Ep139 Don't Let Regret Steal The Life You Have Now

In this week's episode, Carly explores a very specific kind of grief: one that doesn't come from losing something, but from finally finding it. The 'why didn't I start sooner' feeling. The ache that can show up right alongside a genuine awakening.

It's something I've lived through more than once. And it's something I sit with my clients through regularly.

Come and have a listen. I think you might recognise yourself in this one.

In this episode:

— The grief of arrival — what it is and why it matters

— My own loops through this feeling (strength training, leaving the NHS, and more)

— Why the grief and the joy don't have to cancel each other out

— How breathwork and coaching have helped me process rather than suppress

— Four questions to sit with at your own pace

Links & next steps:

Still Space Hull: breathwork, coaching and community: stillspacehull.com

Book a free breathwork discovery call: Book Here

Enquire about one-to-one coaching: contact Carly

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

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👉 Click here to learn more and access today

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🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your host and guide for what is now episode 139. If you are new here,. you are also very welcome to join us. I hope you find what you need here. So let's start today with bit of sharing of what I've been up to recently. Well, I've just returned, literally just a couple of days ago, back from a lovely breathwork retreat, and it was incredibly lovely and a very welcome rest, although it wasn't without its work too. And as is often the case with retreats and workshops and things like that, this had a theme running throughout it for the whole weekend, and the theme was story on this occasion. The stories we carry, the stories that are quietly taking shape in the undercurrent of our lives, the stories that, if we're honest with ourselves, stopped being true a long time ago And yet we still live inside them anyway because that's what can happen when we're busy or distracted. We can absolutely get comfortable in our stories, even the uncomfortable ones, because at least they're familiar. Perhaps you resonate with that. And perhaps there's another episode in that too. So I've come back from the retreat in a particular kind of reflective space, the sort where things just land differently than they normally would. And for me, this is a space where a phrase that I might have otherwise skimmed past in another moment suddenly lands differently. And that's exactly what happened when I was catching up on a workshop replay I hadn't had time to finish. The presenter said something almost in passing, but it really stayed with me, and that was, "Don't let regret steal the life you have now." So let's just give that a little moment. Don't let regret steal the life you have now. So today, I want to talk about why that phrase has landed so strongly with me, Because I think there's a very specific kind of regret that doesn't get named nearly enough, and it's one I see in my clients regularly. I've lived it myself more than once, and that is the grief that comes from not losing something, but actually finally finding it. So let's dive in So let me explain a little bit more about what I actually mean here, this grief of arrival, because there's kind of a moment that happens, and if you've been on any kind of health or personal development journey, you might well recognize yourself in this. That place where something shifts, when you start to feel genuinely better, stronger, more alive, more like yourself again, where things that maybe felt impossible start to feel within reach, where you look in the mirror and actually see someone you recognize, and it's really wonderful. It really is. But sometimes running alongside that joy, there can be this quiet ache, this thought of, "Why didn't I start sooner? How long have I been living at just a fraction of this? And what could my life have looked like had I found this earlier?" And that grief is real. I really want to say that clearly before we go any further. It is absolutely valid response to that genuine feeling of awakening, and it doesn't make you ungrateful. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It actually just means you're human and that you are paying attention and that something in you is doing the maths of the gap between where you were and where you are now But the real question is here, what do we do with that? Because that grief, if we're not careful, can do exactly what that phrase kind of warns us against. It can almost leave us reaching backwards, and it can pull the joy of the present moment right out from under us. So let me share with you a little about my own loops that I've been through, 'cause I've been through several versions of this in my own life so far, and I say several because I don't think it's a feeling you get just more than once. It tends to show up at each new threshold, each time you arrive somewhere, perhaps that you've been wanting to reach for a long time. And the first time I really remember this was around strength training. So for years, and I do mean years, I would go to the gym and end up on the treadmill, not because the treadmill was what I really wanted, but because I didn't know what else to do, and the treadmill felt safe. I'd stand there and stare across the gym floor at the people lifting weights. They had confidence. They seemed to have purpose. They looked like they belonged there, and I felt the pull. I want to be part of that. I want to know what it feels like. But I didn't know where to start, and I didn't know how to ask, and so I stayed on the treadmill, and I kept the wanting at a distance. And then finally, and it took some time, I managed to reach out for the support I needed. I started strength training with support with a personal trainer. I began to feel what it actually felt like to, to be strong, to walk into the gym with a plan, with confidence, with a sense of belonging in a space that had always felt like it was for somebody else, something that other people do. And it was everything that I'd hoped it would be and more, genuinely. But right alongside that came this feeling of grief. All those years on the treadmill, all of those years wishing without reaching out, all the years I could have felt better, I could have felt this new strength, this new joy, this new connection to my life and my body if only I'd asked for help sooner And I guess what was a sign of that newfound strength was the fact that I could sit with that for a while because it needed to be sat with Which then brings me to another version of this. I could notice the time when I left the NHS, started my coaching business. I'd had a good career. I was a dietician in the NHS for 10 years, and very proud of that work. I worked hard to get there. I enjoyed it. I really did. But there came a point where I knew I wanted something different, something that was more fully mine, and making that leap and actually doing it opened up a kind of freedom and aliveness that I hadn't really expected. Working with people in a different way, in the way of my choosing, building something from my own values, and having space to be creative and responsive and present in a way that wasn't always possible inside a, a large institution. And I absolutely loved it. Really felt like this is me living life. And again, it hit again. That grief came along. If I'd left earlier, if I'd trusted myself sooner, if I'd taken that leap a few years before I actually did, where might I be now? How much further along might I be? And it's just another loop again. These things don't end. I believe we continue to take spirals around similar themes