four Cities, and
Muscle Shoals, a very famous music town, and so I reconnected with an
old friend from college. And then we drove to Tupelo, Mississippi, where
we saw the birthplace of Elvis Presley and it was really amazing. We never
had been there and it was really interesting. My husband, Dave, and
I are both Elvis fans. And then we drove to Oxford, Mississippi,
the home of old myths, Big State University, and we stated a charming
hotel called the Graduate, and had dinner and just tooled the beautiful streets.
And then we hit the Mississippi Blues Trail, starting in Clarksdale to go to
the Blues Museum, and we drove this very old historic highway sixty one,
immortalized by Bob Dylan in a song, and we drove the Mississippi Trail down
to New Orleans, and it was an interesting round. It was something we'd
always wanted to do. There were some high points to it and some low
points, very poor and very desolate, but we stayed in some neat places.
We went to some really fun museums and it was a little discovery and
it was a great way to take the blues out of your brain by going
on the Blues Trail. The point is we did it very spontaneously, choosing
a different place every day to stay. And by the time we got to
New Orleans, our spirits were lifted because we had a mini adventure and that
was a lot of fun and we felt a lot better about our decisions and
where we were and what we were doing. So that's a great way to
chase the way the blues and regret. If you're feeling regret, take a
piece of paper and write down why and then figure out how you can turn
that energy into why not something else that can take you push you further.
Figure out how you can take that regret and rechannel that energy into re energize.
I'm still learning to do it, so I'd like to hear from you.
It's not easy but you know what I did. I looked up regret.
I looked up these reasons why elderly people live with regret, and I
said, I'm not there yet. I got a lot of life left,
so I don't have time for regret. I have time for more opportunities.
And then I pulled up the famous song, the song May famous by Frank
Sinatra, and I read the lyrics. And you know, if you've never
really sat down and read the lyrics of a song, you like, sit
down and pull them up and actually read the lyrics because they're poetry, and
when you really read the lyrics, you can get inspired. And I'm going
to end the show with some of the words the lyrics from the song,
which is I did it my way. And as I read the lyrics,
I felt really good about the decisions I made and I felt less regretful.
So I'm going to read it for you, or parts of it, and
hopefully you'll feel the same way. And it says it goes like this,
and now the end is near, and I faced the final curtain. My
friend, I'll say it clear. I'll state my case, of which I'm
certain I lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and every highway,
and more much more than this, I did it my way. Regrets I've
had a few, but then again too few to mension. I did what
I had to do, and I saw it through without exemption. I planned
each charity course, each careful step along lifeespy way, and more much more
than this, I did it my way. Yes, there were times,
I'm sure you knew when I bid off more than I could chew. But
through it all, when there was doubt, I ate it up and spit
it out. I faced it all and I stood tall, and I did
it my way. I've loved, I've left, I've cried, I've had
my fill and my share of losing. And now as tears subside, I
find it also amusing to think I did all that, and may I say
not in a shy way, Oh no, not me. I did it
my way. For what is a man or woman? What has she got
if not herself? That she is not to say the things she truly feels,
and not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took
the blows and I did it my way to say the things she truly feels,
and not the words of one who kneels the record show, I took
the blows and I did it my way. So at the end of this
I want you to say life is one of my favorite authors says, don't
look back, You're not going that way. Don't look back, You're not
going that way. The road ahead is what you have to focus on.
Turned the corner away from regret and focus on your highway and do it your
way, Choose it on your terms. I'm Melanie Young. This is Fearless
Fabulous you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for letting me share my
feelings and my regrets with you, and it makes me feel better to talk
to you about them, and I hope I've made you feel better too.
And just remember there will be paths and detours along the highway of life,
but you can choose to navigate it on your terms if you focus on the
road ahead and not what you left behind and do it your way. Thank
you for joining me, and please follow me at Melanie Fabulous on Instagram and
listen to all my shows on your favorite podcast channel. Thank you