What would you do differently if you had to live your life all over again? Well, we're going to talk about that today in The BraveHearted Woman Podcast.

So welcome everyone to The BraveHearted Woman Podcast, I'm your mentor, Dawn Damon. I’m excited to be with you again today and we're going to look at this question, but I want you not only to listen to the answers that others gave when they were asked this question, What would you do differently if you had to live your life all over again?

Think about what others said, but I want you to answer that. What would you do differently? Is it something you would do differently or is it something you still can do differently in the time that you have left? Well, Dr. Gerald Bell, a noted Behavioral Scientist, was exploring this area and he asked a group of 70-year-old retired executives. This was a group of people who were very successful in their life, and probably made hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. So he asked them at 70 to reflect and look back, what would you do differently? I'm going to share with you the top eight answers to those questions about what he discovered.

All right, you ready for number one? So number one, they said, I should have taken charge of my life earlier and set real goals for myself. Because life isn't practice. It's the real thing. Do you know that too? Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it. We get one shot at living a unique, amazing, abundant life. And that includes all of the hardship and all of the challenges and all the painful events. But those don't define us. Those should not stop or stall us. Yes, they shape us. We have the opportunity to continue to live and take charge of our life and set goals.

So I want to ask you that bravehearted woman, are you in charge of your life? Now, let me just say, of course, we know God is the author and perfecter of our faith. He's in control. I get all of that. I always want you to know I'm tracking with that. But as a Christian woman, you are supposed to take dominion over your earthly life. You're supposed to take dominion over your earthly life, over your earth suit, over your body, your mind, your spirit, your conditions, your circumstances, and as much as you are able. So, what would you change? Would you take charge of your life? Would you do something different? Would you take charge of your health? Would you take charge of your relationship? Would you take charge of your finances? What would you do differently?

In terms of taking charge of your life and whether there are some steps that you can take right now as it relates to taking charge, you are responsible for the quality of life that you want to live. Because the quality of life isn't just in the things that are around us, it's the things that are happening right up here in our mind, our mindset, our heart set, and our soul set, as Robin Sharma will often say. So I should have taken charge of my life and set goals. Let me ask you something. Do you have goals? Not just up here in your mind. Do you have your goals written on paper? Do you have smart goals, or as I like to say brave goals? Do you have brave goals that are measurable and achievable and time-bound? Do you have goals that are set correctly? And are you looking at them and referring to them every Do you know that's what your brain needs? That's what your heart needs. Your brain is really like a deletion program. It's constantly telling you what's important and deleting all of the things that are not. If you don't have your goals written down and you're not looking at them every day, it's possible your brain is just gonna delete those things and it's not gonna be in your reticulating activating system. But that's a real term. That just means it's allowing your brain to bring to you what's important to you, people and proximity. Areas of things that you might see that are important to your brain will allow it to come in and bring you awareness, bring you knowledge, bring you wisdom, bring you insight, and revelation when you've told it, this is what's important to me. That's why you write your goals down. That's why you look at them every day because you are going to move towards your most prominent thought. So, where do you need to take charge of your life? What decision do you need to make? What goals do you need to write down? And what steps do you need to take? So remember, life is not a dress rehearsal. It's the real thing. You are on and this is it. You get one shot.

Number two, they said I would've taken better care of my health. Sometimes we kick the can down the street, don't we? We just think I'm gonna get to that. I am going to do that. I agree that that is so important and I'm actually gonna really be focusing on that in the next season ahead. I'm gonna do that, but guess what? Today is that day. Today is someday, because someday never comes. You gotta start right now. You don't have to take quantum leaps. Remember here at the BraveHearted Woman, we believe in the power of baby steps. We know that little incremental steps are powerful and they add up. Over time, the accumulative effect of your little baby steps makes all of the difference for you in your life. They give you such a huge head start. If you're just standing at the starting gate and somebody else is still saying, I'm gonna do it and you're saying, I'm gonna do it. But then you just take little baby steps. Six months from now, you're winning, baby. This person over here is still with their mantra. I'm gonna do it. You've got to take better. care of your health. I really want to encourage you to do that. Some push-ups are better than no push-ups. Okay, are push-ups too difficult? All right. Walking on a treadmill, walking across the room, passive exercise, where you allow the machine to do the work, but it's helping your muscles. You've got to take authority over your physical health. Only you can decide what you're going to put in your mouth. Only you can decide these are the foods that I want to eat, or these are the supplements I want to take, or these are the things that I want to drink. You can start right now, with small baby steps, and get rid of all sugared drinks. Why drink your calories? Yes, I have gone to meddling. This is meddling now and it is for your good, my sister. If you are drinking pop or lemonades or sweet teas or those things that have sugar in them. Eliminate them from your diet instantly that alone will help you sugar is such a cause of inflammation in our body and Inflammation in our body is the leading cause of disease take authority over your health.

