My dad died in 2022, and in the few years before he went, he kept saying the same thing to me in different ways. Don’t let life pass you by, girl, because you never know how long you’ve got, so make every day count.
I was working all hours back then, eating lunch at my desk, and looking up to find it’s dark outside. He saw it, and I didn’t. I was so busy earning a living that I’d forgotten to have a life.
Moving to rural France in 2016 was meant to be the great shake-up, and for a while, I told myself it was. But the truth is, I just dragged the same habits across the Channel. Same long hours, same skipped meals, same head full of to-do lists. It took losing him for me to actually hear what he’d been saying.
Now I take the dog out for long, slow walks through the country fields, enjoy a French line-dancing class once a week, which I’ve always wanted to do, and pay a cleaner so I can spend Sunday afternoons pottering with the tomatoes instead of mopping floors. Small things, all of them, but they add up to a life that is so much more enjoyable.
9 Costly Mistakes You’ll Live to Regret That You Can Avoid Right Now
The 9 things below are the regrets I’ve heard most often from people in their 70s, my dad included. If you’re in your 50s, you’ve still got time to put some of these changes in place, so you live without regrets.
1. Working Too Much
Nobody in their 70s sits on the porch and wishes they’d put in more overtime. I’ve never heard it, not once. What I hear instead is regret about the school plays they missed, the family dinners they cut short to take a call, the years that went by in a blur of deadlines that felt like life or death at the time, but in reality, of course, they weren’t.
We live in a culture that treats being busy like a badge of honor. If you’re swamped, you must be important. If you’re answering emails at 10 pm, you must be committed. It’s a story we sell ourselves, and it costs us the very things that make a life worth having, or so we tell ourselves.
But the corner office and the bonus check don’t keep you company on a Sunday afternoon when your kids have grown up and moved out.
My dad watched me doing it and tried, gently, to point it out. I didn’t really hear him until he was gone. If there’s one thing I’d push you toward in your 50s, it’s looking honestly at how much of yourself you’re handing over to your job, and whether you’d make the same trade if you knew how the math actually worked out. Most people, when they run the numbers, find they’ve been overpaying.
2. Not Spending Enough Time With the People You Love
The empty chair at the holiday table is the one that haunts people most, not the promotion they didn’t get. The parent they meant to call more often, the friend whose birthday slipped past again, the grandchild who had grown up between visits. These are the absences that ache later.
The tricky part is that time with the people we love rarely feels urgent. There’s no deadline, no boss tapping their watch. So it gets pushed. We tell ourselves we’ll catch up next month, next holiday, when things calm down, but they don’t.
The babies turn into teenagers while we’re answering emails, and the parents who were always going to be there, suddenly aren’t.
What helps is putting it on the calendar, like you’d put a meeting. A standing Sunday dinner, a weekly phone call with your mom, or a shopping trip with your sister once a month. Treat it as fixed, not as the thing that gets canceled when something else comes up.
The phone in your pocket gives you the illusion of staying close to people, and it’s a thin substitute for actually being in the same room with them. And when you are with them, put your screens away.
3. Know What Refills Your Tank and Protect It
Everyone has a handful of things that restore them, and most of us treat those things as the first to be cut when life gets busy. Reading, painting, swimming, gardening, baking, playing the piano, they’re the activities that put you back together. Why, then, do we act like they’re optional, and then wonder why we feel like a wrung-out dishcloth by Friday?
For me, it’s gardening, walking, and my line-dancing class. None of these is productive in the way the world counts productivity. None of them earns me a penny, but they’re also the reason I feel like a human being at the end of the week instead of a husk. When I skip them, I notice within days. When I keep them, everything else I do gets done better.
Your list will look different from mine. The point is to know what’s on yours and to give those things real estate in your week, the same way you’d give it to a doctor’s appointment.
4. It’s Okay to Say No More Often
Saying yes to everything makes you feel like a good person in your 30s and 40s. By your 50s, it starts to feel like a slow leak. Every yes is a no to something else, often something you’d rather have been doing. The committee, the favor, the dinner you didn’t want to go to. They add up, and what gets spent is your time and your energy, both of which become more precious as the years go on.
Learning to decline without a 10-minute explanation is one of the most useful skills you can build now. A simple “no, thank you, that doesn’t work for me,” or “I’m not able to take that on right now,” is plenty. You don’t owe anyone a full-blown explanation. If you don’t want to do something, say no.
The first few times you do it, your stomach will flip, then it gets easier, and one day you realize you’ve stopped overcommitting and your calendar actually has white space.
