This week, a friend posted in his Facebook a video of a doctor in a Brazilian hospital talking about a study made by an Australian nurse that lists the top 5 regrets of the dying.
I could not find a nice video in English, so posting here the link to the blog of the author of the study.
http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
Right now, looking at those regrets, I identify some of them as potential regrets I’ll have later in life.
So i guess I have to start changing, right.
Actually I’ve been changing already, but maybe not as much or as fast.
So lets talk about each individually:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
Not sure if I’m too guilty of that one. Sometimes I may do like others expect me too (having retired this blog as one example) but not so much I guess. Not to the point of having a reason to regret. I guess…
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
Define work! Hahaha. I do work hard in a way that I spend a lot of time in the office, which is time taken away from family. Sometimes I have the chance to go back home early, but because I know once I get home I won’t have time for certain things (like blogging) I stay at the office even longer for that. It’s not work, but still time away from family spent in the office. That said, if anything is needed for family that would required me to miss work, I don’t hesitate. Hubby does sometimes hesitate (although I need to be fair that when really needed he’s always there for them too. Nope, can’t complain of him at all), I never do.
I do wish though, that I would spend less time in the office so I could do things that interest me more. The problem being that I don’t enjoy my job really. If I did, I’d be more cool about this.
And I AM working on that. I am back to school to learn a new profession and be able to change and do something more enjoyable and potentially more flexible that would give me more time for leisure.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
This is one of the biggest ones for me. I do have a hard time. Especially when it comes to expressing my feeling to the people that matter the most. I can totally talk about my feelings to a stranger or a good friend who is just that, a good friend. But as soon as the person becomes really close to me and as soon as the feelings are related to them, regardless of what sort of feelings, than I have a hard time. I do say I love you to the loved ones, but I usually don’t say when I’m mad with them for whatever reason, when my feelings are hurt. I simply shut up and go on, which I know it’s not healthy and does not help the person realize that they could have hurt me (sometimes it’s not intentional, and they just don’t realize it.)
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Yep, that’s another one. Although nowadays with Facebook and other social media t;s easier to find old friends again and reconnect. It’s never the same level of relationship. Especially if you are 7,000 miles away from them, so still a reason to some regret. But just the fact that we’re trying to reconnect I guess eases this one a bit.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
I’m trying this one hard! and you know what, I’m succeeding on it.
I won’t tell here that I’m 100% happy at 100% of the time (this past couple of weeks being an example of not feeling too extremely happy, as you can see in my previous post), but I’m doing much better now that I was 2 years ago.
Just need to continue living like that to not have this regret when my time comes.
So there you go. An evaluation of how I am doing in regards to the top 5 regrets.
Creative Busyness 