Laura Mathis: Regret Free Death Bed

Transcript

[0:00:27] CH: What’s up everybody, it’s Charlie Hoehn, the host of Author Hour where I interview authors about their new books. Today’s episode is awesome, it’s with Laura Mathis who is the author of Regret Free Death Bed. We all have regrets in life, we wish we’d stayed in touch with our friends, we wished we’d had the courage to express ourselves. But we don’t want to get to the very end of our life and have these regrets haunting us. That’s what this episode is about, how do we get around regrets, how do we prevent them and live a much happier, more fulfilling life. Some of the things that Laura talks about are work life satisfaction, not work life balance. Expressing your truth and a whole lot more. If you don’t want to just get through life but you want to have a deeply fulfilling, joyful life, this is the episode for you. Now, here’s our conversation with Laura Mathis.

[0:01:38] Laura Mathis: A few years ago, we lost a major presence in our family. My uncle Dennis, who was my godfather. And he had had some heart problems, he ended up having heart surgery and about a year after he went to his doctor, surgeon, they did a checkup and his surgeon said Dennis, I don’t want to see you for a year. You look fantastic. We were all celebrating, it was Thanksgiving in Canada at the time. A few days later, he laid down to have a nap and he didn’t wake up. His wife of 30, 40 years maybe, they’re so close was devastated and it went from panicked phone calls to the family, what’s going on with Dennis, why is he in the hospital, you know? He’s on life support to him being gone. I think we all just froze because he wasn’t that old, he was the youngest of the family, you know? He was about 56. My dad’s best friend and that was so hard because it just didn’t make sense. He had just been cleared from his surgeon, that he was perfect. That left us all in a really bad space.

[0:02:58] CH: Did they end up finding out what he passed from?

[0:03:01] Laura Mathis: Well, we learned something really interesting, which was that my grandmother didn’t tell anybody that Dennis was a preemie. Back then, there wasn’t really much that could be done for kids that were born very early. They just did their best. Dennis was born very early and he did have a compromised heart but no one really knew because just wasn’t available, that info. In addition to the sadness which of course was there. I had a lot of anger. I was really pissed off that he was gone and that his doctors failed him, it just felt like everybody failed him. How are we in this amazing time of healthcare and no one said, “We should keep an eye on this.” They said. “Go away.” It took me a long time to not be angry and that transferred into a lot of fear where every time the phone rang after that, my heart just collapse because I thought my dad had died, you know? Almost as if, well if his younger brother is going to die, he’s going to go any second now. Every phone call after that, I almost threw up for months. I knew that I couldn’t live that way, that’s a horrible way to live but I couldn’t figure out how or why and so that’s when I started looking into being a hospice volunteer is just to sit a little closer to death without being so angry about it.

[0:04:23] CH: Wow. What happened next? You were in hospice care.

[0:04:29] Laura Mathis: Right. In my mind, I don’t have a medical background, you know, I would go into this beautifully lit room with this gorgeous white haired woman and the sun would come in, you know? I would talk to her about her family and her regrets and it would be this beautiful thing where I made her life better, right? Because I was there. No, hospice is not like that at all. No. Which was good for me because I was trying to glamorize death even then, you know? I wanted it to be prettier than it was.

[0:05:00] CH: Well, you wanted to also heal your wounds.

[0:05:02] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:05:03] CH: But yeah.

[0:05:04] Laura Mathis: That did not happen. Although, ultimately it has, it’s been very fulfilling but those first few times I went to homes that were low income, they would write the person’s name on a white board outside their door. So that when they passed, they just got a finger and wiped it away. The rooms were small and crowded, smelled like urine, the nurses to me couldn’t care less, it broke my heart. But I still got –

[0:05:30] CH: Why couldn’t they care less? I mean, were they just hardened?

[0:05:32] Laura Mathis: It was just hardened but also not necessarily the hospice nurses but the people that cared for - a lot of times, people are in a home or retirement center and they also are on hospice. They have all sorts of other people they care for.

[0:05:46] CH: They’re spread very thin, just the nature of healthcare is very hard on everybody in it and I remember talking to a group and one person said, the first time I saw someone pass away, I had nightmares for a week but the second time, I was totally numb to it and like everybody in the room raised their hand that they related to it. Just the nature of having to just work around trauma, death, all the time. It messes with your psyche just like it would a police officer or solider.

[0:06:19] Laura Mathis: Yes, you certainly can’t cry for 20 minutes anytime someone is in pain of your patients, you know? You have to figure out how to fix it and move on. That’s not to say that every nurse or caretaker is like that of course. But in that place, it was a little hustle-bustle. But we did have some good talks, you know? We talked about politics and their family and they would tell me the same stories over and over again that broke their heart and I would just at first, I had the instinct to fix it, you know? Help them come to a better headspace about it or have you considered - I just slap myself, you know, just witness it, just let them experience it and mourn it and say it.

[0:06:58] CH: What’s a story that comes to mind?

[0:07:01] Laura Mathis: One of the women that I visited, her son was killed in a car accident and he was a manager at Target and he was her favorite. Every time I saw her, she’d say, you know, my son died in a car accident and that pain, you could tell, it never went away. No parent should lose their child but that just stuck with her. I feel like every time I was there, when she said it, it was almost to talk about her son because you don’t want to just stop talking about them because they’re not there anymore.

[0:07:33] CH: Yeah, you don’t want to forget.

