Five years ago, I delivered the eulogy at my dad’s funeral.
It was one of the greatest honours and experiences of my life. It was also a very cathartic process for me as I reflected on all that my dad meant to the many people in his life, including of course, myself.
Speaking with family, friends, colleagues and his community of the impact he had on peoples’ lives was heartwarming.
It helped me truly understand what matters when it comes to our time on Earth. After all, we only get one shot at it. To me, life is about the relationships we form, the character and values we demonstrate, and our ability to maximise on our potential via the achievements and contributions we make.
In the past five years I have often found myself thinking about what people might say about me at my funeral. The impact I would have had on my family, friends, colleagues and community. What will be said of my character, values, achievements and contributions.
It’s a powerful exercise to do in the context of goal setting. Begin with the end – what’s truly important to us – and then work backward from there.
Now, I should clarify that I’ve never actually written my own eulogy or anything like that. It’s not that I’m superstitious, but why take the chance, right?
I have, however, used it to frame up my goal setting and organise the priorities in my life.
For some it may sound morbid, but I think it’s handy to try and incorporate a version of the ‘eulogy process’ when setting your own goals.
Let’s say you were going to leave the planet five years from now, what would you want your family, friends, colleagues and community to say about you?
What would you hope to have achieved? What would you like to change about who you are now and what you have done with your life to date?
It’s an exercise that opens the right side of our brain – the creative, imaginative and emotive side of our brains that we us to set goals strong enough and powerful enough to propel us through times of challenge and struggle.
When I wrote Bulletproof Investing, I broke the book into two parts – growing pains and the bulletproof approach.
The first part was about changing our mindset around money from a reactive to proactive approach. The basic principle being to pay yourself first (i.e. save money), then live off what remains – this is proactive saving – as opposed to trying to save after we have spent everything we need to live on, which is reactive saving.
To quote the Richest Man in Babylon “our expenses will always equal our income unless we profess otherwise!”
The second part was about maintaining financial control by holding that proactive mindset and starting to get the money we save to multiply.
This is impossible without a motivation and goal tied to what is truly important to us, that will force us to have the discipline to remain committed to these new habits of control and proactivity.
Without a strong goal forcing us to maintain our discipline, we lose our way. Particularly when we inevitably face challenges and struggles, which of course we all do from time to time.
Our lives are the culmination of thousands of decisions, which me make daily.
It’s a huge balancing act of delayed gratification, really – balancing the need to make sacrifices today for the benefit of our future selves, without sacrificing too much and missing out on the present.
Carefully considered goals allow us to make the right decisions.
Carefully considered goals help us to get clarity around what to say yes and no to.
The only way we will say no to unimportant things is through a stronger pull of yes to more important things.
Begin at the end and work backwards from there. That’s what works for me, see how it works for you!
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