Start living your life with no regrets

What is one thing in your life you're afraid you might regret if you don't do it?

It's totally human to have regrets, or the fear of regret. Even Taylor Swift and Super Bowl champ Travis Kelce experience them! But it's my goal to help each of us have a heck of a lot less of them. Maybe even none!

In this Thursday Thread, I share own evolution from hairstylist to corporate strategist to online business owner to the voice behind this podcast and how this continuous (and courageous) growth and transformation has helped me to avoid the big R in many ways. I hope it inspires you to take more courageous action, too. 

I believe every "yes" for ourselves, whether it's in our career, job, relationships, family choices, living situation, and so on, is a stepping stone to your most regret-free life and how owning your decisions gives you the opportunity to mindfully craft your own unique journey.

This episode isn't just about career pivots; it's a deeper look at crafting a life without regrets, one where relationships shine as the cornerstone and adaptability is your north star.

As I note in the episode, living regret-free is about consciously uncovering the areas in your life you're ignoring. These shadow parts will only crave more and more attention, after all! So why not honor them by giving them what they need before they become shadow monsters?!

We close the episode with a moment of conscious breathing, grounding you in the here and now, and encouraging you to embrace the lessons of your own journey with open arms and an open heart.

Questions to consider for yourself after listening to this episode:

• Where is that one area where I am not looking at? (relationships, career, love, financial, family, or something else)
• Where am I scared to turn inward? Can I take one tiny, courageous step toward it today?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jenless, the podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I'm your host, jen, and in this episode we're going to talk about how to live your life with no regrets. Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast for this Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread, threading out a little nugget from Kyle Hamilton's episode. So Kyle was on the podcast on Tuesday.

Speaker 1: 0:46

He is a digital marketer, has a digital marketing agency, and he told the story that has led him to this point. The path that felt like it was set for him when he was young was to grow up and be a doctor, as many of the people in his family have, and over the years he became what he called a ski bum. He traveled Europe a little bit. He did all of these things that definitely did not necessarily align with the path that he had set for himself, and there were still moments where he had decided to go to law school. He went back to that. You know, I should get a real job. He had this thought in his head I should get a real job. And how many of us have those moments where we feel like, okay, you know I should get a real job, I should do this the adult way and we start making decisions in our lives that we feel like are the adult way. I need to do it this way. This is the way that it needs to look.

Speaker 1: 1:43

And one of the really cool stories that he told was when he had gone to France right after high school and he was looking for a job, like getting to the point of desperation. He'd put out all. He had applied at so many jobs. He wanted to be able to work in France for the summer and he could not find a job. Something he thought was going to be easy, like sure, I can find just a waiting job, no big deal. He could not find a job anywhere and he has in his head that he's going to get a waiting job. And he finally finds this place where they're willing to offer him a job. But it's not to wait tables, it's to be a cook. And he's like I hardly know how to boil an egg, I can't be a cook for you, and they're like let us just try. And he could have said no, I have in my head that this is the way that it's going to be. But he said yes and ended up opening him up to all kinds of possibilities. That obviously influenced his life in many ways.

Speaker 1: 2:37

And how often do we do this? How often do we have a way that we think life needs to be like well, I need to be a doctor. I have to prove that I can work a real job. I mean even myself, when I went into corporate, there was a piece of me, there was a big piece of me that felt like I needed to prove something. I needed to prove to myself, I needed to prove to my family, I needed to prove to my previous teachers who had believed in me and to all the people to the world that I could go back and get my degree. Now I knew I obviously have the drive, I have the determination. I had already built a solid business. I have the determination to go get a degree. But I needed to prove. I had something to prove. I had to prove that I could work a real job, which even then, at that time, I had such interesting feelings because some of my own hair clients, as I was leaving, they would say some things to me like, oh, you're going to go get a real job. And I was like that opened up a door for me even right there of having that experience of people not believing that I had previously been doing a real job doing my taxes as a small business owner. Doing I mean as a small business owner, I did so many things. I did inventory. I don't think that people realize the behind the scenes. That goes on, for I mean any business owner, but as a stylist, a hairstylist, there is a lot, a lot of behind the scenes work. So your hairstylist is doing many things, especially if they are a small business owner, if they are working for themselves, that you do not realize behind the scene they are doing. That was a real job.

