Posthumous praise

A powerful and profound exercise learned from the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey.

If you feel that your life lacks meaning, or you feel lost, without a clear direction, without long-term goals, without a mission to guide you, this exercise will help you discover it.
In order to teach the second habit “Start with an end in mind” proposes the following exercise:

See mentally attending the funeral of a loved one. Imagine driving your car to the wake or to the chapel, parking. As you walk inside the building you notice the flowers, the soft organ music, see the faces of friends and relatives shared the grief of the loss and joy of having met the deceased.

When you reach the coffin and look inside, you suddenly come to face with yourself. This is your own funeral, which will take place in three years. All those people have gone to pay the last tribute, to express feelings of love and appreciation for you.

When you sit down and wait for the service to start, look at the program in your hand.
here will be four speakers:

  • The first belongs to your family (immediate and extended family: children, brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, uncles and aunts, cousins ​​and grandparents, who have travelled from different parts of the country).
  • The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can talk about who you were as a person.
  • The third speaker is a colleague or co-worker.
  • And the fourth comes from your church or from some community organization in which you have served.

Now, think deeply.

What would you like one of those speakers to say about you and your life?
What kind of husband or wife, father or mother, would you like to be reflected in their words? What kind of son, daughter or cousin? What kind of friend?
What kind of co-worker?
What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements do you want them to remember?
Look carefully at the people around you. How would you like to have influenced their lives?

  • You can add one more question for each role. What is important to me? What do I want to live with these people? What do I want to give them? What do I want to receive from them?

Before continuing reading, take a few minutes to examine your impressions. This will greatly increase your personal understanding of your missio.

[…] “Start with an end in mind” means to start with a clear understanding of your destiny. It means knowing where you are going so that you can better understand where you are, and always take the right steps in the right direction.

[…] How different are our lives when we know what is really important for us, and, keeping that picture in mind, we act every day to be and do what really interests us.

[…] If one carefully considers what one wants to be said in the funeral experience, one will find the personal definition of success. It may be very different from the definition you thought you understood. It is possible that fame, success, money or some of the other things we fight for are not even part of our deep ideal.
When we have a mission, everything we do is ordered around us …

In my case, after doing this exercise I wrote a long list of everything that encompassed my mission. Months later, I would summarize it, in the light of the full moon in a circle of women in the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia: “Learn to heal me and help other beings to do it too”.

Perhentian Islands, Malaysia.

Do you want to help me to continue learning and evolving? You can! 🖤

You will be redirected to a Pay Pal secure site. 👍

Thank you so much!