Let's Begin at the End

Let’s begin at the end, your end to be exact. At the risk of being morbid, you are going to die (oh, the horror!). Guess what, lovelies, we all are. This is probably not something that you want to think about and certainly not something you want to embrace, but thinking about this may help you to better navigate your life while you’re still alive. While Westerners tend to shy away from thinking about death, other cultures, particularly Eastern cultures, embrace this practice. I once read an article about people in Korea who were paying hundreds of dollars to be buried in a coffin to temporarily experience what it might be like to die. Participants in this highly unusual and expensive practice reported greater focus and intentionality in their everyday life after being buried alive. I don’t think it’s necessary bury yourself to obtain clarity on where you want to go in your life. The following simple meditation practice based on the work of Dr. Stephen Hayes will suffice:

Find a comfortable spot, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths. Imagine it is the day of your funeral. You have lived a long and productive life. Your family and friends are now gathered to honor your memory. Take a moment to imagine the scene. The sights, the sounds, what is unfolding before you? Family members and friends stand up one by one to speak about your amazing life. What are they saying? What did you accomplish in your life that they are now commenting on? What are they saying about your character, your actions, and your deeds that you performed while you were alive? Really get into this practice— were you an accomplished musician who dedicated a lifetime to perfecting and beautifying the world via music? Did you dedicate your life to helping others? Did you perform volunteer work for the homeless, give blood? What good deeds are remembered for? During your lifetime, did you acquire the knowledge and skills to run a successful paint your own pottery empire? Did you love to fish or golf or knit elaborate hats or spend time with your children? What did you value while your heart was still beating?

Why bother with all of this? By visualizing the end of your life and what you hope to accomplish, you can better prioritize your day-to-day life now. If you yearn to acquire that business acumen, you can start today in achieving your goal by taking courses, finding a mentor, or doing research. If your end-of-life dream is to start an organization to help rescue abandoned or homeless animals you can begin with the first paragraph of your nonprofit business plan. You can take small steps toward achieving your goals. The choices we make today are cumulative in creating our right life. We can take small steps each day to move in the direction of our dreams, but in order to achieve our dreams we must have a clear and concise understanding of what those dreams are; what do you yearn to be? Using this practice we can gain a big-picture view of where we want to go. Often we spend too much time mired in the details. It’s like trying to watch TV with your face pressed against the screen— you miss the totality of the image.

What does this have to do with your health? So many people find themselves in jobs, relationships or situations that are pulling them away from their right life. Choice by choice, day by day, these people are being pulled farther and farther away from where they intended to go precisely because they weren’t very clear on where they should be headed in the first place. It’s like getting in the car and saying “I want to head North” when what you are really after is a road trip to Winnipeg. How likely are you to get there by merely pointing the car North? Being specific in your vision for your life gives you the destination you’re after, the road you choose to get there is up to you.

Without a clear picture of your endgame, without a clear picture of what you hope to achieve, you are merely drifting without purpose in a sea of endless possibility. By taking the first step of defining your dream, you can clarify the values and day-to-day actions that will help you to create a lifeboat that will purposely float you in the direction of your dream. Note that I did not say struggle or flail or drown in the direction of your dreams, but float. While achieving your vision may not be easy, it will always feel like floating compared to living out a life with no direction or a life that truly doesn’t fit.

This day-to-day struggle, this moment-by-moment war of trying to embrace a life that you don’t truly want sacrifices your health. The stress created by living someone else’s life instead of the life you were meant to live causes physiological changes that can wreak havoc on your body. Every cell in your body yearns to support you in living your right life. When you choose to go to the job every day that you despise, when you choose to love a person who is wrong for you, when you choose to not to share your gifts, your body bears the abuse of these decisions. Conversely, healing begins by envisioning what is true for you, and then following up that vision with action— every day choices that add up to a lifetime of fulfillment. It is never too late to start, just begin at the end.