No Regrets Living by Harley A. Rotbart, MD; Health Communications Inc; ISBN13: 9780757-323942, 272 pages.
By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.
SAN DIEGO– Wish you had the courage to express your feelings more in your life? Wish you stayed more in touch with friends during your lifetime? Wish you had the mettle to live the life you wanted to live and not the life others thought you “should” live?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, if you bemoan and experience regret for the life you’ve lived thus far, this easy reading book filled with practical wisdom by Harley A. Rotbart, physician, scientist, heart surgery patient and child of a Holocaust survivor, may help you out of your self-inflicted rut stories and offer you tools to gain the freedom you are searching for, and live a regret-free life.
Regret is anchored in living a life that’s not yours, that’s counterfeit to your own values and priorities. When you aren’t living who you genuinely are, but someone else’s version of who they think you “should” be living, regret surfaces. The more divergent you are from, well, “you,” the more regret emerges. It seems simple – do the things that line up with the real you, and don’t do those things that are out of alignment with your authentic self.
Dr. Rotbart hasn’t written just another self-help book. He is a deep thinker, a person who blends faith and science, who has written Miracles We Have Seen – America’s Leading Physicians Share Stories They Can’t Forget, No Regrets Parenting: Turning Long Days and Short Years into Cherished Moments with Your Kids, and several other life-enriching books filled with universal truths as well. This current book ought not be confused with another comforting and inspiring read, by Frances H. Livesay, Living With No Regrets, published in 2010.
Dr. Rotbart has crafted a 7-step plan in his current volume to help you, the reader, recognize the good in your life, actively take pride in what you’ve accomplished thus far in life, free yourself of needlessly wasting precious moments just wishing things “turned out differently.” This all sits on top of deeper self-awareness and self-understanding – two tools that promote intentionality to choose to live with no regret.
Why wait until you are older and gray to begin lightening your emotional load and live with no regret? This book is also well suited for young adults who are wise enough to create a healthy road map for later life.
From his gripping photos of his father arriving in America, to his Dad’s fruit truck, his Zadie with the author’s children, this is a heimish read, a personal read and leaves you feeling as though you have a new friend in the author, as if you are listening to a wise, older, and caring relative. This is a friend who points out a path to living in contentment, not in confusion, to a mindset of wonder, not a mind filled with chaos. You know that better path in your life? Take that and free yourself of regret, the author sensitively counsels.
In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, author Bronnie Ware noted the following regrets she found amongst the dying:
- “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
- “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.”
- “I wish I had let myself be happier.”
What’s required to deal with these existential issues that so many leave life with? What do you regret most about your life? What’s preventing you from acting in a more self-authentic, self-accepting manner? Self-awareness, self-reflection, are essential elements to a healthy life. Here are the seven tools Dr. Rotbart offers for personal healing and growth:
- Believe in something greater than yourself
- Discover the miracles around you “and the messiah within you”
- Heal what you can, and you can heal more than you are aware, through a prepared mind and through activism
- Appreciate the good in your daily life by intentionally taking a bit of time every day to reflect on what you are fully grateful for in your life
- Accept fate, reward, punishment, and time
- Seek “four worthy goals: purpose, self-forgiveness, community, and simplicity
- Grow by being willing to learn with a prepared mindset, moving forward away from past regrets, forgiving yourself along the way in life, appreciate your developing maturity, wisdom, and perspective and how different you are now in adulthood, from how you were when you were younger.
Gratitude, unconditional acceptance, a vitally absorbing personal interest and working consistently at that interest, and of course self-forgiveness. These elements Sound like the universal core of leading a life of contentment and fulfillment, a life with an open mind, a receptive heart, with wide-open eyes to the miracles and good that fills our lives.
This toolkit is anchored in the notion of emotional responsibility, in which people have the choice to upset and disturb themselves, or not. The author teaches the value of uncertainty tolerance and points to the difference between pain and suffering, the latter always being optional. He also positions high tolerance of life’s inevitable adversities as a hallmark of regret free living. Indeed, demanding that life, people, circumstance be different always leads to unhappiness and sets the stage for a life of regret.
Dr. Rotbart focuses on topics I find particularly important currently in our world: honesty, peace, fairness and justice, kindness, giving, courtesy, comfort and condolence, timeliness and connectedness, and Divine rewards and heaven.
When a scientist, a physician, professor and vice-chair emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and author of more than 175 medical and scientific publications takes the time to write about these topics to help live free of regret, it’s worth the time to digest his thinking. A better life may result.
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Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly D’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family are members. They are also active members of Congregation Adat Yeshurun. He may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com