Business Builders Podcast

Turning Regrets into Resolutions

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 4 • Episode 59

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Welcome to the first Business Builders episode of 2024! This thought-provoking session revolves around the transformative lessons from one of our reading books from the holidays,  ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying’, by Bronnie Ware. As we embrace the new year, our hosts delve into how understanding life's deepest regrets can be a powerful catalyst for personal and professional growth.

  • Holiday Reflections: A look at how holiday reading, especially poignant books like ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying’, can inspire new perspectives.
  • Understanding Regrets: Discussing the common regrets people have at the end of their lives and the wisdom these insights offer.
  • From Regrets to Resolutions: Exploring how to use these regrets as a foundation for meaningful New Year's resolutions.
  • Living Authentically: Emphasizing the importance of living a life true to oneself, not one shaped by others' expectations.
  • Balancing Work and Life: A conversation about the challenge of finding balance between professional ambitions and personal happiness.
  • Expressing Emotions: Encouraging open expression of feelings to cultivate richer relationships and personal well-being.
  • Cultivating Friendships: The role of deep, meaningful friendships in enhancing life quality and how to nurture them.
  • Embracing Happiness: Discussing the choice to be happier and how this mindset can influence our daily lives and decisions.
  • Practical Tips: Offering actionable advice on how to apply these lessons in daily life and business practices.

This episode is a call to action for listeners to introspect, reassess life priorities, and make 2024 a year of authentic living and meaningful achievements.

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>> Connect with our hosts on Linkedin


Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. Welcome to our first episode for 2024. In today's episode, we discuss the profound lessons from one of our holiday reading books, the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. So as we kick off this New Year, let's explore how understanding life's deepest regrets can inspire us to turn these regrets into resolutions. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian. And it's 2024 on Hard to believe, isn't it?

Brenton Gowland:

I know it comes around. So quick,

Ron Tomlian:

interesting state to 2024. I got COVID for the first time,

Brenton Gowland:

you got COVID.

Ron Tomlian:

And for me, it was just like a mild cold. But it did give me the opportunity to read a lot, which is good. But I like to start the year with a bit of reading. So what seemed to be a negative turned into a positive?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, look, if you're listening to us, welcome back. We've got a rip a year ready to go. And we hope like Ron, you didn't get COVID over the break when you're on your holidays, because that wouldn't be much fun, would it?

Ron Tomlian:

No. But as I said, you can turn it into a positive that a lot of reading. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We when we had Samantha young on the show, just before Christmas, we talked about mental health again, and gave her a sort of pledge that we were going to do some reading that she suggested things like Victor Frankel's book, and things like the Five Regrets of the Dying, which is the one I read. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about what we read over the holidays, and the relevance of that to what we were talking about before, which is looking after yourself and having a fulfilled life. Yes.

Brenton Gowland:

And that episode that we did with Samantha was called unwrapping Christmas, I think he has a memory on me to go back and look it up. It's been a while my memory is getting a bit faded on what we did last year already. But we, as you said, we put out that challenge. And I just wonder as well, if any of our listeners have read any of those books. So what we're going to talk about a lot more this year is about our LinkedIn group, I think there's about at four or five people in it at the moment, we want to build that up. And that's where we're going to do a lot of our communications. And that's where you'll be able to get in contact with us this year. But if you did read one of those books, we'd be really keen to hear about it. So we'll put a post in the LinkedIn group and ask what books you read over the break, we might be getting off to a late start ourselves. So it's almost the end of January, but I love taking January off.

