Bronnie Ware Is an Author and Speaker Whose Bestselling book, the Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Is Based on Her Time as a Palliative Care worker. in This Episode of Insights at the Edge, Bronnie Outlines These Five Major Life Regrets with Tami Sim

children were in, but from an individual perspective, stepping out of the mother role, she still wanted to embrace any aspects of her life, any clarity she had in between pain and painkillers, as much as she could.

That's where friends really came into it, because even though friends were also grieving and had their own pains, there was just such a different dynamic, where friends could reminisce about the good old days in a way that family couldn't, and it brought a lot of mischief, and laughter, and just a whole different angle of love to the dying person's final weeks, because the family often didn't know all of the stories that their friends knew. So, a lot of them had lost touch, and when they got to that point of dying, they were thinking, "Why on Earth didn't I stay in touch with these people? You know, I tried my best to fix that a few times, and sometimes had success, but not always."

And this still applies even with social media. We don't lose touch so much, but we're not as inclined to have one-on-one personal, in-real-life conversations anymore, and they are what we need at the end. They are what we need all the way through, to be honest, but it's the lack of contact, bringing everyone together. And again, the courage came into that because sometimes, people were feeling stupid to want to reach out to other people. I remember one old guy saying, "Oh, no, no. He'd think I was a sentimental old fool if I wanted to track him down now." And it's like, "Well, but you're dying, and I'm sure he'd love to hear from you." In that case, that gentleman didn't actually have the courage to track his old mate down.

TS: You know, before we get to the last of the top five regrets, you wrote a blog post more recently, called "The Five Things I've Learned Since Writing About the Five Top Regrets," and I thought, "Bronnie really knows how to rock this list of five structure." [Bronnie laughs] But anyway, one of the things that you wrote of the top five things you've learned since writing The Top Five Regrets is it's real-life connections that are the essence of joy. And in a way, I think you're pointing to that with this staying in touch with our friends, and saying it's really throughout our life, that these real-life connections are where we find our joy, and that we need to prioritize them.

BW: Absolutely. Absolutely, because it's so lovely. Social media can be so lovely—or the internet, so lovely, in terms of reaching out and finding friends, and saying a quick hello or a text message is hello, but even our conversation now, I mean, we're on the other side of the world, but if you hadn't sent me questions and I hadn't replied, it wouldn't have the flavor that we have in a real-life conversation. So, the more we can hold onto the old world, or return to the old world, and have real-life catch-ups with our friends, the richer our lives will be. And I know we're all busy, and there's so many demands on our time, but I prioritize that these days. Well, I'd never really let go of it, because I learned through other people's hard lessons, that those real-life . . . the time spent in real-life connections, it truly is the essence of joy.

TS: You know, it's almost like these reminders, in a way, they're cliché, and yet I feel like I benefit from them. It's interesting. I benefit from having them be put right in front of me.

BW: Well, they probably are clichés, but clichés are often . . . you know, they've got a common denominator that a lot of people relate to them.

TS: All right, the last of the five regrets, "I wish I had let myself be happier." I think this is really interesting, "let myself be happier." Tell me what you discovered in talking to people on their deathbed, about letting themselves be happier.

BW: Well, they hadn't realized that happiness was a choice. That's not denying that there's suffering and learning, and pretending to be happy every minute of the day, that's unrealistic. We're here to be stretched, and to grow, and to return to our wholeness, but a lot of people realized that they had allowed the opinions of others to stop them from having joy, and had focused on that rather than focusing on the beautiful things about themselves, or the blessings in life, or those incredible, small, magnificent moments in-between, that actually bring you happiness in-between all of the other challenges. They had realized they'd stuck to old patterns, and just owned the identity that other people had dumped upon them, and that feeling that they weren't worthy of happiness.

TS: Yes, in listening to you describe the top five regrets, I can see how important and valuable it is to have that perspective of—it's like I'm on my deathbed, and I'm looking back at my life, but I'm not, so I get the chance, now, to live differently. What are your suggestions for how people can keep a type of "deathbed awareness" with them at whatever point they are in their life, at whatever age, and in whatever health?

BW: I think the easiest and the hardest, all in one, is to realize that you're going to die, to face the fact that you are going to die; and it's the easiest in the sense that, OK, it's a pretty simple truth. You're going to die. It's the hardest because no one wants to talk about it or face it until they really have to. But if, as a society and as individuals, if we can speak more about death, or even just contemplate it on a private, individual level, then you realize that, "OK, I am going to die. This isn't a practice run—" regardless of what you believe in the afterlife, this life I'm in now is the only life I'm going to be living as this person. I don't actually have forever. This, "One day. I'll get around to it one day," thing, it's never going to happen if I don't find the courage now.

