James Laughlin says the biggest life regret is making decisions based on what others think. He cites Bronnie Ware's research on dying people's regrets and shares a story about someone asking him to delete a photo with a former head of state. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before becoming president, showing that past mistakes don't define your future.
The number one regret you are going to have in your life is this. You're going to regret making decisions based upon what other people think about you. That's right. Bronnie Ware wrote the book the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She helped people who were in their last days. And the number one regret was that these people in their later in life regretted making decisions based upon what they thought other people thought of them. Now, do you do that? I bet you do. Some of us have made decisions based upon what we think our parents think about us or our siblings, our kids, our colleagues. Sometimes those decisions are around education, jobs, neighborhoods that we live in, the clothes that we wear, drinks that we may or may not drink at a party because we're thinking, what will others think? Look, you're going to regret that. And I know I have made those decisions in the past based on what I thought other people thought of me. Look, recently I met the most incredible leader. She's a former head of state. She's been retired many years now, but she used to run a country. And her speech that she gave was so powerful, so inspiring and challenging. It set a challenge down, and I loved it. Look, afterwards, we got chatting, and I was just really impressed. I've invited her here onto the show. She's agreed to sit down in the studio and go deep on her lessons, leadership. And she's got so many rich, deep lessons in leadership. It will be powerful. I promise to let you know when that happens. However, I put a photo up of her and I on LinkedIn, and within an hour, I received a private message from someone saying, james, you do not want to give any positive light to that person that you're standing beside. In fact, it may hurt your brand. You know, essentially take the photo down. So I went back out of curiosity, going, well, that's a. Interesting. You know, why do you say that? And the person was coming towards me from a really, I think, a really helpful and thoughtful place in terms of trying to protect my brand. But he was also judging someone based upon one decision they made many, many, many years ago in their professional role as a politician. Now, look, have you always made great decisions in life? Are you proud of every decision you've made? I'm not. There's things, if I could go back and do them again, I would do them differently. But this individual was judging this incredible leader by one thing that she did that didn't suit him. And I just want to say something. If we did that, if we constantly judge people by who they were in the Past that would have massive ramifications for our world. Nelson Mandela, for one, would not be the incredible human that he is now, you know, being remembered for. If we judged him by his past, why he was put in jail for treason for being the founder of a military arm of the ANC political party, he went to jail for 27 years. Now, if we constantly judged him by his past, he wouldn't have became the first democratically elected black president of South Africa. And that would have been horrific for South Africa and for the world. So I want to just challenge you for a moment. What is it in your past that you wish you didn't have to look back upon with regret? What is it? I'm going to just challenge you to this. We all have pasts, but whether you choose to live there or not is up to you. What do I mean by that? If you constantly live in your past, by the regretful things you did or maybe even didn't do, then you're never going to give yourself the opportunity to grow and learn and contribute, add value. And that's such a shame. And when we start to point a finger at others in terms of what they have done in the past, it doesn't achieve anything useful. And yes, we've got to learn from mistakes. We've got to grow and we've got to be wary, you know, of people that have maybe crossed us or we can't trust. I get that 100%. But we can't constantly live in a place of judging others. And I do not regret.
Taking that photo. I do not regret putting that photo up, and I do not regret responding to the person that DM'd me telling me to essentially take it down, say, hey, thanks for that, I appreciate it. But hey, I'm not going to take it down. You know, I believe that if we constantly make decisions based upon what everyone thinks about us, we will drive ourselves nuts. I get messages and comments on the YouTube channel all the time saying, this guest was great. Another two comments, this guest was rubbish. I don't care. You know what? I'm not going to base who I get on the show for one with one comment. If there's 150 people saying, this was amazing, then of course I'm going to do more of that. If there's a thousand people saying, this is terrible, then I'm going to do less of that. But I want you to think about that one person that said one fleeting comment to you and you change direction because of it. Don't let everyone in and don't let everyone judge you based upon who you were and vice versa. Try to park the judgment of others. Keep going back to Nelson Mandela. If you don't know his story, you've got to go and read a book on Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest leaders of all time, but he had to rely on humanity forgiving him for his past failures. So I'm excited to welcome that incredible leader into the studio. Soon, it won't be far away, but I'm going to get you to reflect upon what's most important to you. Ask yourself that question. What is most important to me? What are the decisions I need to make today to move towards my dream? And if you don't know what your dream is or your vision, take a moment right now just to ask yourself that question. Where am I headed? If you don't know where you're headed, you're going to end up anywhere. So take a moment to get really intentional and continue to get out there and lead your life on purpose. Hey guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.
