Susanna O’Brien had a unique window in the dying psyche.
In the last moments of life, she was on a bed with more than 1000 people – from her home to the US to Thailand and Zimbabwe. O’Brien, a registered nurse, had an impetus to move to the hospice for two decades ago and since then worked as a nurse in oncology and death, supporting those who emotionally and physically help them work through their own grief.
The last book by O’Brien, Good deathaimed at normalizing the realities of death and the need to plan the end. The book also shares the pearls of wisdom from O’Brien patients and many common topics shared by people who die – many of whom have “spiritual moments” about their lives that can teach us all, she says.
“They started talking about the same thing,” O’Brien says Wealth. “Because at the end of your life it doesn’t matter who you have and how much money you have. None of it came. It’s all about what they learned, what they regretted, what they didn’t do and what they are too afraid of doing.”
In an interview with WealthO’Brien talks in detail about three significant regrets in her patients at the end of life – and how these discoveries have formed the way she leads her.
- I did not live my goal.
At the end of their lives, many people share what they didn’t, but knew what they always wanted to do, says O’Brien.
“We are all here for a purpose, and we all have gifts, and if we do not divide them and act on them, here is a huge regret,” O’Brien says. Not “dipping into the unknown” and does not try something new, it is a factor in the availability of wealth, she says.
When we consider our time of sacred and limited, we are less afraid to take action that we can excite us. “One of the things we don’t know is how many days we have,” she says. “If you feel this feeling or you have something you want to do, don’t let the ego, fear, close it.”
This does not mean that people should enter into the existential crisis regarding their goal. Think of an unused goal and make gradual changes in its direction. “If you did one thing every day you want to do, in a month you would do 30 things,” O’Brien says.
- I didn’t allow myself to be loved as completely and I didn’t like others unconditionally.
Many people at the end of life regret that they were not vulnerable enough to afford to love and give love. They often share the fact that they could not achieve the level of forgiveness with someone else or themselves, O’Brien says. It is important to expand yourself in grace, know if you take the property and free the guilt, she says. O’Brien urges patients to provide time they fight to let go and ask if they did what they could with information and resources at that moment.
“If you wear luggage, it keeps you stuck,” she says. “We have things that happen to us, and when we cannot decide them when we hold on to anger or resentment, or we think that what we have experienced will dictate the rest of our lives, forgiveness is a transformation tool.”
Searching a way to work with emotional problems and relaxation throughout life can help people establish more genuine connections, O’Brien says. “Do not get to the end of your life to find a favor for yourself,” she says, and sew in the lessons that she brought instead.
Therapy and care are the usual tools to work through resentment and help to establish deeper connections.
- I haven’t appreciated currently
People who are on the deadly lodge recognize the end of life and, sometimes for the first time, the small gifts it brings, which can often be underestimated.
Researchers have studied this recognition and referred to it in the science of care and fear, which illustrates, that assessment of the present moment and the awareness of the environment can calm the mind and body.
“He lacks the moments that are every day, the moments of joy and gratitude … The birds singing on the street go for a walk around the park or may be in this incredible city that is so vigorous,” O’Brien says.
This curiosity and presence can help people live truly and lean towards impressions that cause joy.
“I completely changed my life when I started working at the end,” O’Brien says. “Our mind keeps us stuck. It’s like our own little prison if we allow it.”
Originally this story was presented on Fortune.com
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2025-04-12 10:45:00
Alexa Mikhail
