4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2023
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Engaging with death can help us live more in the present. That’s one of the many lessons Bronnie Ware, who worked in palliative care, has discovered over the years.
In this chat, Fearne and Bronnie explore the idea of using death as a tool for living well. Bronnie’s collected stories about the most common regrets of the dying – everything from wishing they’d had the courage to express their feelings, to wishing they hadn’t worked so hard, and wishing they’d stayed in touch with friends.
Bronnie’s book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, is out now.
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0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that questions |
0:07.0 | what it means to truly live well. Today I'm chatting to Brony Ware. |
0:12.2 | The only thing that turns a mistake into a regret is our own judgement upon it. It's |
0:17.9 | really just a matter of perspective. So every regret is a mistake, but every mistake |
0:22.3 | doesn't have to be a regret. And so if we can look back and recognise we've made a mistake, |
0:27.5 | we're already wiser than we were in that moment. And I just think, okay, well, you did |
0:33.1 | you best as who you were in that moment on that day with those circumstances. And the |
0:39.1 | fact that you can look back and recognise that it's a mistake means I've obviously evolved. |
0:46.0 | After many years of unfulfilling work, Brony began searching for a job with heart. Her |
0:51.5 | search led her to palliative care and something incredible happened. Her experience is |
0:57.0 | tending to the needs of those who were dying transformed the way she chose to live. |
1:02.5 | She wrote a blog about the most common regrets expressed to her by the people she'd cared |
1:06.9 | for. And in just one year it had been read three million times. The top five regrets of |
1:13.3 | the dying is the name of the book, Brony's written to expand on that first blog post. |
1:18.7 | And it's quite understandably an international bestseller. Reading this book personally |
1:23.8 | impacted me hugely in my everyday life, not just sort of long term thinking. I think |
1:31.0 | this subject matter is really important and extremely powerful because we tend not to |
1:35.8 | think about death. We don't like to. And we're so super distracted by everything going |
1:41.5 | on around us that we don't think about time moving really quickly. So this book presses |
1:47.7 | pause on everything and makes you stop and really think about life and how you want |
1:54.3 | to live it. This one precious life. I think that is why so many people have bought this |
2:00.7 | beautiful book. Brony has a very gentle and very honest and very funny approach to all |
... |
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