So, by facing death, and realizing that your time is sacred, then that gives you the courage, because you think, "OK, well, if I'm going to die in a year, what that person thinks of me if I change direction in my career is so irrelevant to how my heart is going to feel because I've at least given it a go." So, I think that we have to use death as a tool for living. I find it is one of the most incredible tools for living, to realize the sacredness of our time, because it's an ever-decreasing resource. We may not have time to do every single thing we want, but the biggest gift we can give to ourselves is to enjoy our life as fully as possible, and that means to be as courageous in honoring our own heart as possible. And of course, that then benefits the whole world anyway.

TS: You know, Bronnie, in preparing for this conversation, I learned that after you wrote The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, you developed a very painful autoimmune disease. I wanted to talk to you about that, and how that experience changed you, and how you were able to bring the insights from this writing project to facing that kind of really difficult, chronic pain and suffering.

BW: Well, at the time that this all came around, I had an immense trust in life, in the sense that I deeply believed, and still do, that our lessons are given to us from a place of love. So I tried—I ' always able, but I tried to hold onto that theory through the worst times.

At the same time, I was very blessed to conceive naturally and quickly at 44. I became a first-time mom at 45, had a very healthy pregnancy, and in the same 24 hours as my daughter was born, my book took off. It had been rejected by 25 publishers, and then all of a sudden, boom, it took off.

So, I had this major birthing happening, of a baby, my book reaching the world properly, and at the same time, rheumatoid arthritis arrived in my life. So it all happened at the same time. Within a couple of weeks of having the baby, the pain kicked in, and it was triggered by the pregnancy. But again, it was a healing, and all of them—I've never known any of them without the other.

So, it was horrific, and I'm not going to glaze over that, in the sense that the level of pain that the body is capable of without dying is just unfathomable, really, because you just cannot believe that the body can contain so much pain and not be dying. So obviously, I had a lot of tears, and a lot of choices. I had to bring so much consciousness into this healing.

But, now that I'm seven years along, I am so grateful to have this disease, because it has taught me gentleness. It has taught me space. It has healed me in ways that nothing, nothing, ever could have, and I deeply believe that as awful as it can be, as painful as it can be, whatever lessons we are given are absolutely perfect for who we are, and for bringing us into our best self, and that they are given to us from an incredibly deep place of love. Because sometimes, the lesson has—the lesson is perfect for who we are, and I couldn't have become as loving to myself, as grounded in myself, as courageous to leave the amount of space in my life as I do, had I not had this disease. So yes, I've learned—the biggest lesson through all of it is to learn to surrender, have the courage to surrender, and to trust in the lesson.

And again, The Five Regrets helped me with that, Tami, because I had already let go of what people think of me, because I had the death element and the sacredness of time already in my thinking, so I had already started letting go of what people think of me. That empowered me as I went through this, because obviously, I had a bestselling book, and yet I'm not huge on social media. I'm not huge on . . . I haven't milked it in a way that it could have been milked, because I was committed to my own healing, and to being present for my own life, rather than living the life expected of me and just running with every single opportunity Five Regrets gave me. Instead, I just thought, "No, OK. I've been given a bigger gift here, and that is to return to such a place of love within my own house."

TS: Are you still in pain from the rheumatoid arthritis?

BW: Well, I'd probably say 2 out of 10. They always scale it. I spin six mornings a week. I ride my push bike on other days. I had a couple of years where I was completely off medication and everything. I went to India and did some major healing through the Ayurvedic path. Then about a year ago, it came back overnight, almost overnight, where I went from jumping on the trampoline to not being able to walk more than two steps without having to lean on the wall to breathe through the pain. So I just, again, trusted—and I went right back almost to where I'd been, but it hasn't taken me as long to get back. And now I'm fitter and stronger than I've been in seven years.

So, you know, I do have pain if I push myself too hard, but I don't generally have much pain. Before, even if I was just sitting down, I would always have some level of pain, whereas I'm sitting here chatting to you now, and I don't feel—I have to search for the pain. There's a little bit of pain in one of my feet at the moment, maybe a 1 out of 10, but even then, I had to search for it. So most of the time, as long as I go gently, I'm doing really well, but I know what my limits are now, and if I push myself too hard, certainly, I still live in pain.

