This morning, I stumbled upon an Instagram post by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, providing an extract from his recent interview with Dr. Gabor Maté. Chatterjee is a British physician, author, television presenter and podcaster (Feel Better. Live More.). Maté is a Canadian physician, speaker and author of books on childhood development, ADHD and addiction, among other topics.

In the extract from the podcast, Maté tells Chatterjee: "If I were to choose to live my life over again, I wouldn't live it in this way." He says that, for years, when reading the end of Winnie the Pooh—when Christopher Robin has to go to school and tells his friends that he won't be able to play with them as much anymore—he would get tears in his eyes. "What I wasn't aware of when I went to medical school and when I was a physician," Maté says, "is how driven I was to justify my existence in the world. I wish I hadn't worked so hard." Maté suggests that people sacrifice their playfulness and joyfulness because they're driven by unconscious needs to validate their existence—a need that he says stems from childhood trauma.

Maté's words resonated with me. I'm sure that I missed out on opportunities for play and joy while working more than I should have, particularly during the last few years of my career. I was driven in part by love, wanting to serve my bosses, colleagues, employees and clients well, and in part by fear, worrying that I would be criticized for not living up to an impossibly high standard (sometimes of my own making, sometimes imposed on me by others).

I have not listened to Chatterjee's 90-minute podcast episode with Maté, but, in his summary of the interview, Chatterjee notes: "Gabor says that living life with 'no regrets' is about learning and understanding from your perceived mistakes, but not being unkind to who you were then." He continues: "Instead we should recognise that we did the best we could do at the time."

I believe that I made choices that felt right at the time, and that I can make different choices that feel right for this point in my life.

This afternoon, I read an email from a friend who has adopted the mantra "a better future awaits." He wrote: "A Mexican teacher used to tell us: at every stage of your life, you need to know what you want to be when you grow up." This also resonated with me, reminding me that I can keep growing throughout my life.

My takeaways from these two pieces are this: create opportunities for learning, play and joy, and trust that a better future awaits.