[0:07:35] Laura Mathis: Yeah, there was little moments like that all the time and even today, people say, “I don’t know how you’re a hospice volunteer,” but honestly is such a privilege to sit with someone who might have one hour left, one week, one day and just share space. Chat about food and the weather and help them.

[0:07:56] CH: Yeah.

[0:07:57] Laura Mathis: It’s really special and I can see how people would shy away from it but they need help, they always need volunteers.

[0:08:05] CH: Yeah, this segues into your book, Regret Free Death Bed. Now, at the time of this recording, it’s November 2018 and so the book’s, I forget, is it in the works now?

[0:08:20] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:08:22] CH: I love the concept, who is it? Bronnie Ware?

[0:08:26] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:08:27] CH: Is the palliative nurse who did something similar, The Five Regrets Of The Dying. Tell me about your book, give me the overview of Regret Free Death Bed and was it birthed in this hospice role?

[0:08:41] Laura Mathis: I would say it was birth from my uncle Dennis’ death. Because I remember thinking, what a great life he had but I also wondered what he didn’t get to do. I started researching death bed regrets and what people most regretted at the end of their lives, talking to my patients, noticing what they bring up over and over. Through my research, I realized that no matter your education level, your age, how much you have in your bank account, your sex. There are six common themes over and over again. What I wanted to do was solidify what those six things are that most people regret and then find really simple ways to be proactive about it and make sure that those are your priorities every day. So that if something was to happen and they say, “Sorry Charlie, you’ve got two weeks.” You wouldn’t look back just in angst and check the down that list of those six things that you had been intentionally doing things every day in those areas of your life.

[0:09:44] CH: Break it down, let’s go through them.

[0:09:45] Laura Mathis: All right. I would say, the first big one is health. I wish I took better care of my health. For a lot of us, it takes that bad blood work coming back or a hospital stay, you know, a cancer diagnosis even losing someone and you realize. “I can’t do this anymore.” Unfortunately, it adds up. If you make some bad choices, that leads to other health ailments and then you don’t want to move as much and so then you become overweight and you have other problems. I think you really have to figure out how to make that a priority. It’s going to look so different for you than it is for me what health is. II had this really –

[0:10:27] CH: How do you mean, explain that.

[0:10:29] Laura Mathis: For you, you might feel like you want the social aspect with health, you want to get on a bike with friends and you want to go 200 miles and you talk and you have beer after. I’m much more of a lone wolf. So when I try to do what other people feel is relaxing in health, I end up quitting. Because I don’t want a bike ride with you for 200 miles. I like doing my own thing. I had this interesting situation where I always felt like I was a morning person, so that I should always work in the morning, right? That’s my peak time and so I wouldn’t exercise in the morning but by lunch, I don’t want to exercise, are you kidding me? I’m already thinking about bed. One day, I said, “Laura, if you want to exercise, you have to exercise before you work,” which was counterintuitive because it seemed like that’s a horrible decision. You’re losing your prime work time to exercise which is optional but it’s not. Then I started exercising in the morning in my prime work time and then I was working better and more efficiently, I had more energy and I had worked out.

[0:11:30] CH: Yeah, what do you do for workouts by the way?

[0:11:33] Laura Mathis: I do all sorts of fun things. I do hit training, I do bar classes.

[0:11:37] CH: You watch hit training workouts on YouTube?

[0:11:40] Laura Mathis: No.

[0:11:40] CH: Some of them are really good.

[0:11:42] Laura Mathis: Are they?

[0:11:42] CH: Yeah, I’m telling you.

[0:11:43] Laura Mathis: All right, I have to check it out. Yeah, I love – step.

[0:11:47] CH: Step, yeah.

[0:11:47] Laura Mathis: Old school, it’s way harder now. It’s no joke.

[0:11:50] CH: I used to work at a rec center. I dropped in on a few of those classes.

[0:11:53] Laura Mathis: it’s very hard. I call it my Alzheimer's workout because it’s just so hard. Swimming, I love standup paddling, running, a little bit of everything. But I like to do it by myself in the morning.

[0:12:07] CH: Nice. For about an hour? Okay.

[0:12:10] Laura Mathis: Six days a week.

[0:12:11] CH: Cool. Health, it’s different for everybody.

[0:12:14] Laura Mathis: Different for everybody and don’t feel bad if you went to a gym and you hate it. That’s fine. Go figure something else out.

[0:12:20] CH: Yeah.

[0:12:21] Laura Mathis: Or, if you have an injury, okay, well you probably can’t do one thing but could you swim?

[0:12:25] CH: What I hear from you, which I agree with whole heartedly, is fun has to be baked in. It’s so easy to do exercise that’s ridden with guilt and the intention is to minimize that guilt rather than to enjoy your life and enjoy the feelings in your body. Like, one is a very harsh, critical, rational decision. How many people do you see in the gym? Every time I go in the gym and I see people on like running on treadmills, in this beautiful city, Austin, they drove to run on a treadmill. There has to be some self-loathing going on there. Like that’s not always a pure decision of just taking care of – I agree wholeheartedly on a fun part.

[0:13:18] Laura Mathis: I agree. That clock ticking down. You want to die, it says, nine minutes and 42 seconds. Come on.

[0:13:26] CH: I know, yeah.

[0:13:29] Laura Mathis: You’ve burned four calories.

