Music by Lisa Thiel - Kuan Yin's mantra
Hello there.
Every week, I receive questions from people all over the world
that basically boil down to:
"How do I live a more fulfilling life?"
For some of us, our life feels routine, empty and stuck.
We don't really feel alive.
We go through the motions, we do what we think we have to do,
but we don't really feel that zest for life.
I'm gonna tell you exactly what do about it.
When we're young, so often we stop following our internal guidance system,
our internal compass in the direction of the things that cause us to feel alive.
We abandon that pathway,
specifically so that we can feel the approval we get from others
as a result of doing what they think we should be doing.
Going in the direction they think we should be going.
Eventually, when we grow up,
we tell ourselves that those things that they wanted us to do make us happy.
But it's sort of like a drug.
We want the drug of approval to cover up the loneliness, the emptiness,
the absence we feel when we're not following our internal guidance system.
But just like a drug, eventually, it doesn't work to cover up that void within us.
We start to feel as if we're not alive.
We start to feel that emptiness.
We start to feel like we don't know what we like.
We don't know what we want.
We don't know which direction to go.
We feel lost.
If we try to deny this aspect of ourselves,
to reject our internal compass,
to not follow the direction which we are being told that we need to go
and we try to numb ourselves out for long enough,
our soul will create a crisis.
This type of crisis is designed specifically to get us back on track.
But sometimes this crisis will bring us face to face with death.
The reason we're a match to this, is because if we're living according to other people's approval,
instead of our own definition of what life really means for us,
then we are living a waking death anyway.
I have spent countless hours at the bedside of people who are terminally ill for this very reason.
And those who tend to recover are the ones who can manage to let the visitor of death educate them about life.
The ones who let a brush with death bring them back to life.
The bottom line is, when a person is terminally ill, priorities change.
And they change into what they always should've been.
The absolute gift of surviving a brush with death,
is that you can make this change in priorities without being physically ill or dying.
Then you have a shot at really living.
Some of us are catastrophy-thinkers,
we're always putting ourself in the worst case scenario,
and quite literally we're always living as if tomorrow will never come.
The downside to this is that we're not very happy,
because we spend most of our lives panicking and worrying about things.
But there is an upside to this.
Your life will be full of meaning
and your life will always be rich
if you can live your life like tomorrow will never come.
And this is the very teaching which those of us that are catastrophy-thinkers
can bring to the world.
If you're a catastrophy-thinker and if you tend to worry
I do have two video's on that particular subject.
You can go look at them up on youtube.
The first is called: "How to stop worrying".
The second is called: "How to stop expecting the worst".
But for the sake of today's video,
we're going to take the direction
of what catastrophy-thinkers are here to teach the world
because it would benefit us,
to live today as if tomorrow may never come.
So I'm gonna give you a practice,
this practice is to be used as a tool
to get your life back on track.
I urge you to throw yourself into this practice with vengeance.
What you're gonna do, is to close your eyes
and you're going to imagine that you died yesterday.
I want you to imagine how you died.
Imagine all the circumstances surrounding your death.
Who is there?
Imagine how the news was broken to the people that love you and the reactions that they had.
Spent some time really making this imagined experience believeable and real to you.
And when you are ready, I want you to ask yourself the following questions.
For the sake of time consumption, I'm going to run through these questions quickly.
But what I encourage you to do,
is to pause the video after each question,
so you allow yourself time, to actually answer it from the core of your own being.
And then resume this video for the next question,
once you have done that.
1. What do I regret the most about my life?
2. Who do I most want to say "I love you" to?
3. What am I incomplete with?
Or what do I desperately wish I could have gotten complete with, before I died?
4. What was I the most afraid of?
And if I wasn't afraid of those things, how would my life have been different?
5. Regardless of what my priorities were while I was living,
looking back on life, what do I now see is the most important thing in my life?
6. Was there anything I worried about that in the end did not really matter once I died?
7. Is there anything I needed to say to someone, but didn't?
8. Was there a time in my life that I chose something else, over love?
Would I have made a different choice?
9. What am I the most glad I did in my life?
What was the best decision I made?
10. What were the top 3 best memories of my life and why were they the best memories?
11. What fed my spirit?
What did I love doing that I didn't do enough of?
Think about those things that make you fall to your knees in awe
or give you goose bumps or make you feel full of life.
Why didn't I make that thing or those things the center of my life?
12. Knowing now that I could choose anywhere on earth.
Where would I have moved to and lived?
13. What will people remember me for?
What legacy am I leaving behind?
Keep in mind that the truth may not always be a positive one.
14. If I could have chosen, what legacy would I have liked to have left behind and be remembered for?
15. Now that I am dead, looking back at my life,
if I could have written a bucket list,
essentially a list of things I want to experience, accomplish or do before I die...
What would be on that list?
16. What life that other people lived was I envious of
and didn't give myself the permission to go after?
17. Now that you are dead.
What advice would you give to anyone who is living, especially your children?
18. Looking at life now that I am dead.
What would I say is the meaning of life?
19. If I were given one more shot at life,
what would I do differently?
20. If I were given one more shot at life.
What would I now have the courage to do,
that I didn't have the courage to do before?
Now I want you to imagine that an angel
or some other transcendental being
comes down and actually tells you:
"I'm gonna give you another shot at life,
you are going to wake up to live another day."
Imagine this being doing so.
And as you open your eyes,
imagine that you are coming back to life after having died
You get to live your life from scratch.
Everything was put into perspective.
Look back over the answers you gave to the questions you were asked while you were dead.
I am not concerned about you making the right decisions for your life.
Having done this exercise, you know exactly what you're meant to do.
And you also have the perspective
and potentially even the courage to do so from this point on.
Make those changes and make them today.
Your world is being created through you and the decisions you make every single day.
You may think that you have lots of time.
But the truth is, you can't know that.
The truth is, you may not be alive in an hour or a day.
So there is no time to waste.
You cannot afford to live a minute of your life thinking or saying or doing something
that is not worthy of your life.
You may have a list five miles long
of the things you think you should be doing
but would those things really matter if you were dead.
This is your life and you came here to live it.
It doesn't belong to anyone but you.
And the only thing that's going to happen
if you play it safe and don't take risks
is you will arive at death safely
because I'm gonna break it to you today.
None of us are getting out of here alive.
And that might just be good news
if we use our life instead of waste it.
All of us need to start living our life as if next year may never come.
And so the question I am going to leave you with is this:
"If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do with today?"
To close this episode, instead of wishing you a good week,
I'm going to read you a truth by my personal favorite poet Dillan Thomas
because this particular truth holds the exact frequency of the bravery that it requires
to live this life the way we were meant to live it.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
They do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see the blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze the meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now, with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community