Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Well again, something that popped up in my inbox this morning.

Shifting from 'early morning rituals'...all the way to 'dying' :)

But seriously, the very title caught my attention 'Insights at the Edge'. It was an interview with the author Bronnie Ware on her book 'Top 5 regrets of the dying', a book that's been translated into 27 languages (after being rejected by 25 publishers)

Bronnie has spent several years working with dying people, and this book came out of her experience.

As I started to read, I found myself getting goosebumps in parts. It was so powerful. In fact moved me enough to go research more on it, and from what I read, and heard, here's excerpts:

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying:

1. The most common regret was people wishing that they had lived a life true to themselves, not a life that other people had expected of them.

"All of our regrets come from a lack of courage," that's really the root of all of the top regrets people have at the end of their life. 

"It's as simple and as difficult as that. So much of everyone's lives—initially, until they make that choice to start to truly honor the life that they are called to live, that we're all called to live—is shaped by courage, or is shaped by fear............. because so much of it is about other people, how we're going to look in front of other people, or how we're going to be judged, or assumptions people are going to make, because if you're willing to live a life true to yourself, at some point, you're going to be considered a fool by some people, and you're going to most likely cop some ridicule and criticism.

So it does take courage, to step out and say, "Well, you know, I really don't care anymore what you think, because my heart is telling me to go this way, and I'm really, really scared, because I don't know where it's leading me to, but I'm going to find the courage and do that, because I am not going to have regrets."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"A lot of people realized that they'd given too much time to work, even because of passion, or because they loved it, but not actually allocated enough time and focus on other areas of their life, which would have supported their work and which would have supported their heart and their healing in other ways.

If I step back and create some unplanned space, or focus on other areas of my life, my work benefits enormously anyway. It's almost like you give your work a shortcut, because instead of having to know every step of the way in your work, if you give attention to other areas, life then supports you by giving you shortcuts in your work anyway"

3. I wish I had had the courage to express my feelings.

"A lot of people are too scared how their vulnerability and honesty will be received, and that was something that in the end, they just wished they had done...that people had come to know them on a different level, regretted that their loved ones couldn't know them on that level, because they'd never found the courage to express their feelings"

It was being too scared to share the depth of their feelings to people —families, ex-partners, friends, whoever; but it was also wishing that they had had the courage to speak up in their own self-love, in their own defense, and not allowed . . . not given their power away to others. That caused massive anguish in some people, that they'd never expressed how they truly felt in a way that would have empowered them, even if the people receiving it would have enjoyed it, or not have enjoyed it.

We can't control how others are going to receive what we say, we can hope that it'll get through and the relationship will receive healing,  but what's more important is that you have lived in a way where you have had the courage to express all of who you truly are.

And there's ways to express it in kindness, even if it's frustration and anger. It doesn't necessarily have to be an attack on the other person. It can just be how you're feeling, like how their words or their treatment of you have left you feeling. So it's not necessarily like, "You're an awful person. You did this. You did that." I mean, that may come out, but it's more like, "I was left feeling broken because of this," or, "I felt this."

We need to reach the point where we know what we want to say, and perhaps we're even confident of articulating it well even if we're feeling vulnerable and scared to say it all.  Even that's rare, to get to that point where you're that confident to articulate it and get everything said you want. There's absolutely no guarantee or likelihood that the person receiving your expression has reached that same level of readiness. I mean, for those two aspects to line up exactly right is rare.  

I found that once the lid was lifted,  it created so much beautiful, loving space  that it was worth anything, any effort put in.  If we can dare to do it for our own healing, for the other, not to prove someone right or wrong....we're all here to dissolve our ego. "

4.  "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." 

People were wanting to reflect and reminisce on the beautiful and fun aspects of their lives. People who are dying want to live for as long as possible, and oftentimes the families were already going into a place of grief while the person was still alive.

That's where friends really came into it, because even though friends were also grieving and had their own pains, there was just such a different dynamic, where friends could reminisce about the good old days in a way that family couldn't, and it brought a lot of mischief, and laughter, and just a whole different angle of love to the dying person's final weeks, because the family often didn't know all of the stories that their friends knew.

It's these real-life connections that are truly the essence of joy, and the realization that we need to prioritize them.

5. "I wish I had let myself be happier."

Most people don't seem to realize that happiness was a choice. That's not denying that there's suffering and learning, and pretending to be happy every minute of the day, that's unrealistic. We're here to be stretched, and to grow, and to return to our wholeness. 

But a lot of people realized they'd stuck to old patterns, and just owned the identity that other people had dumped upon them, and that feeling that they weren't worthy of happiness.

I would pray that they could realize how much time they're wasting in trying to solve everything themselves, because if you're doing it alone, that's a pretty hard place to be. Not that we don't have to get to know ourselves and our heart, but without that level of trust, there's not even a level of hope, and hope is a pretty powerful support system. If you can't trust, at least try to find the hope.

More and more, we have to realize we're all in this together. You know, you're not alone in it, and the harder the lesson, the more we tend to isolate ourselves and think we have to do it on our own.....whereas these are the times when we actually have to allow others to step up and realize what they're capable of, by asking for their help.

"I think that we have to use death as a tool for living. I find it is one of the most incredible tools for living, to realize the sacredness of our time, because it's an ever-decreasing resource. We may not have time to do every single thing we want, but the biggest gift we can give to ourselves is to enjoy our life as fully as possible, and that means to be as courageous in honoring our own heart as possible. And of course, that then benefits the whole world anyway.

"At core, it really comes down to living a life with tremendous courage"