This article isn’t meant to make you feel bad about your life, but rather, to make the changes necessary so you won’t have to live with the burden of regrets later on.
10 REGRETS YOU DON’T WANT IN 10 YEARS
1. NOT FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS.
According to Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse from Australia, many of her dying patients listed this as their biggest regret. Ware took care of patients in their last three to twelve weeks of life, and heard many stories and confessions from them all. While she said that all of them found peace before their death, listening to their regrets moved her so much that she actually wrote a bestselling novel about it called “The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying.”
In the book, she said many of her patients had not honored even half of the dreams they wanted to fulfill, and this caused them to have major regrets before the end of their life. They wanted so badly to knock other things off their bucket list, but they had to die knowing they still had dreams.
10 years from now, do you want to look back and realize that you didn’t work toward your goals? Do you want to look back and see all the time that you wasted wondering if you were good enough to live the life you’ve always imagined? Well, here’s the secret – you can live that life NOW. Don’t want until you’re on your deathbed to think about your dreams; live them now, no matter what you have to do to achieve them. Even if you fail, at least you will have tried rather than giving up before you even started.
2. WORKING TOO HARD.
Ware said that this regret came in at number two, based on the frequency that she heard it. Unfortunately, many people already work too hard even as teenagers. We’ve been spoonfed a bunch of lies about what will truly make us happy, and based on the declining mental health of much of the world, the answer clearly doesn’t lie in how much money we make or how hard we work. What’s the point of it all, really, other than to line the pockets of the wealthy and allow us to pay our bills? At the end of our lives, we won’t care about how much money we have or what we achieved. We’ll remember the human connections we made, or didn’t make.
We’ll think about the memories we made with loved ones and all of the beautiful people we crossed paths with during our time here. Sure, we all have to make money to survive, but don’t work so much that you forget to build a life outside of your job.
3. NOT SAYING WHAT YOU TRULY MEAN.
Coming in at third on Ware’s list, the patients also regretted holding back their feelings. This really doesn’t benefit anyone in the end, because you’ll end up with repressed emotions that will haunt you until the day you die. The person your emotions are directed toward will not know how you truly feel, and will be left in the dark about any issues you have with them. Lying or covering up with truth does no good for anyone, so say what you mean and mean what you say. Not everyone will like it, but at least you can fall asleep at night knowing you live your truth each day and don’t try to sugarcoat it for anyone.
4. NOT STAYING IN TOUCH WITH FRIENDS.
People at the end of their lives also regretted losing touch with friends. In 10 years, will you regret not calling up that friend from high school that you wonder about every day? Will you regret not reaching out to the person in your yoga class that you want to get to know better? Don’t let your fear or doubt control your decisions. Reach out to people and take a chance on a new friendship. Life’s too short to live it all in your head; we all require human connection, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there in order to make new friendships or recover an old one.
5. NOT BEING HAPPY.
We like to think that outside forces control our emotions, but the key to emotional control lies within us. We don’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we react to it. Life goes by so fast, so why spend it finding every little thing to complain about? Being happy costs nothing, keeps you healthier, makes life more fulfilling, attracts more positive relationships, and so on. So, unhappiness, then, actually costs MORE in the long run, and can even lead to serious illnesses. Our mental, emotional, and physical health relies on our perception, so if you want to start living a better life now, simply change how you look at things.