Ron Tomlian:

It's a good time of the year in Australia. Typically the weather's pretty good. We haven't had quite that year in South Australia,

Brenton Gowland:

what's been pretty wet, very wet. It's raining today. And when we get to get unusual, we've had one hot day all of summer, which was I think two days ago. So

Ron Tomlian:

I had to stay in three years. But still that says something, doesn't

Brenton Gowland:

it? It's like, um, it's interesting anyway. But anyway, we'll get on to it. So we're going to talk as you said about the books, what did you read over the break room?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I read a whole bunch of fiction, which is I like reading fiction, because I think it opens up new worlds for you in terms of thinking. But in terms of working books, I reread Eckhart tolle's the New Earth, which is a sort of condensation of his work The Power of Now, and rereading a book, I think, is always a delight, especially when it's a book as good as that. And that's about spirituality, without the religious connotations to it, and a view of life from the perspective of understanding that there's more to you than your thoughts. There's beyond the ego, there is a you and understanding who you are. And the other book I read was The the art of happiness by the Dalai Lama. Okay, so related. And what I was saying to you, when we were preparing for this show, is that you started to read a lot of these books over the years, and you find out that there's a lot of similarity in them, not in terms of the book themselves. But some of the thoughts that come through these books is that there's some commonalities in terms of themes. So if we use the book that you were talking about, which is the Five Regrets of the Dying, or Top Five Regrets of the Dying as a framework for having that discussion, I can bring in some of the things from the Dalai Lama book, The Art of happiness, and we can have a good discussion about that. Okay.

Brenton Gowland:

And I think what's really important is that when we read these things, and you rot, there is commonality. And we found that when we had our discussion pre show, and I think that's very interesting, it's a bit of a human condition thing, I would imagine. But I think it's very important that we determine what did we learn from what we read, it's not worth reading a thing and then just putting on the shelf and saying, that's that. What did we learn from what we read and what are we going to do differently this year as a result, and I think this book by Bronnie Ware, that Samantha recommended to us on you'd read it before, it's called, actually the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. And it's written by a hospice nurse. And I must admit, it wasn't what I expected. In what way, in the sense that it's really more about the person themselves. It's about bronies life, and her ups and downs and her battles with mental health and her lifestyle and how she did things in cheap, led a transient life, she was a professional house sitter, which I think is really interesting, you get to see lots of different places and so forth. But she ended up working with people for a significant amount of time, as they were winding down in their life, then she would be called in to be that hospice nurse, but not in a facility per se, more so in their homes. And then it was about her musings about her life, in relation to her interactions with these people. So very emotive book, a lot of emotions and so forth. And I think that was new for me. I'm used to reading stuff, that's very matter of fact, and this was very emotive, but the Top Five Regrets, I'll just go through them before we get cracking. So I learnt, there was a few things that really stuck out to me. And I think the regrets will make it pretty self evident. And they have from bronies perspective. They're not a scientific measure, or anything, as far as I understand, but from her experience, in working with multiple people who had passed away, and through that process of passing, yeah. So the Top Five Regrets are one, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me one, too, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Three, I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. For I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. And five, I wish that I had let myself be happier. So they're the Five Regrets, and I got a fair bit out of each of them. But in particular, number one actually really resonated with me. And the reason that it resonated with me is because I on occasion, have been too concerned with what other people have thought. And it stopped me from doing things. Because I've listened even though my instincts and everything about me was saying no, no, this will work. This will be really good. And then I've listened to other people and gone Oh, yeah, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe that's not something I should do. And we've all had that. And sometimes it's a psychological thing. Or you think about it too much yourself, even though no one else is thinking about it. I know you've got a story about that.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And I think the thing is that there's no harm in listening to other people. And we should listen more to other people. It's work, whether in listening to other people are concerned. So what will they think of me? What will they think? How are they judging me? And the truth of the matter is, what difference does it make? We often talk about admiring people who don't give an F. And what what why would should that be admirable? Because they don't worry about what other people think

Brenton Gowland:

that's right. And what really stuck with me about this is, the more people that Bronnie spoke about that were approaching deaths, the less they cared about what other people thought of them in balance, right? Because there was some people who regretted like, as we said earlier, one of them was losing touch with their friends. So they often during that phase realise that maybe done things that they had to apologise for. That's a different story. But people just didn't care. I'm happy to be like this, I'm happy to say this thing, I'm happy to do this thing. I just don't care anymore. And it's interesting that as we approach the end of our life, if this is true of many people that they don't really care what other people think, why do we do it so much throughout life, what's ingrained in us,

