Dhru Purohit Show - How Thinking About Our Death Can Radically Energize Our Life Today with Jodi Wellman

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth and AquaTru. Conversations about death are often uncomfortable and avoided by many. However, open and honest discussions about death and mortality can help us live more intentionally and clarify what truly matters in our day-to-day lives. Today’s guest wants us to get truly comfortable with death—to start living. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with executive coach and author Jodi Wellman. Jodi shows us how embracing the idea of our mortality can help us fully live. She suggests implementing a "mortality math" exercise and practice to change your perspective on death and shares lessons learned from near-death experiences. Jodi also provides insightful questions to help you take inventory of your life and find your purpose.  Jodi Wellman is a former corporate executive turned executive coach and author. She has a Master’s in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is an instructor in the Master’s program and a trainer in the world-renowned Penn Resilience Program. She is a Professional Certified Coach with the ICF and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach from CTI.  In this episode, Dhru and Jodi dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Stepping into death to fully live (00:00:57 / 00:00:57) Mortality math to motivate you to pursue your purpose fully (2:55 / 2:55)  What gets in the way of living a meaningful and purposeful life (12:27 / 9:40) Removing the idea of death from our daily lives (14:00 / 11:53) A practice to implement to change your perspective (21:19 / 18:22) Taking inventory of your life (23:35 / 20:48) Lessons from near-death experiences (36:47 / 34:00) Regrets as lessons for the future (41:01 / 37:54) Jodi’s origin story (52:50 / 50:08) Questions to ask yourself and assess a path forward (1:13:27 / 1:10:40) How to discover your purpose (1:19:07 / 1:16:20) Final thoughts (1:25:17 / 1:22:40) Also mentioned in this episode: Jodi's book, You Only Die One: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets  Jodi’s Ted Talk-How Death Can Bring You Back to Life  Explore Cams For more on Jodi, follow her on Instagram or via her website.  Right now, get 30% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jody, welcome to the podcast. I'd love for you to get a chance to introduce yourself. And most importantly, you have a powerful truth that you're here to share with our audience today. I have 1,814 Mondays left as of this Monday to live. And my message as I am to hear on behalf of the Grim Reaper, I'm going to die, you're going to die. We're all completely going to die. And that's totally okay because the good news is when we do tune in to the fact that we're all going to kick the bucket, it helps us live with more intentions. So this is not a morbid thing. This is a good thing.

You're still game to keep chatting. And that's what our conversation is about today. And yes, let's explore that. Why does meditating, thinking about and stepping into the fact that we're going to die? How does that help us live a happier, more meaningful life today? Yeah. Let's start with the pain because that's what we all feel. but it's a weird pain because most of us just do this thing where we take life for granted.

We're not even aware that we've slipped into autopilot because it's what we do, right? We want to be efficient. I do too. I'm not an animal. But we come up with these routines. And then we follow them and it's Monday and then it's Tuesday. And then all of a sudden it's like Thursday's indiscernible from Wednesday. And we find ourselves in these ruts in life.

And sometimes we're just not aware until, you know, years have flown by. So that's the pain I see. And the way that death helps us. if I could get science-yed with you, and I love you, love your science, called temporal scarcity. And it's this idea that whenever there is something that is called an asset, and in our instance, we will refer to our lives that way, when we see an asset as limited, time-only situation, like a pumpkin spice latte, we tend to value it way more than if we just think, oh, I can get that stupid pumpkin-flavored thing any time a year.

You don't like pumpkin spice lattes, do you? Please, tell me you don't. I'm more like a cold brew type of guy. Yeah, yeah. But you can get your cold brew anytime. And if you knew that you could only get your cold brew for maybe another 1,814 Mondays, you might take it a little more serious. That's how this idea works. It's like we'll just keep prolonging our dreams and our hopes, maybe forever, but forever isn't real.

Now, I want to have everybody do some math. There's a very simple formula that you have. You mentioned a very specific number. of how many Mondays you have left here on Earth based on your estimate. Can you share that number again? Yeah. Well, mine's 1,814. Okay, great.

Let's have everybody bust out a calculator or you can do some basic math in your head as well. Walk us through the formula here and I'll do it as well too. How do we estimate how many Mondays we have left? Yes. Okay. If you identify as a male, start with 78. That's the number you're punching into your calculator. If you identify as females, start with 83 years.

and if you don't identify with either, start with 80. Or if you listen to this podcast and you prioritize your longevity and you're healthy and you're focusing on your lean muscle mass and you have a target age of, let's say, 90 or 100, you could use that too? How about we do the real first and then we're going to add in some bonus Drew years? Does that sound cool? Okay, cool. So you're starting with 78 or 83 or 80.

Which is what you're saying is the average lifespan. Yeah. Of a person here. In the U.S., now you could factor. check me. And it's actually a little bit lower because of post-COVID, but I'm deciding that COVID has smoothed over. So let's work with these numbers. Also, is there something, too, that if you've made it to a certain age, then you're probably going to live at least till your mid-80s. Yeah, tons of cool research around if you hit the hurdles of 70 and then 75, it's great.

