Essentials: Live Your Life Backwards
Today's life tool is called Live your Life Backwards.
I actually developed it after losing someone I loved. And this person I loved wasn't just any person. He was everything to me. My entire world was just focused on him, and we were both really happy and in love, and I had never imagined my life without him. And everything changed in my 20s, when suddenly my health changed and I lost this relationship, and one minute I was building a life with this person, and the next minute, everything in my life fell apart.
And what I didn't realize at the time was that I was experiencing what they call a manic episode, which was because I had bipolar disorder, which wasn't diagnosed at the time, and I was in my 20s, and I was alone, and it was just a very difficult time in my life. But there are so many important things I learned from it. One of the most powerful things I learned was to live your life backwards. Let me explain.
Live your Life Backwards means realizing time is limited.
It's precious. There were so many things I wished I had done or said before losing this person. Things that I would no longer have the chance to do anymore, given how suddenly everything had happened in my life. Grief really has a way of stripping away everything to make you see what's really important. It was like living life with a veil torn. Suddenly, I could see what was truly important and what I wanted to do with the time I had left. So, that's how I came up with this tool called Live your Life Backwards.
How you do it is you start at the end. Have a clear vision of what you will have wished you had done by the end of your life. I want to invite you to look back on your life, imagining that you're at the final chapter.
When you're older, what would you want to have seen that you've done?
What would matter to you?
What do you want to make sure that you'll have done or have lived out?
And what experiences will you have wanted to have?
And what kind of person will you have wanted to have been?
I also want you to remember that no matter what happens in your life, always know that you're the author of your story. You get to write the story of your life and how you want to live.
No matter what happens to you, you can always pick yourself up and decide how you want to write the story.
And it really helps to step back and look at your life as a whole. I think on a daily basis, we all tend to get caught up in the day-to-day, the stresses, and oftentimes we forget to pull back and step back and look at our life from a greater vantage point, like a 30,000 foot view. It helps to look at your life like this as a whole, and think about what you want to do with the time you have. Because, as I learned in my 20s, time is limited. And even though I always knew that, I think we all know that it's different when you go through an experience of loss, where you feel it in your bones. You know it in your bones.
I want you to also notice that there is a place inside you that just simply knows what it is that you want to do with your life and to have done with the time that you have left. Notice how there is a place inside you that just knows. It doesn't have to think too hard about it. The answer kind of just emerges inside you. Let this knowing guide you, and use it as a compass. It will help give you clarity on what's most important to you, to help you live in alignment with what matters most.
This week, what I want you to do is spend some time reflecting on what you have in mind for yourself in your life, looking from this bigger perspective on it. It could be going to Africa, getting a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, starting a family, visiting national parks, writing. Those are things on my list. By the way, I'd love to hear things on your list. I bet they're really cool.
This tool of living your life backwards, it's actually related to a Buddhist meditation that's taught by the teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh. In this meditation, he teaches you to sit with the reality of your death. Just realizing you're going to die one day, and using the power of that realization to motivate you, to help wake you up and bring you into the present moment.
There is also a practice from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is an evidence based treatment for anxiety and depression, and it asks you to imagine your epitaph. In other words, what would be written on your gravestone. What would it say about the life you lived? Now, I'll be honest, I've always found that kind of morbid, but many people do find this practice helpful.
As for me, I just say, live your life backwards and let it guide what you do today.
Listen to the full episode of the Inner Calling podcast “ESSENTIALS: Live Your Life Backwards” to learn more about this here, & get the workbook to go along with it in our Resource Library!
