Death, Your Pathway to Personal Discovery

When you die, how will your absence affect the people, places and things in your world?

Whether you have days or decades left to live, end-of-life planning can be a pathway to live your life to its fullest. By asking yourself some thought-provoking, juicy questions, you’ll gain heightened or fresh awareness about your core values and who and what matter most.

Contemplating our inevitable death is a pathway for cultivating self awareness. 

Do you just need to answer some questions, and viola, self-awareness? Unfortunately not. Answering the questions helps, but it’s not the whole story.  If you were to answer that same question five times over say, five months, you’d probably answer it differently each time. The question is an inquiry, and the answers can come in many forms and through many guises.

And, all your responses are signals to you. Everything you think, feel, write, scribble, or say, tells you something about yourself. The more you know about yourself, the more likely you are to live your life the way you choose and to be cared for at the end of your life and after death in a way that reflects your life and your choices.

Writing lasting messages to those you love and for future generations, thinking about and planning for how you would like to be cared for before and after you die, and choosing what happens to your assets, and what kind of legacy you want to leave, are huge issues.

For most people, end-of-life planning consists of filling out forms and checking boxes. If you do that without getting to know yourself, you’re  missing out on a great opportunity for clarity, joy, a sense of purpose, and closer connection to the people who are significant in your life.

What about you?

What kind of end-of-life planning have you done and what did you learn about yourself?