The Top Life Regret Of Dying Hospital Patients

By James Clear

Bronnie Ware is a nurse in Australia. She has spent more than a decade counseling dying people. Over that time span, she began recording the top regrets that people have on their death bed.

After 12 years, she concluded that the most common regret of all was this:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Why is this such a common regret at the end of our lives? And how can you make sure that you don’t end up feeling the same way?

How to Be Courageous and Avoid the Biggest Regret. If you’re reading this website, then you probably have the power to make decisions in your daily life. It’s rare the we are actually forced to live in a way that we don’t want to live (thankfully). But somehow, many of us still end up wishing we had lived in a way that was more true to ourselves.

Here’s why I believe this happens:

Anytime I find myself feeling stuck in neutral, it’s usually the result of not having a clear target. I find myself doing work without defining what the work should actually be or hoping for a change without determining the underlying actions that would lead to it. In other words, I’m not being clear about what I care about and how I can get there. More on this in a moment.

Here’s the result:

If you never draw a line in the sand and clarify what is really important to you, then you’ll end up doing what’s expected of you. When you don’t have a clear purpose driving you forward, you default to doing what other people approve of. We’re not sure what we really want, and so we do what we think other people want.

The gray areas in life usually arise when we haven’t decided what we believe.

This is the position I think we all find ourselves in from time to time. And it’s one reason why I think many of us end up living the life others expect us to live …Read More: https://jamesclear.com/top-regret-dying-people