Death is a weird thing to talk about. Most of us spend our entire lives sprinting away from the mere thought of it, distracted by notifications, bills, and the sheer noise of existing. But when the noise finally stops, people tend to get incredibly clear-eyed.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse who spent years sitting by the bedsides of people in their final weeks, noticed something. It wasn't just a random assortment of "I wish I'd seen the Eiffel Tower." It was more specific. More repetitive. She eventually compiled these observations into her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and honestly, the list is a bit of a gut punch because it's so mundane.
Nobody mentions their LinkedIn profile. No one wishes they’d bought the slightly faster SUV. Instead, they talk about the version of themselves they never let out of the box.
The Weight of the "Shoulds"
The most common regret Ware recorded—by a long shot—was the wish that the person had lived a life true to themselves, rather than the life others expected of them.
Think about that for a second.
Most people die realizing they lived for a script written by someone else. Maybe it was their parents. Maybe it was a vague sense of societal pressure. We suppress our own dreams to fit in, to be "stable," or to avoid making people uncomfortable. When health fails, that pressure vanishes instantly. What's left is the clarity that you traded your only life for the approval of people who aren't even there in the room with you at the end. It’s a heavy realization.
You’ve probably felt this. That tiny voice in your head that says "I want to do this," followed immediately by the much louder voice that asks "But what will they think?"
At the end, "they" don't matter. They never did.
Working Your Life Away
This one is almost exclusively voiced by men in Ware’s specific experience, though that's likely a generational byproduct that is shifting. Every single male patient she nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their life on the treadmill of work.
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They missed their children’s youth. They missed the companionship of their partners.
We’re told that providing is the ultimate goal. And sure, we need money to eat. But there is a point of diminishing returns where the extra hours at the office don't buy a better life—they just buy a more expensive version of a life you're too tired to enjoy. This isn't just "lifestyle" advice; it's a fundamental shift in how we view time. Time is the only currency that matters because you can't earn more of it.
The people on their deathbeds weren't thinking about the promotion they landed in 1994. They were thinking about the Tuesday afternoons they could have spent at the park.
The Courage to Speak Up
We bite our tongues. A lot.
We do it to keep the peace. We do it because we're scared of confrontation. But "peace" gained through the suppression of your true feelings is just a slow-motion war against yourself. Many people reach the end of their lives and realize that by being "nice" and never expressing their true feelings, they settled for a mediocre existence. They never truly connected with others because they never showed their true selves.
They carried bitterness. Or they carried unexpressed love.
Both are heavy.
Why We Hide
- Fear of rejection: If I say how I feel, they might leave.
- Conflict avoidance: It’s easier to stay quiet than to argue.
- Emotional illiteracy: We literally don't have the words for our internal state.
The result of this silence is often physical. Research into the mind-body connection, like that discussed by Dr. Gabor Maté in When the Body Says No, suggests that the long-term stress of suppressing emotion can actually manifest as physical illness. By the time people realize this, it's often too late to repair the relationships or the health they lost along the way.
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Losing Touch with the Pack
It’s easy to let friendships slide. You get busy. You have kids. You move. You assume they’ll always be there, or you’ll "catch up eventually."
But then decades pass.
One of the top regrets of dying is the realization that golden friendships were allowed to slip away. There is a deep loneliness in the final weeks when the people who truly knew you—the ones who shared your history—are nowhere to be found because you didn't put in the work to keep the bridge standing. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. Everyone.
It’s not just about having someone to talk to. It’s about being witnessed. Friends are the keepers of our memories. When you lose those connections, you lose a part of your own story.
Choosing Happiness
This sounds like a Hallmark card, but it’s actually quite profound. Many people don't realize until the end that happiness is, at least in part, a choice.
They stayed stuck in old patterns. The "comfort" of familiarity—even if that familiarity was miserable—was easier than the risk of change. They stayed in the same grumbling loops, the same unhappy marriages, the same drab routines. They were "settled."
Fear of change made them pretend to themselves and to others that they were content. But on the deathbed, the mask slips. You realize that you could have laughed more. You could have been sillier. You could have worried less about the things that, in the grand scheme, didn't matter.
The Practical Reality of Regret
Looking at these regrets isn't meant to be a "downer." It's actually a roadmap. If we know where the pitfalls are, we can jump over them.
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The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies on human happiness, backs this up. They’ve been tracking a group of men (and later their families) for over 80 years. The conclusion? It’s not wealth or fame. It’s the quality of our relationships.
If you are currently prioritizing your "Top 5 Regrets" list instead of your "Top 5 Life Goals" list, it's time to pivot.
How to Actually Change Direction
1. Audit your time like it's money. If you spent $500 on something stupid, you'd be annoyed. But we spend five hours scrolling on social media or arguing with strangers and don't feel a thing. Stop it. Look at your calendar. If it's 90% "stuff you have to do" and 0% "stuff that makes you feel alive," you are building a future regret.
2. Say the thing.
That person you're annoyed with? Tell them. That person you love? Tell them. Do it today. The "perfect time" is a myth. The only time that exists is right now.
3. Simplify the "stuff." The more you own, the more you have to work to maintain the things you own. If you reduce your overhead, you reduce the need to work those extra hours that everyone regrets at the end. It's a trade: a smaller house for a larger life.
4. Reconnect.
Pick up the phone. Don't text. Call. Or better yet, go see them. Deepening one or two key friendships is worth more than a thousand "followers."
5. Permission to be happy.
Stop waiting for everything to be perfect before you allow yourself to enjoy the day. Life is messy. It will always be messy. You have to find the joy in the middle of the mess, or you won't find it at all.
Living without regret doesn't mean you never make mistakes. It means you don't let fear make your decisions for you. It means that when you eventually reach the end of the line, you can look back and say that while it wasn't perfect, it was definitely your life. Not someone else's version of it.