Top 3 regrets people have on their deathbeds: What they can teach us about living meaningfully, from a hospice nurse

As a hospice nurse, Julie McFadden spends her days caring for people near the ends of their lives.

The job gives her a window into the regrets people most commonly express on their deathbeds, which she says offers insight into how people can live better, more fulfilling lives. People often feel uncomfortable hearing about her work, she notes — but when she speaks with her patients and their families, they're virtually always eager to talk about death with her.

"Talking about death, thinking about your own mortality, to me, really helps you live better, live more meaningful[ly], and I think that helps you die more peacefully," McFadden, 41, the author of "Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully," tells CNBC Make It.

Specifically, McFadden says she hears these three regrets most often from her hospice patients:

1. They wish they'd appreciated their health when they had it. "They didn't understand how lucky they were to have a healthy body," McFadden says. "That's the No. 1 thing I hear."
2. They wish they hadn't worked their life away. Some people worked intensively throughout the years leading up to their retirement, leaving them with limited time to appreciate life. "Some of us have to work all the time just because of the world we live in," says McFadden. "But I think you can still live a fulfilled life if you can, on a daily basis, live in gratitude for the little things."
3. They regret how they navigated their relationships. Her patients frequently expressed misgivings over "not saying sorry when they should have, not reconnecting sooner to their estranged sister, or caring too much about what people thought," McFadden says. "Not living the life they wanted, but living the life people around them wanted."

People who aren't imminently dying stand to benefit from a similar kind of contemplation of life's end, says McFadden, who's been a nurse for 16 years, including eight years of hospice and palliative care work. On TikTok, where she's known as "hospice nurse Julie," her videos about the science of dying and her medical care experiences have an audience of 1.6 million followers.

"What we resist persists," she says. "Just because we talk about [death] doesn't mean it's going to happen. Just because we talk about something we fear doesn't mean the fear is going to get bigger — in fact, it usually diminishes it."

An exercise to get ahead of regrets

Everyone should ask themselves a question daily, McFadden recommends: If I knew I'd die in six months, what would I change in my life? It may sound morbid, but the exercise can help you clarify your priorities and identify what you want out of life, she says.

The point isn't necessarily to immediately "go jump off cliffs and vacation and jump out of airplanes," she adds. Instead, the introspection is a nudge toward appreciating the smaller elements of everyday life: the taste of your coffee and food, the sunlight on your face, and the ability to move your body, have an appetite and speak to another person, says McFadden.

"We're not going to always have our health, we're not going to always be alive," she says. "That helps me be so grateful for the here and now."

Other end-of-life practitioners endorse the approach. "As a doctor, I'd recommend eating a balanced diet, and exercising regularly, and avoiding things like smoking and high-risk activities. Reflecting on mortality should really be on that list," Shoshana Ungerleider, a doctor of internal medicine and founder of the nonprofit End Well Foundation, told Make It in September.

"Reflecting on our own mortality throughout life, whether you're 20, 50, 80, whatever, allows us to live better every day with more meaning and purpose in our lives," Ungerleider added.

Indeed, accepting that you'll die one day can help you find meaning in "the little things that bring us joy," end-of-life planning and support expert Alua Arthur told "The Happiness Lab" podcast in July.

"Grounding in my mortality means that at some point I won't have access to all these senses anymore," Arthur said. "And so, how cool is it that I can feel cold on my hands? How cool is it that I have plates for me to eat off of?"

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