Ron Tomlian:

and that ties in beautifully with the echo tall concept of ego, because our ego, constructs this idea of who we really are. And we don't want that challenged by other people making comments or other people making judgments. So it builds this idea that you have to protect

Brenton Gowland:

it. John, judgments is an interesting word I

Ron Tomlian:

and look, we all whether we like it or not, we all judge other people on a second by second basis. It's a natural instinct of AIS, because we have to judge whether this person is a risk, whether this person is a threat, whether this activity that they're undertaking is going to harm us or be a benefit to us. So we have to judge, but whether we take that judgement into who we believe that person is another thing altogether. And it's very sad

Brenton Gowland:

when we allow other people's opinions, even though Well, sometimes they're sharing them sometimes it's just implicit. It's what we think, right? When we let that change the course of our life in a way that as we approach our end, we regret so this one is the one that I think stood out to me the most in the fact that I just end as business people in particular, and even as people with partners and family and so forth, I really want to do this year, much more of what I know to be true. And I don't want to be held back in any way this one really spoke to me, I don't want to be held back by the goals and objectives that I have, by allowing the thoughts about other people to influence that. So yeah, this one was key for me. And

Ron Tomlian:

look, I think the most people live with other people live in society. And so they think people are looking at me, they're judging me, they're making a judgments about me. And they are, but we assume that we know what those judgments are, or we judge, we make those assumptions on the basis of maybe the way we would judge other people. So at the end of the day, all we're doing is catastrophizing, what people might think, and that gets into that whole The Power of Now, people worry about the future worrying about what people are going to think, instead of being in the present moment. And doing things and action is what it's all about doing things in the now. Because actually, this is what God told us book is all about. Actually, all you've got is the present moment. And if you're not in the present moment, if you're in the future, worrying about what might have happened, or you're in the past, ruminating about what did happen. And what you could change was, of course you can because it's happened, all you've got in any given time is the present moment. And that's all you can affect the present moment, you can maybe do something in the present moment that will help you in the future, or hinder you in the future. But all you've really got is the moment now and worrying about the future doesn't actually help you at all. That's

Brenton Gowland:

correct. And you also share an interesting story this morning, that was about people basically trolling us online or leaving comments, I

Ron Tomlian:

came across somebody who made an observation that they were in the past concerned about the comments they got from people on Instagram, or Facebook or whatever, because they they did a lot of their promotions on those medium. And they would take on board the comments that people had, and take the very much to heart and worry about them. And especially if there were negative comments, what this person came to realise is that people make comments for all sorts of reasons. They've had a bad day. They don't like the look of somebody, they there's all sorts of reasons people make negative comments in the moment. And I think we're seeing a lot of this as in, in trolling behaviour, yes, online at the moment in social media. And he came to the realisation that it doesn't really matter. That person doesn't have to live by those comments that they make those. Yeah, it's an offhand comment. And he sent it and I was worrying about this, and it was affecting my life. And I've come to realise, people don't care that much about me, nor nor should they. They don't know me personally. People don't care that much. So it's okay for them. Just make an offhand comment. Make them look good. Oftentimes, people make negative comments, to inflate their own position, who's been to a restaurant with someone who says, Oh, well, this wine isn't quite up to my standard. Maybe they don't even know that much about wine, but it makes them sound knowledgeable, make negative comments to make them to inflate their ego. Interesting in? Yeah. So he came to that realisation, I don't have to worry about what other people are saying. And

Brenton Gowland:

that's a real world thing for a lot of us because with our businesses online and things we do, like I remember, even in our podcast, in the early days, we got a couple of one star reviews. And I remember thinking people hate us. And maybe it was some people out there had had bad experiences with us in the past, because I mean, we're obviously perfect, and we never had any dealings with anyone that ends up in conflict. Ha. Anyway, that happened, that army had been ruminating over that for quite some time. Now, I don't really care anymore. But I must say, we haven't had any reviews that have been that bad since then,

Ron Tomlian:

now we're gonna get you.

