610: A Letter to My Kids (My Biggest Regrets)

Hello and welcome to the Achieve your Goals podcast. The show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves. And we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve youe Goals podcast. This is Hal Elrod and today we're talking about regret and living your life in a way where regret serves you. It doesn't hurt you. It doesn't cause you to suffer. It doesn't cause you to beat yourself up. It doesn't cause you to live in the past. Regret can really hurt us. In fact, it can be like that heavy backpack that you carry through your entire life and you don't realize that you can set the backpack down. What's inspiring today's episode is, well, number one, last week our episode was like 15 minutes. It was a much shorter than usual podcast episode and I got some great feedback. They're like, that was great. It's nice to have instead of like a 45 minute or 60 minute podcast, some shorter episodes. So I thought, you know what, let's keep it fresh and do that again. And specifically, though, what inspired the episode is a letter that I wrote to my kids about my biggest regrets. So I am going to read you this letter and then we'll unpack it and apply it to your life. So it says, Dear Sophia and Halston, there are a few things I've been carrying in my heart for a long time that I want to share with you. They're my biggest regrets, mistakes I've made that I can't undo. My hope in sharing them isn't to make you sad, but to help you learn from my experiences so that you don't repeat them. Life has a way of teaching us through both our joys and our mistakes, our wins and our failures. Regret, when we use it the right way, can be one of life's greatest teachers. The key is to let regret guide you, not trap you. If you dwell on things you can't change, regret will only bring pain. But if you acknowledge it, learn from it, accept it, that is, can't change it, and make different choices moving forward, regret can lead to wisdom and a better life. That's why I'm sharing mine with you my biggest regrets. Number one, Missing family experiences. Some of my favorite memories are the moments we've shared together as a family. That's why it breaks my heart that I missed out on certain experiences. Specifically the camping trips to Kings Canyon that you went on with mom and Bobcha and I was not there. Those are moments I'll never get back. And I wish with everything in me that I had been there with you. Now, whether it's Houston playing basketball or doing a play at Living Oaks, or Sophia in one of her mini theater productions, I never want to miss anything you do. Just being in your presence and watching you do anything is literally one of the greatest joys in my life. Number two, Putting work ahead of family. Before I had cancer, I was a workaholic. I spent too many days and nights focused on work instead of being fully present with you and Mom. If I could go back, I'd give anything to trade some of those work hours for more time with you. Laughing, talking, just being together. Nothing I ever have accomplished professionally matters more than you two. After cancer, even when I was still on chemo and feeling sick, I started waking you up every morning with stuffed animal puffet show derpy and the inappropriate unicorn and reading you stories every night so that I could make sure to begin and end each day with you. Then I started cutting my workday short so I could drive you to school and pick you up every day, which I still do because spending as much time with you as I can will always be more important to me than any work that I do. And number three, moving away from family. One of the hardest decisions I've ever made was moving away from Nampa. So we call my dad instead of Grandpa Nampa. He moved to Temecula to be close to us and to watch you grow up. Then we left for Texas, leaving him in Temecula by himself. Mom and I did what we thought was best for our family. But in hindsight, I don't know if we should have left and whether or not we should have. The fact that we took you guys away from Nampa and still hurts. If I could do it over, I would have made living near him and near Grandma Juju and Aunt Haley and Mom's family my number one priority. And I would have revolved the rest of my life and work around that priority. The lessons I want you to take with you. I can't change the past, but I can share what I've learned in the hope that you make different choices. You may not fully understand this now, but as you Grow older. I hope you'll remember these words. Choose family first. Always. Family is everything. It's the most important part of life. And it's not just about loving your family. It's about doing life with them. Day in and day out, multiple generations living near each other, supporting each other. That's how I believe life is meant to be lived. I believe God intended it that way. When you're older and deciding where to live, what job to take, or what lifestyle to build, don't just think about money, friends, convenience or adventure. Think about family. Think about being close to the people who love you most and who will always