How to Prevent Major Regrets in Your Life

The book Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A life transformed by the dearly departing written by Bronnie Ware is one of the excellent books to get great perspectives about regrets, why we have regrets, what causes them, how can we possibly prevent them in our lives, and much more.

She was looking for a job that she could do with her heart and ended up being the carer (care taker) to the dying. Over years of that profession, she had a chance to talk to many leaving souls. And realized, some common regrets of lives are most repeating.

I got very thought-provoking insights by reading that book. As I thought about many regrets, I had an urge to write about few regrets that I could relate to by looking at people around me. And, I believe, if people focused on them, life can be most rewarding, fulfilling, and happier as we leave this world.

Here you go.

Not growing capabilities

Our capabilities can be nurtured and developed through our lives. How deep we go with them in fields or areas of work varies from person to person. Are we conscious of paying attention to our capabilities, and are we consistently growing them with a clear purpose?. If not, we have enormous potential to improve our capabilities and make life more valuable for us and others.

For example, I started running to be fit and healthier. In the journey, I became an ultramarathoner and saw that I could endure up to 24 hours at a stretch. Similarly, in writing, I visualized I could author a book. These experiences came a long way that made me understand how we could consistently work to grow our capabilities. It's about following our life's calling to pursue our possibilities.

It could be anything for your life, but did you take time to realize what are few areas of your life where your capabilities have the potential to grow, helping yourself and others?. Can you pass on the inspiration to others through your life?

Not being compassionate

Our life is complete when we live for ourselves and others. Others include starting from your parents, siblings, immediate family, relatives, community, society, city, state, country, and it can go up to the world.

How far did we go in our lives is an important question to ask? Did we live only for ourselves? Did we take good care of our parents? Did we stretch a bit and did something good for the society and community where we live? If we were fortunate enough, did we go further and touch the lives of people from all corners of the world by any means?

For example, some authors have written inspiring books, which millions of people are reading every day and their life is improving as they read those books and act.

Did you think in those lines? Did you get a perspective about how your life has been or is? Did you see your life as just you, or comprised of all lives around you?

Not spending quality time with your loved ones

The world is fast-moving to a culture where both parents are working to afford a good living standard in all geography of the world. When both parents work, their time for each other, their children, or dependents, reducing dramatically.

Working too much or not working on meaningful things can easily cost our time and even life. With online classes, too many gadgets, Internet exposure, and too much screen time, our children have more needs for parents' attention and time shaping their lives. Similarly, many parents are living too far away from working couples. We can do much more for our parents, calling them frequently, visiting them regularly, and providing them with all the needs (physical, emotional, and mental).

We can call our friends at regular intervals if we cannot meet them. We could take time and attend special occasions for our relatives.

In the face of fast-paced modern living, it is most important to take few minutes to think of all our loved ones and see if we made justice to them as part of our living.

Not being healthy

Many people post-retirement or much before, start to get symptoms of chronic illnesses. The primary reason being they didn't take care of their health when they were young. Things like diabetes, hypertension are on the rise at early ages caused by a sedentary or stressful lifestyle.

Many senior citizens find traveling very challenging, despite their wish to travel more and see various parts of the world. Reason? Their poor health conditions not allowing them to move around as they would like to.

Start right away. You are never late. Start spending 15 to 20 minutes every day towards upkeeping your health and fitness today. Visualize how you want to lead your life as you age.

Not learning enough or taking risks

We all believe that we learn a lot during our education, including school and college. With a professional degree, once we are in a job, we naturally start to live in a status quo. We seldom learn new things, be it related to our profession or outside it.

Last two decades, with technologies evolving and professions taking multiple forms (entrepreneurs, freelancers, product innovators, etc.), continuous learning has become inevitable. To provide value to customers or organizations, one needs to keep learning and keep upgrading their skills.

Without the drive to continuously learn, we can not take risks to explore more possibilities in our lives. E.g., If you have to move away from a 9-5 job and do a business, you need skills in more depth to provide outstanding value to customers.

Here is where hobbies can come a long way. If you pick up one hobby and continuously work on it, you can see that you can become an expert in it that can provide the possibility to earn as well.

Summing it up:

People have regrets in all junctions and corners of their lives. Regretting makes us sad, and if continued, it has possibilities to make us go unmotivated.

Happy people have fewer regrets in life, while sad people have more regrets if you keenly observe.

When people regret less, they have more energy left in them. They own their life responsibilities more. They wouldn't regret anything in the future because they know they gave their best.

Despite wherever you are in your life, you have great possibilities to stop regretting. You have the power within you to start motivating yourself to achieve your goals. When you take complete responsibility for your life, regrets begin to disappear because we know we are giving our best. We may look back only to learn more. We may never look back to regret.

There can be many more regrets. But if we looked at them holistically, there would only be a few that needs our attention. When they are taken care of well, we would see our lives becoming less regretful and more rewarding.