In this motivational monologue, Rob Dial explains that the most common regret of people on their deathbeds—cited as 90% in the book Five Regrets of the Dying—is wishing they had lived a life true to themselves rather than one shaped by others' expectations. He attributes this to two main causes: (1) an ingrained need for acceptance that leads us to adopt a "persona" or mask from childhood, and (2) a lack of self‑knowledge that prevents us from recognizing our true desires. Dial illustrates how societal and familial conditioning creates a false identity, causing many to pursue education, careers, and relationships that feel "right" only because they are socially approved. He describes the resulting mid‑life or quarter‑life crisis as a wake‑up call from an autopilot existence. Drawing on personal experience—leaving a six‑figure sales job, starting a podcast, and finding courage through a late‑father’s letter—he shows that change is possible at any age. He offers a practical framework for creating a transition plan, emphasizing that it’s never too late to align work and life with one’s authentic purpose. The talk concludes with a repeated call to constantly ask oneself “What do I want?” and to pursue that answer relentlessly, warning that ignoring it leads to the same regret most people experience at the end of life.
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Stop. It's not too late. You have now woken up from the slumber that you're in. Don't go back to sleep. Don't go back to sleep. Today we're going to be talking about how to die with regret. Hopefully you're not one of the people that does die with regret, but I'm going to talk about why 90% of people end up living their lives and then dying with regret. I'm going to talk about it so that you don't have to. That's an important thing you have to learn from other people so that you can improve your life. And there's an incredible book called Five Regrets of the Dying in the Number One Regret. Actually, before I go about the number one regret, let me tell you about what the book's about. The book is a lady who lives in hospice or works in hospice for people who. She's a nurse there and she's around people who are dying all of the time. And she starts to notice that there's five really common regrets that people have as they're dying. And the number one regret, which is what we're going to talk about today, the number one regret of people who are on their deathbeds, they've lived their entire lives and they're at the very end, there is no way out. Their number one regret is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that others expected of me. Let that sink in for a second. The number one thing that people regret when they're at the end of their lives is that they wish they lived a life that was true to themselves and and not the life that others expected of them. And there's a couple reasons why this exists. And I'm going to talk about two reasons. Number one is our absolute need for acceptance from other people that holds us back. I'm going to talk about that. And number two is I feel like most people don't know who they truly are. And if you don't know who you truly are, then you don't know what you truly want. And so let's go over the first one first. People's need for acceptance holds them back from everything that they want. There's an incredible quote that Jim Carrey has when he's giving a commencement speech, and he says, your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world. We learn from a young age, whether it's our parents or society or our family or our friends, we learn that we have to act a certain way and we have to fit in into society. And so from a young age, we develop what's called a personality. Now, just so you know, personality comes from the Greek word Persona. The Greek word Persona is actually the mask that people would wear when they were acting on stage back in ancient Greece. So that personality that you have is a mask that you're wearing so that you can fit in with what you think you should be or what you have been raised to be. So ultimately, what happens from a young age is we make ourselves into a character of who we think other people want us to be. Whether that's our parents, whether that's society, whether that's fitting in with our friends, whatever it is. We make ourselves into a character of who we think other people want us to be. It starts off as everything does with our parents. If you had great parents or terrible parents, we still, as children, mold ourselves into what we feel like our parents want us to be, how they want us to act, how they act. And sometimes it's not even what they specifically say to us, it's also what we watch them doing. Have you ever noticed one time where you're just doing something, you're like, oh my God, that was exactly like my mom. Oh my God, that was exactly like my dad. It's not that they force that onto us, it's that we learn the world by learning from what they say to us, but actually more than anything else is watching them. So if your parents have a personality, a Persona, a character that they've developed, children tend to take on their parents character as well. And so what happens is when we act a certain way as we're young, we figure out what we're supposed to do, what we're not supposed to do, right? We learn it from our parents and we start to develop that personality. And then what happens? We start to hang out around other children, and we want to be around other children. We want to be accepted by other children. It's built into us to be tribal beings, so we want to be accepted. We don't want to be kicked