Holstee manifesto

The Guardian recently wrote about Bonnie Ware, an Austalian palliative care nurse who counseled and cared for the dying. Over many conversations with her patients, she heard five main regrets expressing things that they would have done differently. We find that rather than being a downer, they are a big gift, offering great perspective about shifts we might wish to make NOW:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

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

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

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

We find the last one the most striking: that feeling happiness was an option that was often not expressed or felt, though it could have been.

It’s worth reading the whole article, or checking out Ware’s website Inspiration and Chai for deeper rendering of her discoveries. She’s also written a book about them

We thing the Holstee Manifesto segues perfectly.

via Open Culture

Related posts: ‘ordinary people, extraordinary lives’
mind shift: the great bell chant
designing slow life
dept of the future: how would you like to be remembered?
the other sides of steve jobs: good + bad = ?
holstee’s inspiring video manifesto

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3 replies on “‘the top 5 regrets of the dying’ = a tool for living

  1. Thank you for this post.
    It is so true.
    I am finally working on a dream project that I thought about in third grade.

    I am 53.

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