Ep 84: Living with Less Regret with Sarah Wittry

When you look back on your life, do you regret more of the things you did do or the things you didn’t?

Today, my amazing guest Sarah Wittry talks with me about regret from her very interesting perspective. Sarah is both a physician who works in palliative care and hospice medicine and a life coach. Being honest with people at the end of their lives as well as helping humans live a life with as little regret as possible has given her the wisdom she shares with us in this episode.

We’ll talk about the steps you can take to have fewer regrets in life and how to live according to the way you want to be remembered.

Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.
If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa
Hello everybody, and welcome back to your favorite you. I have an amazing guest on the podcast today. I would like to introduce you all to Sarah Wittry. Sarah has a very interesting perspective in the world for many reasons, but the reasons we are going to discuss today are that she's both a physician who works in palliative care and hospice medicine - and you can correct me if I’m wrong here, Sarah - she works to help patients dealing with life-limiting illnesses and making sure that they are as comfortable and as dignified as possible near and at the end of their life.

Sarah
Yes, that's right

Melissa
Sarah has also embarked on a career in life coaching, so she is one of my many physician life coach friends, and I thought it would be so interesting to hear Sarah's perspective on helping humans live a life with as little regret as possible, and she thought that was a good idea too. So here we are today.

Sarah
Yeah, awesome

Melissa
I'll let you introduce yourself, Sarah. What would you love the listeners of Your Favorite You to know about you? And just kind of tell us about your favorite version of yourself?

Sarah
Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for having me Melissa. I really appreciate it. So, yeah, I am Sarah, and my family and I have lived in Columbus for about five years this summer. We moved from Seattle, Washington, so we really enjoyed the outdoors and the nature there for quite a while during residency and training and everything. We have four kids ages between two and twelve.

Melissa
Two and twelve did you say?

Sarah
Yes, so like a two-year-old, a six-year-old, a seven-year-old, and a twelve-year-old, so four of them altogether. And we… what else? Yeah, we're building a house in Ohio so we're here to stay. We have, like, nature in our backyard, so we're really excited about that and it's coming along slowly and surely. And otherwise, yeah, I just practice medicine here in Columbus, do part-time palliative. Like 50% of the time I should say palliative, and 50% in hospice in the inpatient setting. I love the patients and the families that I get to work with. I find it to be, you know, really, really meaningful work. And personally I like to… I love to do yoga and read. I read like two to three books at all times and I'm kind of obsessed. And then just getting outside.

Melissa
Amazing, amazing. All right, tell us, how did you get into wanting to work with people at the end of their life?

Sarah
So I would say that I was drawn to the specialty of palliative um, not necessarily for the end of life conversations initially, but just really really impacted by watching palliative colleagues that I had during residency and fellowship to be the most honest and like truth telling people that I experienced and encountered in medicine.

So I was… I'm just a person who just prefers to be authentic and, like you know, transparent as possible and it was really bothering me, like on a moral level, when I would know that there were all these things that were happening and like the outcomes weren't going to be very good, but I didn't sense that like the patient or the family got that um understanding, and so I think really it was just like the transparency of communication and kind of navigating the healthcare system is what drew me to palliative. And then, yeah, as I kind of you know, worked with the limits of medicine and it just exposed me to so much more of like the human side of medicine and just being able to hear literally hear people's stories all day and like hold space for them and just kind of help them navigate through and kind of like, make meaning of life, which I think is really, you know, a special privilege in a lot of ways, like it's a very sacred time in people's lives to be able to make it meaningful.

Melissa
Yeah, so beautiful. So in your experience with people nearing or at the end of their life, where maybe medicine has reached its limits and instead of giving people hope, we're giving people truth. Is it more common in your experience that people express that they're proud of the life that they have led up until this point, or is it more common that many of them have major regrets?

