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Write your obituary and reform your life

When I was 17 and much more serious, I sat down and wrote my own obituary.

Looking back, I don't know why I ever did it. I wasn't suicidal, depressed, or especially odd.

I just wrote my obituary, just for the heck of it. I kept it for about a day, then tore it up.

Now, I'm suggesting that writing your obituary is a pretty good thing to do...but with one little change that makes all the difference in the world.

I'm suggesting that each of us sit down and write our obituary as we want it to look, at some time far, far in the future.

Did I mention it was far in the future?

Really, really, really far in the future?

Writing your obituary is often a useful way of deciding what you wish to accomplish and what really matters to you in life.

Start off with your name. Then, pick an appropriately bizarre way to die. You don't want anything typical. You don't want anything obvious. Heart disease, liver ailments, car accidents, cancer are all out of bounds as "cause of death" for this little exercise, as is having a heart attack while you're sitting on the toilet.

My brother says the way he would like to die is to be shot by a jealous husband when he's 98 years old. You can use that one if you like.

Anyway, decide an appropriate death date. Make it 50 or 100 years or so from now. Then, decide what you've accomplished. This is the key point to this whole exercise, and it involves two main steps: First off, decide who you want to be (or have been, if we're talking obituary-time).

Do you want your obituary to reflect your family? Then that's where your current time and efforts should focus. Should it reflect your career? That becomes number one.

It's true -- where you put your time and effort is where you will gain the greatest rewards. But when you're looking back on your life, you may find that your goals and desires may have been a bit skewed.

My father, God rest his soul, worked hard every day. He spent long hours in work and community service. He influenced the lives of many people for good. Still, he was talking about "taking a break one of these days," when his death came.

Many of us will be faced with the same circumstance. We will always talk about the time we want to spend. Years later, we will refer to that time as the "time we should have spent." I do it. I work too hard. I work long hours. This piece is being written at 12:15 a.m. You do it too -- I'm sure you do, sometime or another.

We have to make certain we have our priorities in place -- and writing your own obituary is an excellent way to accomplish it.

Second, writing your obituary can help you to set long-term goals. When you take an "accomplishment" view of your life, listing the things you really want to accomplish, it clarifies where you want to go. Try to make your "accomplishments" as concrete and possible as you can. Try to define yourself in terms of what you are likely to be able to accomplish, with a little or a lot of stretching.

Keep unlikely things out of your projected obit. It looks great to say you developed a cure for baldness, but unless you're a doctor or a microbiologist, or have the desire to become one, you're not that likely to gain it. Keep your "accomplishments" to things that you are likely to be able to do.

I've heard it say that we should live our work lives as if we were going to list our accomplishments on a resume five years from now. That is a wonderful technique for the short term. The obituary is a wonderful way to approach long term goals and desires.

Lastly, when you're done writing it, make certain to tell your spouse about it -- and then, after you've finished breaking down how you're going to achieve everything on your list, get rid of the obit. You don't want it appearing in print -- at least not until you've achieved all those items. And you're not going to need it for a long, long, long, long, long time.

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