What Students/Young Adults Can Learn from The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Jayden turned twenty-two the same weekend he helped his grandfather sort through a garage full of tools he no longer used. His grandfather kept picking things up, telling a story, then setting them back down half finished, and Jayden realized this was the first time he had really pictured his grandfather as someone with a whole unfinished life behind him, not just a fixed relative who had always been old. Driving home, Jayden thought about his own plan, the safe major, the internship his parents approved of, and wondered when exactly he had started choosing the path that sounded good on paper over the one that actually interested him. He was not in crisis. He just felt, for the first time, that the choices piling up now would eventually be the ones he looked back on.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Choosing your own direction early
It is easy to pick a major, a job, or a city because it is the expected next step rather than because it fits you, especially when you have not yet had much practice trusting your own judgment. A young adult who pauses occasionally to ask whether a choice is truly theirs tends to avoid years of quiet drift later.
You often lack the life experience yet to know what actually fits, which can make any choice feel arbitrary.
Before your next big decision, write one sentence on whether you are choosing it or just accepting it.
The friend group that scatters
College and early adulthood friendships can feel unbreakable and then quietly dissolve the moment everyone moves for jobs or graduate school, since staying close now takes real effort instead of just proximity. Nothing goes wrong, the closeness simply stops being maintained.
New routines make the old friendships feel optional right when they need the most tending.
Reach out to one friend from an earlier chapter of your life this week.
Working hard versus staying honest with yourself
Grinding toward a resume or a GPA can feel like the responsible thing to do, and it can also be a way to avoid the harder, more honest question of whether this path is actually yours. Both patterns build gradually, without ever feeling like a decision.
Overwork earns visible praise, while honesty about doubt rarely does.
This week, tell one person close to you something true about your doubts, out loud.
The throughline beneath the plan
This book is not a research study, it is one caregiver's synthesis of what she heard repeatedly while sitting with people near the end of their lives. The regret beneath the others was that people had not let themselves be happy along the way, assuming contentment would arrive once they achieved enough. For a young adult, that is a useful question to sit with now, not a fixed prediction about your future.
Choosing your own direction can mean disappointing family who expected something else from you. Staying close to old friends takes effort that a demanding new job or degree will always compete for. Being honest about your doubts can undercut the confident image you feel pressure to project. These pulls are strongest exactly when you are busiest proving yourself.
Name one thing, honestly
- Is the path you are on one you chose, or one you accepted because it was expected? - Which friendship from an earlier chapter of your life have you let go quiet? - Where are you staying busy partly to avoid an honest question about your own doubts?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
This week, tell one person close to you something true about your doubts, out loud.