Strategy Blueprint for Life

Nope, no epitaph for me!

What started out as a "Gratitude Exercise" from Olivia Fox Cabane's excellent book The Charisma Myth turned out to be an exercise in discovering the strategy blueprint for my life!

Cabane maintains that gratitude can transform your entire body language into positive energy, and therefore enhance charisma. (If nothing else, read her chapter "Creating Charismatic Mental States."  It will make you a warmer, more compassionate person.) She provides exercises to find gratitude, and one of them is to:

Imagine your own funeral

No kidding. The idea is to be flooded with gratitude when you realize you're still alive.  I thought, why not give it a try, just for kicks.  The result?  Not gratitude for being alive - I'm pretty happy about that every day, to be honest - but I got a sure-fire strategy on how I'm going to live my life.

I'll share what I wrote, by hand, at a Starbucks on Battery Street on a miraculously sunny San Francisco summer day.

My Funeral

My funeral is held outdoors, on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  It's midday, sunny, a bit breezy.  No stuffy interiors or heavy-scented flowers (ugh).  It is a Saturday. Nature is all around.  Guests had to walk a bit from their cars, but they were prepared beforehand on what to expect.  People (a fairly contained crowd of those who knew and loved me most) know why they're there - I love the sea, the wind.  No chairs.  This is not a long, stuffy eulogy-type thing.

A few people talk.  Those closest to me.  ~10-15 minutes each.  People take leaves or flower petals and scatter them over the ocean afterwards.  No coffin, no nothing.  Cremation, yo!

During the speeches, people talk about how I was a warm, caring person who made others' lives better or richer in some way.  That I was full of life and curiosity, always excited about something.  That I delighted them with my dancing, music, and interesting topics of conversation.  They'd have no regrets for me, because I'll have tried all the things I wanted!

I won't have a tombstone, because no coffin, remember?  It might be nice to have a plaque somewhere.  Something that says: 

"Life is awesome!  Live the life you want, now!" 

... in my memory.  My name doesn't have to be on it.  In fact, it should be anonymous, so that henceforth people can see it and think, "Yeah!  What am I doing with my life?  Carpe diem!" and do something about it (or at least think about it). 

I don't feel teary-eyed or even intense, thinking about my own funeral.  I trust myself enough to know that if there's something I really want to try in my life, I'm going to go do it.  So by the time I move on, I'll be okay with it.

Sure, it's a bit surreal (and a wee bit tingly) thinking about being gone, but after all, we've got to go sometime.  If our time was infinite, we might not ever feel enough urgency to get out there and DO stuff that's meaningful to us.

Neither is life a ticking timepiece.  All in good time - only I'll know when it's time to take another leap, big or small.  There's never a perfect time.  Just do it when it's appropriate, or at least set the wheels in motion for it to happen.

I've lived a fulfilling life by the time my goodbye happens, so it'll be sentimental but joyous.  I want people to miss me and to remember me, but to be happy.  After the brief speeches and scattering of leaves/petals, there will be food.  And a dance party.  LIFE CONTINUES!

***

It all came tumbling out very smoothly, very surely.  I was delighted as I surprised myself by what turned out to be an exercise in self-affirmation.

Now I'll have even more impetus to make calculated risks to do the things I want in my life.  Because at the end of life, no one ever talks about things they regret they did; they talk about the what-ifs in their life.  I don't want that!

As I finished writing, I was left with a sense of shimmering energy and joy.  I can feel it as I write this, now.

Give it a shot - write about your own funeral!  You never know what you'll learn about yourself.  You just might discover what really matters to you.

Reducing Life's Noise

Beta scratchpad of my very first To-Don't List!

How many To-Do lists do you have?  I confess that I currently have three:

• Work
• Personal
• A dumping repository of things I want to remember to do but are lower priority, such as the title of a book that piqued my interest during a weekend browsing session at the local bookstore (one of the few that still exist)

Despite the satisfaction of checking something off one of my lists, the items continue to grow ... and grow, and grow.  What if we decided to subtract, rather than add, to our lives?