be there for you, no matter what. One day you'll look back on your life. The moments you'll treasure won't be promotions or possessions. There'll be family dinners, late night talks, holidays spent together, and little moments of laughter and love. Those are the things that truly matter. And when you make mistakes, as we all do, acknowledge them, learn from them, and teach others what you learned. But don't dwell on them. Don't carry regret like a heavy weighted backpack. Let it be a signpost that guides you forward, not a chain that holds you back. Sophia and Halston, you are my greatest blessings. If you take only one lesson from me, let it be this. Build a life where family is at the center. It's a choice you'll never regret. I love you both more than words can express. With all my heart, dad, if you struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep, I have a supplement that I take that I've taken for about three years now, virtually every single night. I highly recommend it. It's called Nightcaps by Cured Nutrition. It is a CBN and CBD oil supplement and CBN supports your body's natural sleep rhythms throughout the night for deep restorative sleep that leaves you feeling refreshed and ready to rise in the morning. Highly recommended. I book in my days with Cured Nutrition. I take their flow gummies in the morning. I take nightcaps at night, and you can get 20% off of both of those products. As a listener of the Achieve your goals podcast, head over to curednutrition.com HAL that's curednutrition.com HAL and use the discount code HAL for 20% off your entire order. And if you do a subscription, which I do, a monthly subscription for both of those products, you get an additional 20% off that stacks on top of the 20% as a listener so you can save a bunch of money and it'll help you fall asleep and stay asleep again. Cured nutrition nightcaps in the evening. And I start my day with Flo gummies every single morning. And I hope these products will help you and enhance your life as they have for mine. Enjoy the rest of the episode. I wrote that letter a few weeks ago. I just felt inspired to write it. And as I was reading it the other day, actually yesterday, I was like, I'm going to share this on a podcast because I think this would resonate with a lot of people. And a few things that you can take from this, Obviously, you know, you might go, oh, wow, there's a lot from that letter that I can relate to. And you can see how it's kind of a healthy way of taking regret and learning from it and then passing it on to other people, in this case, my children. And ultimately, the life that we live, the experience that we have every day, moment by moment, for the rest of our lives, is based on our perception, our perspective. And if we choose to see regret as a bad thing, if we choose to see the mistakes that we made as a bad thing, by labeling it bad, we create a negative experience of life. And like I said, it can last for your entire life. I was reading an article in doing research for today's episode beyond the letter that I just shared with you, an article from Mark Manson. Mark Manson wrote the book the Subtle Art of Not Giving, you know what, and he has sold millions and millions of books because he is absolutely brilliant. I encourage you. Check out his website, read his blog posts, read his books. He's a very brilliant thought leader, if you will, like a true thought leader. He's very, very wise. So he has a quote. He says, a regret is simply a mistake we haven't learned the proper lesson from yet. So if you do something wrong, but you learn from it, then suddenly that mistake becomes helpful. It becomes an asset. And you don't need to live in a state of regret. You can go, okay, this thing that I regret, I'm using regret as a signpost of something that I did or didn't do, that in hindsight, I would have done differently. Had I been aware or thinking or had the discipline or the whatever it was at the time, I would have done it differently. But there is no point in dwelling on something that you cannot change from your past. You've probably heard me say this before, but the source of all of our emotional pain is resistance. It is resisting reality and wishing that something that is out of our control, which includes everything that's ever happened to us, you cannot go back in time, unless you are Marty McFly with the DeLorean and change anything, right? So you have to either accept the past and be at peace or regret the past. Resist the past and put energy into wishing something were different or something didn't happen to you. And to the degree that you resist, reality determines the degree of emotional pain that you create for yourself. That's that heavy backpack of regret. It's a resistance of reality wishing that something were different that's out of your control. And in resisting reality in the form of regret, you are creating emotional pain for yourself that you carry in the present moment based on something that's not happening anymore in the present moment that's happening in the past. So, yeah, it saddens me that we moved away from my dad and my mom and