Most people download the PDF, read it, feel a momentary pang of existential dread, close the tab, and go back to work. That is useless. Here is how to weaponize this document.
This is the most common regret. It is also the heaviest. Ware notes that most patients had not even realized, until the end, how much of their life was a performance. They played the good spouse, the reliable employee, the obedient child. They dimmed their own desires for the comfort of others.
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.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent several years caring for patients in the last weeks and days of their lives. During this time, she noticed a common pattern of regrets that people expressed as they approached death. These regrets were not just about what they had done or not done, but also about the way they had lived their lives. In her TED Talk, Ware shares the top five regrets of the dying, which have been widely shared and discussed.
Based on Ware's experience, the top five regrets of the dying are: