Rules to Living a Fulfilling Life: Leave No Regrets
The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die
by John Izzo
“IT is hard to imagine anything worse than dying with your story trapped inside you.”
- John Izzo, Author
Once I identified and embraced that Life Coaching was a true passion of mine, I immediately followed up that calling with fear because although I have diligently put forth the work for two years at that point, I did not feel I was “enough” to coach women. To state publicly that I am a Life Coach.
Sure, I did the work both personally and professionally. I partnered with my own coaches: identifying and forming awareness surrounding habits that were no longer serving me. I moved forward from tough transitions through career and relationships shifts embracing positivity. I spent hours researching the field, studying it and obtained an international certification, but no matter how much time and effort I put into this passion, I kept hearing an inner voice in the back of my head stating “You are not yet enough to serve others, you will be when [insert every fear-based excuse in the book here]… you accomplish a true sense of self-perfection, then you will be accepted”.
Well, shit. I thought.
At that rate, I will be racing my best friends in our motorized wheelchairs down in Florida with a margarita strapped to my handlebars, still trying to instill this perfection dogma within me.
Shortly thereafter, I read a book by John Izzo, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (I found it best suited my thought process directly above). Within it, Izzo bestows the common knowledge and advice he received as an outcome of interviewing over 200 individuals, ages 60 to 100, from different walks of life, whom were all voted as the wisest persons by their peers. After identifying common threads between each person, he formulated the following top five secrets to living a life of fulfillment:
1. Be true to yourself
2. Leave no regrets*
3. Become love
4. Live in the moment
5. Give more than you take
There were moments in reading this book where I really cried. It moved me reading quote after quote of persons who were twice my age, speaking so profoundly about their life learnings, embracing vulnerability and being beautifully and purely egoless and honest.
I could not recommend this read more in its entirety, however, there is one chapter that personally hit home with me the most:
Leave No Regrets
Within this chapter, Izzo quotes “What we fear the most is not having lived to the fullest extent possible, to come to the end of our life with our final words being I wish I had.” He proceeds to outline various outcomes of his conversations with select persons on Regret, one of which particularly shook my soul in one moment: Izzo describes a conversation he had with a woman in her seventies who professed to having six, incomplete books on her desktop. When he asked her why she hasn’t finished them, she responded:
“All of my life I have left things unfinished. I thought it was just procrastination. But as I reflect on it, [I believe it is because] if I ever do finish these books, I would have to let someone else read them. And perhaps then, they would tell me that I cannot write. I suppose it is the fear of rejection that has kept me from finishing.”
Izzo then responded to her statement beautifully saying: My heart went out to her. Seventy-one years old, and, because of fear, she might never complete the books that have been inside of her all her life. […] It is hard to imagine anything worse than dying with your story trapped inside of you.”
It is incredibly challenging for me to follow-up my reaction in reading that statement because in that moment, I realized I am this woman. That many of you, are in fact, that person too and can relate to her fear surrounding releasing her story, her true self, publicly, for fear of not being enough, for fear of rejection.
For many, we’ve become the outcome of what others think our story should be. We’ve adopted their renditions because it is easier to do so than to challenge them, and in a skewed sense, to be accepted by many than to be rejected by few.
I was this person. For most of my life, I molded myself into the stories that others wished for me, largely because I am a heart-centered, empathic person who cares for those around me, that I never wanted to let them down. This led to my adoption of people pleasing tendencies which then triggered confusion and countless fears surrounding allowing my true outgoing, goofy, passionate identity to shine. Instead, I dimmed the light on my own novel and put my book on the shelf, allowing fear to rule my life.
And also, in that moment, I made the decision I did not want to be anyone else but me.
To put things into perspective, do you ever do the math in your head when you hear of someone’s age who is older than you to try to provide you with peace of mind because “so and so is 30 years older than me, that means I have a good many years ahead to either accomplish what they did or not do what they recommend to stay away from”? Well I do and did. For every quote I read, I looked at their age, and deduced how many years I had to accomplish their advice, just to put myself at ease so I too, don’t find myself in a rocking chair bestowing the lessons I wish I knew when I was younger.
But you know what? I also cannot believe I am on the edge of my 32nd year. Yes, age is just a number and time doesn’t truly exist, yada yada, but let’s be honest, whatever it is, it sure does fly! And you know what else? The seemingly scary part is that we too, will be with God’s blessing, “older” one day. That day is coming a lot faster than I ever thought it would. This puts a lot of weight on this being YOUR life, you have ONE life to live and you may as well RECLAIM IT while you can.
The soul shifting experience I encountered in reading this book moved me to such a degree that I adopted the mentality surrounding “When I am an old woman sitting in my rocking chair thinking about my life, what decision will I wish I had made?”. Right now, I wish I had launched this blog. Owned my Life Coaching career. Let go of other’s cares and concerns about my decision to embark on a new career path.
In the words of The Notebook, tailored to our story:
Noah: “So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day. Would you do something for me? Just picture your life for me, 30 years from now, 40 years from now, What’s it look like? If it’s [not reclaiming your life] go! But don’t you take the easy way out. Would you stop thinking about what everyone wants? Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want, what do YOU want?”
I want this. SO damn badly. I want this for YOU.
And so, this journey begins…
I created this blog to incorporate various shades of authenticity: true to myself, to be genuine to each of you and overall, downright real. As I currently experience colors of my own f-word, FEAR (again on oath, the other variation can be triggered from time-to-time), my goal is that my written word creates a sense of shared common feelings, experiences and sentiments and instills inspiration, confidence and peace within each of you that someone else has or is experiencing exactly what you are right now. Fear, vulnerability hangovers and all, bring it on. Let’s live without regret. Let’s live out our dreams without fear taking over.
Let’s live our story.
“The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.”
“We must live with courage, moving toward what we want rather than away from what we fear”.
-John Izzo