In this 2020 YouTube book‑tip video, Nick Hutchison shares his experience with Bronnie Ware’s The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. He explains how he first encountered the book in 2018, finished it recently, and why its insights matter as we enter a new year. Hutchison highlights the most common regret of people at the end of life – wishing they had the courage to live a life true to themselves rather than meeting others’ expectations. He reflects on his own shift from making decisions to please others toward filtering choices through his close inner circle, emphasizing personal authenticity. Hutchison also recounts a Buddhist anecdote about not internalizing others’ negativity, illustrating how to keep external criticism from shaping one’s path. He ties the lesson to his personal memento mori practice (a chest tattoo reminding him of mortality) as a daily motivator to prioritize time and avoid future regrets. The video concludes with a strong recommendation to read the book and to start 2020 by making self‑directed choices.
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Hello, Book Thinkers family! Today's book tip is a special one. It's going to come from The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. This book was amazing. It first came across my plate in January of 2018, and I read about half the book back then. I got distracted, something came up, and I didn't finish it. So I decided to finish it a couple weeks ago, and I'm so happy that I did. It's 2020 now, and we all know that hindsight is 20/20. What's unique about this book is that it deals with people that are at the end of their lives who have the ability to look back over the course of their life and decide what regrets basically they're still living with. So Bronnie, after a couple years— when she was younger, after a couple years of meaningless work— she decided that she wanted to have a little bit more meaning, and she took on palliative care. She worked with people that were at the end of their lives. She would spend a lot of time with these people and talk a lot with them. So she was able to gain a lot of really unique perspective from a lot of people who had regrets at the end of their lives. And it's a very sad topic. This is a very emotional book, but I think it's very important to talk about, especially as we're going into 2020 and we all have big plans and goals and things that we'd like to achieve, knowing that we might fall short on some of them. So listen up. At the end of these people's lives, she accumulated so much feedback she decided to condense them into the top 5 regrets of dying. And the first regret is probably the most powerful, and she says it's the one that people talk about the most. And I want to, I want to highlight it here for you. Regret number 1: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This is a pretty powerful one. I know in my life that I've lived my life and I've made decisions, important decisions, looking through the lens of other people, not my lens. And I've made decisions that would make other people happy, not me happy. And thankfully, after reading so many of these amazing books over the last few years, I don't really do that anymore. I don't care that much about what other people think. I know what's going to make me happy and fulfilled, and I know it's going to fulfill my kind of inner circle, the people that I spend the most time with. And I filter my decisions through those lenses, or that specific lens. But a lot of people don't ever have that realization. They live lives based on expectations that other people have of them, and it's such a sad thing. At the end of their lives, people name that as the number one regret that they have, and it's pretty sad to think about. So living consciously with that present in your mind all the time— live for yourself— that's such an important lesson that you can take away from today's video. There is this great Buddhist story that they talked about in the book where the Buddha is speaking to a group of people and somebody starts yelling and saying all these terrible things, and the Buddha doesn't really react. Buddha just kind of sits there and takes it and then moves on. Somebody from the crowd approaches Buddha and says, hey, why didn't you let that affect you? And Buddha has this cool little question. He says, if somebody gives a gift to you and you decide not to receive it, To whom does the gift belong? Well, obviously it's to the person that was trying to gift it. So if somebody is spewing negativity to you, if somebody's saying mean things or trying to guide your decision-making and you don't let it affect you, that negativity stays with them. You don't need to bear all of that on yourself. You don't need to carry that weight on your shoulders. If somebody wants the best for you, they should want you to be happy first and foremost. Right? That's the end-all be-all. It's not about making them happy with things that they think are going to be good for you. It's about doing what's right for yourself. So I would highly encourage reading this book. It was a super emotional kind of roller coaster for me. I really enjoyed it. I got into it a lot. And as you read this book, you'll develop more compassion for people who are at the end of their lives. And that's kind of another perspective shift that I had. At the end of the day, I would really recommend reading it. I think that starting off 2020 by thinking of that, make decisions for yourself, go big or go home. You don't wanna have regrets at the end of your life. It's a cool perspective to have. Everybody knows that I love memento mori, which translates to remember your own mortality. It's a tattoo I have on my chest and it's something I read every day because it helps me prioritize my time. Don't waste your 2020, take advantage of it. That's my motivation for you today. Go read something like this book and have a great day. Bye. Bye.