Brenton Gowland:

That's great. I care as much anymore. So go on, give us a review. Anyway, if you're listening, the regret is I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself. Right. And I think we probably took less about that than we did about not the life others expected of me. And I think I would encourage you to ask the question, simply ask I'm not telling you to think anything in particular. Simply ask are you living a life where you are true to yourself? Or

Ron Tomlian:

that begs the question, what is being true to myself mean? And what am I van it's a big question. What do I believe? Yep. And it is important to reflect on that. What do I really do some and fundamental one, like people say why I believe it's important to tell the truth. Yeah. Okay. But do you tell the truth all the time?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's interesting. We talked about do you have a New Year's resolution? And you said you have goals? Yeah, I

Ron Tomlian:

set my goals at the beginning of the year what we've done that yet. Now we're about to go into a goal setting retreat with my, my groups. Of course you are. Yeah. And, and to my way of thinking, it's important to do that as a process to think about where you are at the moment where you want to be and then what are you going to do what steps along the way you're going to take in the next year? And I think a year is a pretty good timeframe for thinking about that. As long as you've thought about the distant future, what do you really want, but the framework for that has to be what's important to me? Yeah, the framework has to be what about

Brenton Gowland:

value? So January is a good time of year to do this. Yeah. Look, I

Ron Tomlian:

think it's to me, a lot of people say, Well, you should do it, as a business person, financial years in Australia, and angels, really, you

Brenton Gowland:

can do it any month, but just a nice tidy time, because we have a bit of a break generally,

Ron Tomlian:

that's the thing. I think, when people have taken a break, and most people in Australia take at least a week, if not, maybe two, yes, over the January period, or December, January period, they're refreshed. They're looking forward to the year that we tend to think in years. So it's a good time to be motivated to think about what do I want to achieve? What do I want to be able to say, at the end of the year that I've achieved, and that achievement might be the way you want to live your life, it doesn't always have to be there's an outcome, it can be the process as well.

Brenton Gowland:

So if you're a business person, and you're listening, because we are talking to business builders, people who build themselves in order to build their businesses, that's what we're all about. So if you're doing your planning, just add that question. Are you living a life true to yourself? Or are you being influenced by what everyone else thinks of you in a way that's unhealthy? And

Ron Tomlian:

I think that the, a lot of people will be influenced by other people's version of success. And we've talked about this before, material success. And one of the things that in both the Viktor Frankl book and in the Dalai Lama book started

Brenton Gowland:

the Viktor Frankl move halfway through, I want to talk about that today, though,

Ron Tomlian:

they talked about the environment that you're in, yeah, people think that the environment that I'm in will make me happy. Yeah, when I get that house when I get that car, that's not what happiness is about. That's what not what fulfilment is about, they can add small dimensions of that. But the truth of the matter is, happiness and fulfilment comes from not your environment, but from within. Okay, you can be in it like Viktor Frankl was in horrible environments, concentration camps in Second World War Germany, you can be in horrible environments and still see, good things can happen. And again, it's about your perspective on things. If there's people who had the capacity to still see beauty, like the nature and flowers and so on, still see beauty around them, were much more resilient to the horrors that were going on. It gave them something to look forward to. And if you take hope away from people, that's when things go very badly wrong.

Brenton Gowland:

Here's the interesting, the Viktor Frankl book is good. I'm liking it Man's Search for Meaning. Yes, so I have been reading that. But the thing that occurs to me is that there's some real benefit in suffering, there's some real benefit in listening to people who are about to pass away. And I'm not advocating that we go out and suffer. But we've all got challenges in our life. But I think we can learn a lot from people who do because the thing that I've been reading in the Viktor Frankl book is he was saying that he was stripped back of everything that he possibly had, that was part of his identity. And the only thing he was left with was what was in his head was his thinking his thoughts. And that's what actually gave people the strength. They had no other identifier. There were, you know anything about Second World War and concentration camps, they lived by a number and the number was tattooed on them, and it was on their clothes and horrible, right. But there was no identity whatsoever. They were reduced to a number. So he was saying that people who had a vivid imagination and who were educated and meaning that they had a broad ability to think critically, I guess is the interpretation of what he was saying. People like that, who and they weren't necessarily the physically most strong or impressive people but it was the people with the mindset that survived but the things I learned about themselves, and the things they learned that they took into life after that was quite amazing. And he came up with a whole what was it called? logotherapy logotherapy