[0:13:30] CH: Have you seen If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast? It’s a documentary by Carl Reiner. Very well aligned with what we’re talking about and it’s just all these people who were over 90 years old talking about what they’ve learned through life. What separates them basically from the majority of people who at the end of their life have regrets or these are all vibrant people in their 90’s, people like Dick Van Dyke.

[0:13:58] Laura Mathis: Yeah.

[0:13:59] CH: You know. Mel Brooks who are still making jokes, still dancing, still having fun. The key with a lot of them was movement and fun, yeah.

[0:14:10] Laura Mathis: That’s health, we know that’s important. Living a truthful life was also a big one. We know when we’re not living a truthful life because you wake up and your first thought is; “Oh God, kill me, another day.” We know that feeling, yeah. Sometimes that feeling starts the night before in anticipation of the next day.

[0:14:35] CH: Yeah.

[0:14:35] Laura Mathis: We can’t all do that dream thing we want to do, you know, I’ve always wanted to teach water ski lessons on a tropical island.

[0:14:45] CH: Always?

[0:14:46] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:14:46] CH: Really? What’s holding you back?

[0:14:49] Laura Mathis: You know, I’ve done small portions of that, I’ve lived on in little island for a while, I’ve taught kids on and off for many years and it took me a while to figure out, what is that? Why do I want to do that and I finally unearthed it. The core behind it is ease. Kids are not going to harass me about a power point presentation, they’re just happy to be there. They’re in a learning environment, which I love. I love being around someone that wants to learn something. I’m outside, which is my favorite way to work, somewhere beautiful, it’s warm. I realized, okay, it’s not necessarily that I’m teaching a water ski lessons to kids, it’s all those things that are behind that lifestyle. If you’re not living a truthful life, it eats you alive. There are people that at the end of their life, they have a job for this 40 years at a company they hated, their boss was mean to them and belittled them. Whatever it is and it’s very hurtful to look back and say, I want to be an artist, I never wrote my book or all those years I straightened my hair and did full makeup and I just wanted to rip my skin off every day because I was trying to be someone that I wasn’t.

[0:16:07] CH: Right, yeah.

[0:16:08] Laura Mathis: That’s tough. I mean, you can struggle with that when you’re 25, not when you’re 75. Everyone goes through that.

[0:16:13] CH: it just builds on you over the years, just hold it in and this was a theme with a recent book I read One Last Talk by Philip McKernan and the whole point of the book is to speak your truth. Whatever your truth is, very similar to your book actually. If you were on, if you were about to leave this planet, what would be the one truth you wanted to share and who would it be with and he challenges you to write that speech, give it to that one person. You’re talking about like being true to yourself in your actions and what you do, there’s also that layer, right? Of what is your deeper truth, does anybody really understand who you are on this planet? Does anybody understand and accept it because if you never have that, you’ve never fully connected with yourself or anybody else.

[0:17:10] Laura Mathis: Yup. I think there has to be a witnessing aspect to it. Once you realize it and you feel it and you know it, you can’t keep that a secret anymore.

[0:17:17] CH: Right, yeah. Okay, health or exercise and being truthful.

[0:17:25] Laura Mathis: Truthful life. You ready for the next one? Work-life satisfaction. I don’t even call it work-life balance because we all know that -

[0:17:34] CH: Everybody says balance, yeah.

[0:17:35] Laura Mathis: You can’t say balance, there’s no balance.

[0:17:37] CH: It’s work life integration, it’s a life.

[0:17:39] Laura Mathis: Absolutely. The second you say balance, you start to get a little pissed off because the math doesn’t work.

[0:17:44] CH: No.

[0:17:44] Laura Mathis: Right.

[0:17:45] CH: Definitely not.

[0:17:47] Laura Mathis: Work-life satisfaction. This one is tough because when you get home at the end of the day, it’s all admin, it’s chores, it’s dinner, it’s the dishwasher, it’s carting the kids somewhere, it’s the bills, it’s making that phone call. Then, it’s cleaning up and it’s bedtime and maybe 30 minutes of TV and you’re done. When you do that enough times, you start to get real resentful.

[0:18:13] CH: You definitely can.

[0:18:15] Laura Mathis: Yes. Because there’s no balance or what you’ve treated yourself to is not doing the trick, that one hour of Netflix is not the all-encompassing relaxation.

[0:18:26] CH: Well, it depends on the show.

[0:18:27] Laura Mathis: That’s true, there are some good TV out there right now. For most people, if you have - if it’s too lopsided, you’re going to think about that to your final day. I know someone in my family, in my extended family, who has worked six days a week all their life.

[0:18:44] CH: Doing what?

[0:18:46] Laura Mathis: Sales. Then on that one day off, they do some chores, that have to be done, right? It’s the only day.

[0:18:54] CH: Man, they never taken a – wow. It’s all work.

[0:18:58] Laura Mathis: It’s all work.

[0:18:59] CH: That’s our culture.

[0:19:01] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:19:02] CH: I feel like that’s starting to shift a little bit but it’s still very difficult to break. That’s the culture in a lot of countries around the world.

[0:19:11] Laura Mathis: Yes. I learned a good trick a few years ago from someone who said, I always schedule my vacations first and then work around that.

[0:19:20] CH: I like that.

[0:19:21] Laura Mathis: I really like that a lot.

[0:19:22] CH: Yeah.

[0:19:23] Laura Mathis: As opposed to ell, when is it slow at work?

[0:19:26] CH: Yeah. I’m going to write that down, that’s great.

[0:19:29] Laura Mathis: January is a great time to have that mindset.

