The 6 Months Left to Live Question

I wanted to share a chapter from The Everyday Hero Manifesto with you. The chapter is called The 6 Months Left to Live Question. And here it is... Just imagine. For only a second. That you had merely six months left to live. ...6 short months to do all those things you’d promised yourself you’d do. ...6 months to visit the Taj Mahal and listen to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and see the Mona Lisa and walk along The Great Wall of China. ...6 months to write letters of forgiveness to those...

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma and welcome to Daily Mastery. This is my short form podcast where I'll walk you through the insights, methodologies, and tactics that I've shared with many of the world's most successful people as their mentor, including celebrity billionaires, NBA superstars, world-class artists, and global humanitarians. I hope you find great value in today's episode.

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  So many of us live our lives as if we have all the time in the world. We postpone that master project that would allow us to dominate our domain and bring beauty into the world. We postpone being the kind of people we know and our hearts we want to be. We postpone forgiving people who might have hurt us and repairing broken relationships. We postpone taking travels to Mauritius to swim with the dolphins, or going to Buenos Aires, or going to the Tate Modern in London, or wherever it is. We postpone living our promise and doing the study and exercising the training that

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  would allow us to live more of our potential. We postpone having more fun. We are hustling, grinding, working most of the time to meet our responsibilities and to fulfill the cultural norm of working hard as a badge of honor. So we postpone watching the sunset, or spending a few hours in a garden, or reading the great works of literature to some imaginary time in the distance when the busyness will dissolve and we'll have much more free time and everything will be okay and we'll have all this freedom. Yet, there will never be a better time to be the person and to live the life of your

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  highest ethical ambitions than now. And what I often do is, at this stage of my life, I ask myself a question. I say, would I do this, given that I only have 25 Christmases left? And I don't know how long I'm going to get to live. It might be much shorter, it might be much longer, but roughly I have about 23, 20, or 25 Christmases left. And so, when there's an adventure I want to take, or when there's a project that I ideate, I ask myself, or I might say it to my loved ones, "Well, you know what? I only have 20 Christmases left." And that really brings the shortness of life into focus.

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  And that brings me to a chapter in the Everyday Hero Manifesto that I would love to walk you through as your mentor. It's the "Six Months Left to Live" question. It's chapter 87.

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  "A fire blazes as I work. The crackling of logs fills the room I'm writing in, standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my hand by the primitive radio gods plays. I know it's an ancient song, yet it lifts my vibe and it makes me feel a little sad." Which makes me wonder, just imagine for only a second that you had merely six months left to live. And I just want to put the book down, and I want to challenge you with great love and respect. What project would you release into your field if you only had six months left to live? What would you say to your loved ones if you have only six months left to live?

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  What books would you read if you had only six months to live? What art galleries would you visit? What travels would you take? What things would you do? Who would you become? What would you say? What would you think? How would you feel if you had only six months left to live? Let's continue.

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  Just imagine for only a second that you had merely six months left to live. Six short months to do all the things you promised yourself you'd do. Six months to visit the Taj Mahal and listen to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and see the Mona Lisa and explore the Great Pyramid of Giza. Six months to write letters of forgiveness to those who wronged you, or letters of apology to those whom you've hurt. And letters of unembarrassed and unconditional love to those who cherished you and only saw the light within you. If you had just six months left to live, what would you stop doing? Because here's a bonus point. It's not your to-do list that is most important.

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  It's your not-to-do list that really allows you to focus in on those priorities, those projects, those personal life activities that will bring you the greatest joy and the highest impact. Maybe you'd list items on your stop-doing list like refusing to over-identify yourself with your work, being busy being busy with digital distractions, spending too much time with entertainment, and not enough time on your education, getting angry over needless things, and irritated by trifling matters like noisy neighbors, terrible drivers, and frustrating family members. Then I'll just continue. And what things would you have the weighty wisdom and charismatic strength to begin doing?

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  Like writing up and thereby re-experiencing the most spectacular meals you've ever had, and reflecting on the majestic moments you've been blessed to enjoy. And that's the beauty of writing in a journal. Every morning, while the rest of the world is asleep, you can not only record your intentions and your HVTs, your high-value targets, not only write about the person you want to be, you can not only list gratitude and the blessings that are in your life, you can not only process through pain if you're going through a difficult time. Writing in a journal allows you to re-experience great meals and great travels and great victories, and recording the small wins that will give you the confidence and energy to make each

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  day even more productive, more creative, and more fun.

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  What things would you begin doing? Like bellowing aloud "I love you" to all the people whom you've never felt safe enough to say this to, but who need to hear the extent of your love for them before you return to the great wide-open space from which you came. Like taking the trip of a lifetime or planting a special rose garden that your friends will remember you by. Like eating more pizza, gulping more pasta. I don't know if you love pasta as much as I do.

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  And savoring more ice cream. Like dancing naked under a full moon, reading poetry you were too busy to read, or going to art galleries you promised you'd visit someday when you said you had more time and less to do. I could go on, like returning to your childhood home, walking the streets you walked as a kid with a pure heart and unmarked history, radiating good cheer, high hope, and an innocence I wish we all enjoyed more of. I really want you to think. As a thought exercise, what would you do if you only had six months left to live? And that will actually remind you of how you wish to live, so that when you are on

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  the last hour of your last day and you're surveying how you've lived, you will say, "I lived my life." In the short story of Leo Tolstoy called "The Death of Ivan Illich," the character got to the end of his life and asked himself a fundamentally heartbreaking question. "What if my whole life was wrong? What if my whole life was a lie?" And too many good souls on the planet today are living someone else's life. They're living society's life, they're living their neighbor's life. And a huge part of being an everyday hero is being true to you, living your life. And not only living your life in terms of your values and doing the projects that make

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  your heart sing, and releasing beauty in the world, and being true to yourself, telling people how you truly feel, for example. Part of being an everyday hero is also not postponing living your majesty and your promise until sometime in the future that never really comes. It's really about getting in the game now and being the person we both know you can be, starting today.

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma. I hope you've received strong value from today's episode. I encourage you to read my latest book, The Everyday Hero Manifesto, which is helping people from right across the world live soaring lives. If you'd like to go into further learning, you can head over to robinsharma.com, where you can download my free ebook, The World Changers Manifesto. And when you do that, you'll also get full access to the Everyday Hero Training Formula, which is a complete system to help you upgrade your productivity, positivity, impact, and the quality of your life. Have an outstanding day.