How to Avoid Regrets at the End of Your Life
A Short Guide for Fear and Focusing on What Matters
Two fish greet each other one morning.
‘How’s the water?’, one asks the other.
The other replies, ‘What the heck is water?’
If you do have regrets in the final moments of your life, it will likely be that you wished you had focused more on what matters.
Matters to you. Be that quality time loved ones. Time spent indulging in your greatest passions. Time in joy, in flow, in presence.
And matters to something more than you, I offer. Time giving back. Helping others. Paying it forward. Time spent contributing to something greater.
Whatever we label these two notions - purpose, connectedness - these are two fundamental needs of every human. Biologically, emotionally, spiritually we are at our very best when we are operating in the moment, in relation or in harmony with others.
And yet it can feel to many of us that the systems we operate in are working against our own interests. For many of us the working world asks us to simply be a good, productive worker bee who keeps busy - very busy in fact - producing wealth and consuming resource.
Many folks will spend the majority of their life and career climbing a ladder or remaining on a treadmill only to realise that the financial enrichment does not translate into spiritual or soulful enrichment.
That to chase meaning and purpose purely through individual progress in their working life may well have been a fool’s errand. As John Stewart quipped in a recent piece - the only values a corporation ultimately cares about is shareholder value.
One of the most common regrets of those dying is that they spent too much care and time on their work. Too much of their identity has been defined by their job title, or perceived status. Because, of course, that isn’t really who they are deep down.
Motivated by Fear
Sometimes I wonder if we operate in a fear-based economy. At a macro level, many of the ills we face stem from individual or collective fear. A desire to control. A fear of the other - real or exaggerated. A desire to have power over - to dominate.
At a micro level, many of us swim every day in the murky waters of fear. Fear of missing out. Fear of not providing for our loved ones. Fear of losing face, losing status. Fear of not fitting in. Fear of looking stupid in the meeting. Fear of rejection from the family, from the group, from the tribe.
A fear of the pain we would experience if someone made a comment about the clothes we wear, the car we own, the house we live in or the holidays we take.
In your work team, or any group dynamic, you might feel self conscious speaking up, asking a ‘silly’ question. Sharing a different opinion or idea. It often feels safer to blend in, keep your head down. To homogenise.
More conscious, and more socially acceptable to share today, is perhaps a fear of failure. A fear of success. A fear of being ‘found out’ as an imposter in the work we do.
We are deeply complicated and tribal creatures. And at the heart of being a human lies a paradox. It is ingrained in us to both want to be connected to others and to also deeply care what others think and feel towards and about us.
Systemic Thinking
Many folks come to coaching, or therapy, or counselling to explore thoughts, feelings or suffering related to this crisis of meaning. Of thought patterns or behaviour patterns so well-engrained and entrenched that it becomes the default operating system. Put another way, you’ve stopped noticing the water in which you’re swimming.
The systems we are operating in - be they your work role or environment, be they the traps of addiction, the allure of social media and screen time or be they wider economic and political - are asking us to bend ourselves out of shape. Both physically - in our posture, our diets, our health. And emotionally, in our hyper-connectedness to technology and with everybody, and their opinion, and with every piece of information that has ever existed.
It is tough. It is tiring. And in this context it is perfectly rational that many people you know are burning out, are breaking down. And the fabrics of our societies, governments and institutions can feel like they are untethering, while the very ecology - life itself - collapses both in seemingly slow motion and at a giddying, unfathomable pace.
Here lies one of the tensions. For many of us, the work that we do is measured by how much value we bring. How much profit we deliver. It can feel transactional, superficial, lacking substance, meaning, purpose. Our work can over-index and over-prioritise financial profit, at cost to ourselves and wider stakeholders.
The water we are swimming in is, perhaps, that of perennial growth. Economies grow. GDP increases. House prices go up. More wealth is created. And this mindset naturally filters down to the individual. We aim to be faster, stronger, slimmer, richer. We seek more followers. We seek more personal growth, more refinement and optimisation - often to our detriment, and to those who really matter to us.
Coaching for Business as Usual
The work of coaches faces a fascinating existential enquiry. Do coaches see themselves as helping clients sustain and put up with the pressures and demands of their system? Does a resilience coach want to simply patch up an employee to help them sustain more harm, like a boxing coach might prop up a punch-drunk fighter in the corner of a ring? Do coaches want to help perpetuate a business-as-usual way of thinking and operating in our clients? To help our clients simply achieve more, grow more, earn more, succeed more?
Do we want to go a little deeper? To help our clients think and feel a little more clearly. To create a generative, reflective space where our clients can explore, think and feel more deeply. To come back to who they really are, taking off their career mask, carefully or carelessly curated over the years which may feel like it has become stuck to their face. To help the person opposite us come back to their innate connectedness.
Coaching is, of course, just one way of attending. It is, perhaps alongside mentoring, one of the most ‘work-friendly’ interventions at the moment. But others find similar benefits from other forms of reflection, dialogue, community. With their co-creation of trusted spaces and deeper conversation, coaches today may filling a void in communities inhabited previously by elders, by mentors, by gurus. Or indeed, by authentic, trusted leaders and managers.
Part of the vision I have for coaching is that it helps facilitate deeper awareness. It helps us reconnect to a way of being that honours slowing down. That prioritises reflection and time to think a little more deeply. That it models presence, not-knowing, trust and vulnerability. That it leans into complexity. That is helps more people make sense of their thought and behaviours, their situations, their opportunities. That it can help future proof against those regrets at the end of life.
That it helps us notice the water we’re swimming in.
I first heard a version the parable of the two fish in a knockout speech from David Foster Wallace. I recommend it highly - link here
If something has been evoked for you, reflections are always welcome in the comments.
Please share with others or your wider networks.
Would you like to explore some support or deeper enquiry for you, your team, your organisation? Feel welcome to schedule a call here or drop me an email back.
With Gratitude,
George
An interesting read, loved the fish anecdote.