[0:19:31] CH: Yeah.

[0:19:32] Laura Mathis: Yes.

[0:19:33] CH: What was your last vacation?

[0:19:36] Laura Mathis: Jeez, let’s see. I took my daughter to Galveston for three nights, that was the first time she had one on one time together because I have twins so usually they come in a package everywhere we go.

[0:19:47] CH: You have twins. No kidding.

[0:19:50] Laura Mathis: That was amazing.

[0:19:51] CH: Yeah. Galveston’s a cool little town.

[0:19:54] Laura Mathis: It was the perfect getaway and so there’s so many reasons why that was unnecessary, right? I mean, it’s just me and her, so that could have been any time. I pulled her out of school which I probably shouldn’t have done, cost money, you know, all these reasons. I could have just spent a day with her on Saturday or Sunday but I knew that it had to be done. If I want to walk the talk, I have to prioritize this stuff because most of the time, it’s business with her and I. It’s pick her up, drive her to swimming, do your homework, did you brush your teeth, I just nag her and I hate it.

[0:20:29] CH: Yeah, I know. It puts parents in such a tough role where they’re just rule enforcers.

[0:20:36] Laura Mathis: Yes, it’s like a prison guard, that’s how I feel most of the time.

[0:20:40] CH: Yeah. Have you thought about alternatives to that?

[0:20:44] Laura Mathis: I try. I am a fun person but parenthood –

[0:20:48] CH: You seem that way.

[0:20:48] Laura Mathis: Can suck it out of me a little bit.

[0:20:49] CH: Well yeah, if you play in that role.

[0:20:51] Laura Mathis: Yes, but I do try. I do and you know, we mess with our kids all the time and it’s hilarious to my husband and I and so we try to keep that levity there. I really feel like it’s my obligation to make my work look fun. Because otherwise, they’re going to have a horrible attitude about work, I don’t want a job.

[0:21:10] CH: A bad model to follow.

[0:21:11] Laura Mathis: Absolutely. Then they’ll live with me till they’re 40 and I don’t want that.

[0:21:15] CH: Right. Well, you know, growing up, I saw a lot of adults – it really made a big impression on me, seeing a lot of adults not like their jobs. A lot of kids wanted to grow up, I did not, where it was like, if that’s the real world. I’ve always carried this deep mission that there have to be jobs that don’t feel like jobs. There has to be work out there that doesn’t feel like work and it might take a lot of effort to find it but once you find it, hold on to it.

[0:21:54] Laura Mathis: Yes. Some people disagree, they’d say, no matter what you’re doing, you’re going to hate it one day.

[0:22:00] CH: That’s a deep protestant work ethic instilled in them. That is the agricultural norm.

[0:22:09] Laura Mathis: I think if you have the attitude, it makes it maybe a little more tolerable. I hate my job, so does everybody else. As opposed to like what you said, is there something out there that I could still make revenue from, right? That’s the catch. For most people, there still has to be revenue generated. But yes, there was going to be small inconveniences but that’s nothing compared to waking up and saying, let’s do this.

[0:22:33] CH: Right, yeah. I mean, of what purpose is life if it gets grinded out of you and you are the one at the helm doing that to yourself.

[0:22:43] Laura Mathis: if it’s all about money, then you need to start making some decisions.

[0:22:47] CH: Right, and every spiritual text in existence says, anything in the external world is passing, it’s not going to make you happy, you have to, that’s why I always talk about the internal paycheck. If you don’t have that feeling from it, if it doesn’t make you feel more vibrant or present doing it, it’s going to be tough to sustain.

[0:23:10] Laura Mathis: Yup, you might have to create all of that on your own, if you’re selling cars and you hate your job but you need to stay in it, you know, think about who are you supporting? Are you giving, are you helping a mom buy a car so she can get to her job so that her kids can have money to go on sports teams and then they get a scholarship, you know what I mean? You can play a little bit and it doesn’t have to feel like you’re tricking yourself or lying but even if you can’t change your circumstance, people might be listening, going, well I just can’t quit my job, of course you can’t quit your job. But there’s some options other than quitting your job.

[0:23:42] CH: Right? Yeah.

[0:23:43] Laura Mathis: It’s your responsibility to get to a good headspace about it, no one else is going to do it.

[0:23:47] CH: Right, they can quit their job, they absolutely can, they can move, they can do any number of things that require sacrifices and hard choices but they are always available on the table at any moment, yeah. Have you had that true work-life satisfaction? What is the time where you experience like the peak of that.

[0:24:09] Laura Mathis: I had a great aha moment which I’ve only had a handful in my whole life but I still think of it every day and II was at a sales job and I had been laid off. The whole division I was in was closing and it broke my heart because I just felt like we had just reached where we were ready to go. The foundation had been built. I made a phone call to somebody I was wrapping up some things and is a woman named Nancy Duarte. I don’t know if you know Duarte, they do a lot of great stuff. She and I were in communication and her assistant said, Nancy’s not here, she’s working on her book, most of the time. She’s not in the office. And I hung up and it was like a movie, where everything swirls around you and stops, I realized, I should be writing a book. After that, I had to go into a meeting and the whole time, I just tried to look normal because I felt like a whole shift had just occurred. I started thinking about, well, what’s my book and what’s my message and how would this work? What do I want to talk about? Then that was it for me, that was what I knew I wanted to do and that’s given me so much. You know how you talk about being able to know who you are inside and then share it. That’s what I’ve been inching towards, finally writing this book is what I’ve been studying all my life. Happiness and self-growth and all these things. It accumulates into this that once you start to tiptoe towards death and use it as motivation, life gets so much better. Because you realize, you don’t have all the time in the world, we assumed we’d see Dennis for another 40 years. You just can’t assume you have that time.