out of the tribe because a hundred thousand years ago to be kicked out of the tribe meant certain death. And so it's built into our brains to have the need for acceptance from others around us. So it starts with our parents, and then we get older. And then as we're, you know, five, six, seven, eight years old, we start to develop a personality, a character, a mask, a Persona that of what we think other people want us to be. And then what do we do? We start acting a Certain way so that we fit in. I still remember. I still feel bad. I'm 30, about to be 35 years old. I still feel bad for calling a girl named Tracy on the bus on the way back from school in middle school on Annamaria Island, a name that I thought was really, really harsh. And after those words came out of my mouth, I was like, that wasn't me. I can't believe I said that. But I can't take it back. And the only reason why I said it was because I remember that I thought other kids would think it was funny. I developed a. I said something that was completely out of my character to her. And I still feel bad about it, like, 28 years later, 20 years later, whatever. 25 years later, I still feel bad about it because that's not who I am. But it's who I thought I needed to be to be accepted. So let me take a step back. Who did you need to be, or who did you think you needed to be in order to be accepted by your parents? Have you ever thought about that for a second? Who did you need to be? Or who did you think you needed to be to be accepted by other children when you were younger? Who did you need to be, or who did you think you needed to be to be accepted in high school, in college, in your first relationships, you develop a Persona. And a lot of times what happens is we do what we think other people think that we should do. So we go to college. When in reality, some of us don't want to go to college because we feel like that's just. I don't know. I'm 17 years old. I'm 18 years old. I don't know what the best decision is, but it seems like what everyone's telling me is that I have to go to this college. And so we go to college, even though sometimes we might not want to go to college, or maybe we go to college and we get a degree or start studying for a degree that we don't truly want. But it's what our parents tell us is the safest route, or we get it because we know that that job is going to make the most money. And so we go on a pursuit of not what we truly want, not what we truly desire, but we go on a pursuit of what we feel other people want from us, or what we feel will get us accepted, or what we feel will make us more money, will surely make us more successful, which will then change other people's perception of us, make us feel a Certain way. Then we keep going. We get out of college, we get a job. And sometimes we get a job just because we want other people to think of us in a certain way. Oh, I want to get this job. I want to be a doctor so that people think of me in a high way. They think that I'm a great person or whatever it is. And we get a job and we do what we think other people want us to do, when in reality we still don't know what the hell we want to do. And then what happens? There's something called a midlife crisis for a lot of people. Some people have theirs. I had my midlife crisis at 24. I had a quarter life crisis. Some people have it 30, 40, 50, 60. And we wake up from this sleep that we've been in, this autopilot that we've been working on, and we get the feeling of, this isn't what I want. But am I too far down the road to turn back now? I can't tell you how many messages I got from people that are 40 years old, 35 years old, 30 years old, 50 years old. And they want something completely different than what they have. They have awoken from the dream that they have been in the autopilot. But they say, I don't think I can turn back now. I'm too far down the road. I have a family to support. I have this I need to do. And what happens is that they stay in a job. A lot of times that's slowly killing them. They're too far down the road is what they feel, right? I've invested too much time. I don't want to get out of this now. I've invested way too much. I'm so far down the road. You might be 40 years old right now, and you might feel like you've invested so much time into your career, into your college, into your degree, into everything, but it's not fulfilling you. It's not what you want. But you might think it's too late, I've missed my shot, right? So many people feel that way. If you're 40 years old, the average person's living to about 85 years old. You're not even halfway through with your life, so you're going to waste the next 80. Well, if we could do 85 minus 40, 45 years of your life doing something that you don't want to do, because simply you made a decision when you were 17 years old to do something and to go study something, and you got a job in it. That's freaking bonkers if you think about it. You're not too old, it's not too late. You can change at any time and you don't have to change right now. But. But can you start to make a transition plan over the next two years? I'm gonna leave my job, I'm gonna do this, make sure my family's set up, make sure financially I'm good to go. I'm not saying just leave at this very moment, but you can make a transition plan. I understand some people listening to me have, have people mouths to feed. So I'm not saying just up and leave and quit and go become an artist. But whatever it is you wanna do, it's truly possible for you to make money doing it and for you to be fulfilled and to live your passion and to still feed your family. What