In a beautiful book called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Australian author Bronnie Ware, she recounts her experience as a nurse spending time with people in their final days on their deathbeds. It may seem like a harsh book about death, but it’s actually about life itself.
She listened to their stories and asked them a simple yet poignant question: “If you could go back in time… what would you change?”
Surprisingly, most of them shared similar regrets.
The regret wasn’t about failure, wrong decisions, not becoming the CEO, not getting a doctorate, or not buying a villa.
The regret was about not living the life they had hoped to live.
👇 The top five things they all regretted:
1️⃣ “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” “I wish I had lived the life I wanted, not the life people expected of me.”
We often walk a path laid out for us by others, social media, society, and expectations, forgetting ourselves along the way. Until we discover too late that our lives weren’t ours; they were just images we wanted to project.
2️⃣ “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
Work is important, but when it takes away your time, your health, and your time with loved ones, it comes at a high price. Success itself, just as there is success at work, is another kind of success we often forget about—success with ourselves and our families.
3️⃣ “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
“I wish I had expressed my feelings.” The fear of hurt feelings or rejection makes us keep quiet, but sometimes we need to talk, just as sometimes we need to say nothing. In both cases, we need to understand how we feel and express it, even if only to ourselves.
4️⃣ “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
“I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends more.”
Time passes, and everyone gets caught up in their own lives, but these old relationships support us more than we imagine. As time goes by, you rearrange your priorities, and your compass shifts from achievements on paper and degrees to achievements in life and in people, and you realize that these are what truly matter.
5️⃣ “I wish I had let myself be happier.”
“I wish I had used my time to be happy.”
Many people waited for the perfect moment to be happy, until life passed them by. Happiness isn’t a fleeting moment; it’s a series of tasks, degrees, and periods, and in the end, the long-awaited happiness is postponed and never arrives.
This book isn’t really about death…
It’s about life.
It’s about living it now in a way that, when you look back, you won’t regret it.