TS: You know, I'm moved and inspired by your story, by you sharing that it was horrifically painful, but that you had this underlying, overriding, powerful trust in life through it. Yet, I want to address that person who says, "You know, yes, life is the teacher, love is the lesson. I'm hearing this, but you know, I'm going through a hard time right now," this person says. "And you know, I hear those as words, but I don't feel it. I don't really feel that kind of trust. I don't feel the trust. I want to, but I'm not there."

BW: Well, I would pray for that person that they could realize how much time they're wasting in trying to solve everything themselves, because even if you're not feeling that, then you're doing it alone, and that's a pretty hard place to be. Not that we don't have to get to know ourselves and our heart, but without that level of trust—or not that level, without some level of trust, then there's not even a level of hope, and hope is a pretty powerful support system. If you can't trust, at least try to find the hope.

But more and more, we have to realize we're all in this together. You know, you're not alone in it, and the harder the lesson, the more we tend to isolate ourselves and think we have to do it on our own, whereas they're the times when we actually have to allow others to step up and realize what they're capable of, by asking for their help.

TS: Now, Bronnie, you've written a new book, called Bloom: A Tale of Courage, Surrender, and Breaking Through Upper Limits. In this conversation, we've talked quite a bit about courage, and you've brought up surrender a couple of times in powerful ways, and especially here in talking about the process the you've been through with rheumatoid arthritis. Tell me a little bit about this idea of breaking through upper limits, and how this became an important teaching for you.

BW: Well, I realized that just as there's a place we can get to in the depth of pain and despair, where we say, "I am really at the bottom here. I cannot take another ounce of pain," and then actually, usually life gives us a little bit more until we get—there's usually a couple more layers down. Then we can get to the absolute bottom, where we're broken, where our old self has shattered, and we're having to be reborn from that place, and where we do reach the absolute depth, that we say, "That's it. I am so broken. I cannot take one more ounce of pain," and that is a turning point.

The same works the other way. As we learn to open our heart and receive life's blessings, we also—it's like there's a cloud above us, and we get to a certain level of goodness where we're allowing opportunity in, we're allowing more love, we're allowing more joy into our life, and then we hit an upper limit where we genuinely don't know how to allow more joy in, or more goodness, or more blessings, so we can often sabotage ourselves, whether consciously or not. We can rock the boat in a relationship, or we can quit a job that's just starting to break through to the good points, or do things that are just our old self's patterns, because we really have reached that place where you think, "I don't know how—" and it's not conscious. Of course we'd never do that consciously to ourselves, but a part of us is thinking, "I don't know how to let more goodness in."

So what I find when I reach those places, I've started recognizing the sabotage, and when the old self comes back and wants to sabotage me in some way, then I just think, "No, no, no. OK, I am not ready for the next step, but I am not going back down there." That's when I just really stay committed to leaving space in my life, and do something that brings me joy, that is simple and manageable—like going for a bike ride beside the river, or doing something that brings me joy, but it is not a scary gift of joy, something that's familiar. And I just keep staying committed to that level of joy until all of a sudden, I sort of realize, "OK, righto, life. I'm ready for the next level. Let's get on with this." Then, sure enough, before long, I take another step up into some unknown area that leads to further joy.

TS: Can you give me an example, once again, of you saying, "Aha, this is an upper limit issue. I can see it"?

BW: Yes. OK, well a recent one is . . . one of the biggest fights I've had in myself, in my career, or in my whole life, is in being seen. Because I got used to just finding peace in being in the background, in growing up, and then life called me to this public role, and I hated it. I really resisted it so much, and it started off with I wrote a book, with some quotes, with nature photos. That was how my creative journey started, and that was safe. I just sold my photos at markets. I didn't have my name on the back of the photos, my surname. I was covering my tracks the whole way. Excuse me. I want this cough. [Coughs] Sorry.

So I was covering my tracks the whole way, but then the songwriting came in, and I had to stand on a stage to share my message, because I couldn't find anyone else to do that. And I hated it. There was not one gig in the early days that I looked forward to. I drove to every gig with dread, because I didn't want to be on stage, but I wanted to share my message. So I'd come up against these limits, and I'd just think, "No, I'm going to break through this, because I know how good it will feel to be heard and to have my message help people."

So I kept going through that, and over time, the performance started bringing me joy, because I started finding the right audience, but also because I let go of those limits that were restricting me from actually enjoying it. Then, that led to me speaking on stage. When I speak on stage now, I don't think about it. I don't plan it. I just say to God, "OK, allow me to say what this audience needs to hear," so sometimes I can come off the stage and I could think, "Oh, I could have said that, and that, and that. That would have made me feel more clever." But I don't do that now. I just say to life, "Work through me. Say what this audience needs to hear." I've got the confidence to do that, but I wouldn't have if I hadn't kept breaking through the upper limits of what performing was trying to bless me with.