[0:25:49] CH: Yeah. We’ve covered work-life satisfaction, exercise and –

[0:25:57] Laura Mathis: Truthful life.

[0:25:58] CH: Yeah, speaking your truth, living a truthful life, actually. What are the other three?

[0:26:03] Laura Mathis: The next one is relationships.

[0:26:06] CH: Oh man, those are hard.

[0:26:08] Laura Mathis: Please, it is hard.

[0:26:10] CH: Those require effort.

[0:26:12] Laura Mathis: So much effort, yes and when you add that to the lifestyle that most people have where they’re busy, one of the saddest moments is when people are at the end of their life and they say, I wish I would have kept in touch with my friends.

[0:26:27] CH: Yeah, I mean I have said that in my 20s. It is so sad, yeah.

[0:26:35] Laura Mathis: It’s so sad.

[0:26:36] CH: That is life, I feel friends are almost higher than love. Like they are pure love. There’s no bitterness, there’s no jealousy. Friends are when you are at your best.

[0:26:49] Laura Mathis: So there’s lots of ways to solve this conundrum. First I think you really need to identify who your friends are, not guilt friends like, “I should be friends with them because dot dot dot. Or “I see them enough that I should keep in touch with them.” Okay life is too short for that. Who are your people? Right? Your people that you haven’t talked to them in five years but they are still your people. You could plunk together in a room and it would be like no time had passed. So you’ve got to find your people and sometimes they’re spread out and sometimes they’re two blocks away. And then there is nothing like face to face. You can text, you can send a Facebook message but you’ve got to get a face to face.

[0:27:29] CH: This is the craziest thing, right? So you studied happiness, have you studied blue zones?

[0:27:36] Laura Mathis: No.

[0:27:36] CH: Okay, so the blue zones, a quick overview, is just a guy when he visited the countries were people are A, living the longest and B, the happiest and he found it consistent. The number one thing he found was seven or eight hours of face to face per day.

[0:27:55] Laura Mathis: Seven to eight hours, wow.

[0:27:57] CH: Yeah and you think about where you are now with tech, like we’re looking at screens all day. We are communicating, we are all using the tech to communicate which is great, relationships. But the face to face is what has changed. That’s gone, yeah.

[0:28:14] Laura Mathis: And there’s lots of reason for it and one of the silliest ones I think is that you don’t feel like your home is appropriate for guests. I read a quote once from a woman and she said, “I wish I wouldn’t have worried so much about the stains on my carpet and my small living room and just had people over more.”

[0:28:32] CH: Yeah, right. Yes.

[0:28:35] Laura Mathis: Who cares?

[0:28:37] CH: Yes, oh man.

[0:28:39] Laura Mathis: So I decided okay, if I am going to talk about friendships and relationships I need to figure out how to do this because a lot of my friends are also parents and these Uber drivers extraordinaire where we’re just driving our kids everywhere and working and doing all of these things. And so I had a party last month. I decided to see how it went and it was a favorite things party. Yes, so everyone was going to spend seven dollars on 12 of their favorite things. So like a candle or something in the kitchen or whatever it was, something that they loved. Bring it wrapped, everyone comes to the party.

[0:29:18] CH: How did you decide on seven and 12?

[0:29:20] Laura Mathis: You know I just did the math. It was going to be about $90 and I thought, “Okay that’s enough for a social event.”

[0:29:26] CH: Okay, I got it. Yeah.

[0:29:28] Laura Mathis: Yes because that would be the commitment.

[0:29:29] CH: I thought they were each spending $7 on 12 items each, each one looks like 50 cents.

[0:29:34] Laura Mathis: So it’s like it shouldn’t be more – here you go, here’s your dollar store toy. Yeah, so that’s pretty reasonable, right? You can think of something for $7 and so I had everyone actually bring 13 gifts. 12 people at the party plus one that we created a basket for and I dropped it off at Caritas which is working on homelessness here in Austin and so that was a way to give back and make it a donation as well as a social get together and let me tell you, there are a lot of women in my house. My husband said, “Wow that many women are really loud.” It was at 7:00 on Sunday and I said bring your favorite food so it kept the pressure off of me a little bit. I didn’t try to cater for 12 women, right? Make it easy for you. You don’t have to cater the whole thing.

[0:30:21] CH: Right, you don’t have to spend $300 feeding people.

[0:30:24] Laura Mathis: No you don’t. Just do what you can do, right? So I said, “Everyone bring your favorite food and I had some food there too. And it was a blast. And not all of them knew each other. So they also made new friends which was great because they are my people that I hadn’t really connected yet and we talked and we laughed and we drank and we all opened our presents and we made this donation and it was one of the best nights in my life. It was three hours long.

[0:30:49] CH: Really? That’s awesome.

[0:30:50] Laura Mathis: Yes, now it took some effort. It took some planning.

[0:30:53] CH: It took some courage too.

[0:30:55] Laura Mathis: It took some courage. Because in between now Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, parties, I mean I was worried that everyone would say no. I’m like, “meh-meh,” right? But so many people said yes, I mean I could have double the amount of people. So it was great.