Speaker 1: 4:27

When I got into the corporate world and I just got to sit behind a desk for eight hours, I was like what is this luxury? I'm getting sick to sit behind a desk. But as that pearl started to shift, I realized it was not the pearl for me sitting there behind a desk. I was actually maybe should have taken it as a sign. When I was in physical pain every day sitting behind that desk I actually had to go and see a physical therapist. I was in so much pain from sitting all day because I had previously spent my entire life standing and moving and bending and shifting and using my muscles all day, that sitting behind a desk was the most painful thing, which is perhaps a metaphor for my corporate experience. Actually, there were so many gifts that I gained in corporate and at the same time it turned out not to be the thing for me.

Speaker 1: 5:20

But I have no regrets. I have no regrets, just like Kyle was sharing in his story. There's not a single regret along the way. Could I have stayed being a hairstylist? Yes, Now I realize looking back. If I had had the tools that I have now, I could have stayed in the hair business. I could have grown in the hair business. I could have done all of these things that were dreams of mine but I didn't realize were dreams of mine. But do I regret that? Am I sad about that? Is there a part of me that thinks, ah, how cool might that have been if I had the courage to stand on stage and cut hair at hair shows? That was definitely something I had kind of wanted to do but couldn't believe in the dream for myself at the time that now I have the skills that I totally could do that. But I have no regrets about it.

Speaker 1: 6:14

I realize that every single thing that has led me to this point has led me to this point for a reason. Every experience that I have had the light, the dark, the good, the bad every single one of them, and I don't even think that any of those need to be judged by those terms. Every experience is the experience that it is, and this is a hard thing to say, because we experience grief, we experience loss, we experience sadness and indeed I have been blessed in my life to not have the full cup of that, as some other people have and at the same time, how do we live a life with no regrets? How do we truly live a life with no regrets? I thought it would be fun to look and see what chatGBT says. I asked chatGBT before. I always say GB, it's GP, it should be GB, it just sounds better. But, chatgbt, how do you live your life with no regrets? Let's see what they have to say.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Living a life without regrets involves making mindful choices, learning from experiences and focusing on personal growth. Congratulations to anybody listening to this podcast, because that's basically what we're talking about here making mindful choices, learning from our experiences, focusing on personal growth. So if you're listening to this podcast, I just want you to celebrate yourself right now because you are on the path to truly living your life with no regrets. That's really what we're doing here. We're untethered unicorns. We are seeking the way to get to when we are 90 years old. We look back and we say that was fucking brilliant. That's truly my goal in life and it has taken me some time some searching, some mindful choices, some learning from my experiencing experiences, focusing on personal growth and doing one of the things that Kyle and I talked about in the last episode, the Tuesday episode allowing myself to fail, allowing myself to receive one more, no, putting myself out there in ways that are really uncomfortable, because you don't regret doing that. We don't regret doing that because the growth and the learning from the experiences that you get to have when you do that is huge. So chat GPT did not suggest that you put yourself in more situations where you're willing to fail, but it did say some really good things Self-awareness, mindfulness, setting realistic goals, prioritizing your relationships.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Actually, I lied here. It is take calculated risks. Taking calculated risks, self-forgiveness, expressing yourself, I will add, authentically. It says work-life balance. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a thing, but cool and adaptability. So all of these things we can all agree that all of these things can support us, probably, in living a life of no regrets, with exception of that balancing work and life. I'm not exactly sure what that means. I think, instead of work-life balance to me, crafting a life that you want to live we don't need to balance a life that is crafted in a way that we want to live it. If we're doing all of the other things on this list, then what is the balance? Your work is your life. Your life is your work. Every single piece of it all works together.

Speaker 1: 9:59

What I'm realizing, something that I am highly focusing on, is relationships, because it's the area that I've been avoiding. So, if we're talking about regrets and how do I live my life without regrets, what is that one area of your life where you have not been putting some of this focus, where you have not been bringing self-awareness, where you've not been allowing yourself to learn from mistakes and take calculated risks? Where have you not been forgiving yourself? Where are you not setting realistic goals? You know, I noticed this, guess. Where I noticed this for myself is in horoscopes, of all places. I love to look at horoscopes I always have, I just think it's fun. I love self-reflection and horoscopes offer us the opportunity to self-reflect and I would always skip over the love one because I married to my high school sweetheart. So that was the excuse that I used. Is I married to my high school sweetheart? I don't need to look at the love one.