my sister. Like, in hindsight, if you think about this, here's a slight tangent, but I think it's valuable. Our society, and it was probably very intentional, was to promote college as the most important thing. For an 18 year old graduating high school, the most important thing in the world for you is the college that you get into. And they start preparing. Think about that. They start preparing a high school student, right, to start thinking about college, what college you can get into. You got to take your SATs, you got to take your, like, all the testing, okay? It's all about the college. And then what ends up happening is because that's promoted as the most important thing. And students, you know, your brain is still forming at 15, 16, 17, 18 years old. And then what do kids do? And parents, by the way, are equally as brainwashed that the college you get into is the most important thing. And whether or not you want to debate that, that's another conversation. But the premise here is, so what does a 18 year old do? They leave home. They leave home and they go away to the best college that they can get into. Now, I would argue, and you can gather this from the letter that I just read to you, that I wrote to my kids, I would argue that family is way more important than college. That the people that love you and that raised you and that you and I realized, by the way, let me. I know when I say family, that's a loaded word for some people. It's like, hey, my family sucks. I moved away from my family. Like, I get that. And I would have you replace the word family with loved ones, right? So if you're like, screw my family, like, they're not good to me. They were abusive. Got it. Loved ones. And maybe now you've moved away from the family that didn't love and support you and you're actually surrounding yourself with your new family, with your friends and your, your associates. You're the people that love you and support you the way that your family maybe didn't. So again, realize that context, that family, loved ones is really a more accurate word for that. All right, let me ask you a question. How many apps are you using for your personal development? Maybe a meditation app like Calmer Headspace, an affirmation app like I Am, or Think Up, a book summary app like Blinkist, a journaling app like 5 Minute Journal, a visualization app like Envision, an exercise app like 7 Minute Workout, and maybe even a habit tracking app to keep it all together. That is a lot to manage and a lot to pay for. What if you could replace all of them with just one app? Yes, it is called the Miracle morning app and it is essentially seven apps in one. Hundreds of guided meditations and Breathwork tracks a full library of affirmations, plus tools to create your own visualization prompts for 10 key areas of your life. Guided workouts from 2 to 10 minutes long, book and audiobook summaries of top personal and professional development books and a journaling tool with guided prompts. The wheel of life or a blank page to write freely. It simplifies your morning, saves you money and helps you start every day with clarity, purpose and energy. And it's one of the only apps in this space with a 4.9 out of 5 star rating. Try it free for 7 days. Just search Miracle Morning in your app store or go to miracle morning app.com to get started. All right, back to the show.

So with all of that said though, going back to this idea that yeah, college is most important, so we leave. I mean like my family, they all broke up, they went different ways for you know, one was for a job, one was for college, so on and so forth. And now me, my mom, my dad and my sister, we all live, I mean either states away or the closest is my dad and sister that live like it's like an eight hour drive. I just think that they had it figured out. You know, you go back like a hundred years back or just go into even societies where they live in villages, right? And the entire multi generational living where the great grandparents and the grandparents and the parents and the kids and the baby, right, they all do life together. That's my personal opinion. Not saying it's right or wrong. I believe that's the most important thing at least for me, that family is most important. And my grandma's been trying to tell me that, my grandma Sally, every time I talk to her. I talked to her the other day and she goes, hal, you know me, I'm a family Aholic. She's 91 years old right now, and I don't know if she remembers that. She tells me that she's a family aholic every time we talk, but she does and I love it. And I go, grandma, I got that from you. I have become a family holic. I didn't get it when I was younger. Took me a while. It took me making some mistakes and moving away from my family to realize that, oh, I am a family aholic. And I am really grateful to say that I just spent time with my sister. I'm going to visit my dad next month and then my mom is coming to visit as well next month. So I'm going to see the three most important folks, you know, outside of my immediate family, of my wife and my kids, of course, but my mom, my dad, my sister, we're all