My Journey With Health And Fitness – Regrets

Weather and technology are playing havoc with my workouts. Yesterday we caught some weather from hurricane Helene. I got up and it was windy and the rain was just pouring down. I had no intention of walking in that kind of weather (the rain continued to come in squalls for the rest of the day) so had already decided I would do a quick Zoom recorded fitness class. Now this seemed to be a good idea except the Mac Mini we use to run Zoom on our tv didn’t want to play the recording and I eventually gave up. This morning it was still raining so I rebooted the Mini and it still wouldn’t play the recording. I decided to try doing the class using my iPad but gave up after about 5 minutes because I really couldn’t see much of what was going on (note, I wear reading glasses but not really able to if I am doing a workout). My husband and I will be looking to find a work around today so that if I need to skip my walk again I have a backup. I do want to point out I still did my usual live online class each day.

I know it is hard going through life without having regrets. I also know is some we can be accountable for while others were out of our control. For example, my big ones are that my Dad never got to see me be the first on either side of the family to graduate from university. I also regret that he didn’t get to meet my husband nor see me get married but those are things I had no control over as he passed before they happened. I regret that I wasn’t there the day my Mom died because as usual I put work first, now that is something that is on me. And I am sure if I really thought about it I could come up with more.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of the number of people who have come up to me to tell me things they regret regarding my brother’s death. Most of them centre around not finding the time to spend with him. Someone told me that they regretted putting off getting together with him and now really wished they had found the time. Another felt bad that they had canceled a coffee date with him as they had something else they decided they wanted to do. Recently a friend told me they regretted not responding most of the time when my brother sent them friendly texts just checking on them.

But you know what, there is a huge lesson here. We have the ability to live life relatively regret free, we just need to remember that everything can change in a heartbeat. I think if you live life by knowing your priorities, following your values, doing everything you can to help others and always trying to be kind you can minimize being regretful when you look back in hindsight. I have for quite a while now tried to always do the right thing but now I am even more determined to make time for others whenever I possibly can. I don’t ever again want to lose a loved one and have thoughts of what I could have done better.

So it is your choice as to how you want to look back at life in hindsight.

One last thing that I regret, I so wish I had started looking after my health and fitness long before I did. What I don’t regret is that once I decided to go down this journey I have kept at it.