Sarah
That's a good question. I think it depends a lot on how the person has lived, right? But one thing that I definitely notice, a trend in a pattern is when people have a really supportive family who's there with them and who they have had… just experienced a lot of life with and like deep relationships, right? I find that it seems that those individuals regret… They tend to kind of talk about less regrets and more about all the experiences that they had right, and it's like a bittersweet time, like they're so glad they took this trip or they're so glad they had right, and it's like a bittersweet time, like they're so glad they took this trip or they're so glad they did this together. And that's like what the conversations are about, even though obviously they're like preparing for life without those people or, you know, preparing to go on and wishing that they had more time. Yeah, and then I mean, I think it's just the nature of it, like facing mortality, that people do tend to kind of talk about their regrets, and I'd say that the most common things I hear over and over are about working too much. Making, you know, career too much of an identity for too long, and so many people you know deciding to kind of put off something that they really were hopeful to do or wanted to do, plan to do until, um, till they retire, or tell it's always tell something right down the road, when they get less busy, when their kids are out of the house, like all of the things, and so if they didn't get a chance to do those things I think that's a big part of what people tend to talk about is, you know, those missed opportunities and kind of… Yeah, from a deeper level, I think people reflect a lot on how they were not very true to themselves or they wish they would have been more true to themselves. Right, definitely see that come up in a lot of different areas as well.

Melissa
Yeah, wow. So I'm curious how working with these people has made you maybe change the trajectory of your life.

Sarah
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think, if nothing else, it's like in my face every day. Right, I can't get away from it. I can't kind of wish away or pretend like life is not finite. So that definitely, I think, informs my perspectives and I think probably in the everyday it's just, uh, over time and still there's like a lot of room to go, but it's over time made me less focused on kind of stupid, meaningless stuff, right? And little details of perfectionism type of stuff or like little things that are annoying about people, like I think I have a greater capacity to just like see it all in a little bit more of a zoomed out perspective, like this probably doesn't really matter as much, as I think it, you know, might otherwise have been focused in on.

So I think it's a lot of that, just like seeing it, seeing what's happening with like a different lens and, yeah, really deciding and like asking myself hard questions about, like, am I living in line with you, know what I think is my biggest priorities and values? Because that's like, you know, for better or worse we wish that people all were able to live till they're like late 90s, right, but like I see people all the time who are my age or younger and it's just like, oh god, like what? What would that be like for me? So I think, yeah, taking the risks that I, um, am passionate about or like that are on my heart, I think it probably makes me bolder, probably making me bolder.

Melissa
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a fine line to walk right, because we don't want to, like, live as if we have no cares in the world. But we also don't want to live as if we're going to live forever, right? I don't know it's, I think it's… and I think if we were constantly thinking, well, you know, today's the day that I might die, like maybe we wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, maybe we would just stay in bed all day and…

Sarah
Yeah, yeah, totally..

Melissa
Who wants to live that life? Like that's not a very tenable life to live, and um… But I do think, when we are caught up in the minutiae of stuff that doesn't matter, it's very hard to see that, like, none of us is guaranteed tomorrow, and I - just for me I was thinking about this - you know, when I was writing the questions that I wanted to ask you, and I was thinking about what regret-proofing my life might look like for me, right, and I shared with you before we started recording, but I think it's apropos that we're recording this on the third anniversary of my last day as a practicing pediatrician, right, yeah, and I really want to live my life with what I want in the forefront, which is not how we're socialized. We're always socialized to put what other people want…

Sarah
For sure.

Melissa
I want to live saying yes to more things that are just for me, because I know that if I say yes to those things, then I will actually be a person that other people that I love and care about want to be around, right?

Sarah
Yeah, yeah.

Melissa
I want to say yes more often for me and no to the things that other people or society might expect from me. Um, I want to be a person that my husband and my kids and my friends actually want to be around. I want to extend grace and compassion to me first, so that it's easier for me to give those same things to other people. I initially was thinking like the people that I love, but then I was like, but maybe especially the ones that I don't like. Like what? If I could extend grace and compassion to them too.

I wrote I want to forgive myself for every little thing that I've done. That was not my favorite version of me, Like anytime I spend like thinking about that and like I don't want to make the same mistakes, but I think that oftentimes, if we don't forgive ourselves, we end up just like beating ourselves up and thinking that's the way to stop from doing those things again, but it's not.

Sarah
Absolutely.