Even recently—I haven't done many videos at all, at all, online, on YouTube. There's some of me doing interviews and whatnot, but generally, I've avoided video completely, because I just don't like it. It's not my medium. So recently, I launched a membership community. I needed people to get to know me and to trust me more by getting to know me. So, I thought, "OK, I'm going to do videos, and I'm going to let them really see who I am at my best." So I just made it so fun, Tami. Instead of sitting there thinking, "I've got to say this, and I've got to say that, and get all the copy right," you know? All the copy correct. I just thought, "Oh, I'm going to let go of all that nonsense. I'm just going to sit and chat to these people and let them get to know me."

So I put videos on my social media and let people get to know me, and it was a real upper limit for me. Not that I'm scared of people seeing me; I mean, my face has been plenty of places, but more it just ' my thing. It didn't bring me joy. So in the end, I thought, "OK, people need to get to know me better. I'm going to do some videos and allow the world to see me better, see me more clearly." That's what I did, and it was fun. So I think that that is probably the most recent upper limit that I've worked through. It's the example that came up, yes.

TS: You know, it's possible we could put our whole conversation under this umbrella term that you use, "regret-free living." When I think about that term, "regret-free living," I imagine somebody who feels guilt about something or other. You know, "In that situation, I lied, and maybe I lied for so many years, I don't even want to go back and correct it," or you know, "I have this guilt about something else," you know? "I allowed myself to not take care of my body well," or whatever. What would you say to that person, who says, "I've heard this whole talk, but I'm still perplexed by these things I feel guilty about, that I'm holding onto"?

BW: Well, it's human to make mistakes, and we have all been there, and we can all look back on how we'd have done it differently if we had the wisdom of who we are now. But we didn't. We were who we were then, so what I say is rather than feel guilty and judge yourself so harshly—because that’s all regrets are, are really harsh judgment of ourselves. You know, we all make mistakes, but the only thing that turns a mistake into a regret is that harsh judgment of ourselves.

So rather than judge yourself so harshly and have guilt and any other toxic emotion that isn't empowering you now, bring compassion to your old self, because if you can recognize that what you did ' ideal, was not ideal, then you've already evolved from being that person to who you are now. So from who you are now to the person you were, bring loving compassion to that person, and say, "OK, you messed up, but you did the best as who you were at that time. You've since grown into who I am now. I am going to love you, with all of your frailties, mistakes, vulnerabilities, and everything else, because that's who you were then, and I'm going to love you anyway. I'm not going to judge you anymore. I am not going to dump this guilt and regret on you. You messed up. You've learned from it. I'm going to hold you tightly and lovingly in my heart and move forward with you."

TS: Beautiful. All right, Bronnie. I just have one final question for you. This Sounds True show is called Insights at the Edge, and I'm curious what your edge is, especially in terms of this theme of courage. If you had all the courage in the world, is there something you might be doing, or approach, or be different about than you are? If we just said, "Here you go, unlimited courage," does anything occur to you? I know it's a kind of edgy question, but that's why here it is, at the end of our conversation, Insights at the Edge.

BW: Well, I guess, you know, relationships are one of my big lessons, so if I had all the courage in the world, I would be the most open book of unconditional love for a partner. Yes, that would be tipping me over the edge. Yes, tipping me over the edge. I just had this vision of a cliff, going over the edge, but I once said to a friend, "I feel like I've jumped off a cliff, and I've caught a little branch on the way down, and the branch is about to break," and he said to me, "Well, why would you jump off . . . why not just fly off the cliff?" You know? So when you're saying go off the edge, that level of courage, to be as hugely, unconditionally open with a partner, has the potential to set me flying, and that's the edge I'd like to go from.

TS: Bronnie, I have so enjoyed talking with you. I'm here in Boulder, Colorado. You're in what part of Australia as we're talking?

BW: In Northern New South Wales, between Byron Bay and the Gold Coast.

TS: Ah, beautiful place. Thank you so much.

BW: Yes.

TS: Thank you so much for being a guest.

BW: It's been my pleasure.

TS: Really enjoyed talking with you.

BW: Thank you, Tami.

TS: Great work. Bronnie Ware is the author of the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, and a new book called Bloom: A Tale of Courage, Surrender, and Breaking Through Upper Limits. Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today's interview at soundstrue.com/podcast. And if you're interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. And also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes, and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.