Following dreams

Not everyone does new year's resolutions but I think there's a natural inclination to think about some things you want to do or change in the year ahead, even if you don't state them out loud to yourself or others. Eating better, exercising more and taking up something are common ones but for a bit more substance to your year ahead, I wanted to share these Top Five Regrets of The Dying.

Not to be too sombre for the start of a new year but there's always something you can learn from others and in this case, people who had the occasion to reflect on a lifetime. Whilst there are no big surprises in the list of five, they each provide food for thought.

Regrets tend to be things we didn't do - we rarely regret doing something, even though that's often what we fear. Should we talk to that person, make that phonecall, start a conversation with a person who catches our eye, ask for a pay rise / promotion......? If we don't do it, we're likely to regret it. If we can make ourselves do it, we're not only unlikely to regret it but it will probably benefit us in more ways that we can imagine.

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

This first regret in the list (and the most common regret according to the post), resonates most strongly for me. We all have dreams and it's only too easy to dismiss them and tell ourselves we'll do it another time. We get caught up in the everyday and dreams get pushed to the side. Actively following them and trying to achieve something that matters to us takes an effort but one that we'll be glad we made later in life.

Are there any regrets in the list that strike you as being something you'd like to focus more on, something you recognise is an area of your life you need to work on?
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