Last week, I talked about the first 2 regrets of the dying based on Bronnie Ware's study. If you haven't listened to that yet, you might want to listen to that first. It will help you to get some context. You can find that at http://reviveyourmidlifemarriage.com/31

So, let's dive into the last 3  of the top 5 regrets of the dying and how to avoid them.  

Sharing Feelings

The third most common regret was, "I wish I had the courage to express my feelings."This one will overlap a bit on the regret I covered last week, which was living true to yourself, but I want to add a little here. There are 7 primary feelings that everyone feels. They are pain, fear, anger, love, joy, guilt, and shame. Now, we often think of pain, fear, anger, guilt, and shame as negative feelings and only love and joy as positive feelings, but that is absolutely false. Every one of these feelings is universal to every human being. They are neither positive nor negative. They just are. It is a heavy burden to bear when we stuff our feelings. It negatively affects our physical and emotional health. 

However, how we respond to these feelings can make a positive or negative impact. If we hurt others as a result of our anger and pain-that is negative. If we allow fear to rule our lives, that is negative.  If we can't forgive ourselves, shame and guilt are negative, and so on. You know why expressing our true feelings is so hard? We fear total vulnerability. If I share my feelings, you may use them against me or think I'm weak, or even overreacting. In other words, we fear how others will see us. If we express too much joy, we may seem silly. If I share my love for others, they might think I'm crazy or weird. 

You know, how we express our feelings is directly related to how our parents expressed their feeling or didn't express them. We take our parental influences in, and it creates patterns for our lives whether we like it or not. For instance, maybe your parents provided for your physical needs but didn't share words of love and affirmation. Now you find yourself having a hard time sharing your feelings of love. This was my husband's experience. Or, your parents expressed anger in very damaging ways, so you see anger as a bad thing, so you stuff your anger and see it as negative. This was my experience, and I learned how to accept my anger and communicate it in healthy ways. 

So, the way to express your feelings more to avoid regrets is to first accept each feeling as okay. There are no negative feelings if handled healthily.

Get honest with yourself about how you are feeling instead of avoiding your feelings and shutting them down.

You'll find the complete show notes to this episode at http://reviveyourmidlifemarriage.com/32