Today is my 47th birthday, which seems impossible since I feel firmly 35… Well, outside of the hair loss, hilarious brain fog (I don’t remember anything right now), and irrational mood swings due to, you know it, perimenopause. But besides that, I feel GREAT! Haha. I feel both young and old, which is probably why they call it mid-life. Luckily, I went through my mid-life crisis early (38-42 – it was an appropriately long one) so I don’t feel a lot of the existential panic that I used to. But feeling connected to why you are here and what actually brings life meaning doesn’t make aging super easy. I know intellectually that I’ve done a lot. I can look back and see the years, and they did happen – day after day and month after month – but it still feels so weird to be this close to 50. And I know that a lot of my post-50 readers will say (and please, say it loudly) that there are soooooo many incredible parts of life left, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit sad to see my kids grow up seemingly overnight. So it’s less about me getting older, and more about time slipping away faster. I thought that spending so much time with them would slow down the process, but it didn’t (it did create a ton of great memories, bonding and connection, and I have very few regrets). Which brings me to Daniel Pink.

A few years ago, Daniel Pink wrote the book The Power of Regret, which I bought and promptly didn’t read, and instead listened to him on allllll the podcasts – Brené Brown’s, Armchair Expert, etc. He is a researcher and author who dedicated years to understanding what people universally regret at the end of their life. He had 5,000 Americans and 16,000 people from all over the world submit their biggest regrets. He collected and studied them with the goal to reverse engineer a life with fewer regrets. He discovered there were four regrets that were the most universal. I’ve never gotten these out of my head. So what are they? And how am I doing at them? This is all based on Daniel Pink’s research, so don’t shoot the messenger:

“Foundation Regrets”

“Foundation regrets”. The hard and annoying work you need to do to set yourself up in health and money. Boring, tedious, takes discipline, foresight, and paperwork. But it makes sense that so many people near the end of their lives wish they had taken better care of their health, saved more money, stopped smoking earlier, etc., because having poor health and relying on others financially at the end of your life is hard.

I’m doing OK on this.

Financially, we have taken some major adult steps (Guardian life insurance, real estate investments, low-risk stock market, college funds, 401k, etc) with the help of someone who literally forces us to fill out paperwork (a massive privilege). Health-wise, I’m not the worst, but I’m not the best, either. I work out, sure. I eat vegetables and have a cupboard of supplements, sure. I love cycling and yoga a lot (booked my first big yoga retreat in January as my birthday present). But I’ve had a cracked tooth for a while along with receding gums (and I now know that dental health is so critical to preventing alzheimers which I’m low-key terrified of); I have elevated inflammation markers (heart stuff), and I know that I drink more than the “2 drinks” recommendations most weeks. So I know I can do better here:) I’m actively trying to make better choices (which is why we have been booking mostly active/workout vacations – to offset the fun:)). I did Function Health, which I can’t tell if it just gave me health anxiety over this dumb inflammation when I feel 100% great. So yah, I could improve in these areas.

“Boldness Regrets”

This is the “I wish I had…changed careers, started the business, gone after the guy, taken the trip”. The older we get, the more we are fear-based, not wanting to lose what we have to chase an unknown. This is the stuff that gets in our own way of happiness. The dream killers.

I suffer from this at times, fear of not wanting to do something new, but I’d say my bigger problem is trying too many things that I want to do that sound so fun, but not being able to actually do them all and then disappointing everyone. But it’s a good reminder to not put off the thing you want to do (especially before you have a family, should you want to do that) because it gets harder and harder to take the big risk the older you get. I so admire all the people who start new careers at 50. Did you know that Ina Garten didn’t really launch her career til she was over 50! So inspiring. I’d say putting myself out there is not the problem; I have to be reigned in A LOT, which is a whole other set of regrets that didn’t come up in his work (YET).

“Moral Regrets”

This is the wishing you hadn’t done the wrong thing, or even wishing you had known what you were doing was wrong when you did it. The affairs, the crimes, the fraud, the cheating, or even basic manipulation. Doesn’t mean these things can’t be repaired, but they do show up as one of the four biggest regret categories. It’s mostly due to how it hurt people, less about feeling incriminated.

I don’t know. I don’t need to tell you all how “moral” of a person I am. I try really, really, really fucking hard to do the right thing at all times, and there are times when I still look back on something and am like, “you were being so selfish” or “you took advantage”. I think for me it’s about being really thoughtful when I have to make a hard decision, and it helps to picture myself on my death bed, with someone reminding me what I did and how I did it. I really, really want to be proud of my decisions. But that doesn’t mean that even now I don’t do something and wish I had handled it so differently; better, with more consideration and compassion. Wanting to be better is such a clear goal of mine, but I also know that my ego and the speed at which I operate sometimes allow me to compromise. But at 47, I’ve got some time!

“Connection Regrets”

These are the relationships we’ve neglected or abandoned and only think about on our dark days, which fill us with shame and guilt. Old friends, sibling relationships, parents. The closer you were, the easier it is to let slip, the harder it feels to repair. So we don’t. And at the end of the day, it fills us full of regret (this obviously doesn’t include the toxic or abusive relationships).

I am in the middle of repairing some relationships, but my goodness, life gets so busy that I still neglect the ones that need the most work. It’s so easy to avoid, postpone, procrastinate. Especially when you can see your responsibility in the chasm. When I was younger, I used to think that when I was “older” I’d be in a healthier place to talk through it all and then we’d heal, but there is no magical day. Knowing that this is one of the entire world’s biggest regrets really forced some internal change. But I still have a lot of work to do, and even writing this I’m both guilty and more motivated.

ANYWAY. just a light fun birthday post for you:) I didn’t really intend on writing any of this, honestly. But it’s always in the back of my mind, and whenever I think about aging, I don’t just think about what I want to do, places I have yet to go, blah blah, but more: am I growing into the person that I will make my future self so proud?

We’ll see:) It’s nice to have goals. And as Esther Perel says, “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships,” and while I could work on all of those, too, if that’s the biggest measurement, then I feel like at least I’m putting my finite energy towards the right places.

Thanks for being here. Always. I appreciate the hell out of each of you (especially those that have been here since the beginning – I get so emotional when I think of how you’ve watched my family grow up). And thanks to my team for helping keep me here during said mid-life crisis 🙂 And creating a space on the internet that we all still love to go to. Hopefully til I’m 87:)

Opening Image Credit: Photo by Kaitlin Green