Melissa
What else…

Sarah
Those are all really good and I, you know, I think they sort of change over time a little bit…

Melissa
Oh, for sure.

Sarah
…but they keep a lot of the same themes, right? Like the same, yeah, depending on your season and stuff. So coming back to it is probably a really good exercise, like every year or two.

Melissa
Oh, yeah, this list is way different than it would have been, had I written it 10 years ago, when my kids were 12 and 9 like totally, a totally different list. But there were definitely things that I did back then that I definitely would not waste any time doing like if I knew I only had a decade left, or I knew I only had a year left.

I don't know if you know this about me, but I grew up in a funeral home. Oh, we talked about it, I think, one time.

Sarah
I think you did say, yeah, you did tell me that.

Melissa
But my dad used to play… There was a video made by, I think, a casket company called Batesville and it was a video about a woman knowing that she only had 24 hours to live. And like what would she do with those 24 hours? And like… I think it makes it so much easier when you know that there, for sure, is a finite amount of time, like all the bullshit just melts away.

Sarah
Yep, it does. Fades in the background, right?

Melissa
Yeah, and things that are really important come to the fore.

Sarah
Absolutely.

Melissa
Tell me, tell me how you came to the decision to become a life coach, because it seems to me - and I was thinking about this for myself way before -  like we are life coaches but we are kind of death coaches too.

Sarah
Yeah, I mean, I think so my journey to coaching was basically through my own need for it, or like discovery of it, right, and just kind of I think coaching helped me the most, and just like giving language and like some of the questions, um, to help myself trust myself more, right, to lead me to like that inner knowing and sort of give myself permission to like prioritize myself first, which, like you said, is not like a societal norm in any way, shape or form, especially for women, and like high achieving. We just have this, like, pathway and you're just supposed to continue on. And I think I knew right like way early that it just, like, didn't align with me, um, and kind of what I wanted all my life to be, um, and so I think… I think that once I realized how much value I was getting out of coaching, and like seeing my colleagues and my peers and like people I interacted with on the daily right, they were like suffering and struggling and like I know that they're brilliant minds that want to do well and like have a great career in medicine, but all I can see is like oh my god, they need to uh, you know, learn to love themselves and like learn to not make medicine be their only part in life and someone to like tell them that's okay and like if you're struggling, if you're suffering, you're not alone in that and you don't have to like stay in the the sucky part.

You know it doesn't have to be all or none. And I think, yeah, that's like my biggest, I guess, passion and reason for why I decided to become a coach myself is so I could help people in that way that I needed for myself and hopefully learn those lessons a little bit sooner, or like have a little bit more open mindedness when it comes to like early career you know that you can do medicine. It doesn't have to be your whole life, like it's a part of you.

Melissa
Yeah, I think we get caught in that trap, right, because we are so tied to our worth being all the external achievements as successful, high achieving, Type A, checklist-making women, right?

Sarah
Yes.

Melissa
And it's… It's so easy to get sucked into that trap of thinking If I just give a little bit more of myself at work to my career, like maybe I can, you know, move up the tenure ladder quicker or and have a full patient load sooner and I could help more people and that type of thing, and it's just…  I'm with you. Just the needing to have medicine, obviously it's a calling and it is not for everyone, um, but having it be a part of who you are, not, like you said, your entire identity and you know, and just like welcoming all the different parts of yourself to the table and the part that like actually likes to play, the part that likes to rest, the part that likes to read for fun, like I can't tell you how many years I went without reading because I was just so frigging sick of reading after school and residency and journals and like oh I'm just so sick of it. But, like, finding reading again for pleasure. I’m like, “This is amazing.”

Sarah
Right, right, and there's so much freedom in it, right? There's freedom in just, like, letting yourself do the things you love to do, that like your soul craves to do, and you just are like I've pushed that aside for so long. It's sort of like it's frivolous or it's selfish or it's, you know, I could be making better use of my time, right? Laundry or catching up on charts, right, right? So yeah, I think it's really freeing when you're able to kind of give yourself that permission. Yeah, you just live… you feel like more in the driver's seat of your life, and I think it has ripple effects on literally every area.

Melissa
Yeah, every person.

Sarah
Yeah.

Melissa
How do you think it is - from your perspective - why do you think it is that so many people struggle to recognize that we do have a finite amount of time and we do need to prioritize what's important to us?

Sarah
I think it's because, like, our medical culture is just so set up for fixing, it's like a problem-based thing, right, and so I mean it's come… We're making slow progress in talking about dying and like normalizing it a little bit more, but it's just like there's so much of a belief, I think, in our medical system that like dying, or even talking about dying signals failure, or like we've done something wrong we're giving up or losing hope, um, and so I think that when you work in that all the time you're surrounded by that, that's like your entire environment. I think it makes it really easy to ignore or like pretend, stuff it down. It's uncomfortable… It's a deeply uncomfortable, like emotional landscape that is like… With talking about dying, suffering, death, like, um, yeah, loss of anyone, including yourself so… You know it would never cease to amaze me that we'll have like 80 year old patients with like many chronic diseases and like they've never once talked about death or talked about it with their family, and it's, it's just wild to me, you know. So I think that that's why it's not normal for us at younger ages, as we kind of assume like we'll have time, we'll, you know, we'll live a long life, and and if we don't like, we don't want to think about the alternative, I think, because I think we always assume we have more time.

I don't know if you've read the book Four Thousand Weeks.

Melissa
I haven't read that one. I'll put it on my list.

Sarah
It's so good. It's like Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. And it totally, like, reframed the concept of time management, like we're so obsessed with it right in our culture, even like just trying to, like, systemize everything and to-do's and all the things. And he's like, basically, if you live to be 76.7 or whatever the average life expectancy, you have about 4 000 weeks. So he's like, you have to kind of come to the realization that, like, you're not going to get everything you want done. There is a finite amount of time for projects and the good and the bad, right, all of the things and the mundane, and just like using that to, I guess, again zoom out and see, like, what really matters and is that what I'm focused on, right? Not just today, but like am I managing my time and my managing like what I put my energy into? For things that are on track with where I want to be and then, looking back, be like yeah, those were like totally meaningful experiences. You know, so glad I did that, right?

Melissa
Yeah, I mean I think I've always known and I talk to my clients about this all the time. You know, most people when they have regrets at the end of their life, it's usually not about the stuff that they did do, it's about the stuff that they didn't, right? That they said that they wanted to but they never got to, or that they just held in their little hearts without telling anyone because they didn't want it to be out there, because if they didn't do it then they would be seen as a failure or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, so interesting.

My hubby, you know, is pulmonary critical care, so he's constantly, not so much anymore, but he was in the ICU and he, he has this amazing ability in our family and in our relationship to like zoom out and see things from 40,000 feet, when I'm like usually stuck in the muck and the minutiae and that type of thing, and he's always telling me you know, honey, the stuff that you're worried about just doesn't fucking matter, like come and sit and snuggle with me and spend time with me instead of whatever it is you're doing, you know?

Sarah
Yeah.

Melissa
And I think especially after he's had a tough case or a tough death or a young person or something unexpected, you know, he's always like bringing be back, bringing me back to what really matters and I’m very grateful for that perspective from him, and then also I think from the perspective of, you know, growing up in the funeral home and you know, we just never would know like it, one day it would be a bunch of 90 year olds and another day it would be a baby and you know, just like the huge dichotomy of that and all the nuance and I think it's very interesting too and I don't know…. I've been to a lot of funerals in my life just because of you know where I grew up and that type of thing, and it's it's so amazing to me the amount of celebration that happens at funerals and you know, you think that they're supposed to be sad and somber, and of course there are times where they are, but for the most part, you know, what most people are doing is reminiscing back about the things that did happen and the time spent and the funny things, and you know. So I think that's an interesting way to think about it, and I don't know if you're like me but I think about my funeral and what I want people to think and what I want people to say about me and my life.

Sarah
Totally, I agree. I think we had to do that exercise in fellowship, right? Like write your own eulogy, and sort of like… What's on it? What are you not doing that you should be doing? That you, you know, want to be there, And that reminded me of like, uh, you know the Nobel Prize, like the Nobel Prize that everyone gets?