Here's the third thing that this group of executive millionaires said they would do differently in their life. Number three, I would manage my money better. How about you? Do you need to manage your money better? Managing your money is more than just how you spend it, how you save it, and how you invest it. That's all part of managing it. It's also how you share it. How you give generously and how you plant it. Yes, I said to plant it. Do you know that you've always got to have a seed in the ground? That means money has to be released from your hand so that it will never leave your life. God said the kingdom of God is like a seed. If you want to manage your money better, you need to be thinking about all these areas, how to be generous, and how to plant. That means you're sowing into good soil, good ground, ministry, nonprofit ministry, whatever it is, and not just your church. Your church gets the tithe but giving and sowing is beyond that 10%. That's not enough. We think, Oh, I gave my 10%. I'm good. No, God still calls us to give offerings and generosity. It's so good for you not to be caught up in money. But, what about investments? Not just savings. That's good. But, are you investing? Are you putting money away? Are you naming the dollars that you're saving? This is for my vacation. This is for an improvement fund. This is for my plastic surgery. Yeah, you can do plastic surgery if you want to. You can do whatever you want to do to manage and steward your health and your body. This is the money I'm saving and putting away for my college, for my granddaughters, for my grandsons, whatever it is. Make sure that you take a look at how to manage your money. If you need help with that in all of these areas, I want to just tell you right here. We don't improve all by ourselves. We don't improve in a vacuum. Only the very highly disciplined people probably do that and then you might not need this list after all but coaching. Get a coach. Get some accountability. Let your desires and your hopes be made known to someone else. Do it today. Pick up the phone, text someone, call someone, email someone, and let them know. I want to manage my money better. I'm asking you to hold me accountable, or I'm asking you to coach me. Tell me something that you know. I'm an amazing coach for any midlife woman who needs to reinvent her life, get up off the couch, doesn't know what her purpose is, doesn't have the joy and the fulfillment anymore because she's facing an empty nest, or doesn't have her body in shape. It doesn't feel like she's aging the way that she wants to. I'm here to help you.

So here's number four. This is what these executives said. I can imagine this and I can hear this from executives, the busy people. I would have spent more time with my family. Is that you? Is that how you feel? Would you spend more time with your family? I spend a lot of time with my family, so that's probably not going to be on my list because I'm doing that now. I do not want to get to 70 years old and find out that I missed the most incredible human beings on the planet. My children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, of which, yes, I already have one great. granddaughter. I'm not going to miss them, but I would probably say that I love creating experiences for my family. I don't just want to spend time with them. I do like to create memorable experiences and in those experiences, whether it's a marriage retreat that I do for my family, whether it's personal development, whether we planted a church and we did it for eight years and all of my kids were involved in that pastoring my children, providing mediation for my children, keeping their relationships strong and vibrant, not only with each other but in terms of their work in terms of their extended families. But I would definitely say that I'm not going to get to 70 and bemoan the fact and regret the fact that I missed out on a relationship with the most incredible people on the earth. Yes, my children. So I hope that if there's any breach in your family if you have a breakdown with a son or a daughter. Sometimes there's nothing you can do. I have very dear friends that have been wonderful parents But for some reason, children have decided to ghost their parents or what they call a no contact I don't understand that. That would be difficult. A no contact means they've just cut off all contact with their parents and said, Don't reach out to me when I'm done with this rant and this temper tantrum or whatever it is. I'll get back to you. I'll call you. That would be very difficult. I don't think that I would be able to do well. I would trample down their door. I would want to respect a boundary for sure, but my kids wouldn't set that kind of boundary unless something had gone really, really wrong. I think that that point would be my job to exert myself and find out what it was. But I understand it doesn't always work.

