Living a Life of No Regrets
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One of my biggest fears in life is getting to the end and having regrets. In my old age, I don’t want to have a long list of experiences I wish I had, or places I wish I had gotten to visit.
It makes me sad when I hear older people say, “I always wanted to go there” or “I always wanted to do that.” I don’t feel that way out of judgement for them, everyone has different life circumstances and various hardships they face. However, it does inspire me to learn from their past regrets, to hopefully avoid the same fate.
It makes me reflect on how I can live a life of no regrets. It makes me want to control what I can control. It inspires me to prioritize quality time, relationships, travel, and experiences – rather than working crazy hours to accumulate more material possessions. It makes we want to prioritize meaningful work instead of busy work. It reaffirms the importance of saving and investing, as we build wealth on our path to financial independence.
Regrets of the Dying
For many years Bronnie Ware worked with terminally ill patients at the very end of their lives. She wrote a popular blog post titled, “Regrets of the Dying” where she details the five most common regrets that patients shared with her. She dives even deeper into these lessons in her book, Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.
Here are those five regrets:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
My biggest takeaways from Ware’s findings are two-fold:
First, don’t wait around for “someday,” as that day may never come. If you’re waiting around to be “ready” or needing to feel like you have it all figured out, you’ll always be waiting. We need to live life to the fullest while we still can and treasure every moment possible.
Second, live the life that you want to live, not the life that others prescribe for you. We need to make our own path. You don’t have to go to college, work a traditional 9-to-5 job, get married, have two kids, buy a house with a white picket fence – if that’s not the life you want. What do YOU want out of life?
This is Ware’s first point, the regret of living a life that was expected of us, rather than a life that is true to ourselves. If you determine that entrepreneurship or living as a digital nomad is right for you, then take the leap and give it a shot! Or if you value stability, stick with a more traditional career path and build up wealth that way.
While this post may seem a bit morbid, I hope that it encourages you to reflect about the life you want to live. How can we pursue our purpose and find contentment? How can we live a life where, when we’re our death bed someday and looking back, we can feel proud?
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