I’ve just finished one of the most powerful books I’ve read this year. It’s by a wonderful woman named Bronnie Ware, and it focuses in on the actual voiced regrets of people she encountered when they were dying. Powerful stuff – go and pick up the book!
Here’s a small excerpt:
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
POST YOUR QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS BELOW
P.S. Did this article stir something in your soul (like it did with mine)? Let’s talk. I’ve worked with many clients who have the same questions — and we developed a successful plan to turn that around. If you’re not a client . . . pick up the phone and call me (203.500.2421) — I schedule infrequent complimentary sessions – catch one today.
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And what if doing some or all of these hurts someone whom you love? What then?
Tim – Great point. Today, a lot of people are selfish and make decisions that might be good for them and bad for others. My hope in these five ‘regrets’ that we take into account how our actions and decisions affect others – and compensate to ensure we benefit without hurting others (or at least lessening the impact). I love your comments!
It’s hard, Rich. Unless you are very lucky, changing things the way these points suggest is likely to create unexpected havoc. All except keeping in touch with your friends. Though, as we have seen, facebook reunites old flames and wrecks current relationships.
I think, when one is dying, one expresses the regrets rather than sees the issues that altering things now would cause.
The message, and it s a valid message, is to plan every decision in order to have no regrets later. Do it this way and everyone wins. Then they would not have done (this) and thus (that person) would not be upset when they undo it today
One of my regrets was not meeting Julia Child before she passed away. Now when I have an opportunity to meet someone I admire, I grab it.
Lisa
Lisa – That’s the spirit! I always read the NY Times Obituary section and learn about all these cool and adventurous people who just passed away. I would love an internet site which would do the same thing – but with people that are still living. That’s why I read Wired, Fast Company, and Inc. – cool people doing cool things.
I’m an Executive Coach diagnosed for the third time with cancer. This time it’s lung cancer. I have thrived after thyroid cancer (20 years ago), breast cancer (11 years ago), and it will be a year in February siince my last diagnosis and treatment. There’s nothing like cancer to motivate you to re-evaluate your life. Mine is grand!
I believe that most people also only make those comments when they are certain they are going to die. How many people would really give up a well paid job so they can go and live in a forest or let their children miss out on a good education because they gave up work to live happily but poor. Life is what it is and regret is the biggest regret of them all. Work hard, live well, regret nothing and when your time comes, face it with dignity. No one escapes alive and there is no perfect life, love your friends and your family and do one amazing act of kindness in your life for someone you’ve never met for no other reason than it’s a great thing to do. Expect no thanks, even for the big things, but give thanks and praise to even the smallest thing. I guarantee when you are lying on your death bed and you have achieved these things, regret is a word you won’t even understand.
Reading these things made me think “Wow, I’m lucky enough to be living the life a lot of people wish they had!” I am married to my sweetheart, stay home with my four little kids I adore, have oodles and scads of the best girlfriends anyone could want, savor the good things and try to learn from the hard ones, and am truly happy. I feel so blessed.
I just gave my Creative Writing students the task of creating their “Bucket List”. I decided to do the assignment with them and plan on framing my list to be sure that I make the effort to accomplish my dreams. Eye opening experience.
Perhaps this is just a way to consider making small adjustments, i.e. go on an exciting trip, take a day off to celebrate an anniversary, step outside of the box a little in how you dress or decorate your home, tell someone that you love them or that they hurt you or you are proud of them and go have lunch with friends instead of letting Facebook be a substitute for friendship. I can’t fathom how these decisions would completely alter your life or someone else in some terrible way, except making you terribly happy.
I am a professional and over the years had to leave jobs which demand too much of me. Sorry, in the evenings I go to the gym to stay healthy and have dinner with my husband. I enjoy weekend trips and spending time with friends. Why do companies want to work you to death at the expense of your family, health, friends, hobbies and happiness? Who said “no one on their death bed wishes they spent more time at the office” I always think about that. Yes, I will work hard for you. Yes, I will put in 40 hours a week. Yes, I will try my absolute best and appreciate that you hired me. No, you will not take over my life!
