Book #3
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
By Bronnie Ware
Unfortunately Relatable Content
When I was reading this book, I was immersed in the stories within it feeling sympathy for the people within its pages, but not empathy. Sympathy comes when you care about another person’s situation. Empathy is when you understand and share that person’s feelings.
I listened to their stories with the kind of detachment that people typically view death. It always seems to happen to other people, until it happens to us. Most of us don’t like to think about it on a daily basis, perhaps we like to pretend it doesn’t exist. We are surprised when it becomes personal.
A few stories in, it hit me like a train that I can in fact deeply relate to the people in these stories.
I got very sick in my 20’s. I am now in my early 30’s and am doing okay. I am not thriving but I’m not dying either, life just goes on day by day getting incrementally better. So I thought to myself, dang. What were my top five regrets? I came up with six.
My Top Regrets When I Got Sick
Regret #1: Allowing Other People to Dictate My Life
I wrote this first regret down before I came across the regrets in Ware’s book. I was surprised that this regret was one of the top five. For all our uniqueness, I don’t think humans are so different after all.
I am a naturally soft-spoken person and although I can speak up for myself and be blunt at times, my overall nature is quite gentle. I like laughter and getting along with people. This nature led to a certain porousness of my personality. I would bend a lot in order to make others happy.
At the beginning, I was happy to do so but slowly resentment began to grow. This was especially true for subjects that were very important to me, such as my values or the physical safety of myself or others.
I wish I had asked myself if I wanted to spend time around people who regularly asked me to be someone that I’m not. My answer to that is no. And my answer to that question in those days would also have been no if I had thought to ask myself that.
Regret #2: Giving Up Something I Wasn’t Willing to Lose
Risking What Matters Most to You
While I was sick, I had very little in the way of resources. I had student loans, I didn’t have a place of my own, I had very few assets, and I had lost the intangible things that I cared about too, like my values and bubbly personality. I hadn’t lived the life I wanted to live despite my best efforts to do so.
So my advice to my younger self is this: There are things in life that are fundamental to your well-being. This list is personal to you, but for me these are: the relationships you value most, your financial security, your physical safety and the safety of those you care about, your passions, and your values. Do not give these things up lightly and if you do, make sure it is for a good reason.
Romance Scams
There are several stories in the news today about people losing their life savings to online romance scams. I think those people would have similar regrets to mine, although my life savings were likely much smaller when I got sick in my early 20’s than theirs are.
From the outside, people looking in shake their heads and say, “How could this person hand over their retirement fund or their child’s inheritance?” It seems incomprehensible. But I think this comes from a relaxation of a life rule that inspired this regret of mine: that is, be very slow to give up something that is fundamental to your well-being.
Sometimes Losses Happen in an Instant, Sometimes Slowly Over Time
After losing the things I cared about most when I got sick, I wish I had written down a list of non-negotiables. Such as: No, I will not go into debt just to make anyone happy.
These important parts of your life are not typically lost all at once, but slowly over time. This means that by the time you notice how far astray you have gone, you have already lost so much. I wish I would have thought about this before losing anything.
Defining My Non-Negotiables
If I were to create a list of general subjects that are fundamental to my identity and well-being, it would be:
My Passions
- If someone ever asks you to make yourself a smaller version of yourself in an area that you have worked hard for, like your career, I would tell myself to run. I regret giving these up for anyone because these are the things that make me “Me” and if someone doesn’t value that then they are not the right person for me.
My Finances
- If someone ever asks you to do something with money that you feel uncomfortable about, that is a red flag. I wish I would have questioned the relationship.
My Health
- Similar to finances, if someone asks you to drain your health in order to make them happy, that is a red flag. I would now deeply question that relationship. If I questioned it and decided that I wanted to continue the relationship, I would ask such questions as: How long am I expected to exist in a health deficit? A few weeks? Months? Years? This would have helped me to spot a train wreck before it happened.
My Safety
- If someone was comfortable with me feeling unsafe, I wish I would have run. True friends value your safety and comfort. They want you to be at ease.
My Values
- People who love you should not ask you to relax your values for their sake. Instead they want to learn more about these values because this is what makes you who you are. Looking back, I would surround myself with people who respected and supported my individual values.
Regret #3: Never Saying “No”
Don’t Confuse Being Nice With Having Poor Boundaries
In those days, it was a very popular sentiment to want to be nice to everyone. Get along with everyone! Be happy! Be kind! But I think it is essential for a young person to develop the ability to say “No. I am not like you”.
They are going to need to do this in certain situations throughout their life, like if their friends ask them to steal something from a store, if a weird older person wants to grow closer to them, or if someone tells them something about themself that they disagree with, such as: you are stupid, you’re a specific sexual orientation, you want to be a doctor, you should follow in my footsteps.
I gritted my teeth and too many times did something I disagreed with in order to be “nice”. But a person should never be nice because it is expected of them, it should be given freely. Otherwise that person isn’t making a free choice.
I regret not walking away from situations sooner and I think I would have been able to if I would have developed the ability to say “No. I’m not like you”.
Regret #4: Leaving a Regrettable Legacy
When I was sick, I realized how little I trusted the people around me to carry out my wishes. This is partially because of the aforementioned regrets.
I had spent years allowing others to walk all over me and was contorted into someone that I was not. This meant that when it came time for me to think about the legacy I left, I didn’t like it. It was not my own. These values were someone else’s and I regretted that the world never got to know the full me. This was reflected in my legacy.
You create a legacy while you are alive. The legacy you leave in death is just the momentum of your living legacy. While I was healthy, I wish I had crafted this legacy in my own image, not the image of what others thought I should be.
Regret #5: Convincing Yourself that You Are Less Important Than You Are
I made myself into a smaller version of myself to make others happy. And guess what? They still weren’t happy.
I wish I could have avoided convincing myself that I suck at life and instead embraced a healthy view of being a person on earth.
I am meant to be here. I exist for a reason. This is an exploratory attitude, not a constrained one. I wish I would have maintained this attitude when I became an adult. I would have accepted far more opportunities if I believed myself worthy of them.
Regret #6: Allowing Myself to Be Influenced in Ways I Didn’t Like
Not All “Good” Advice is Good
I think often well-meaning and ill-meaning people will try to influence your decision in a certain direction.
An example of a well-meaning person trying to influence you would be someone telling you that you should go to university. They are giving you what they believe is good advice, but you are the one who will have to do the work and pay off your student loans. So you should be the one making this decision.
No one else should convince you of a certain action unless they too will be responsible for the consequences of it.
Beware the Power of Influence
An example of a person with bad intentions convincing you to do something you don’t want to do… well, I think there is an obvious one when it comes to sex and intimacy.
Influence is a powerful thing and if you don’t stand your ground, you could find yourself far away from where you wanted to be. And the person that influenced you to that place? There is no guarantee they will be there for you when the consequences hit. If you’re the one left holding the bag, the decision should be up to you.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on Mar. 9, 2025)
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware is available here.
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