would that transition plan look like? It's not too late. Stop selling your telling yourself you're too late. You have now woken up from the slumber that you're in. Don't go back to sleep. Don't go back to sleep. So that's the first thing is that people have the need for acceptance and so they, they do all of these things to be accepted for so long and then sometimes they wake up. And that's one of the number one reasons. That's the number one reason why people obviously hold themselves back and they get into this life that we're talking about. And the second reason why is because people don't know who they truly are and what they truly want. So we rarely ask ourselves, what do I want? What if you started waking up every single morning, just ask yourself the question, what do I want? What is it that I want? What is my dream life? What is this dream job, this dream profession, this dream family, this dream happiness, this dream mindset? What do I want? Do you ever ask yourself that? What do you want? What do you want in life? What do you want? Go for it. And then what happens is some people will wake up to what they want and they still don't go for it, right? So we live a life based on what we think other people want from us. One of the scariest moments of my entire life was leaving my job that I felt like I had worked forever at. You know, I was 26 years old when I got the job, 29 when I was leaving the job. I was making over six figures figures base salary plus commission on top of it. That's a lot of money for a 29 year old. And I remember I was Like, I felt. Literally, I felt like my. I felt like my soul was dying. Like, I felt like I could feel myself slowly slipping into a depression. Like, I was on the edge of going into a depression. I could feel myself slipping into habits that I didn't want to have, in habits that I realized would not create the life that I wanted to. And so what happened was I created this podcast. I started a business, and it didn't go really well for a while. That's what I don't talk a whole lot about. Like, I wasn't making much money. I wasn't, you know, like, oh, my gosh, I'm super successful from the very beginning. And I was terrified because I left my job to make a business out of it. Terrified. Scared shitless, right? And I went back home. And this was in November of 2015. I'm sorry, December of 2015, I went back home, and my sister asked me a question. She goes, hey, have I ever shown you the box of dad's stuff? I was like, I don't know what you mean. She's like, I have a box of dad's stuff. My dad had died 14 years ago. She still never showed me all this. And she finally brings out this box, and it's got, like, old shirts, it's got his glasses, it's got his watch, and it's got these letters. My dad was. When I was younger, my dad was in jail for a little while for multiple DUIs. And he wrote us letters, and he wrote a letter to my sister on her 19th birthday. And it was this beautiful letter. He was a great writer. And then at the end, he said, I hope you live your life with courage, love, and laughter. And then it was a little bit more, and I was like, holy. I feel like he's speaking to me right now. Like, this is a letter from my sister. In 2000. Would have been 2000, he wrote this letter to her. And in 2015, I'm reading the letter, and it says, I hope you live your life with courage, love, and laughter. And the number one thing that I was feeling at that moment from starting a business is, should I shut down my business and go back to sales, Go back to doing what I was doing, because I knew that that money was guaranteed. I had so much fear inside of me. And the opposite of fear is courage. I needed some courage. And on it, it said, I hope you live your life with courage, love, and laughter. And I had never had any tattoos in my entire life for that moment. But I was like, I feel like I'M about to slip into massive amounts of fear and anxiety around not having the money that I want to coming in with this business. What do I want? Set your reticular activating in your system to find what it is that you want. You might wake up today and you might say, what do I want? That answer might come to you right away. Probably not going to though. It might take a week, it might take a month, it might take 10 months, it might take a year, it might take five years before you finally get the answer as to what it is that that makes your soul come alive. It's not okay to not be in constant search for what that is if you don't know what it is. So what do you want in your life? Stop doing what you feel like you're supposed to be doing. Stop following what other people say that you should be doing. Because what happens is if you do stay in the route that you're in, if you don't love what you're doing, if you're not following your purpose, if you're not finding your dream, if you're not doing exactly as that you want to do, then the worst thing that could happen is that you could be like 90% of people. Like they say in this book that gets to the end of their life. They're on their deathbed and they wish they lived a life that was true to themselves and not the life that others expected of them. What do you want in your life? All that matters is what you want, not what other people want. What do you want? Figure it out, find it, follow it, and don't stop until you get it. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about mastering your mind, click right here and watch this video as well. But what if I told you that in 10 years, 10 years from today, you will have a life that you absolutely love? Like the perfect life? Would that excite you?
