Happy New Year!!! It is amazing that it is now 2016!!!!
I hope you had a chance to spend time with family and friends over the Holidays, and maybe even slow down and relax a little.
Which raises the question you KNOW I will ask……did you spend at least a little bit of time in “SELF REFLECTION”??? Did you pause to reflect on your values and what really matters in your life?
Many folks start the year with “new year resolutions” that will make them happy and subsequently get frustrated when by the second or third week in January these resolutions are either broken or no longer valid.
I thought you would find this quote from an article in last Sunday’s NYT of interest…”To be happier, start thinking more about your death”.. I know this may sound odd, or contradictory, or maybe even depressing, but I believe there are some interesting insights from what the author calls the “last year test”. All of us would like to be happy, and the key is making good use of our time! To accomplish this, of course, you have to discover what “good use” for you really is. People who apply the “last year test” tend to spend more time on the things that give them the most satisfaction. The full article is available here.
When students or executives ask me what it is like to be truly reflective, I tell them that it is helpful to think about how they would react if they were told they had only five days left to live. Really think about it….would you race around like crazy trying to complete the things you feel you need to do, or would you take the time to reflect and realize the obvious, “I will do nothing different because everyone has only five days left, we just don’t know five days from when, so maybe I should live my life and treat everyone as if I really only have five days left”. Putting your life in perspective makes a huge difference in how you live your life.
I always appreciate your comments and thoughts!
Thank you Harry for this thoughtful entry. Like many things, from the outside this challenge to consider our own death is obvious, and very easy – especially as we consider others’ lives. We all know this to be true. And we’ve known it since we were very little. What is hard is when one individual seriously considers it for him or herself. That step takes courage. But as you have highlighted in many ways here and elsewhere that is the power of self-reflection. And the reward.