People's last words are often these 4 phrases: What they teach us about living happy, meaningful lives, from an oncologist

Everyone's life is different — yet most people still utter one of four common phrases on their deathbeds, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Each of the phrases offers an important lesson for leading a fulfilling and successful life, Mukherjee said during a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania last week. "Every person that I've met in this moment of transition wanted to make four offerings," he added.

The phrases are:

People who know they're dying often express some variation of one of those four themes — indicating that they waited until it was late to show their appreciation for others or right their interpersonal wrongs, said Mukherjee, author of the award-winning 2011 nonfiction book "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."

Instead, they harbored grudges, lived with unresolved guilt or spent years being too afraid to be vulnerable, Mukherjee explained. The ensuing remorse, stress, poor mental health and even hormonal and immune imbalances can stunt your personal and professional growth, neurobehavioral scientist J. Kim Penberthy wrote in a 2022 University of Virginia blog post.

"Love and forgiveness, death and transition. Waiting [to express yourself] merely delays the inevitable," said Mukherjee, adding that young people should "take this seriously. You're living in a world where love and forgiveness have become meaningless, outdated platitudes. ... They're words people have learned to laugh at."

Coming to terms with the fact that you've wronged or hurt someone can be difficult. Try following these four steps, recommends Richard Cowden, a social-personality psychologist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative