I love my church.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all holy roller on you, but I love my church. One of the great things about church is that people at church are cool. You never walk out of church saying to yourself, “Wow, that guy was a real dick today.” It just never happens. The messages are strong, the people are happy, and everyone gets along. My church is pretty great.
For me the best part of church is the sermon. My pastor is a really cool guy and he’s a good speaker too. I’ve always said I’m the worst student in the world because I’m so critical of other speakers, but this guy is like Goldilocks…not too much, not too little, just right.
Not surprisingly, each week’s message has some relevance in my life, but a week ago, he slipped something in that really rung my bells. It was a simple message that should resonate with all of us: don’t get to the end of your life with regret. For me that’s more than money, love, and legacy.
The First Rule
As we go through the motions of our day, as we fall victim to our routines, and as we sometimes let our fears be our guide, we often forget the first rule of life: death. One day we’re all going to be pushing up daisies. It’s true. For some the ride is longer than others, but in the end we all come to the end. Remembering that is probably the most important rule to live a regret free life.
If you’re in the pew on a Sunday morning, you might be looking for a ticket to a better place when your time comes, or maybe you just showed up to poach the free brunch. But make no mistake, eventually your time is going to come, and my pastor is right, you don’t want a bunch of regrets when it does.
My 2 Policies
As I get older, I think about this regret stuff from time to time. I think about my own imminent death probably because I’ve already been dead once (for 8 minutes – it’s true). Pondering my own demise and the regret of my regrets, I’ve developed two policies I follow each day as I’m wandering around: taking risks and giving.
Taking Risks
Jumping off a cliff without a parachute isn’t taking a risk, it’s just being stupid. A proper risk is doing something that scares you a little. Something you’re uncomfortable with or something you’re not totally sure you can do. Like asking someone to be your person, like signing up for gym class with your less than stellar bod, or like shorting pork belly options on the Chicago Mercantile. You take a risk because you hope you will get some kind of return, not to implode. I take risks all the time, and I fail more than I want to, but I’m not going to stop. I’ve already been dead once, and I know it’s going to happen again. They tell me we regret the things we didn’t do more than we did, and I think they’re right. Whoever “they” are.
Giving
My other policy each day is giving. I’m not going to write a check for my entire net worth to charity and just hope that God will have my back because that would also be stupid, but I do believe in giving. Every week I give my time to write you these love letters. Every week I put on free webinars to teach whoever shows up how to do cool things. I bring the women I love flowers regularly because it makes them happy, I’ve spent countless hours providing therapy to friends in distress over the years, and I give money to food banks because if you’re starving, your life pretty much sucks. I do what I can, and I could probably do more, but giving is a part of my purpose during my visit here.
One of my accidental careers is that of a teacher. For me the school part of school was always a bore and I never thought in a gazillion years I would become a national speaker and course developer, but here I am. I do it because I’m pretty good at it but mostly because it’s what I know how to do to help people out. It’s another little insurance policy against getting to the end of the ride and saying, “I wish I would have”.
If it were a math problem, my 2 policies would probably look like this:
Risk Taking + Giving = No Regrets
DOYOUCHURCH?
Let me leave you with this…if you’re kind of bummed out this holiday season, if you don’t have a ton of friends, if your family is all dead like mine, or if maybe you recently got dumped, you should check out going to church. Really. There’s good folks at church, and they’re really just trying to just help each other have a more fulfilling life and get to a regret free ending. And if you find an awesome church like mine, no one will be a dick.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2023.12.17
Cite
“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.”
-Lucille Ball