This is a wonderful idea from Tom Peters and Jim Collins, the authors of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great, respectively.  I was introduced to it by reading motivation guru Dan Pink's excellent book Drive, and also found it on productivity expert Peter Bregman's blogpost on the Wall Street Journal. The To-Don't List is #6 on Pink's recent manifesto FLIP: 16 Counter-Intuitive Ideas about Motivation (downloadable from his site):

"The key insight of both Peters and Collins is that we spend too much time on addition and not nearly enough on subtraction. Yet it's only by taking away what doesn't matter that allows us to reveal what does matter."

Here's my list, strategically placed so that it's constantly visible (on my desktop, mobile, cube wall):

• Don't snack after 8pm
  (I tend to go overboard and end up with lovely case of indigestion)

• Don't accept meetings or conference calls I wouldn't have initiated myself
  (sorry Dan, I took that straight from you - it's a really valuable one!)

• Don't snack before practicing the piano in the evening
  (it's only to put off the inevitable)

• Don't go to bed after 11 pm

• Don't say 'yes' to requests merely out of habit

• Don't be a perfectionist when the task at hand doesn't require the extra mile

Simply writing these down has stopped me in my tracks even thinking about doing some of the above.  This evening I thought about snacking on something sweet after dinner, but it was already after 8pm.  Though I was sorely tempted, I remembered my new list.  I made a deal with myself: I'd wait twenty minutes and then if I still really wanted that snack, I'd get it.  That wasn't victory outright, but it was a start! 

That's how powerful writing down a list can be.  As Pink writes:

"... merely by making those productivity and satisfaction destroyers explicit, and facing them day after day, I clarify what is truly important to me - producing good work and spending time with those I care about." 

That sounds like a good deal to me!  

So, what's on your list?

And Just Who *Am* I? The Perils of the Profile

I finally got over my inertia and set up a Twitter account (@SusanRLin)!  I realized I could be getting interesting and useful gems of information from people I respect - people whose books I've read and am reading, whose podcasts I regularly listen to.  (Tess Vigeland, you're awesome!)

I could also be letting folks know about the writing I do here on this blog, as well as on my dance and piano blogs Dancing With Joy and Romance in Black and White.  I'm surprised and humbled by the wonderful comments and emails I receive from perfect strangers who have somehow found my blogs despite my not publicizing them at all.  If my writing can help, inspire, or simply be of interest to someone, I am thrilled.

During the setup of my Twitter account, I gleefully added people to follow - that was easy!  After clicking "Next" I was suddenly faced with a little blank field, titled "Profile."  I stopped in my tracks.  What should I write in that innocuous white space?

I realized I had no idea how to introduce myself.  Who am I, anyway?

Quickly, almost in a panic, I scanned the profiles of the people I had just begun following.  But I am not a professor at a distinguished university, I am not the host of a national radio show.  I have a career, but I knew immediately that I don't want that to be what defines me.  (This is the result of a long and laborious evolution, of which I am personally proud.)

I could simply leave the field blank; I saw that many people do.  However, this was not an acceptable option to me.  I like information - receiving and giving it.

I tried, and failed, to come up with something punchy that conveys my desire to learn everything there is to learn in the world, my excitement about life and its infinite possibilities, my goal of figuring out how to create an environment within and without that leads to motivated, happy people, and my explorations in music and dance that inform my corporate experience and shape my life overall.

That obviously wasn't going to happen in 140 characters.  I need to work on this.  So, here's what I came up with:

People Operations Manager, Dancer, Classical Pianist, and Incurably Excited about Life and Discovery


It's not perfect, but it's a start.  What do you think?

I realize we can be defined and define ourselves in various ways.  It is a personal choice, of course.  Something as small as a short profile description can speak volumes about:

• What we want to say about ourselves
• How we want people to see us 

In some cases, it is aspirational: the profile can be a powerful statement of what we want to be, whether we've gotten there or not.

I'll keep working on articulating who I am right now - I know it'll evolve as I plow, meander, jaunt, drag my feet, dance, labor, study, and sing my way through life - but fundamentally there is a center, a heart, to who we are as individuals.  It is the core that stays constant.  Just what we define it to be may ultimately be a matter of perspective, discovery, and choice.  

Isn't life beautiful in its mysterious ways?