If you knew the date of your death, would you live your life differently? I don’t know if that sounds like a bleak question to you but, to be clear, I don’t see it that way at all. I see it as a galvanising positive. Realising that we are not immortal is a great leveller, a reality check that we all need to embrace to maximise our time on planet Earth, no matter how old or young we are. It is important to consider our mortality.
Each of us is born with the potential to achieve greatness. But many of us do not realise our full potential. Instead, some people go through life with an aching feeling that they haven’t lived life to the full, that they’re now too old or have wasted too much time, or perhaps have tried and failed and don’t feel they have the time, energy, belief or confidence left to try again.
Mortality motivation
While you have no control over the length of your life, you do have absolute control over its breadth and depth. You have the power to ensure that you make every day, every minute and every interaction count. So don’t waste your energy sweating the small stuff.
All of this talks to the idea that we should make the most of our time on this earth and get the most out of each of our days ahead. But how many days do you have exactly? And what does it matter if you squander some and only make the most of a few?
I’ve come up with this simple exercise to get you to start thinking with the end in mind.
Based on the average life expectancy where you live, how many days do you have left? (To find the specific life expectancy for where you live, type into your search engine and then do the simple calculation.) Then, with that number, ask yourself the following:
How good is the trade of time you’re making every day?
Are you happy with the trade?
If the answer to question 2 is yes, then keep doing what you’re doing. But if it’s no, what do you need to do differently or how do you need to change the way you’re thinking about things in your life right now?
Let’s make sure every day is a good trade.
Now imagine a standard tape measure (or use a real one if you have one to hand). You’ll want one that is at least as long as your average life expectancy in centimetres, where one centimetre represents one year. Open the tape measure at the point where you discovered the life expectancy for a person of your gender, in the country where you live, for example, 79 years equals 79 centimetres.
Using the tape measure, the next step is to rewind your age from your life expectancy, so you are only showing the years left ahead of you. For example, if your life expectancy is 79 and your age is 42, then you will have 37 years left or 37cm showing on the tape measure.
Now, since we need to sleep for roughly eight hours per day, or one-third of each 24-hour cycle, we must also ‘delete’ that time from the years we have left. So wind the tape measure in once again. How many centimetres are now left?
It’s an indication of the time each of us has left to achieve our goals, pursue our dreams and live the life we want to live. That’s the time we have left to ensure our obituary is the one we want people to read.
A few days lost here and there because of a lack of focus may not appear to matter, except that those are days you can’t take back. In the end, the big important things are usually the small, seemingly unimportant things that you put off while you get on with your life or don’t pay attention to because you’re too ‘busy’. These are simple things such as cuddling your little girl or boy, playing with your dog in the garden, going for a walk and enjoying the sunshine.
I hope it’s now clear to you that mortality motivation isn’t depressing or bleak; it’s a rallying cry for you to get out there and do something remarkable with your life. And it’s a warning that you ought to start doing that right now.
Royston Guest is a leading authority on growing businesses and unlocking people potential. Entrepreneur, author of #1 best-seller Built to Grow and RISE: Start living the life you were meant to lead, CEO of Pathways Global and founder of The Business Growth Pathway
and Pti Worldwide.
See more by Royston here.
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