So number five, I would have spent more time on personal development. Now, I think number five in terms of ranking, I think this should be way higher. I honestly feel like right after number one, it should be this, you've got to spend time on personal development, bravehearted women. If you don't hear anything else, I have to say, please hear this. You've got to spend time on personal development. If your mind is overwhelmed and your mind is full, then start writing or start journaling. But if your mind feels empty and you're not sure, start reading, start filling your mind. But whatever you do, keep moving forward in development, get a coach, get clarity, and figure out what you're supposed to do in this season of your life. You do know that you have a purpose in this season, it's different than the purpose you had in the last season of your life. It probably won't be the same purpose you have in the next season. But for right now in your 50s or your 60s or your 70s or maybe your forties or even eighties, whatever you are at this point, you have a purpose and an assignment. It's your job to discover it. It's your job to uncover it really because it's there. It's within you. You've got the seeds of purpose. They're just waiting for the right environment and the right conditions to bloom. Personal development means you're reading. You're reading 10 books at least a year. It means that you're trying something new. You're getting out of your comfort zone. It means you're pushing yourself to do something hard, like something that you don't know how to do, something that's very unfamiliar and everything in your brain is screaming. But once you get done with it, you feel a sense of self-esteem. You're like, Wow! I did that. I recently was in a situation like that. I have myself continuing to write and I'm very excited to share with you that my next book is coming out this fall. I cannot wait for you to get your copy of it. And if you're among some of the first, you might even get an autographed copy of it. We'll share more about that later, but there's a process that's involved in the writing and the editing. And even though it's my sixth book, as I was going back in the editing process, I felt myself being pushed like, Ooh, I'm afraid, like, what if I do this wrong? I'm not sure I know how to do this. So guess what I did? I phoned a friend. I phoned an author colleague. I was able to go online and watch some YouTube videos to figure out this new software and this new program on how to do what it is my publisher is asking me to do. Now too many things in your mind may tend to make you just go into paralysis. So you want to just give yourself a priority of this, this, this, and then this, but whatever you do, do nothing. This is a season for you to bloom and to go forward and whatever you do, keep personal development at the forefront of all that you do.

Number six, I would have had more fun. I love the word ‘recreation,’ because it really is two words, re and creation, that's what it means. It's recreating your soul and your spirit and your heart. When you recreate something, it's like being born again. It's brand new. Well, recreation brings joy to your soul. It brings refreshment to your mind and your body. So good for your nervous system. Takes you out of sympathy where everything is just go, go, go, go, go. Adrenaline runs and put you in a parasympathetic, which is so good for your body to disconnect, disconnect and disengage from the constant drive of going and producing and creating and deadlines. So you've got to have fun downtime. When was the last time you belly laughed? When's the last time you had so much fun, and you weren't worried about what you're worried about, and you just took a break? It took some time off. I want to encourage you to do that.

Number seven, hard to believe that this group of executives would have said this, but they did. I would have planned my career. I think there's a sense of that for me in terms of maybe feeling like I missed something. I would have maybe gotten my master's in this. I think maybe I would have gotten my studies in another area. We can't live in regret too much, but I do want to tell you this. It's never too late. I know that there are women still going after their education. If it means something if it matters. If it's a piece of paper that will change the trajectory of your life, don't tell yourself, I'm too old. It's too late. I can't learn. My season is done. Those are all lies. They're all limiting beliefs that will stop you, stall you, and cause you to quit. They're all lies. So if you want to plan your career for the next decade, do it. Don't stop. Do it. I'm an author. I'm a speaker. That's what I do. I'm a podcaster. I keep coming to you every week. We're trying new things. We're promoting, we're elevating, we're getting new equipment. We're going to conferences. We're learning how to do this well because I want to help you. So you can do it too. What is your career? I get what they're saying here that back when they were 20 and 30, they would have planned it better. That just means they wanted a life of design, not default. But we do too. And you can still design your life. You are meant to co-create with God. He created and designed everything. Now you have the stewardship of, as we said a moment ago, uncovering what it is you're meant to do and designing the plan and the pathway to get there.

Number eight, I would have given more back. We talked about this in terms of our money in generosity. What would you give back? What's the legacy you want to leave? What would you offer? Words of wisdom? Your life memoir? Would you start a foundation? Would you start a trust? Would you leave your children a legacy? If you have children, would you leave them a legacy of, The wisdom that you've gleaned throughout the years? I would have given more back. What are you going to hand down when you leave? What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to give back? How do you want to use your gifts to invest in someone else and pour into someone else? There's another generation coming up. They need the wisdom that you have. They need to learn the experiences that you have. What's your mechanism? What's the way that you're going to release it back to them? How do you want to give back? Well, those are great questions. I hope that you'll ask them of yourself and I hope that you will answer them yourself and I hope in some way this nudges you forward to think about how strategic you want the rest of your life to be. As we said a moment ago, you don't want to just live by default. You don't want to be that tumbleweed just blowing in the wind. You don't want to be that little feather just floating here and there. It's okay for a minute, but you have to have a master plan. Design your life. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? What do I want to leave behind? I hope you'll answer those questions.

So, Bravehearted Woman, I want to offer to you my free download this week. We talk about aging and the season that we're in. Well, I have some beauty hacks. I have 10 of My Favorite Products. I want to make them available to you. All you have to do is see the show notes and our free download. Go ahead and click that and you'll get all of the links to my favorite products. I'm going to be topping that 10 with another 10 not too long from now. Please follow me. Like and review. That's so helpful for me, helpful for me. I hope that you'll do that. And here we go. Bravehearts, I'm going to leave you like I always do. Is this your moment to find your brave and live your vision?