The 5 Most Important Things in Life You’ll Probably Regret Not Pursuing

Author: Mark Pettit / Source: Lifehack

The definition of Regret in the Oxford English Dictionary is:^[1]

“Feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that one has done or failed to do)”

When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself:

“What hopes, dreams and plans do I have?”

“What does my ideal future look like?

”

“What is my purpose in life?”

“What do I really want from life, love and my career?”

How we set ourselves up to create a life well lived versus a life half lived is often more about the regrets we have over the things we failed to do rather than the things we actually did.

We regret more not becoming our ideal selves, or the person we truly wanted to be. We regret living an unfulfilled life. We regret living in fear and not having the courage to focus on the things and people that truly matter most.

We Regret Not Achieving Our Goals and Dreams

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying. — Jeff Bezos

Psychologist Tom Gilovich and his colleague Shai Davidai have found in a new research piece “The Ideal Road Not Taken” that people are haunted more by regrets about failing to fulfil their hopes, goals and aspirations than by regrets about failing to fulfil their duties, obligations and responsibilities.^[2]

Published in Emotion, the researchers surveyed hundreds of participants, making a distinction between “ideal self” (not achieving goals they had set for themselves, their dreams and ambitions) and “the ought self” (not meeting the norms and rules they had for themselves or fulfilling their obligations to others), before asking them to list, name and categorise their regrets.

^[3]

Across the different studies, the participants said they experienced regrets concerning their ideal self more often (72 per cent vs. 28 per cent).

They mentioned more ideal-self regrets than ought-self regrets when asked to list their regrets in life so far (57 per cent vs. 43 per cent).

When asked to name their single biggest regret in life, participants were more likely to mention a regret about not fulfilling their ideal self (76 per cent vs. 24 per cent mentioning an ought-self regret).

“When we evaluate our lives, we think about whether we’re heading toward our ideal selves, becoming the person we’d like to be. Those are the regrets that are going to stick with you, because they are what you look at through the windshield of life. The ‘ought’ regrets are potholes on the road. Those were problems, but now they’re behind you.” – Tom Gilovich

Let us ponder a couple of questions:

What is it that you currently regret most about your life?

What do you most not want to regret about your life when your time is up?

People regret their inactions more than their actions in the long term. None of us are perfect. We are all going to make mistakes. We can often learn from our mistakes, and take actions to rectify problems.

Many mistakes can be fixed or apologized for. It is the lack of action, the lack of courage to follow through that can haunt us for a long time.

Maybe you never started writing that book despite your love for writing. Perhaps you haven’t set up your own dream business because you were afraid of what people would think if you actually tried.

You didn’t learn that instrument you always wanted to because you were worried you wouldn’t be good enough. You didn’t continue your education because your friends were getting jobs.

Fear of taking that first step. Fear of following your dreams. Fear of pursuing your purpose.

A lot of people wait for inspiration and confidence before getting started. They wait and wait and never actually take that first step.

The thing is, taking action is that first step to ensure you avoid regrets.

Confidence comes with taking action. Making a commitment to follow through and then having the courage to do it builds the momentum.

“If you cannot risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best. If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else matters?” – Dr. David Viscott

The things we want to do in our life don’t go away. The extraordinary results we want to achieve in our life, in our relationships, in our career, in our health and wellbeing, and in our purpose are driven by courage and faith.

If we don’t fearlessly pursue these things, we start blaming ourselves for not taking action and the regret compounds.

The Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda

But if we are clear on our purpose and priorities in life, you can create the personal power necessary to push through, and take action on the things that matter most. To avoid the thing that can undermine our living a life well lived – regret.

When you make a decision to focus on creating your ideal future, to create a life with no regrets you’ll move from “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” to “I lived a life worth living” and “I made a difference.”

To get through the hardest journey, we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping. – Chinese Proverb

Bonnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying tells us much about living a life to minimize regrets.^[4] Ware spent many years in palliative care, looking after patients who had gone home to die. When she questioned these patients about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, a number of common themes came through.

The five most common themes were, in descending order:

I wish I’d had the courage to life a life true to myself not the life others expected of me
I wished I hadn’t worked so hard
I wish I had the courage to express my feelings
I wish I’d stayed in touch with friends
I wish that I’d let myself be happier

The most common regret, by far, was ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. According to Ware:

“Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices that they made, or not made.”

These themes are similar to the ones that came through when Guardian journalist Emma Freud asked the question on Twitter “What is your biggest regret?”^[5]

Being held back by fear, self-blame and bad choices around love, learning and loss were the most frequent responses.

The most frequent regrets focused around: