As Isaac Asimov put it, "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." Shoshana Ungerleider, a doctor who founded the nonprofit End Well Foundation, told CNBC in September that people often share the same regrets at the end of their lives. The antidote, she advised, is to start asking yourself questions now: What is most important to me? Who do I want to spend my time with? "As a doctor, I'd recommend eating a balanced diet, and exercising regularly, and avoiding things like smoking and high-risk activities. Reflecting on mortality should really be on that list," Ungerleider says.
"Reflecting on our own mortality throughout life, whether you're 20, 50, 80, whatever, allows us to live better every day with more meaning and purpose in our lives," she added. What kind of regrets should you be looking to sidestep? In addition to regrets like working too many hours and not spending enough time with friends and family, here are some of the most common ones:
- "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Bronnie Ware, a former palliative care worker and author of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying, wrote in a blog post that this is "the most common regret of all. ... When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made." Hospital chaplain Joon Park echoes that to Business Insider: "People at the end cannot help but imagine a 'phantom life' of untapped possibility."
- "I wish I would have appreciated my health." Medical Daily quotes Julie McFadden, known as Hospice Nurse Julie, as noting this as a most-heard regret. "I think the biggest thing I hear from people [who are] dying is that they wish they would have appreciated how well they felt before," McFadden said. "I like the fact that I can breathe, I'm walking around, I can feel the sunshine—little things like that."
- "I wish I didn't spend so much time hating my body." In a 2017 essay for CNN, hospital chaplain Kerry Egan wrote that people have voiced many regrets to her before dying, "but the stories about the time they waste hating their bodies, abusing it or letting it be abused—the years people spend not appreciating their body until they are close to leaving it—are some of the saddest." She continues, "No matter what you believe happens after death, be it an afterlife, reincarnation or nothing at all, the fact remains: You will no longer be able to experience this world in this body, ever again. People who are dying face that reality every day. So they talk about their favorite memories of their bodies"—the joy in how things tasted, smelled, sounded, and felt.
story continues below
- "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings." This is another from Ware's list, and in an interview with Forbes, she explains how hearing this regret changed her own life. "Silence and introversion used to be my coping mechanisms. But unexpressed feelings just eat away inside. Witnessing the pain of this regret on numerous occasions gave me the courage to become as fully honest and open as possible, which has completely changed who I am in the best ways. It has not only brought me a deeper sense of peace and pride in who I am, but has also added immense richness to the quality of relationships I now enjoy both personally and professionally."
- "I regret not preserving conversations with the people I love." This regret comes not from the dying, but those who loved them. A YouGov poll from 2022 found 47% of Americans regret not having recorded or documented a conversation with a person they were close to before that person's death.
(More
death stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