Ron Tomlian:

was Is version of what often people refer to now as cognitive behavioural therapy. And

Brenton Gowland:

that was because he was a psychiatrist before he went into Auschwitz. And so obviously, he had a particular lens that he would look at the situation through based on his training. It's interesting

Ron Tomlian:

because both that and the art of happiness talks about your perspective on things being your mindset, being terribly important to have a supple mindset and be able to change and not fall well like that. Whereas supple mind, I love that. And that's that, to me was the big takeout from the idea of happiness. And that comes down to being able to see the good in even terrible situations or a frustrating situation. I'll give you an example. Just yesterday, I was working on my bass, my accounts from the budget, which I have to give to my accountant so that I can do my best statement, all this fun stuff. And I'm thinking, God, I hate doing this. And then and, you know, it's not the funnest job in the world, I've got to tell you. But it occurred to me that how lucky are you that you get to do something like this? I mean, I've got my own business. I've got the the flexibility and lifestyle that I want, having to do this small job. It's not fun. But, boy, it's good to be able to have all that sits around it. So actually, I don't look forward to it. But it's not something I resent anymore. Interesting.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that brings us on to the second regret of the dying. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. You're working too hard? Well, no, I don't think so. It's just playing with having to do your best. My goodness, yeah, it's

Ron Tomlian:

let's put it this way. It's the one thing in the Regrets of the Dying, I wish I wouldn't have worked so hard. I don't resent working hard because I like what I do. And so maybe the way to get around working so hard is to find something that you like doing. And that's easy to say it's not so easy to achieve. But I think a lot of people think I need to work hard, even though I don't like what I'm doing. Because that way I'll get more money. And that way I'll be happy is I'll be able to buy the stuff I'm gonna want.

Brenton Gowland:

That's interesting, because in the book, he was talking about this particular gentleman who had plenty of money, kids all that and he could have retired 15 years earlier than he did. But he kept working because he just wanted to keep working. But his wife was constantly adding about let's go on holidays. Let's do this. And he kept putting it off until we were retired. And then he saw how miserable she was 14 years after going, why are you still working. And he agreed to retire in a year and go on holiday. So she started making plans. And then of course, serendipity said in and she got sick and died before he retired. And then for the rest of his life until he passed. All he did was regret not taking his wife and going on holidays and wondering if she would live longer if he had and, and he wasn't working hard because he had to but it was who he was. And that's,

Ron Tomlian:

again, this is ties into the Eckhart Tolle book, where identity is all about our ego. And if we think all we are is the job that we have, yeah, well, the profession that we've worked so hard to attain, if that's all we are, then it's very difficult for people to give up work, because that's who they are. I've just read this another book I've read over the holidays fiction was, Mrs. Winterbottom goes takes a gap year. Okay, so she's a doctor is like an English what it is, is he's a doctor. And she gives up her profession at 67. And decides in all her ruminations about what she's going to do, she decides to go to Gambia that she never had. So one of the difficulties that she had is she's always been a doctor. And who was she was, she's a doctor. And that's the way she identified herself. Her profession was her identity. Yes. And she found real difficulty in giving that up. Right? And we add our professions. We, it's something we do, but it's not who we are correct and being able to extract yourself from that definition. People will say to other people, when they say oh, so who are you? And they think that what that means is, what do I do?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I got into this habit of with networking events to never tell anyone, unless there was a certain scenario is I would talk about other things for that exact reason. But that was me also playing games. But I must admit that I am a hard worker, I share with you I've been a workaholic. And probably for a long time. Now, if we had a worker holics anonymous, so I would probably be part of that group. But since I've met my partner, it's made me think differently. And before I had a partner, I had no reason to not work. You know, To focus on the job and so forth. So it it, I think there's another layer to that. And the layer is that sometimes we do it to fill gaps and to get over things. And we weren't not just because it's our identity, but it stops us from actually thinking about things we might find difficult or having the spare time to do those kinds of things. And this ties