And I agree with what you said about friendship. I recently spoke my mind and told a friend that I am going through a hard time and need her to be a friend, not just a drinking buddy. I received no response to this, didn’t hear from her in about two months, and she didnt invite me & my husband to her boyfriend’s surprise party (we’ve known this couple for 8 years) I do not regret speaking my mind and it looks like I just “released an unhealthy relationship from my life”
The only real regret is not living your life for Jesus. Sure, we all could do more things but in the end that’s just beneficial to ourselves and it’s not helping others. If you accomplished everything on your list above, at the end of your life it would still be meaningless compared to a life spent following Jesus. “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?”- Mark 8:36
Oh Kay, how arrogant and evangelistic. Yours is not the only game in town.
I think to live by faith and not by fear helps keep priorities clear. Fear told us all that we had to have $100,00 before retirement. The next year, it was $250,000. A year later, half a million, then certainly you’ll need a million. A regret of many retired people is that they wish they hadn’t spent so much time slaving for retirement because the money didn’t last, they exhausted themselves with worry (fear) trying to save so much and guess what—they were happy anyway…without all the savings! Work hard, sure, but in the end, we cannot choose what will take our life or the timing, so it seems like a really good idea to get close to and have faith in the One who makes that choice for us and find peace.
A faith is fine. Pronouncing that it is, by inference, the only faith worth following, or that others must adhere to it, that is not. Faith comes in many forms, with and without capital lettered words. Believe in whatever is important to you to believe in, and welcome. Living a decent life is important to me, and it is important to those that surround me that I do so. By living a decent life I minimise my regrets and theirs when those regrets refer to me. But I can do that with a general faith, with a specific faith or with no faith at all.
I’m happy to look at the morality declared by more than one faith and to determine if that allows me to live a decent life. I have seen many such stated moralities that promote hatred, ‘me first’, and so much that is unequivocally not decent. I have seen many stated moralities that are wholesome. By and large the wholesome offsets the unwholesome. But faith is a personal choice. Mine is not better than yours, yours is not better than mine. You may state that you have a faith and have none. I may state that I have none and have a profound faith.
But I will never regret “not living my life for Jesus”. If you read the books and believe in them then you understand this Jewish chap lived his life for me, among others.
If it’s all the same to you I’ll just do my best and will try to pick good role models. Jesus is one such, Buddha is another. There are many more.
What, exactly is “living your life for Jesus”? I grew up in an Independent Fundamentalist church which used fear as a means of control. If you weren’t born again you were going to hell. Homosexuals are going to hell. My grandfather went to hell because he was Catholic and I didn’t “save him”. If this is the “Jesus” I am supposed to follow, I’ll pass. As an adult, I know better now. There isn’t just one road into heaven. Arrogant and evangelistic? Ditto from me.
I am a 31 year old mother of a 1 yr old boy, married to an awesome man who is my best friend and so much more, I have an outstanding extended and immediate family and amazing girlfriends. When I was about 26, I decided to go back to college and become an RN, something I never thought I could do. I feel like I am living my dream, I am able to be home with my child 95% of the time, and when I am working, I get to do a job that I love, that so happens to be caring for others. I believe it is true what your patients say, in the end, love and relationships are all that matters. You can’t take money to the grave. The only thing I have reservations about is “speaking your mind”….I am a person that does this, maybe to a fault. I have learned that sometimes it is better to keep thoughts to yourself and spare someone’s feelings. On the other hand, if someone really and truly hurts you, there is usually a tactful way to express yourself. And of course, always say “I love you”!!!
I work in a construction trade, long hours in decaying powerhouses that are always far from home, away from my wife and 2 children. Often I am layed off, sometimes for long periods of time between jobs. Something I learned quick was that money didn’t replace me in my children’s or wife’s life. Being home with nowhere to go or nothing to do is often the happiest times in my life so far. I get the perspective of being away from those who matter the most, then the point of view of all day every day in a small house cluttered with toys, dogs, cats and children. It is a curious blend of life but living small and keeping the overhead low equals time, time with those who are most important at the most important time in their life.
We should look at the way we have relationships with people all our lives. There’s no point waiting for someone to be seriously ill and dying before telling you them you love them, that you’re sorry, or that you wished you’d done things differently.
I regret that while pregnant I got overly confident about the birth so switched OBs from a very experienced Dr. to a less experienced one. The new OB had privileges at a hospital with lactation consultants and larger rooms (a small community hospital) that I liked better than the first OB’s much larger hospital and I knew that since mine was to be a scheduled c-section I’d be in that hospital for several days. Sadly, 5 days prior to the scheduled c-section, 2 days after ceasing the blood thinner injections that I’d put myself on at the advice of two specialists, I came down with HELLP Syndrome (a rare and extreme form of eclampsia) that gave me a stroke, put me in three-week long coma, and ruptured my liver. For a while it looked like I might die. In fact my husband was told to prepare for my death but he replied, “That’s not an option.” When the surgeons did a CT scan they told him in a surprised tone, “She’s not bleeding again in the brain and the liver seems to have healed. We think she may survive.” They did predict, however, that if I walked again I’d be on a walker or crutches for a year. Mercifully, neither were necessary when I did finally walk again about six months later. However, due to the traumatic brain injury I was not able to live at home for six months and have no memories of the first three months of my daughter’s life. My husband tells me that he would place our infant daughter in my arms and I would gaze at her and murmur, “She’s beautiful. Can we keep her?” He says that he’d reply, “But honey, she’s ours” and I would just gaze at him skeptically. The brain injury was so bad that if someone left the room I would not remember that they had been there even as soon as a few minutes later. And apparently the TBI messed with my perceptions. My husband says that I’d look at our daughter and say “she’s beautiful” when her face was at rest but when she sucked on a bottle I’d say, “Poor thing, she’s not very attractive, is she?” He realized that my brain was “freeze framing” her expressions and once he understood what was going on my comments ceased to upset him.
During recovery I had to relearn to breathe, speak, swallow, walk, talk and think again. The therapies for this were NO FUN. In fact if I had to do an exercise called “the cognition module” one more time I thought I was going to scream. But I was blessed to live in a city that offers these therapies and to have dual (union provided) health insurance that paid for them.
Prior to this illness I had achieved professional success at a creative and lucrative (and highly competitive) career I loved, earned a good income and great union provided health benefits, and had saved enough money to put a down payment on a house in Los Angeles (no easy task) so I had a lot to be proud of. Now I struggle with pathfinding and short term memory issues as well as PTSD. However, I am grateful for all that improbably went right and when I look at our beautiful daughter (now 18 months old) who is such a happy and healthy little girl I feel very blessed. So many babies born to moms with this illness don’t survive. My husband and I recently did a “promise walk” on behalf of March of Dimes and raised $1,000 for research into infant prematurity.
I’m looking into organizing a promise walk in the Los Angeles area for research into HELLP. Although a rare illness, there are others who suffer it and whose babies do not survive. I would like to help them. I would also like to use some of what I have learned about brain injury to advocate on behalf of the brain injured, a population that does not always receive compassionate care. Although the clinic I attended was topnotch, I saw patients treated in ways there that can still make me cry and I don’t just want to forget about this but rather work to raise awareness and change the way the brain injured are treated.
It’s phenomenal how many touching and heartfelt comments and stories come out of a simple blog post – thank you for letting me into your world and I hope my writing helps just a little bit.
Great post. As a recent grad (of Ripon College!) I couldn’t agree more with #2. I’m currently job searching and Work/Life Balance tops my list of priorities. I want to work when I’m at work, and focus only on family when I’m home. However, as technology evolves it seems there is an increased expectation to be constantly connected. Because of this, it seems like the types of jobs that do not require you to take your work home with you are becoming inceasingly rare. Do you see the same thing?
Also, as a job-seeker, how can I convey that work/life balance is my top priority without coming across as lazy, or uncommited? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Eric – Check this out – http://richgee.com/2011/12/are-you-working-too-much-here%E2%80%99s-how-click-it-down/
Also nice to read in the same “area”
“Happier” by Tal-Ben Shahar
“Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch
I asked a friend why she hadn’t opened a present I gave her yet. I’ll never forget her beautiful smile as she looked to me and said. I am savoring the moment! I loved that thought! Every moment can be a gift when we approach life that way.
Death is a part of living, a phase of life that I use to fear, that I ultimately decided to take on. In fact, my life already came to an end, an event I witnessed and walked away unscathed to tell of to others. For me, everyday I wake up, now, is a day of purpose. I was always told the most important decision we ever make is the decision of faith in Jesus Christ, faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, and I accepted this. I’m mentioning this because without faith in the one who freed us from slavery, we are standing on the wrong side of the tracks, so to say. It’s a pivotal moment to believe in the one who lived perfectly because, now, you’re positionally relocated to the other side of the tracks making anything possible. Letting go of the old ways of thinking takes time. It’s never too late!