Bronnie Ware Quotes

There is a fine line between compassion and a victim mentality. Compassion though is a healing force and comes from a place of kindness towards yourself. Playing the victim is a toxic waste of time that not only repels other people, but also robs the victim of ever knowing true happiness.

There is always a gift in any challenge.

Life doesn’t owe us anything. We only owe ourselves, to make the most of the life we are living, of the time we have left, and to live in gratitude.

... to be in any sort of relationship where you do not express yourself, simply to keep the peace, is a relationship ruled by one person and will never be balanced or healthy.

Laughter is a very underrated tool for healing.

The same view you look at every day, the same life, can become something brand new by focusing on its gifts rather than the negative aspects. Perspective is your own choice and the best way to shift that perspective is through gratitude, by acknowledging and appreciating the positives.

No one owes us anything. We only owe ourselves to get off our backsides, count our blessings, and face our challenges. When you live from that perspective, the gifts pour forth.

There is nothing wrong with loving your work and wanting to apply yourself to it. But there is so much more to life. Balance is what is important, maintaining balance.

Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”6 This requires, not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials, and not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but cutting out some really good opportunities as well.

They say though that we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. So it is when the pain becomes too much that we finally find the courage to make changes.

Surrender is not giving up, far from it. Surrender takes an enormous amount of courage. Often we are only capable of doing so when the pain of trying to control the outcome becomes too much to bear.

Don’t worry about the little stuff. None of it matters. Only love matters. If you remember this, that love is always present; it will be a good life

The only true thing that brings out the best in anyone is love.

Don’t work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.

Smile and Know that this time will pass and good will follow.

It’s not just about staying in touch with your friends, my dear girl. It is about giving yourself the gift of their company too.

Sometimes we don’t know until much later that a particular moment in time has changed our life’s direction.

They say that everything comes down to love or fear: every emotion, every action, and every thought.

Smile and Know, Thank and Know, became my mantra as I went about my days smiling and knowing when I could. As I did so, I was walking in complete faith, which left me naturally wanting to thank as well.

Surrender is not giving up, far from it. Surrender takes an enormous amount of courage. Often we are only capable of doing so when the pain of trying to control the outcome becomes too much to bear. Reaching that point is actually liberating, even if it is not fun. Being able to accept there is absolutely nothing more you can do, other than hand it over to the greater force, is the catalyst that finally opens the flow.

the chase for more, and the need to be recognised through our achievements and belongings, can hinder us from the real things, like time with those we love, time doing things we love ourselves, and balance. It’s probably all about balance really, isn’t it?

Loneliness isn’t a lack of people. It is a lack of understanding and acceptance.

Those who accept you as who you are, and who know you very well, are worth more than anything in the end.

We can never know the gifts that will flow to us until they arrive, but of one thing I am certain. Courage and honesty are always rewarded.

Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it

Finding the courage to act or surrender will never be as painful as lying on a deathbed with regrets.

People play the victim forever,” she continued. “But who are they kidding? They are only robbing themselves. Life doesn’t owe you anything. Neither does anyone else. Only you owe yourself. So the best way to make the most out of life is to appreciate the gift of it, and choose not to be a victim.

A Buddhist story is that a man came shouting angrily at Buddha, who remained unaffected by him. When questioned by others as to how he remained calm and unaffected, Buddha answered with a question. “If someone gives you a gift and you choose not to receive it, to whom then does the gift belong?” Of course it stays with the giver.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse and author who spent several years working in palliative care with patients in the last weeks of their lives, recorded her patients’ top five regrets. The number one regret was that people wished they had stayed true to themselves.

Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”6

A Buddhist story is that a man came shouting angrily at Buddha, who remained unaffected by him. When questioned by others as to how he remained calm and unaffected, Buddha answered with a question. “If someone gives you a gift and you choose not to receive it, to whom then does the gift belong?” Of course it stays with the giver. So it was with words that were still unjustly dumped onto me sometimes. I stopped taking them on and instead I felt compassion. After all, those words were not coming from a place of happiness.

Gratitude for every day along the way is the key to acknowledging and enjoying happiness now. Not when the results come in or when you retire, or when this or that happens.

The mind knows no answers. The heart knows no questions”.

When there is limited time left, there is little to lose by being totally honest.

I had to let go first. Trying to control the timing and outcome was a terrible waste of energy. My intentions were already out there and I had taken what action I could. My only job now was to get out of the way.