[0:31:12] CH: How many people in total came?

[0:31:14] Laura Mathis: 12.

[0:31:15] CH: 12, good number.

[0:31:17] Laura Mathis: We crammed in, it was great. Yeah, so you could find your own version of that. It doesn’t have to be that elaborate. It could be calling someone and saying, “I have not seen you in three months, can we please get breakfast?” Simple but you have to do it and if you’re the one making the effort, it’s okay. Let it go, don’t wait for them. Just do it, take the initiative.

[0:31:39] CH: And they crave that too and most people I found are not going to initiate. So you just have to take the reins and say, “This is what I want in real life,” and just make it happen.

[0:31:52] Laura Mathis: Yeah.

[0:31:52] CH: Like you did.

[0:31:53] Laura Mathis: Yep and so it’s friendship but it’s also marriage, the family and putting the time in. It takes a lot of effort.

[0:32:01] CH: And everybody’s got that handled so we don’t need to cover that at all.

[0:32:05] Laura Mathis: Whose marriage isn’t perfect? Who doesn’t love their mother-in-law? Come on.

[0:32:09] CH: Easy-peasy, right. So yeah, what advice do you have for marriage? Because I mean we all know the stats. So what advice do you have?

[0:32:22] Laura Mathis: I think I got lucky. I don’t know if there is science behind it. Well I think –

[0:32:26] CH: You got no advice, you just get lucky?

[0:32:29] Laura Mathis: Get lucky, I’ve been married – we got married in 2003. So it’s that almost 15 years and I have written a few things about marriage over the years and some of it just sounds really cliché. You know, “Be friends!” But I think it’s really just what’s been the core behind our marriage that’s all I can really speak of is really just wanting each other to be better and being there when the hard work comes in behind that. You know my husband has encouraged me to do so many things. That I don’t know if I would have attempted without him saying, “Of course you can do it, just go do it.” Like, “Oh okay.” And I have done the same for him and so to be able to be a relentless cheerleader I think has been good because it’s easy to be a manager when you’re married because there’s so many logistics behind it. It’s all about lists and did you do this and can you fix this and call this person and so I think that moral support is a big part of a good marriage.

[0:33:35] CH: Gosh, it’s so huge, isn’t it? Just feeling like you have somebody really in your corner who believes in you.

[0:33:40] Laura Mathis: Yes I mean that’s the perk of marriage, right? You don’t have to do it by yourself.

[0:33:45] CH: Gosh, yeah because doing it by yourself is just rough and the beauty actually of marriage as well is so we talked about that seven to eight hours of face time and the happiest people, if you’re with somebody you like that you’re really good friends with. Like genuinely like outside marriage aside, you get that seven to eight hours of face time in and so you are going to be happier as long as you talk to each other respectfully and friendly and yeah.

[0:34:20] Laura Mathis: Yeah that’s true. Yeah, I always try to remind myself to be as nice to my husband as I would to a stranger staying at my house.

[0:34:27] CH: Isn’t that ironic like the people you love the most are the ones you tend to just be – you could be as abusive as possible to them.

[0:34:36] Laura Mathis: Oh yeah, I would never say things to let’s say a friend from out of town say, “Oh my hotel fell through, can I stay at your house?” You know I would always be, “What can I get you?” And, “Do you want more water?” And, “Are you comfortable?” And, “What do you want to do tomorrow?” My husband would be like, “Get your own damn water, you have legs.” Yeah and it can’t always be like that of course but I think most of the time it should.

[0:34:59] CH: Yeah, it’s true. All right, so we got four of them covered. What are the last two?

[0:35:05] Laura Mathis: All right, we’re down to two. The second to last is express yourself. This one about was found fascinating because I feel that I express myself fairly naturally and I’ve had blocks through the years but some people, I only see it in certain situations. If they’re drunk or if they’re tired or if they have been given an opportunity to shine and then you see, “Well I didn’t know you could do that.” And they have been hiding it from you. And that is tied to living a truthful life but expressing yourself can be really simple. I remember when I look back at pictures of myself in college. I would always have this really low cut things and I had this glitter stick and I would put glitter all over my cleavage. It didn’t matter where I was going, right? This is just a part of my outfit, it was glitter in the boobs which was so ridiculous, right? But it made me really happy. Glitter was huge for me, I had it on my cheeks and I do. Yeah so that was me expressing myself and now it’s not really appropriate and I don’t really want glitter on my cleavage but what is that for me now, you know? What was behind that and how can I find that now? Because that stuff really gets squelched.

[0:36:19] CH: Yeah, what do you think underlying it was? Was it the attention? Was it feeling like you were shining or you’re a different version of yourself? What do you think drove that?

[0:36:34] Laura Mathis: I would say it was like showing up and being seen, being willing to just be like, “Here I am.” As opposed to blending in and fitting in and being subtle and being appropriate. And so sometimes I’ll get inspiration. I saw something on Instagram the other day and this comedian had a wig party. So everyone came to the party and they had a stupid wig on. I was like, “Oh I am going to steal that.” Because that to me is the sparkle on the cleavage. It’s just have fun, do something interesting and don’t be tapered down. Be bold, be you, express yourself.

[0:37:12] CH: What were you for Halloween this year?

[0:37:14] Laura Mathis: What was I? Oh I was a punk gypsy. Because that’s what my daughter was.

[0:37:20] CH: How do I know you’d have a unique answer not just like, “I was a witch.”

[0:37:25] Laura Mathis: Well that’s what my daughter wanted to do and she wanted to match so we matched each other but my family is ridiculous. I mean it’s all about inflatable costumes. I had tagged you actually because you were a part of my motivation for writing about play at Halloween with my husband’s inflatable dinosaur costume.

[0:37:44] CH: That was awesome.

[0:37:45] Laura Mathis: Yeah that was really awesome. It was really good.

[0:37:47] CH: I remember that, so just a quick aside on this, it’s a video on Instagram of your husband dressed as an inflatable dinosaur walking through the halls of this elementary school - elementary or middle school? And picking up your son and all of the kids are just awe struck that there’s a tyrannosaurus rex walking through the halls.

[0:38:10] Laura Mathis: It was great, it got everybody jacked up about Halloween and it was just so fun.

[0:38:15] CH: Was your son super excited? Or was he embarrassed?

[0:38:16] Laura Mathis: Yeah, I think he was excited. At the end of the video you can hear another voice say, “Wait, that’s your dad?” And then my son has this look, it’s kind of half fear, half pride, you know? I think he wondered if he was going to get in trouble. Because it broke the mold like no father has ever picked up their child in a dinosaur costume. And so that was my husband expressing himself, you know? He’s an attorney, he doesn’t do those things very often and so that was great. So of course when he said, “I want to do that.” I said, “Yeah.”

[0:38:49] CH: And your son is going to remember it forever.

[0:38:52] Laura Mathis: Yeah, so you have to find those ways to do, it doesn’t have to be an inflatable costume but don’t taper down, don’t blend. I mean you have to do that stuff that’s what makes you feel alive.

[0:39:01] CH: Yeah, I mean at the very least you can just journal your truths to yourself and never show a single soul but just having the power back, giving it to yourself to say what you’re really feeling, what you’re really going through is freeing.

[0:39:16] Laura Mathis: Got to do it.

[0:39:17] CH: So we have covered five, what is the last one?

[0:39:19] Laura Mathis: All right, the last one is joy and happiness.

[0:39:22] CH: Oh great.

[0:39:23] Laura Mathis: Oh geez, my personal obsession with happiness.

[0:39:26] CH: What’s the difference between joy and happiness?

[0:39:29] Laura Mathis: I think that joy can feel more substantial. It is a little heavier. Happiness is sometimes I am really happy if I am hungry and then I eat, okay? When I think of joy –

[0:39:44] CH: Can I tell you what I think the difference is?

[0:39:46] Laura Mathis: Yeah, tell me.

[0:39:47] CH: Happiness I believe is a choice, joy is evoked from circumstances. Joy bubbles out of you, it bursts. That’s what I think the two - or there is no more resistance with joy. Something gets taken down or maybe it is your ego, maybe I think it’s whatever the critical part of your mind and it just bursts out. Happiness I feel is a deliberate choice.

[0:40:16] Laura Mathis: So could you also choose joy?

[0:40:19] CH: I don’t know. I find at least - I could be totally wrong, this is a subjective experience. But joy I feel is cranking it up to 11. It’s the highest level. It’s like joy and love are the - I experience joy when I am doing improv with a group of friends and we hit these hilarious moments and we’re delighted, right? It is hard to be delighted moment to moment to moment through life. I find some people can do it, like Buddha and whatever but I am not there. And so happiness is more just a deliberate choice of at least for me, of recognizing what you have and how good life is moment to moment.

[0:41:14] Laura Mathis: I like that. And joy I feel really you get a lot of bang for your buck.

[0:41:20] CH: Yeah, big time.

[0:41:23] Laura Mathis: You remember my husband and I when we first married we said, “Every anniversary let’s not buy each other anything. Let’s do something fun.” So we kicked it off with skydiving.

[0:41:34] CH: Oh man, I have been trying to get my wife to skydive.

[0:41:37] Laura Mathis: Oh you got to do it before you get too old.

[0:41:38] CH: I know, it is super fun.

[0:41:40] Laura Mathis: I know it was terrifying, the whole way up. We did tandem where there was someone behind you. The whole way up my guy was reading a book on horoscopes. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was thinking, “Are you kidding me right now? Don’t you need to be reviewing a manual, check off a list or something?” And that moment where he said, “Okay we have to go.” Everything in me said no and I said, “I don’t know if I can.” He said, “Well we have to do it right now” and I still can feel that feeling of doing it and landing and surviving, that was joy, you know?

[0:42:18] CH: Did you feel joy on the way down when the shoot went up or were you still scared?

[0:42:22] Laura Mathis: You have to do it. So we can talk about it because there’s very –

[0:42:27] CH: Oh I have done it.

[0:42:28] Laura Mathis: Oh you have, you want it with your wife.

[0:42:30] CH: Yes, I want her to experience this because I remember having an adrenaline high for four hours after because I was joyful that entire four hours. I was like, “I just lived through that! I can’t believe that, it’s the greatest thing ever!” Yeah it’s awesome.

[0:42:45] Laura Mathis: Yeah, you get so much leverage out of joy and happiness and I think sometimes happiness gets a bad rap. I mean, “You can’t be happy all the time,” or, “I have to focus on providing for my family. I don’t have time to be happy.” But I know that without happiness you have nothing and you can be happy without having all of your boxes checked too.

[0:43:11] CH: Yeah, yeah what do you mean you have nothing without happiness?

