As I ponder about my death, I asked myself what would I do if I was diagnosed terminally ill today? What would I change about my life?
Two things came to mind extremely fast. I’d spend time with family and friends, and I’d set them up to have success after I have passed.
What exactly would I do when it comes to that second point? What doest success mean? Success is to live their most fulfilling lives.
Over the years I’ve been searching, and reading, and reflecting about this topic myself. I feel like I came into a midlife crisis at the age of 25 and I can feel it internally that I either found it or am somewhere around the answer.
The answer I have come up with is helping others.
Every billionaire, that has cut back on work, has become heavily involved with charities or helping people in some way. A part of it could definitely be to look like a better person, but I have an intuition that all of them made their money and had their own soul searching session to find out what all this means. And now that they have more money than they know what to do with, how can they live a fulfilling life. But this little goober stumbled upon all of this before having a billion dollars and being able to start a charity. And non of my friends or family have billions in their bank accounts. So what can they do to have a fulfilling life?
While they don’t have money, everybody has time. Even if they work 28 hours a day and have 18 kids, there is still some amount of time they have. If you really do not have any time, then you need to try your best to create some, to stay sane.
So how do you go about helping others. Here’s a quick one. Your job, and the things you do at work probably already helps others. If you are one of those people that hate their jobs, a simple reframing of what you do might have a huge impact on your internal state. That approach would lead to a more positive approach to your work which should result in more quality, which will make that impact you are having even greater. I bet you’d become a more pleasureful person to work with. Even if your job is sending accounting statements, the people that work with you will notice your statements or language or something being more delightful. This can be a small little wave that impacts their day positively and maybe they take that step to be more delightful to the next person. Maybe that small little wave could change the output of the whole organization and impact the world.
Yeah sure, that’s wishful thinking. But what if you do that with all aspects of your life. Every single day. I dare you to tell me your internal state wouldn’t bet better. And that it wouldn’t translate to something meaningful and helpful to others through osmosis.
A direct way to help others is through creating and sharing. This is vague because there are infinitely many ways this can be done. Through trial and error you can find what works best for you. The easiest way to start is through online endeavors. Create literally anything online and share it with the world and who knows what kind of impact it can have on people. The hardest thing is that you don’t have that immediate feedback as you would in real life, but you just have to trust that there’s an impact.
That’s why I wrote this. Maybe somebody reading this will start that small trickle of helping others that leads not only others to have a more fulfilling life, but themselves.
That’s how I define success in life.
That’s what I would try to leave behind for my loved ones, if I got a terminal diagnosis.
That’s what I will leave behind for my loved ones. Without any diagnosis.