How to not regret your life
Two types of performance come up in coaching.
One leads to external rewards. The other leads to internal turmoil—and potentially regrets on your death bed.
The first kind of performance is about meeting expectations.
This most commonly shows up at work. Employees who perform get raises and promotions. Those who don’t get put on performance-improvement plans.
It also shows up in entrepreneurship, fitness, health, finances, and relationships.
Coaching on this type of performance is about helping you accomplish things so you can reach new levels of success.
Many people arrive at coaching because they want improvements in this first type of performance—they want to make more money, find more fulfilling work, experience more connected relationships.
But in my experience (as both coach and client), addressing a second type of performance is the unlock for achieving big results.
The second kind of performance is about playing roles.
We all step into roles sometimes. It’s part of being an adaptable human who senses what different situations require.
Yet sometimes performing in this way stems from trying to satisfy an “audience” of fear, shoulds, or other people’s opinions. It separates you from yourself, causing you to lose sight of who you really are and what you really want.
Coaching on this type of performance is about helping you reconnect with your true self and clarify what you want to create in your life. This is the core of transformational coaching.
Top regret of the dying
The role-playing type of performance came up on a recent episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, when she spoke with hospice doctor Zach Bush.
Mel asked him an expected question—What are the top regrets of the dying?—to which he gave an unexpected answer:
“The number-one regret is, I was performing the whole time.”
Woah.
He added, “I was never actually being me and I was afraid to be me. I didn’t even know what it would feel like to be me.”
If that caused you to sit up a little straighter—it definitely did when I heard it—here are a few questions to think about:
Do you know what it feels like to be yourself?
Are you being that way in your relationships and at work?
Where in your life are you performing?
What’s one thing you’re ready to acknowledge? (Even if only to yourself.)
You are perfect
Looking honestly at yourself can be confronting. The discoveries may tempt you to judge yourself as “bad” or “wrong.”
You’re not. You’re perfect.
Everything that has happened in your life was exactly as it needed to be.
As my wise coach recently put it, “…those behaviors were you doing your best to take care of yourself then, given what you were thinking and believing.”
The questions above are nothing more than an opportunity to get curious. To explore a future with no regrets. To play with what’s possible when you stop performing.