Melissa
Yes.

Sarah
So there's, you know the story behind it.

Melissa
No, tell me, please tell all our listeners too.

Sarah
It's really fascinating. So it's basically like -  I don't know - it's like in the 1800s, I think, Alfred Nobel, he was living, doing his thing, was a businessman kind of, had some questionable practices, like, took advantage of people etc. for profits. And then he woke up one day and he saw in the newspaper it was an obituary. It said that he died and he was like, “Oh, what?” right? And um, it was actually his brother, uh, who had died. But they'd gotten it mixed up.

But the people that wrote the obituary it was like searing him and it was just like awful, right, and so it was like this huge wake up to him, like oh my god, this is how people would remember me as like this self-centered person who, like, just wanted to take advantage of people and like only cared about, you know, the bottom line and so… But he was extremely wealthy. So I guess that was like he had a lot of regret right seeing that and kind of reflecting um, and then he I don't know, a decade later, whatever, when he did die, he left like 96 percent of his billions of dollars to um, basically the create the Nobel Prize, which was like for anybody in economics, math and medicine and all those areas, like who contributed to humanity in the last year most meaningfully, like they would be recognized and that's like you know, everyone knows the Nobel Prize and it's like such a radical change to like what he'll be remembered by, right? And I guess that's to me… It's like there's a lot of talk about no regrets, right, like live with no regrets, like those songs and tattoos and all the things.

Melissa
Yeah, yeah.

Sarah
But I think that the truth is, you know human emotion, like you're gonna have regrets, whether they're something you did or you're like I wish I would have done differently, if only I'd done this. You know, things you didn't do - the inaction ones. But it's like, if you can not just look at your like regrets as things to be used to beat yourself up about, right, or like ruminate on, if you can really like pull and extract like the insights from them, I think that they can be used to reframe and like propel you as like a catalyst, right, to positive thing that you have you still have time for.

Melissa
Yeah, so beautiful.

Sarah
And I think that that's pretty cool to have as far as, like, a reframe for regret, right?

Melissa
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, I'd like to think… I was just thinking, as you were talking, like the obituary that would have been written about me pre-coaching is quite different, I think, than the one that's going to be written about me post-coaching. And I like to think about changing the trajectory of my whole family's life. And then me becoming a coach myself, like everyone who chooses to work with me, changing the trajectory of their life and therefore their family's lives. Um, so that's amazing. I love that story.

Sarah
So cool and it's such a good modeling for our, like, generational stuff. The patterns, right? Like cause you changed so much and you didn't keep going down the same path. And like all the… like your kids and rest of your family and friends. I really truly think it's like inspiring to them on levels that they may be sort of aware of now but might become more aware of later, you know, it's like I saw my mom do this and this, when she was realizing she wasn't that happy doing this. She, like, didn't just stick it out and complain, she figured out what to do and changed and like…

Melissa
Figured it the fuck out.

Sarah
Yeah, yeah.

Melissa
So good. And not to say that I have it all figured out. That is not what I want the take-home message to be. I am open to the idea that, like I might change again and, like, that another pivot is not a problem.

Sarah
No, no. Yeah, as long as you're, like, connected to yourself, figuring out what you want, like trusting yourself, you know when it's time to pivot, and that's good.

Melissa
Yeah, so good. All right, is there anything else that you think that the listeners of Your Favorite You need to know?

Sarah
Um…

Melissa
I mean, I'm sure there's a million things, but…

Sarah
Yeah, yeah, there's so many… such, like, philosophical kind of existential questions, right? But I think, more than anything, if you're talking about like your favorite you and who you are, I would just encourage people that if they have something that has been on their heart, been on their mind for like a very long time, right, and they find themselves keep coming back to but are like putting it off or dismissing it even… not to say you have to like wake up tomorrow and jump in and quit your job, but like maybe give that a little bit of space in your mind, right, and just be see what's there. Like let your curiosity lead you a little bit and, like, imagine what it could be like and you know, taking, like, even a teeny, tiny step, or just taking five minutes to like think about it and really, like, allow yourself to think about it, I think is a great first step. So I just don't, I don't want people to have those inaction regrets, you know, because we just don't know… We just don't know what the time holds for us, or like what our function is going to be. So that's my thing is to encourage people not to keep waiting on that, but kind of like give it a little thought, give it a little space and maybe take like a 1% change.

