This is my hack for making a lot of hard decisions very easy.
It's a technique I picked up from the Stoics called Contemplating Mortality. It is seen almost as a daily exercise you do intentionally. It is a form of meditation or simply an act of stopping and thinking for a little bit about your imminent death.
Why is it so useful and in fact necessary? Because actually realizing and facing the reality of yourself dying eventually and potentially sooner than you plan is extremely useful for aligning your emotions with your most desirable actions. The most desirable actions are things you want for yourself, things you dreamt of when you were a child, things you dare to think about sometimes and then you go like "No way, it's probably impossible."
When you catch that addictive feeling of "Shoot, I am young right now but I am still going to die", hard decisions become way easier. In the face of imminent death, the only actions worth pursuing are high-impact, high-integrity, high-happiness.
It is a state that one needs to learn to get into with some developed routine. This state is not natural to us as humans. Thinking about death doesn't make sense when you are living and thriving. So performing this exercise is like overcoming your own fear of mortality to kind of make your life more aligned with what you actually want.
In fact, contemplating not your own mortality but especially those of people you love is even more motivating.
You get your priorities in check. You become more present. You start being and behaving fully 10000x you.
You are going to die. I am going to die. The people in my family, my friends that I share my life with right now are all going to die.
Is anything other than phenomenal worth pursuing with these high-ass stakes??
For me, there are certain things I want to do for my grandparents from the life position that I want to be in. Fully facing the unpleasant reality of their death at some point in the very near future, makes me care more about fulfilling my wants toward them than being scared of the means of me getting there.
it does not matter what your religious beliefs are and if you have a mental scheme of what is going to happen after you die. In any case, you will lose everything you had in this life. You will lose all of your life that you have lived, the emotions, the memories. When a person you love dies, you forever lose them.
To me, that seems damn strong to be acting a very radical way towards at least pursuing your dreams.
To be attending to your desires, sustainably but still hearing the things that you "have wanted to do".
Ensuring success and happiness for the people around
Doing "the crazy" things you believe to be worth it
Happy Monday,
Mariyam
P.S. Check out this beautiful concept in visual art called Memento Mori(remember you are going to die). The deathly objects in the paintings are aimed at reminding the viewers of the imminence of death even in something beautiful and living right now.