You will regret the fear. In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware—a nurse who worked in palliative care—shared her experience of talking to those near the end of their lives. Far and away the biggest regret they had was fear. Many of Bronnie’s patients were in deep anguish that they had spent their whole lives worrying. Lives consumed by fear. Worrying what other people thought of them. A worry that had stopped them being true to themselves.

See also Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2012). The five regrets are as follows: (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.

Start creating the habit of counting your blessings for being alive today. Take ownership of your life. Shift your priorities. You are going to die! Understand this, and get excited about the gift of today. You are alive right now.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last twelve weeks of their lives. She revealed the most common regrets of her patients in the best-selling book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying—A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing” (Ware). Here were the regrets, starting at #2: 2.I wish I didn’t work 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.

Life is over so quickly. It is possible to reach the end with no regrets. It takes some bravery to live it right, to honour the life you are here to live but the choice is yours. … Appreciate the time you have left by valuing all of the gifts in your life and that includes especially, your own, amazing self.

What kind of regrets? For me, very few books cause tears, much less require a handkerchief, but Bronnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying did both. Ware spent many years caring for those facing their own mortality. When she questioned the dying about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, Bronnie found that common themes surfaced again and again. The five most common were these: I wish that I’d let myself be happier—too late they realized happiness is a choice; I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends—too often they failed to give them the time and effort they deserved; I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings—too frequently shut mouths and shuttered feelings weighed too heavy to handle; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard—too much time spent making a living over building a life caused too much remorse. As tough as these were, one stood out above them all. The most common regret was this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. Half-filled dreams and unfulfilled hopes: this was the number-one regret expressed by the dying. As Ware put it, “Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.” Bronnie Ware’s observations aren’t hers alone. At the conclusion of their exhaustive research, Gilovich and Medvec in 1994 wrote, “When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret.... People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.” Honoring our hopes and pursuing productive lives through faith in our purpose and priorities is the message from our elders. From the wisest position they’ll ever have comes their clearest message. No regrets. So make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. The best lives aren’t led this way.

I think that a lot of people lead their lives never having really lived them at all. They play the roles they were assigned early in life, without questioning if they even want to be this way. They get comfortable, even with really uncomfortable circumstances. They let the days and weeks and years wash over them and never see that they have the power to change IT ALL. But I don’t see that for you [...] You are not going to think, I wish I had let myself be happier. Do you know that those are two of the top five things people regret when faced with death? I do because I googled, ‘What do people regret before they die?’ and found that Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse in Australia who had spent years sitting with people who were dying, wrote an entire book on the subject: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She saw over and over just how much people regret not living the life they wanted, not letting themselves be happy. I just don’t see any of those regrets for you. For you, I see something grander: I see a life that you consciously live. That you curate and cultivate and create for yourself, a life in which you are self-aware AF, grateful for the luck that you are here at all, a life in which you love and also let yourself be loved. I see you engaged to your life, holding it firmly yet tenderly by the hand like it’s your soulmate, bringing it in for the deepest of make-out seshes. I see you feeling up your life in the most passionate of embraces. That is what I see for you.

It was at that point ... that I remembered the importance of surrender, of letting go and allowing nature to weave its magic.

Compassion though is a healing force and comes from a place of kindness towards yourself.

Life doesn’t owe you anything. Neither does anyone else. Only you owe yourself.

I have come to see how that loss helped me to become the person I now am and to help others. I wouldn’t be who I am without having experienced his passing.

There may be times I thought I didn’t love particular people in my life. But I saw it was only their behaviour and words I did not love.

If we are able to face our own inevitable death with honest acceptance, before we have reached that time, then we shift our priorities well before it is too late. This gives us the opportunity to then put our energies into directions of true value. Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think of us. Instead, we are more driven by what our hearts truly want. This acknowledgment of our inevitable, approaching death, offers us the opportunity to find greater purpose and satisfaction in the time we have remaining.

Or people like Bronnie Ware, whose heartfelt book on the regrets of the dying gave me life at my weakest moment. Or Master Hsing Yun, whose wisdom shook me from my career delusions and forced me to truly confront my own ego. Without these unquantifiable, nonoptimizable connections to other people, I would never have learned what it truly means to be human. Without them, I would never have reordered my priorities and reoriented my own life.

...Life doesn't owe you anything. Neither does anyone else. Only you owe yourself.

So the best way to make the most out of life is to appreciate the gift of it, and choose no to be a victim.

Money is so misunderstood. It keeps people in the wrong jobs forever because they think they won't be able to make money doing what they love. When it can really be the other way around. If you totally love what you do, you can become more open to the flow of money because you are more absorbed in your work and ara happier as a person.