visiting here within the span of a month. So that makes me very, very, very happy. Huh? With all of that said, I just want to bring us back to where we started. And it's this topic of regret. And I just want to remind you, remember, that regret is a form of resistance, resisting reality and wishing that your past were different. That resistance is futile. You're not going to change your past by regretting it and wishing it were different. The only way to transmute that regret into value in the present and the future for you and others is to learn the lesson from the regret. Live the lesson now, moving forward to the best of your abilities, and share that lesson with anyone and everyone that you can so that they can learn from your past mistakes, so that they don't make them themselves and that they don't have that regret that they need to transmute at some point. But the reality is, as human beings, we will all make mistakes, we will all have regrets. We will all have regrets. It's not about not having them. It's about not living with them and perpetuating those regrets in a negative way where it negatively affects your mental and emotional well being, but instead transmuting them into lessons, learning from them, living them and improving your life. You know, and I express to my family regularly, my dad and my mom, you know, hey, I'm so sorry that we don't live next to each other. So like, they know my mom and dad know where my heart is. At they know that if I had to do it over again, I would have kept us all together living in the same neighborhood for the rest of our lives. But it did not work out that way, and I don't beat myself up because of it. I just hope that my kids will learn from my mistakes. And I have certainly learned from my mistakes of being a workaholic before I had cancer. And I've made meaningful changes in my life as a result. And so I hope that today's episode inspired you to be at peace with the mistakes you've made in the past and the regrets that you have now and take those regrets and thoughtfully, consciously, intentionally transmute them into lessons for you and the people that you love. Speaking of people that you love, I love you very much. I really appreciate you tuning in today and may this podcast bless your life. If you really enjoy enjoyed it, please share this with another person. And if you haven't yet, if you're a regular listener of the podcast, please go leave a review where you listen to podcasts. So if you, you know, if you're watching my podcast episodes, the solo episodes usually aren't on YouTube, but all of the interviews I do are on YouTube. So you can leave a comment or review there. Or please leave a review on itunes or podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the show. That really helps the show reach more people and it means a lot to me. Thank you so much. And oh, last but not least, I almost forgot. My newest book is available today for pre order the miracle morning after 50 a proven path to Joy, Vitality and Purpose for Aging Adults. And it was co authored with Duane J. Clark. He is a longevity expert, a best selling author, founder of Aegis Living and he has revolutionized the way that people over the age of 50 care for themselves. And so if you are over 50, this book is for you. And if you're under 50, this book would be a great holiday gift for your parents, for your grandparents, for a mentor, a friend, anyone in your life who you love and you care about that is over 50 that you see. Maybe they're struggling with purpose or clarity or health. And this book hits on all of those how to optimize your brain health, your cellular health, your physical, mental and emotional well being. How to find purpose. You name it and you can pre order it and get five bonuses including a ticket to the live miracle morning after 50 event in December and four bonus chapters at miracle morning after 50.com that is miracle morning after 50.com and if you're thinking how I already pre ordered the book. How do I get the bonuses like I bought it I pre ordered on Amazon. And if even if you want to pre order on Amazon right now, you can pre order the book on Amazon. And if you already did, you can still go to that website and get your bonuses. So you can go to Miracle Morning After50.com and then copy and paste your Amazon receipt from your email receipt, your order number and you'll get those bonuses delivered your inbox, including the ticket to the live virtual event. Again, miracle morning after 50.com all right, I almost forgot to mention that to you and thank goodness I had the book sitting in front of me. I've got an early copy and it reminded me so all right, that is it. I love you and live your life without dwelling on your regrets, but turning them into lessons to add value for you and other people. And I love you. I'll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. To learn more about the Achieve your Goals podcast and to get access today's show notes, transcript and exclusive content from hal Elrod, visit halelrod.com Paul Podcast thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Achieve your goals podcast.