When people are on their deathbed, they honestly talk about what they feel and think. The majority talks about the regrets they have about things they didn’t get to do.
When you’re young, making life altering decisions is hard because the future is one big unknown and you feel like you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t know what you’re doing. (90% of the population feels like this, the other 10% tricked themselves in thinking they do know. More about this in another post)
The regret minimization framework is a good framework to use when making these decisions. You project yourself forward to age 80 and say: ‘Okay, looking back on my life, I want to minimize the amount of regrets I have.’ The question for life altering decisions is whether you will regret not trying them. When you think about it like that, it becomes an incredibly easy decision.
If you want to understand regret, go visit a nursing home and talk to a couple of people there about their life and regrets. Once you see the regret in their eyes, it stings. Regret is poison.