Bronnie Ware, una ex enfermera que cuidaba a enfermos terminales escribió un conmovedor articulo llamado “Los 5 lamentos antes de morir” basada en su experiencia al oír a pacientes moribundos revelar sus mayores lamentos. Estos son los 5 lamentos extraídos del artículo: Lamento 1: Ojalá hubiera tenido la valentía para vivir la vida que yo quería y no la que otros esperaban que viviera. Lamento 2: Desearía no haber trabajado tan duro. Lamento 3: Desearía haber tenido el coraje para expresar mis sentimientos. Lamento 4: Desearía no haber perdido el contacto con mis amigos. Lamento 5: Desearía haberme permitido ser feliz.

The topic of living simply became more of an important issue for Charlie, as his days wore on. He said people work too hard for all sorts of reasons. Often they think there is no choice, because they cannot get off the wheel of routine with bills and supporting their family. Charlie understood this. He agreed that survival is a genuine challenge for many people, but insisted there were always choices. ‘It is a matter of changing your perspective sometimes. Do we really need to live in a house this big? Do we need such a flashy car?’ he asked. As he said, sometimes it was more a matter of changing their thinking and finding a new solution, thinking hard about what they love and working as a family towards finding more balance.

It was as if I had been swimming down the same river over and over, and each time I would come across a large rock blocking my natural flow. It was always there. One day though, I realised that it may always be there. Rather than repeatedly having to face that same rock, that same blockage, I was choosing somewhere different to swim, somewhere that would allow me to move forwards freely and naturally.

Our society has shut death out, almost as a denial of its existence. This denial leaves both the dying person and the family or friends totally unprepared for something that is inevitable. We are all going to die. But rather than acknowledge the existence of death, we try to hide it. It is as if we are trying to convince ourselves that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ really works. But it doesn’t, because we carry on trying to validate ourselves through our material life and associated fearful behaviour instead.

Surrender takes an enormous amount of courage.

Due to a total lack of effort, he had created no opportunities to improve or change. Failure was not about whether he would have been successful or not in whatever he tried. Just having a go would have been a success in itself. Anthony’s biggest failure lay in becoming a complete product of his environment, lacking any desire to challenge himself and potentially improve his life. It was such a waste of a good, intelligent person and of the natural gifts he had been born with.

Yes, it takes courage, Bronnie,’ Jude continued. ‘That’s the point I am trying to make. It takes courage to express your feelings, particularly if you are not doing okay and need assistance, or if you’ve never expressed honest feelings to someone you love and don’t know how it will be received. But the more you practise sharing your feelings, whatever they are, the better things become. Pride is such a waste of time. Honestly, look at me now. I can’t even wipe my own bum. What does it matter? We are all human. We are allowed to be vulnerable too. It is a part of the process.

We should never feel guilty for expressing our feelings and we should never make someone else feel guilty, if they have found the courage to do so.

If I can leave any good in this world besides my family, I leave these words. Don’t work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.

A happy life can be found without moving house or doing anything drastic in our physical world. It is about changing our perception and being brave enough to honour some of our own desires too.

This regret—wishing they had been true to themselves—was the most common one of all.

Be who you are, find balance, speak honestly, value those you love, and allow yourself to be happy.

Seeing the anguish Jozsef experienced from not being able to express his feelings left me determined to always try and be brave enough to share mine. My walls of privacy were being eroded and I began to wonder why we are all so afraid of being open and honest. Of course, we do it to avoid pain that may come as a result of our honesty. But those walls we create bring pain of their own, by stopping others from knowing who we truly are.

challenging

I have known love, and that love has not lessened for one day in all of these years,’ he said.

It was one of a soul completely free of ego and personality. It was pure love, completely free of everything else. Only radiance and joy remained and their shine was almost blinding in their beauty.

Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”6 This requires, not just haphazardly saying no,

Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

My leaps of faith had also taught me this already. When the money stopped, it was usually because I was focusing on that fear of lack, so I received more lack. When I focused on the beauty of the day, counted my blessings and worked towards whatever I was being guided to do, what I needed would flow my way.

we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. So it is when the pain becomes too much that we finally find the courage to make changes.

settee

The clock ticks for every one of us. It is your own choice how you spend your remaining days.

It is much easier to be strong in faith when you are smiling. So it would automatically lift my mood and reassure me that I would indeed find more reasons to smile again.

Whenever out on a leap of faith, things have never turned out as I had imagined, but in the long run, things have always turned out better. Faith is a powerful force and one that creates incredible blessings.

Man sagt, dass alles letztendlich auf Liebe oder Angst zurückzuführen ist: jedes Gefühl, jede Tat, jeder Gedanke.

Um sich seinen Ängsten zu stellen, gibt es keinen besseren Ort als die Natur, wo man in den normalen Rhythmus des Lebens zurückfinden kann.

Loslassen ist nicht dasselbe wie Aufgeben, ganz im Gegenteil. Loslassen erfordert eine gehörige Portion Mut.

Rassismus werde ich nie begreifen. Die meisten von uns ähneln sich schon darin, dass sie einfach nur glücklich sein wollen. Und wir alle haben ein Herz, das leiden kann.

Gratitude for every day along the way is the key to acknowledging and enjoying happiness now.

That’s why not losing touch in the first place is important. No one knows what lies ahead or when the time will come that you are longing for your friends and in between, you still have the gift of them in your life.

Como señala Bronnie Ware  en Los cinco mandamientos para tener una vida plena, la gente siempre dice: «Ojalá hubiera tenido el coraje de hacer lo que realmente quería hacer y no lo que los otros esperaban que hiciera».

When you live and work within the same community, day in day out, privacy in your everyday living becomes sacred.

Because happiness is a choice, Rosemary, and one I try to make every day. Some days I can’t. Like you, I’ve had a hard life; in different ways, but still hard. But rather than dwelling on what’s wrong and how hard I’ve done it, I try to find the blessings in each day and appreciate the moment I am in, as much as I can,

In her deeply moving book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, nurse Bronnie Ware says the top two regrets of those facing the end of their lives are “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me,” and “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” She goes on to say that the vast majority of her patients never accomplished at least half of their dreams, often because of their choice to keep working instead of following them. These people pushed on, saved, and worked only to look back and wonder what it was all for.

In Bronnie Ware’s book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, based on her deep conversations with the dying as a palliative care worker, she doesn’t reveal that most people regret not being more successful when they’re on their deathbed. They don’t regret not having achieved more. In fact, the top five regrets were: Wishing they’d had the courage to live a life more true to themselves rather than the life others expected of them. Wishing they hadn’t worked so hard. Wishing they’d had the courage to express their feelings. Wishing they’d stayed in touch with their friends. Wishing they’d let themselves be happier.

Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, became famous for her arresting writings and book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, about her patients in the final twelve weeks of life. Though her list has been widely published, it can’t be shared often enough. If not for the heaviness of its message, it should be posted on every fridge and bathroom mirror for every person on this earth to reread daily. The top five regrets of dying people were: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Listen to the bird,’ she smiled. We both sat quietly, delighting in its song, smiling even more when we heard its mate reply from a tree further up the street. ‘Every day is a gift now. Every day was always a gift, but it’s only now I have slowed down enough to truly see the huge amount of beauty each day offers. We take so much for granted. Listen.’ Different songs rang out from a few nearby trees.

His love, Rita, had died in her late forties, only a few years after they had lost Alistair to the mental health system. From Rita’s diagnosis to her departure, it was only a matter of weeks. Yet here was this lovely man telling me he had lived a good life. Through tears, I asked how he saw it that way. ‘I have known love, and that love has not lessened for one day in all of these years,’ he said.

Due to a total lack of effort, he had created no opportunities to improve or change.

So if we were all to become a product of our environment, myself included, the best thing I could do was to choose the right environments from here on, ones that would suit the direction I wanted my life to move towards.

Pearl stressed that this is why purpose was so important in our work. If it has purpose, we naturally approach it with the right intention.

I would never let anything trap me you know, and I won’t let anything trap my flowers.’ As Florence continued to break the constraints around her beautiful garden, I said a silent prayer of thanks, for having found the courage to start breaking free of my own constraints. Like a flower, I too was now free to grow and to bloom.

Honesty is rewarded, even if it is not in the way you anticipate. It may come as self-respect, living without guilt when someone has died, richer relationships, unhealthy relationships being relinquished from your life, or in any number of unimagined forms. The longer you delay your honest expression, the less you are honouring the precious gift of your life and others.

Gratitude warmed my heart and I couldn’t help but smile. I wasn’t thinking of the past or the future. Happiness is now and that is where I was.

The freedom to be you is the greatest freedom of all, regardless of the town or suburb you live in.

Health offers amazing freedom but once gone, it is often gone forever.

Learning from what happened then allowed me to forgive myself, and that is the greatest forgiveness of all. REGRET 1: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me