When people look back on their life in their 30s, 40s and older what are some common regrets they have?

(what follows is a reposting fom Quora, but related is my own blog post on regret HERE) 

QUORA :

From Bradley Voytek, BA in psychology and PhD in neuroscience":

110 votes by Laura Copeland, Emily Altman, Monika Kothari, (more)

In 2011 there was a large, national survey of Americans across all age groups that looked at just this. The paper was called Regrets of the Typical American published by Roese and Morrison in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
http://spp.sagepub.com/content/2...

Here's the main finding, outlined by Vaughan Bell over on the Mind Hacks blog:
http://mindhacks.com/2011/03/27/...


The main sources of regret were, in order:

1. romance
2. family
3. education
4. career
5. finance
6. parenting
7. health
8. "other"
9. friends
10. spirituality
11. community
12. leisure
13. self

They also looked at differences between sexes:

Women, who tend to value social relationships more than men, have more regrets of love (romance, family) compared to men. Conversely, men were more likely to have work-related (career, education) regrets. Those who lack either higher education or a romantic relationship hold the most regrets in precisely these areas.


Americans with high levels of education had the most career-related regrets. Apparently, the more education obtained, the more acute may be the sensitivity to aspiration and fulfillment. Moreover, the youngest and least-educated people in our sample, who most likely possess the greatest capability of fixing their regrets, were indeed the most likely to provide fixable regrets.

Vaughan also has some great insight into this work:

The study also found that regrets about things you haven’t done were equally as common as regrets about things you have, no matter how old the person.


The difference between the two is often a psychological one, because we can frame the same regret either way – as regret about an action: 'If only I had not dropped out of school'; or as a regret about an inaction: 'If only I had stayed in school'.


Despite the fact that they are practically equivalent, regrets framed as laments about actions were more common and more intense than regrets about inactions, although inaction regrets tended to be longer lasting.

This was the easiest source to find, but from what I recall from psychology courses, for older adults without children, not having a family is the primary regret, which is corroborated by #2 from the larger group in this study.

update 10 April 2011 : 
another related article is Top 5 Regrets of the dying

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. 
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings 
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends 
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.