Ask anyone how long they think they will live. In most cases, you will get an answer. And the answer will generally be a very specific number. Sometimes this is based on a desire, or a family history, but somehow, imprinted in all of our brains, is a mortality timeframe.
This number may vary as you age. In fact, the older you get, generally the higher your number will be.
Now don’t confuse this age digit with the “number” that you see mentioned in television commercials. Mutual fund companies and financial advisors all want us to commit to a specific dollar amount to have in the kitty for retirement. Some of these clever commercials show people walking around with a rather large number tucked underneath their arms, smugly looking at those whose numbers are smaller. You see the man with a nice, plump number and his attractive wife ready to board an airplane, no doubt traveling to some exotic location.
But perhaps more important than our retirement kitty number, our age integer affects how we live our lives. The closer we feel we are to that number, the less likely we are to undertake new projects; instead, we prefer to begin to “wind down” towards retirement.
Now here’s an interesting spin on the age number question. First of all, ask yourself how long you will live. Like retrieving most things that reside barely underneath your conscious thought, don’t analyze this. You will find that an age will pop into your head. Go with your first instinct.
Got one?
Now, take your age number, and add 10 or 15 years to it.
Now that you have an extra 10 or 15 years, what do you want to do with this bonus time? What most folks will do when this question is posed to them is to start to identify activities that they’ve always wanted to do. In a sense, you might create your “bucket list.”
Now ask yourself when you want that extra 10 to 15 years, now or at the end of your life? Most people want it now!
What you’ll find when you start coming up with a list of the things that you would do with the extra time you have been given in your life, is that this is really a list of the goals or accomplishments or activities that to you, indicate your life has been a successful one. You are probing deep beneath the surface to find those things that are not only most congruent with your values, beliefs, and immutable truths, but often are the physical manifestations of such.
You have discovered, in this brief exercise, some things that would add dramatically to the quality of your life, and the satisfaction you feel with it. Let’s end our time with three final questions:
- What is stopping you from undertaking these activities now?
- What would be your first step in removing those things that block you from moving towards a more satisfying life?
- What would your life look like if you took that first step, and then the next, and so forth?