23 Benefits of Heart-Centered End-of-Life Education and Planning

If you’re reading this, then you may know that end-of-life planning can reduce stress, anxiety and chaos, and increase peace of mind and ease at the end of someone’s life and after they die. Did you also know that the benefits of end-of-life planning can go much further?

When people think and talk about death way before they are told to get their affairs in order, it will help them not only die peacefully but also live more fully and meaningfully.

If you are a death doula, end-of-life educator or end-of-life planner who helps people with advance-care plans, or if you’re working on yours or someone else’s plans, consider all the ways you can help people with what Willow calls “heart-centered” end-of-life planning.

Here are 23 ways you can help people as a heart-centered end-of-life educator and planner.

You can help people…

1. Articulate their core values that guide their living and their dying. 
2. Uncover the range of feelings about what makes life worth living and what would make a good death. 
3. Learn from past experiences with death and dying.
4. Explore their hopes and fears around their inevitable death and empower them to address those that they can. 
5. Create end-of-life plans that reflect their core values, priorities and who and what matter most.
6. Live and die without regrets.
7. Write lasting messages to people they love and future generations.
8. Live their lives according to the legacy they want to leave.
9. Gain the clarity and peace that some dying people have, way before they die!
10. Become “better” at caring for and being with someone who is dying (end-of-life care).
11. Understand that heartache, sorrow, love and acceptance can co-exist when death occurs.
12. Imagine and plan for meaningful funeral rituals and ceremonies.
13. Know their options of how to green their death.
14. Use death, dying, funerals and legacy planning as pathways to growth and healing.
15. Do everything possible to reduce anxiety and prevent conflict at the time of their death.
16. Talk openly and compassionately about what their inevitable death and dying means to them and people they love.
17. Create instructions or guidelines about how they want to be cared for and laid to rest after they die.
18. Have meaningful end-of-life planning conversations with the people in their lives. 
19. Consider what they believe happens after death.
20. Explore how they want to remember others and be remembered.
21. Feel enriched, energized and connected to themselves, others and the planet. 
22. Increase their appreciation for life and the people in their life.
23. Reduce fear and anxiety around death and dying.