Minimize Regret
In 2009 Bronnie Ware wrote a blog post that would change her life and it would go on to change the lives of millions of others who would read it.
In the short blog post, called Regrets Of The Dying, Bronnie shares the most common regrets of the patients she worked with in palliative care. During her time at the palliative care center, she would spend the final three to twelve weeks of their life with her patients. When someone is dying and in palliative care, there is little to do other than reflect on life and talk, which is what Bronnie did. She listened to their accomplishments, happy moments, sad moments, and regrets.
Throughout these conversations, Bronnie noticed a few common regrets of her patients and she shared five of these common regrets, along with a little commentary in her blog post. The post became so popular that Bronnie eventually turned it into a book and focused her life’s work on helping people avoid the same regrets her patients had.
If you haven’t come across Bronnie Ware’s work, the top five common regrets of her palliative care patients were:
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.
When I first started creating content for the PRST brand, and now that I think about it even before when I would describe my work with clients of RLS Wealth, I would often talk about wanting to help people minimize regret in their lives. It’s not possible to eliminate regret but with intentional planning and understanding what you value the most in life, reducing and minimizing regret is possible.
Prior to trying to help clients minimize regrets, I don’t remember reading Bronnie’s blog post and I still don’t have the book–I should probably change that, but I can’t say with confidence that someone had not told me about her work. It’s quite possible the common regrets of the dying were living in my subconscious for years waiting for me to start down the path of PRST and now helping people connect their spirit, mind, body, and money in the pursuit of their authentic life. You can find an old Motivational Monday episode on the On Our PRST podcast channel where I discuss Bronnie’s post and today I find myself reconnecting with it as I write about the importance of allowing yourself to find your authentic life to minimize the regret in your life.
There should be urgency in the pursuit of your authentic life because it is unknown how much time you have left. We assume that we will live a long life which gives us plenty of time to make changes and live the life we were meant to live—our authentic life. And hopefully, you do have a lot of time left ahead of you, but what if you don’t?
I put two of the regrets in bold because as I read them I couldn’t help but think of “authentic life”. Another way of summarizing the common regrets of Bronnie Ware’s palliative care patients was they regretted not living their authentic lives.
Don’t take it from me–a guy with a belief… there were (and are) dying people who would have given anything to trade places with you and redo their life to minimize their regrets by living their authentic life.
You owe it to yourself, and those you care about, to take the time to align your spirit, mind, body, and money to find your authentic life. And once you find it, make the changes to actually live it.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC
