Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip comes from a listener who completely changed how
Speaker 1: she spent her time after losing a dear friend. Listener
Speaker 1: Robin writes that she enjoyed the List of one hundred
Speaker 1: Dreams episode that aired a few months ago. This was
Speaker 1: about creating an unedited list of anything you'd like to
Speaker 1: spend more time doing. Robin said that she'd been creating
Speaker 1: a similar list for the past three years, albeit with
Speaker 1: fifty items, and she wanted to share the story of
Speaker 1: how her list came to be. Several years ago, she writes,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage four cancer.
Speaker 1: From the time she was diagnosed till we lost her
Speaker 1: was about four months after hearing of her diagnosis. We
Speaker 1: were sitting together talking and I asked her how she
Speaker 1: was doing. Her response at the time and to this
Speaker 1: day flabbergasted me. She told me she was fine. The
Speaker 1: doctors had told her that if there was anything that
Speaker 1: she hadn't done that she really wanted to do, that
Speaker 1: she should do it immediately. She said that she had
Speaker 1: done everything and had no regrets. Robin continues, we were
Speaker 1: both in our forties at the time, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine being able to say this. I could imagine so
Speaker 1: many more things that I hadn't done, so many more
Speaker 1: adventures I hadn't gone on, so many more experiences that
Speaker 1: were yet to be had. But here was my friend
Speaker 1: telling me that she had checked off everything on her list.
Speaker 1: Robin notes that I rationalized this away to some extent.
Speaker 1: She was single and had no children, Her time was
Speaker 1: her own. I was married, with three children, one each
Speaker 1: in college, high school, in middle school. Our lives were different,
Speaker 1: yet this stayed with me in a profound way. A
Speaker 1: couple of years later, I was given a notebook by
Speaker 1: another friend. On the cover, it says, have courage and
Speaker 1: be kind. A few days later, there was news coverage
Speaker 1: of an event that my deceased friend had attended every year.
Speaker 1: Even though she was gone, I still found myself searching
Speaker 1: for her distinctive winter hat in the crowd. That night,
Speaker 1: I picked up the notebook and started to write down
Speaker 1: everything that caught my attention, and I haven't stopped. Yes,
Speaker 1: I only have fifty items on my list, but as
Speaker 1: of this weekend, three years after I started. Forty three
Speaker 1: of them have been done. I'm constantly adding to the
Speaker 1: original list. Sometimes I will add something on Monday, knowing
Speaker 1: I plan on doing it on Saturday. But that really
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. What matters is that I am identifying much
Speaker 1: better uses for my time and creating memories. She writes,
Speaker 1: I am managing my time to create a better life.
Speaker 1: I love Robin's story and her commitment to creating an
Speaker 1: ongoing list of how she'd like to spend her time. Time.
Speaker 1: What a great habit to have. We can revolutionize our
Speaker 1: lives by asking a version of the question her friends
Speaker 1: doctors asked her, what would we like to do that
Speaker 1: we haven't done? The vast majority of us aren't facing
Speaker 1: a life threatening diagnosis, thank goodness. But it's easy to
Speaker 1: trudge along through life assuming will do everything later. Maybe
Speaker 1: we do have all the time in the world, but
Speaker 1: maybe we don't. If our time was suddenly limited, what
Speaker 1: would we still like to cross off that list? Of course,
Speaker 1: there needs to be a balance here. Living like there's
Speaker 1: no tomorrow means a lot of people would stop saving
Speaker 1: for retirement, they'd stop flossing, they'd stop eating their vegetables.
Speaker 1: No one's immortal. But given that the odds favor a
Speaker 1: fair number of tomorrow's, we're probably better off doing these things.
Speaker 1: But like Robin, it might help to ask ourselves what
Speaker 1: we'd need to do to get to a place where,
Speaker 1: like her friend, we could say we have no regrets,
Speaker 1: make this list, and then see what's feasible to do,
Speaker 1: maybe sooner rather than later. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.
Speaker 1: Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast pod that's B the number four, then Breakfast
Speaker 1: p o D. You can also shoot me an email
Speaker 1: at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com
Speaker 1: that Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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