Speaker 1: 11:08

It occurred to me not so long ago that I was not paying much attention, not giving much effort in that area at all. I had a lot of assumptions, both he and I Joey and I have been working at this for a bit. We have a lot of assumptions. We're being together for this long. We have so many assumptions of ourselves and when I really started opening the door which was a little scary to look at my relationships, I was doing this with all of them with colleague relationships, with relationships with my clients, with relationships with my parents, with relationships with my siblings and friends. It was happening all over the place. I wasn't willing to look there.

Speaker 1: 11:56

So if we want to live a life with no regrets, that is the challenge that I would offer to all of us today is to look at where is the one where I'm not looking. I'm always very interested to look in my horoscopes, in career and in success and in all of those areas and living my dream life and all of these things. But it's like I was happy to look at those and excited to look at those, but I was just turning a blind eye. Anytime it would say love or relationships, I just didn't even care, I wouldn't read it. So where are the places in your life that you're glazing over?

Speaker 1: 12:38

Because it is by deepening those areas, it's by looking in the areas, looking a little bit in the shadows and shining a light in there, that we can really bring even deeper fulfillment for ourselves. Because when we're seeking, if you find yourself seeking, we're seeking and we're trying to fulfill that. In other ways we might be trying to fulfill the fact that our relationships are not serving us in the way that they could be. We're trying to fill that hole in our achievements, trying to fill that hole with our business, and it's actually interning toward the thing that we've been ignoring, that all of a sudden that hole is going to fill. And then we're not putting that striving and that pressure in the other area, because we're looking for love through our business. And then it's like rebounding back at us because we're looking in the wrong place. So your business is going to take off. Other things are going to take off when we turn toward that little shadow area. So we'll challenge for you today so that we can more deeply live a life that truly is crafted for us, a truly untethered, magical unicorn life.

Speaker 1: 13:59

And also, one thing that I want to note about is simply doing things when the time is right. We know, if something about this message strikes you, if it's lighting something up inside of you, the time is right. If you're feeling like you're not interested and this is not landing with you today, the time is not right and that's okay. That is, oh okay. We get to choose when we turn inward on something and when we don't, and we can't be doing all things at once, but things show up for us when they're meant to, and so if this feels like something that feels really great to you, it's lighting up then I encourage you to take a look inward.

Speaker 1: 14:45

As always with our Thursday threads, let's close with a moment of conscious breath. So settling in wherever you are. If you're driving, you can come back to this later, or keep your eyes open, just keeping yourself aware If you're walking, if you're moving, you can do this alongside of us with your eyes open as well, just ensuring that your awareness is in the present moment. If you are seated, if you're standing wherever you are, taking a big inhale into your nose, taking it back out through the nose. Another big, full breath filling the belly. Take a deep breath Back out through the nose, feeling your body begin to sink a land on that surface beneath you, feeling the support of that surface, whether it's the ground, a chair, if you're outside walking, maybe it's the concrete surface or the soil beneath your feet, letting yourself lean into that surface with your full body's weight. And let's continue this breath into the nose, out through the nose, sending those exhales a little bit longer than the inhale, just inviting yourself to be fully present in this moment. Letting yourself be right here, where you are, maybe noticing any textures around you, maybe the texture of the air itself. Maybe is it cool, is it warm, feeling it on your skin. Maybe feeling the texture of whatever is beneath your hands. Maybe it's your pants, the steering wheel, bringing your awareness to that texture, just noticing it. Taking another inhale into the nose, causing at the top, exhaling through the mouth, completely Thanking yourself for taking these few moments to bring yourself into the present, to bring your awareness mindfully into the here and the now, and recognizing all the magic that is created by allowing yourself to become present.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. It means the world to me that you would listen in. There's something that deeply connected or resonated with you in this episode. I encourage you to share it. You can share it on social media by taking a little screenshot of the episode. Share it on social media. Share your take away. I would love to hear it. You can tag me. I'm untetheredgen on Instagram. I will always reshare your posts. If you tag me, you just keep shining your magical unicorn light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time. Bye.