[0:43:15] Laura Mathis: Because let’s say you’re unhappy with your job and you are unhappy with your marriage or you are unhappy with the house that you live in or you are unhappy with your relationships whatever it is, it’s hard to have joy and happiness and other moments because I feel that always takes things away a little. If you see something beautiful but you are with your partner that you’re fighting with, that beautiful thing turns down the volume a little because there’s that underlying unhappiness. Or if I catch myself yelling at my kids and then we see a butterfly, it would have been a lot cooler to see that butterfly if I hadn’t just snapped at my daughter. And so it takes away from this really beautiful experiences if you are suffering and my goal is to always be understanding what makes me happy and that changes and a lot of it is really boring like taking supplements, drinking enough water.

[0:44:13] CH: Which supplements?

[0:44:15] Laura Mathis: Oh everything. I take Omega and vitamin B and D and I take –

[0:44:20] CH: Vitamin B, I will attest has that made it more difference on my happiness level.

[0:44:25] Laura Mathis: Yes, I remember you writing about it. Yeah multivitamins, lysine, I take everything. Because I am always experimenting with what makes me feel good. You know drinking enough water, eating good food. You’d think happiness would be like going roller skating. But for me it’s so much more simple than that because when I do those things then I feel good then I can make choices that make me happier.

[0:44:47] CH: What is the most surprising thing you do that keeps you happy or even the most maybe the most scandalous?

[0:44:54] Laura Mathis: Oh scandalous. I would say that I spent time alone which doesn’t sound scandalous, but it kind of is. It is kind of a dirty luxury. Like sometimes I will just go see a matinee when I have so many things to do.

[0:45:12] CH: What was the last one you saw?

[0:45:14] Laura Mathis: Oh I saw, what’s that clansman movie?

[0:45:18] CH: Oh was that the new Spike Lee?

[0:45:20] Laura Mathis: Yes, oh so good. It was great, yeah. I’ll just go see a movie. and by myself. It makes me really happy and that’s $10.

[0:45:33] CH: I love it, that’s a great thing to do. It’s super fun.

[0:45:37] Laura Mathis: But it is easy to say just to say, “No don’t do that. There’s stuff you have to do”.

[0:45:41] CH: Yeah but it is so much fun, well this has been awesome. I am curious, how do you see this book kind of rippling out into people’s lives? What is your hope for the book?

[0:45:54] Laura Mathis: When I tell people about the book they almost always say, “That sounds great I want to read it.” Because I think we all have that fear of mortality whether you talk about it or not. And when you ran away from it, it’s just another one of those things that weighs on you. And I wasn’t comfortable talking about death before my uncle passed. I almost thought it would jinx me you know? So I didn’t talk about it, I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t even really wrap my head around it.

[0:46:26] CH: Why did you think it would jinx you?

[0:46:28] Laura Mathis: I don’t know. I just feel like – I knock on wood when I say things that I don’t mean to say, you know? And so I just worried that maybe I would bring it to me or be a horrible law of attraction situation.

[0:46:41] CH: Right, The Secret.

[0:46:43] Laura Mathis: The Secret didn’t talk about this part, yeah and so that’s my –

[0:46:48] CH: There is a class action law suit and all of these people thinking about death it attracted it.

[0:46:52] Laura Mathis: I bought a burial plot and then I died.

[0:46:55] CH: Millions and millions of people.

[0:46:57] Laura Mathis: I have seen how freeing it could be to think about my death every day and realize that that should impact how I treat people and how I treat myself and what I want to get done, what I want to work on and what I want to say. It’s been so powerful for me and it really brings the preciousness and the immediacy to light when you realize what if today was the last day? Would I wish I would have called my friend and said, “Let’s get lunch?” Or said to my daughter, “Okay you just spilled Cheerios all over the floor but let’s clean it up as pirates,” you know? And not be such a jerk all the time, take myself so seriously. I don’t want to be remembered like that.

[0:47:46] CH: Yeah, I like that finding the fun and even if it is not fun, there’s fun there.

[0:47:51] Laura Mathis: Absolutely.

[0:47:52] CH: My favorite line from the movie Departed is when this guy says, “Hey how’s your mother?” And he says, “Oh she’s on her way out”, and he says, “We all are, act accordingly”.

[0:48:08] Laura Mathis: Yeah, it’s true though, right?

[0:48:09] CH: Yeah, what is the best way for listeners to either follow you or get in touch with you?

[0:48:17] Laura Mathis: Sure, right now my website is being revamped, lauramathis.com that will be up soon. And I am really active on Instagram. They can find me @authorlauramathis on Instagram, @thelauramathis on Twitter, Facebook, all the usual places.

[0:48:31] CH: Yeah. Do you do speaking? Do you do coaching, workshops, anything along those lines or is the book just the book and that’s it?

[0:48:40] Laura Mathis: I’d loved to transition the material in the book to some classes and courses. I think it is the kind of thing that really requires support and long term ideas and suggestions and what works for you a year ago doesn’t work for you now. So really continuing to fine tune it and that will be something I’ll be offering once things are rolling.

[0:48:59] CH: Excellent. Well the book is Regret Free Death Bed. Laura Mathis, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:49:07] Laura Mathis: Thank you, it was great.

[0:49:09] CH: Thanks again to Laura Mathis for being on the show. You can buy her book, Regret Free Death Bed, on Amazon. Be sure to check out authorhour.co for show notes, transcriptions and more for this episode. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews”. Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.