“Please imagine your death. When is the exact day, month, and year? What is your cause of death? What are your last thoughts, emotions and sensations? Who will be with you?”
This is often the first question that I ask in my popular “Happiness Workshop: Find Your Pleasure, Purpose and Peace.” (Find out more information here.). It’s not a rhetorical question. Instead, I hand out the question on an otherwise blank piece of paper, and I give the participants about seven minutes to write their answers. No time to overthink. No time for writer’s block. Just hurry up and start writing, now.
I say “I know it’s a tough question. Just do the best you can. You can manifest whatever you want — if you think you’ll live until you’re 150, go ahead and write that. If you think you’ll die in an earthquake in the next hour, write that.”
Why do I pose this question? Because in order to live a happy, fulfilling, pleasurable life, you need to grasp your mortality in the first place. Because I never started having the courage to live the life of my dreams, until after I got a cancer diagnosis on February 5, 2013. (I wrote more about that here: “Live **AS IF** You Had Cancer”.) And because we don’t want to face the fact that we will die some day. We are often in denial that — just as you have a birthday — you will also have a death day. Merely writing that day is a very powerful act. October 6, 2063? February 17, 2105? July 4, 2017? It’s powerful because it helps you realize your mortality.
In my workshops, almost all people struggle with the question for the first 30 seconds, and then they start writing. Some are really stuck after a couple of minutes, and then they have a breakthrough. And on rare occasions, a person’s fear or denial is so strong that they simply refuse to write anything at all. For those people, I am respectful of their emotions and their struggle. But I think they’ll start living a whole lot better lives, when they realize that they don’t have forever.
Is the question “morbid”? No, it’s reality:
You do NOT have forever to live your life.
You do NOT have forever to start that business or do the work that you’ve always wanted to do.
You do NOT have forever to love others, create a family, be a compassionate father, mother, spouse, son, brother, sister, child, or friend.
You do NOT have forever to take care of your health. Or do that trip to Italy that you’ve always wanted to do. Or go to that fancy restaurant which you think you can’t afford, when you know you can.
I love this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.:
“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”
In my Happiness Workshops, after participants spend about seven minutes writing their answers to this first of several questions, I then ask them to pair up with another person (often somebody they don’t know), and then they spend about eight minutes sharing what they wrote. It’s pretty common that at least one person in the room starts crying — because they ARE feeling their mortality, they ARE realizing that their time is precious, and they ARE seeing that they need to make some changes to their lives, and they need to do so NOW. This is serious emotional work, but my workshop participants often tell me that they’re amazed at how quickly we are able to get to deep life issues – and gain actionable insights.
After the one-on-one discussions, I bring the whole room together so we can share any epiphanies, ask questions, and discuss. I then ask everyone to write out specific action items, of anything they might need to do or change in their lives, based on what they wrote. One time a woman said she had a vision of dying with her children and grandchildren beside her — but at that moment she didn’t have any children at all. Then, she told me, she decided she wanted to start a family with her husband. (I’m happy to say they are now pregnant, and expecting a baby this fall!)
In another workshop, there was a lovely couple from Brazil. He thought he would only live to age 70. She thought she would live to 96. When they discussed this, she started crying because she loves her husband, and she did not like the thought of being a widow for a quarter century. And they resolved that he needed to take better care of his health, so they would live long lives together.
Lots of participants ask “Should I write my ideal scenario, or write what I think will really happen?” I tell them it’s up to them. How far apart are the two scenarios? And more important, what would you need to do or change, so that you improve the chances of the ideal scenario actually happening?
So let me ask you the very same question:
“Please imagine your death. When is the exact day, month, and year? What is your cause of death? What are your last thoughts, emotions and sensations? Who will be with you?”
Take seven minutes, right now, to write out your answer. Think about the implications this has for your career, your relationships, your health, and your legacy. Share your answers with a loved one or a friend. And then have the courage to live a much better life, knowing that you will not live forever.
I’d be honored to hear in the comments section what you experience. And if you found this blog post useful, I’m very grateful for you sharing it. Thanks!
Be well, and enjoy the journey!
Jim