Melissa
Yeah, that's all it takes, it's not, it doesn't have to be a whole 180.

Sarah
No, no.

Melissa
Yeah, that's so good. And I think, just from my perspective, like you can do that on your own, obviously, and if you choose to work with a coach, somebody who, you know, sees the pitfalls and who you know kind of gets to know your brain and can see you kind of maybe doing the same patterns over and over and over again, and can point them out to you and say, oh yeah, you're like talking yourself out of that heart knowing that yeah, you're doing it again like, like you said you wanted this, like let's work toward it and that type of thing…

So just working with someone else who can kind of see and can help point you, guide you in the right direction. Not of what I want or what you want as a coach for your clients, but like pointing them back to what they say that they want over and over and over again.

Sarah
Right, right.

Melissa
And I think, for me for sure, like anything that I… that my heart wants, it starts as a little tiny whisper, and then if I give it space it gets a little bit louder and louder and louder until I can't, like, not follow it anymore.

Sarah
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or it just shows up as, like, a dissatisfaction that gets bigger and bigger. You don't pay attention to, you know, what's trying to say.

Melissa
Yes, yeah, it's like ignoring a splinter that is there it's like never a good idea. You should probably take it out, right? Too funny.

Alright, sweet Sarah. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to follow you on the social medias, if they want to get in contact with you, tell my listeners how they find you.

Sarah
Yeah, so you can check out my podcast. It's called Vibrant Humans, it's on Spotify and Apple. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I do like a lot of, you know, helping moms in medicine, who are even deciding whether they want to be a mom or not and how they're going to make that work with, you know, the whole medical career thing, right? Or maybe have just had babies and are like what the hell, how am I going to make this transition back, you know, and make this work. So, yeah, LinkedIn, that kind of thing and…

Melissa
They would just search Sarah Wittry there?

Sarah
Yeah, on LinkedIn.

Melissa
Okay, sweet. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your beautiful light with me and with my audience, and we'll keep the conversation going and if we need to have you back on, we'll do that too.

Sarah
Absolutely. Thank you for indulging me in these conversations, the deep stuff I always like to go to.

Melissa
Yeah, oh girl, I'm like I don't have time for… that's something I definitely don't have time for like small talk.

Sarah
The small talk, yeah.

Melissa
I mean I'll be nice to you in the grocery store If I meet you - my husband says I could talk to wallpaper. But if I know you, like, we're going deep. And if you don't want that, like I'm not going to coach you, but we're not going to talk about superficial shit.

Sarah
Right.

Melissa
We just don't have time for that anymore.

Sarah
I know, I know. There's too much other goodness, right?

Melissa
Exactly, exactly. 

Alright, thanks guys for listening, and we'll see you back here next week.

I would love one more minute of your precious time so that I can invite you all to a webinar I am presenting on Wednesday, May 8th at 7pm Eastern. This webinar is titled, How To Figure Out What The Fuck You Want: The 5-Steps High-Achievers Need To Go From EFFFF to AAAHH… On the webinar, I will be going over where you are now, where you want to be, what you have tried so far in your life to get it, why it hasn’t worked, and the process that I have developed to help all of my people figure out what the fuck they want! After I teach you all about the process, you can stay on and I will tell you all about my group coaching program, also called Your Favorite You. I will share what you can expect when you join the group, and all the amazing results that you and I and all of the other incredible women in the group can co-create together! To sign up for the webinar, go to melissaparsonscoaching.com/webinar - put your information in the empty fields and you will be all signed up! Sign up, mark your calendar, bring your friends, and for the love of everything, please interact with me on the webinar. It makes it so much more fun and interesting for everyone! So, go right now - melissaparsonscoaching.com/webinar! See you there!