When you were a kid, you always dreamed of going out into the mountains and exploring unknown spaces, where few humans have been. Maybe you wanted to visit all the big cities in the world. But you have bills to pay, work to do. Slowly, year by year, you forget about your dreams.

You found a person you absolutely adore. You called them your soulmate. You made new humans together. But you’ve all built a lifestyle around you, and you need to work hard to maintain that. You spend maybe 30 minutes a day with these people who you say mean more than the world to you.

Someone cuts you off while you’re driving to work — you take a deep breath and say “they’re probably in a hurry to get to the hospital.” You really like someone, but are too scared of what they’ll say if you tell them. You’re really excited about something, but don’t want to scare your loved ones, who might be worried about how their future changes based on this new thing you’re excited about. You bite your lip. You “act cool.” Your feelings stay hidden away deep inside you.

You work Monday to Saturday. There’s a group of friends who have planned to meet up and go out for a hike. You say no and think to yourself — “how jobless are these people? If they were as important as me, they wouldn’t have the time to do all this. Now is the time to grind! Build something great, so that i can enjoy it once I’ve retired early”. The early retirement never comes. Those friends stop asking. You’re 65. You browse facebook looking at the group photos of those friends on trips together. You want to ask them, but how?

The race sucks you in, serenades you with fancy cars, houses, holiday spots and gadgets. You keep one of these as a target and GO TO WORK. Each day, it’s on your vision board, getting ever closer. And then one day, you get it. You buy the supercar. Post the photos on social media. 5 years of effort. One supercar. 1 week of happiness, and then it’s on to the next one.

Decisions

At key points in your life, the decisions you make end up making you.

There are two kinds of decisions that most people make in their personal lives –

• Conscious
• Unconscious

Conscious Decisions

Should I do Science or Arts? Should I build something to fulfill this idea? Should I ask that girl out?

These are all examples of instances where you are fully aware that you’re making a decision.

Unconscious Decisions

The ones we talked about right in the beginning –

• Bills or dreams?
• Lifestyle or family time?
• Express or suppress?
• Friend outing or that project deadline?
• Supercar or daily happiness?

The top 5 regrets that people on their deathbed have, are about things they didn’t do. However, these things they didn’t do, are not major life decisions. They’re the kind of things that are habits ingrained in your system.

1. They forgot their dreams
2. They ignored their family
3. They suppressed their feelings
4. They neglected their friends
5. They forgot to be happy

Do you see a pattern here? It’s all about things they didn’t actively do. You don’t ever make conscious decisions about these parts of your life, they just happen.

Most of the time, you end up knowing how your decision impacts your life only much much after you’ve made it and applied it to your life. You take a decision based on your feelings and your priorities at that specific point of time. “I’m feeling ambitious” you say as you commit yourself to a 5 year loan for a supercar. Then you look back 2 years later: “What the hell was I thinking?”

How do you make a decision that you can actually look back and say – “I wouldn’t do it any other way if I were given a second chance”?

Regret Minimization Framework

Sit back with me and follow my lead for a minute. Think of the one thing right now that you’re most scared of doing. You know what i’m talking about. That one thing you haven’t been able to get off the fence about. You’ve been weighing the pros and cons, discussing with your inner circle, hesitating to take the step.

Got it? Good.

Now, project yourself forward – imagine you’re 80 years old. Your life’s work is behind you. Ask yourself this one simple question — “Do I regret not doing this?”

It’s a simple yes/no question.

You’ll have your answer instantly.

And if you do regret not doing it when you’re 80 years old, then go ahead and just DO it. No matter what the odds, no matter if it’s possible you’ll fail miserably.

Jeff Bezos talked about how this one simple question led him to found Amazon. He asked himself – would I regret NOT doing this? And he thought yes! I would regret not even giving it a shot! He was completely open to failure, but in his own words, “the one thing that I might regret is not ever having tried.”

Sure, he also built the Amazon Fire phone using this same decision framework, but hey! he would never have known what could’ve happened if he hadn’t tried.

The Regret Minimization Framework is a way to step out of your own current situation and to make decisions while being able to see their long-term impact on your life, all in under 2 minutes.

How to use this framework

Reactively

Every time you have a conscious decision to make and you’re scared of one of the choices, pull this question out of your pocket and ask yourself: “Will I look back at 80 and regret not doing this?”

Proactively

Every single morning, remind yourself –

1. Remember your dreams
2. Enjoy with your family
3. Express your feelings
4. Proactively contact your friends
5. Do what makes you happy

Pro tip

As those of you whom I’ve already emailed about this know, you will almost always regret the safe choice.

Is Life A Journey?

“Life isn’t about the destination. It’s about the journey.” We’ve all heard this expression. But really, life is more like a song.

We don’t listen to songs just for how they end. We listen to songs, to enjoy them while they play.

Every single one of us has the same destination. Which one has the more fulfilling journey? The one who laser focuses on minimizing their regrets, and makes sure they do all the things that scare them. The one who enjoys the whole song and dance.

When the song of your life ends, make sure you can look back and say, “I enjoyed every second of that, and I wouldn’t have done it any other way.”