Ron Tomlian:

in the whole thing, if one of if you confront your fears, and one of those fears we have is, I don't understand the big picture. I haven't spent any time thinking about this stuff. So the easiest way to deal with it is to ignore it. And unfortunately, that as a habit of biting you in the bum.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. Okay, so those are the first two the same, the last three are a bit more ethereal, a bit more emotive. They're okay. And, but they didn't strike me as hard as the other things, probably because I am already doing some of these things. But one is, the third one is I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. And that was about keeping your mouth shut, and never really adding to the conversation just because that's the way you are, you're trying to please everyone, I

Ron Tomlian:

think you need to be careful because expressing your opinion is one thing, expressing your feelings is something else. And so how you feel about a lot of, and I'm gonna say, sexist, I suppose. But a lot of men find it very difficult to talk about how they feel. One because

Brenton Gowland:

one of the people in the book was a man who was saying his family didn't know that he loved them, and all this kind of caper, and of course, Bronnie, she drew it out of him and got him talking to his family in the end part. But he wished he'd been able to do it sooner. So actually, it does support your point because he was incapable of really expressing his feelings, his family, and

Ron Tomlian:

we're not, I think we've been socialised not to do that. Don't burden other people with your feelings, and all this sort of stiff upper lip type of in, especially in Western culture, rather than being able to, and it's not an easy thing to do, you have to be vulnerable, to express your feelings. And you don't want to be vulnerable if you're, you've got iron clad armour that nobody gets in. And so it's difficult to express your feelings with that sort of thinking. And so a lot of people are suspect when they're dying, wish that they had told people, how much they loved them, what they not what they thought about them, but how they felt about

Brenton Gowland:

there's also there was also a component of that about just being the wallflower and not sharing your opinion as well, that was part of it. I wished I had been not just a passenger in these things. You know what I mean? I wish I had a voice as well be more active. And I think that's a good one. It made me think, Am I doing this and so forth. But it was the top two that really spoke to me the most. The other one was really important. Spent a lot of time talking with my partner about this one. I wish I had a stayed in touch with my friends. Because they were talking about end of life approaches you think about those friendships and so forth?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, then look, I think I've talked about it before the Harvard study by the current director of the study, Robert waldinger, talks about the the thing that makes people the most fulfilled in their life is their relationship. Yeah. And loneliness can kill Yeah. And so a lot of times we disregard friendships that we've made early in life, because I moved on. But the truth of the matter is, oftentimes, they're the most fulfilling. Yeah. So if we disregard those things, we are doing ourselves a disservice.

Brenton Gowland:

And I was talking about the fact that because my partner and I are spending so much time together, I said, it was almost like a New Year's thing. We've got to make sure that this year, that we're not that couple, just go away and spend time on our own, we got to actually cultivate the friendships that we've got outside of ourselves. And I don't know how other people are our that I've been single for a long time. So I'm just learning. But I think it's really important, as you said, to cultivate those friendships beyond your inshallah family unit,

Ron Tomlian:

and cultivate the capacity to interact and relate to people, even when you met them for the first time. Yeah, loneliness is about not being not having the capacity to do that.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And I think if you think of your relationships and your family as a unit, if you go out and get other stimuli or resource opinions, it can only make provided you're a healthy person mentally, it makes that family unit a healthier place to be because you're bringing other thinking of other influences, which you can either choose to judge and go, no thanks. Or judging, or actually, we should think about this. It helps

Ron Tomlian:

you with different perspectives. Yeah. And I think business people need to do that, too. Yeah. It's not just about family. It's about having a group of people that you can relate to in business network. Yeah, that your network or I run these groups CEOs, and they get great benefit from having the perspective of other people are absolutely running their businesses with other people who run businesses like this. Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

And the last one, I wish I had let myself be happier. You strike me as a happy guy or on? Well,

Ron Tomlian:

yeah, I don't think happiness, it's about letting yourself be in the moment. Yeah, yeah, to me, that's what happiness is all about is appreciating what's around you at any given moment. And especially people who are about confronting their own death. And let's be fair, that's one inevitability that we all share WhatsApp tax now, death. Taxes, especially if it was very poignant at the moment, we're going on

Brenton Gowland:

to stage three and tax cuts, just keep going around in circles. But if you're listening internationally, that's just a thing with its prime minister, talking about at the moment, if

Ron Tomlian:

you've got that perspective, then you suddenly realise all the wasted moments you had where you could have appreciated something, and didn't. And I have personal experiences. A couple of years ago, I was on holiday with my family to Fiji. And I just undertaken a new challenge. And I was right in the middle of that. And then we went away. And I took some of that with me. Right? As it turns out, that project never went very far. And all that energy. And all that time I spent while I was on that holiday is ruminating about that reading, or that I didn't I wasn't in the present moment. I wasn't enjoying the holiday. Wasted time. Yeah. And the only good thing that came out of that is I've never done that, again, I've never not been in the moment at sometimes you find it difficult. But try and bring yourself into the moment and happiness is about appreciating the moment.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, the other thing is, it's also about how you see yourself. So if you have a low self esteem, you need to work on that clearly. Or if you are very hard on yourself, why?

Ron Tomlian:

What's the point? Oh, and a lot of this is about questioning, the questioning your thinking, your questioning the way you see the world questioning your mindset. And being able to say, or being able to admit, maybe this isn't the best for me, maybe it

Brenton Gowland:

goes back to that first one. Remember about I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, allowing yourself to be happier, there's a full circle I see here is if you know inside that you have a compass that says I should do this and you don't do it, you're really blocking yourself from living the way you're meant to be. And then that, that stops you from being happy.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think for business people this is often as I haven't got the time to be happy more, I'd have the right to be happy. Or if I'm worrying about being happy, then I'm not concentrating on my business. Be happy in your business. Yep. So let your business be part of your happiness as well. And treat it that way. Make it fun. I think fun is underrated.

Brenton Gowland:

So we start the year by looking at this book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying and those Top Five Regrets again, where I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. So go your own way, pave your

Ron Tomlian:

path, and know what it is to what's valuable to you.

Brenton Gowland:

So like you said, goal setting, January great time for it. As we move into Feb. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends massively important. I wish I'd let myself be happier. So as we go into 2024, we look at those regrets and go what can we do to actually

Ron Tomlian:

be what can we do to escape those regrets? Correct in our lives? Yeah, use the benefit of the experience that other people have had as a basis for saying I don't want to be there. So what am I going to do to use that knowledge as a basis for what I do? Okay, so it's relevant to business people as it is to anyone else. So

Brenton Gowland:

everyone who's listening, we're going to post in the LinkedIn group go and look up business builders podcast on LinkedIn, it's a group join in, I think it's a closed group. So you just have to say, Hey, can I be a part of this and Rana I will accept you. And then we'll put you into the group. And in that group, there'll be a bunch of posts about what book have you read? Give us your thoughts on the year ahead, all that kind of jazz. And we'd love to hear from you. And Ron, what have we got coming up in the next few months?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, one of the themes that I'd like to explore and I think we've talked about this is communication, because it's absolutely critical for business people. Yes, business leaders in particular, to be effective communicators. And I don't think we've explored that enough. But beyond that, it's not a cop out. I've got a couple of other themes and you've got a couple of themes that you'd like to explore. But we'd like to hear from people who listen to the podcast about what they what themes they'd like to see what things they'd like, explored because You're the people who were doing this for, what do you want to know? Great.

Brenton Gowland:

So again, in the LinkedIn group, we'll put up another post, which will be what do you want to hear from us this year? What kind of things are you wanting us to explore? So as Ron said, we'll be looking at communication. We will also be wrapping up our series on lifework balance. So we've got a few episodes to go in the next three weeks, I believe, and then we're on to communication. And I also want us to have a look at mindset a little later in the year as well, because as you were saying, massively important, and I think that ties in with making sure that we've got not just the business that thrives, but a life that helps us to achieve those things. Absolutely. So thanks for listening, everyone. Welcome to 2024 and we look forward to a great year ahead with you on the business builders podcast. It's goodbye from me and buy from me