The surprising part is that the relationships you say yes to less often tend to get better, not worse. When you do show up, you’re actually present for it, because you wanted to be there.
5. Caring Too Much About What Other People Think
I think we’re all guilty of this. But a funny thing happens as you get older, or it does to some of us, we stop caring. Think of all the things you didn’t do because you were worried about what other people might think: the clothes you didn’t wear, the move you didn’t make, the relationship you stayed in or didn’t start, all because you were worried about the imagined opinions of other people.
In your 70s, the people whose approval you were chasing in your 20s and 30s are often gone, or no longer in your life, or in some cases never really cared in the first place. What’s left is the life you actually built, and how much of it is yours versus how much of it was a performance for an invisible audience.
The line-dancing class is a good example. I was so close to turning around and not going through the front door on that first day. I didn’t speak much French, and I was so nervous that everyone would laugh at me and not want me there. I’m so glad I pushed through that because now, four years later, I’m as big a part of that group as anyone else, and I love it.
6. Letting Fear Hold You Back
Fear is the regret with the longest shadow, and it comes in all shapes and sizes, from the business you didn’t start, the country you didn’t move to, the conversation you didn’t have with the person before they died.
Fear holds you back from so many things and tells you that next year is a better time, that you’ll do it when the kids are older, when the mortgage is paid, when you feel ready. You never feel ready.
The people I know in their 70s who took the leaps don’t all talk about them as if they worked out perfectly. Plenty of them didn’t. The business failed, the move was harder than expected, and the marriage didn’t last. What they don’t seem to have is regret about the attempt itself.
In your 50s, you have something you didn’t have at 25, which is a clearer sense of what you actually want. You also have less time to waste being scared of the wrong things. The mortgage payment, the awkward conversation, the move to a country where you don’t speak the language properly, these are smaller monsters than your brain is telling you. The bigger one is sitting at 75, wondering what your life might have been.
7. Taking Life Too Seriously
Life can be hard, and there are times it needs to be taken seriously. However, there are two types of seriousness. There’s the how do I pay the mortgage one, and then there’s the one that stops you from being you. It stops you from having fun and seeing the lighter side of life, and there is one, always. Somewhere along the way, you forgot how to be a bit silly, and the people around you feel it.
Don’t lose your sense of humor through the harder years, remember how to laugh at yourself, and don’t be afraid to dance badly at a wedding. Life is going to hand you plenty of things that require the serious you, such as health stuff, loss, money trouble, and the proper griefs. You’ll meet those people better if you haven’t used up all your seriousness on the small stuff.
Learn to let the small annoyances go faster than your instinct says you should, because the lightness is what makes the rest of it bearable.
8. Not Living in the Present
Half of us spend our 50s rehearsing the past or worrying about the future. Replaying old conversations, planning the retirement we’ll have in 10 years, fretting about a phone call that hasn’t even happened yet. Meanwhile, the actual day, the one we’re in, goes by unnoticed.
You need to learn to just be where you are, wherever that might be. Try eating the meal you’re eating instead of scrolling through your phone. Listening to the person across the table instead of mentally drafting their next email. Walking the dog and noticing the light coming through the trees instead of running through tomorrow’s calendar.
It sounds woo-woo, but it isn’t. It’s a skill, and like any skill, it builds with practice. Eat one meal a day without your phone in sight. Have one conversation a day when you’re not doing anything else. Take one walk a week without an audiobook in your ears. The world is louder than it used to be, and the pull to be everywhere except where you are is strong. The present moment is where your life is actually happening.
9. Comparing Yourself to Other People
Social media has a lot to answer for when it comes to this one. We’re constantly having put in front of us what everyone else is doing, eating, wearing, achieving, and where they’re vacationing. Of course, we feel behind. The comparison engine is running 24 hours a day, and it’s built to make us feel like we’re losing.
In your 50s, this is particularly toxic because the metrics start to scatter. Some friends are retiring early, some are traveling the world, others are at the peak of their careers, some have grandkids, and some are starting over after a divorce. There is no single track anymore, and comparing your life to anyone else’s is comparing apples to oranges. It never gives you useful information.
What I’ve learned, slowly and not without backsliding, is that the only useful comparison is to the version of yourself from a year ago. Are you a bit kinder, a bit healthier, a bit more present, a bit happier in your own skin? That’s the question. Whether someone you went to school with just bought a bigger house is not.
My dad used to say the only race worth running is your own, and it took me a long time to understand what he meant. I get it now. I just wish I’d got it when he was still here to see it.
This article is for general information and isn’t medical advice. If you’re working through any health or well-being concerns, please speak with a qualified professional who knows your situation.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health, diet, or exercise routine.