that are helpful to us along our journey. So more recently, I've been through my own season of returning to myself once again. I've been reclaiming joy and aliveness and connections that I hadn't realized I'd been very slowly stepping away from in my earlier years. And it's not for me to get specific in this situation. Some things just need to be private. Some things involve other people, and that is how it should be. Uh, the phrase, "Not all chapters are meant to be read aloud," is coming to mind right now. But what I will say is this, that there have been years in my life where I quietly set aside my own needs, my own joy, my own connection, and it wasn't a particularly dramatic thing, and it wasn't like I dropped my whole life and whole connection at once, but it was gradual, kind of in the way that I hear many people do, prioritizing other people, keeping the peace, postponing things that really lit me up in favor of the things that were required of me. And now I'm living very differently, now that I've given myself permission to reconnect what really lights me up. The grief of those past years is very present. Of course it is. I mean, how could it not be? But it's taught me something. It's helped me learn what to do with it, and that is what I want to offer you today So the grief and the joy, they might feel like opposites, maybe they are, maybe they're not, but they're not in competition with each other. Maybe you've realized this or maybe you haven't, but you actually don't have to choose between honoring what the past cost you and embracing what the present is offering. You can hold both. In fact, I'd go further than that. I think the grief is actually part of that kind of arrival. I feel it's a kind of evidence that you've actually landed somewhere real, somewhere your whole self recognizes as true. And if it didn't matter, there would be nothing to grieve. So that grief is proportional to the value of what you found. But, uh, this is important, let's acknowledge this, the grief is not a place to live. It's a place to visit, to honor, something to allow to move through you, not a place to set up camp. Because if we let that happen, that constant backward-gazing ache, it will start to steal the very thing you've worked so hard to reach. And here we are again with that phrase, "Don't let regret steal the life you have now." And there's a reframe that's really helped me, and that I might come back to regularly with my clients as well. You could not have arrived here any other way. Every loop you took, every year that felt like it was going sideways, every time you stayed a bit too long or started too late, or at least felt like you did, maybe those times you really felt like you'd taken a wrong route and almost like you had to backtrack. All of these things have made a contribution. All of it was the exact accumulation of experience and readiness that made this moment possible. So that woman who walked into the gym with confidence and belonging, she was shaped by the years on the treadmill. The courage it took to start the business was built through a decade in the NHS, and the depth of appreciation for the aliveness available to her now, that exists because she knows what it felt like to live without it. So that path wasn't a detour, it was the path So let me share with you something about the tools that have helped me navigate all of this. I hope they can serve you in some way too, because I don't think we talk often enough about what it actually takes to sit with grief without either suppressing in it or feeling overwhelmed or drowning in it. So for me, breathwork has been one of the most significant tools, not the only tool, but I found it so helpful for me because It doesn't bypass that feeling. Absolutely the opposite. Breathwork has actually helped me to feel the grief rather than just manage it from a safe distance. I've been able to truly let it move through my body rather than getting stuck in my thoughts about it. And there is a difference between processing something and just thinking about it repeatedly, and that's where breathwork has been a huge part of learning with that difference, that involvement of, yes, the thoughts are welcome, but how does it feel in the body? And how do we support ourselves as this passes through, even when it feels difficult? And the retreat I've just come back from was a beautiful example of that. Working with story, looking at the narratives I've been carrying, noticing which ones are still serving me and which ones have actually expired. It's really created space for some of this grief to move. It's not disappeared. I don't think I want it to. It doesn't need solving, but it's definitely shifted. It's really become something I can hold a lot more lightly And the other part of this that's come alongside it quite nicely is coaching. Having someone walk alongside me in the messy middle, not to fix things or speed it up. If anything, it's helped me slow things down, and that's really helped me to stay present with what was there, to honor what brought me here without letting it define where I'm going. And these are things I now offer to the people I work with because I know from the inside what it's like to need them So before I close today, I would like to leave you with a few questions if you feel called to sit with or answer them. And it's not about finding the right answers now necessarily, but you might sit with them. You might muse with a cup of tea over them. Perhaps you might journal, or maybe you just let them float around in your mind when you're out on a walk. So here they are. Take what you need. Let the rest float off for another time, perhaps. So the first one, where in your life are you currently experiencing the grief of arrival? Where have you found something, strength, freedom, joy, connection, aliveness, that also comes with an ache of wondering why it took so long? Now the second part of this, perhaps you want to pause these if you're going to do these alongside. But the second question: How can you let yourself feel both? What's present with you now, but also the grief or the regrets of the years that felt less than. Can you hold them without letting one cancel out the other? The third question, there's four of these, what's the story you're telling about the gap? Is it a story of lost time, or could it be a story of a path that was always leading here? And lastly, question number four, Perhaps this is most important, but I'll let you decide. Is there anywhere in your life right now where regrets is quietly stealing from your present? Where the weight of what was is taking up the space that actually belongs to what is present right now So there we have it. Don't let regret steal the life you have now. You've worked too hard to get here for all of that So if today's episode has stirred something inside of you, if you're in the middle of your own season of change, or navigating that particular grief that comes with finally arriving somewhere you've been trying really hard to reach, I would love to connect with you. Still Space Hull exists exactly for this, a space to land, a space to be held, and to do the work of processing what's behind you and stepping more fully into what's in front of you. And that might be through breathwork, through one-to-one coaching, or simply through finding a community of people who are walking a similar path. You can find all the details in the show notes, or come and find me at stillspacehull.com online or in person in Hull. And if you're not quite ready to reach out yet, that's okay too. Just keep on listening, keep showing up for yourself, and keep letting yourself feel the things that need to be felt. That's the work. You're already doing it. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember, you already have everything you need