If you’ve spoken to me over the last month, it is without a doubt that I’ve mentioned to you Glennon Doyle’s podcast, We Can Do Hard Things. It’s my favorite podcast for so many reasons, but mostly because it is Doyle and her sister just chatting about the things that many of us are thinking about. They discuss love, communication, relationships, and more. Recently, Doyle and her sister (She’s called Sister on the podcast.) discussed death bed regrets. These are the supposed regrets that people have at the end of their lives. “I wish I had spent more time with my family.” Or, “I wish I had traveled more.” Those types of end-of-life regrets.

They compared those to bedtime regrets: “I wish I hadn’t snapped at my kids today.” Or, “I wish I had gone for a walk today.” Their point was that if we address the bedtime regrets, it’s unlikely that we will have death bed regrets. It was a powerful concept and one that I’ve thought about since. The death bed regrets come from days on end of not doing what we say we want to do and thus, lead us to a life filled with regrets.

What if we examined those bedtime regrets a little more closely? Why did I snap at my kids today and what can I do tomorrow to change that behavior? What kept me from walking today and if I really want to walk, how can I make it happen? Or, I worked so much today and didn’t get any time with my family. What can I do about that tomorrow? A death bed regret is essentially useless. We can’t change anything about it. Yet a bedtime regret seems like a great opportunity to do something immediately, that very next day.

Since listening to that episode of We Can Do Hard Things, I do a quick run through of my day right as I’m going to bed to see if there are any regrets. If there are, I think of a plan to change those for the next day. If I’m having trouble changing them, I want to figure out why so that too much time doesn’t pass before I make the changes that I really want to make. How can you make sure you don’t have death bed regrets and instead learn to manage those bedtime regrets?

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC