For many years, Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care. Her patients were those who had gone home to die in the comfort of their familiar surroundings. She was able to witness some incredibly special moments while caring for them during the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. She ended up writing an insightful book about her experiences called, The 5 Regrets of the Dying. Here are the top five regrets as explained in her book:

#5 – “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

#4 – “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

#3 – “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”

#2 – “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

#1 – “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

What a powerful statement: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself.” These insights remind me of what Mark Twain once said: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Are you a Do-er or a Don’t-er? Do-ers are people of action; Don’t-ers are people of apathy. It’s the Do-ers who experience life to the fullest, while the Don’t-ers experience lives of emptiness.

James 1:22 (NIV)

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

To live a life of intentionality, you must have an extreme bias toward action—the drive to make your life count. The good thing is that, in my opinion, everyone possesses this desire; it’s just a matter of extracting and activating it. The goal of life is not to arrive at death safely, but sparingly. By sparingly,  I mean to live fully and to die empty. To have poured out your life with abandon, having nothing left to give at the end. Life is too short to live with could have, should have, would have regrets. Do-ers hold nothing back. They live out their faith rather than living in fear. This is why the book of Acts is not called the book of Ideas…it’s about people who acted on their faith and did what God called them to do, making no excuses. Author Mark Batterson wrote, “At the end of your life your greatest regrets will not be the things you did but wish you hadn’t, but it will be the things you didn’t do but wish you had.”

Proverbs 20:4 (NIV) 

Sluggards do not plow in season; so at harvest time they look but find nothing.