Okay, but let's start off with, okay, so I'm a male. Yeah. I'm going to type in 78. You got this. You were halfway. Okay. Mine is your current age. Okay, great. I'm turning 42, so 36. Okay. Multiply by 52. Okay, times 52, 1,872. You beat me. All right. Now what we can do is add in some fun bonus, you know, weeks or years. It's all just, you know, TBD.

But I think most of us have a sense. So let's pause right there just to make sure that the audience understands and those that are listening and watching. Yeah. 1,872 Mondays. And if you don't like Mondays, you could say Fridays or Saturdays or whatever. I have 1,872, and those are at home that are doing the math themselves and step into this. And just sit with that for a second. That's a big thing that you talk about.

Yeah. What do you want people to sit and think about with this number before we get into the bonus math? Yeah. What does it feel like? Like actually ask yourself, can I ask you? Like, what does that math look like feel like to you? Well, I'm cheating a little bit because I did this before. Yeah.

In preparation of the interview. Yeah. but all share the feeling that I've had, and I've done similar exercises and meditations in my death. Yeah. And the initial feeling is like, whoa, that's way less than I would have thought. And I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. Like only 1,872 Fridays, Saturdays, or Mondays left, that doesn't seem like a lot.

And you are hitting on the sort of perverse pleasure that I'm getting. And this is exactly why I want us to do this is because we have. have these little delusions of, it's not of grandeur, it's delusions of immortality in a way, right? Like, it's a very comforting place and we come by it honestly psychologically. We deny death. It's a very basic instinct we have. Otherwise, we would go squirrelly every day if all we focused on was that. But I like the dose of it.

So this math is exactly the thing that can help you go a little bit of a wake up, a little bit of a woe. And now I want you to take that discomfort. And now we're going to work with it and flip it so that it motivates you to get on with things that maybe you have been putting off or the dreams that you've been deferring or delaying. That's the point of it. We're going from, wow, or shit. I only have 1,800 Mondays left to, oh, shit, I only have 1,800 Mondays left.

Let's go. He just said it so perfectly. That needs to be a T-shirt. And I'll doodle the Grim Reaper for the back. We'll sell a lot of them. Before we go a little further, because my podcast is focused on longevity, wellness, other things, let's do some of the bonus math that you talk about. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Well, every time I'm in a workshop, it's my schick, I do a fun thing where everybody gets a bonus week or a year because you paid membership dues for this organization or whatnot. But let me ask you, when you, your typical average, fabulous, healthy listener, in your experience, are they on the path towards becoming, you know, centenarians, blues owners? What's your take? I probably say that a lot of them would like to get there. And a lot of them are asking themselves, how do I get there?

And most importantly, for this conversation, a lot of them are asking himself, how do I live as long as I can with great health? Yeah. Because I'll tell you, the number one fear of not just my audience, but so many people when they're caring about this topic of longevity, and I'm sure you know this, because this is world is I don't want to live a long life, but the last 20%, 10% of it, I'm riddled with poor health, cognitive decline, cancer, God forbid, whatever it might be. Totally.

Yeah. You're opening up the whole topic that I think is the juiciest, which is the quality versus quantity. And I think, you know, you're all like minded listening in here, right? We're all, we all want to live well. And just, ooh, woo, badge of honor getting to 98, if you feel like garbage is. going to feel super great. It reminded me of research. There's cool research that social scientists call the James Dean effect. And they ask people, you know, however they manipulate them, pull them in

studies. And what comes up is people value a life that ends on a high, like a really good experiential life, even if it means dying early, like James Dean, you know, the famous actor in the 50s or 60s. So this idea of if you could rate your life. So then this leads me to that research I've done, where I'm like, would you rather lead a 9 out of 10 life that you would, you know, ratings, subjective ratings, but die at 60? Would you rather lead an 8 at a 10 life, but die at 70? Would you rather lead a 7 at a 10 life than die at 80? And I mean, it's easy from the distance, right, of having, oh, I've got some time left.

Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to go for. What do you think most people would vote for, would choose? I think most people probably choose, I'm going to take an eight out of ten life. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe die a little earlier. Yeah. If they were given those choices.

If given the choices, absolutely. And what this points to is that we, of course, we value the quality. And so I get obsessed, not just in the length of life. Sure, I'd love to live long if it meant that it was a fully astonishingly alive life to use my language. But let's talk about living wider and deeper. Because I think those are the dimensions that most of us are actually interested in, because that reflects our day-to-day experience now and on the way to 78 or 83 or however long

we get to live, right? What are the top things that get in the way from us living a meaningful and purposeful, enjoyable and happy life? Yeah, okay. Starting off with our lovely delusions. So I referred to denial a bit earlier. And we just, we do some fancy freaking footwork. You know, we'd come by it.

Like, we don't want to think about it or talk about it. So we do this, la la, la, la. All the things that I long to do, oh, I'd love to go and do that Mediterranean cruise. And we're going to do that later. And we're going to do this in retirement. Like, don't even get me started on retirement, that, like, elusive place that, first of all, you may not get there. Second of all, you might get there.

And you might be hobbling around for whatever reason, right? So life will change on us in ways that are reliable. So we deny our mortality. because it sucks. And so rather than facing it, which ironically, it's like when we don't face death, if you have any death anxieties, I've heard your podcast before, I know you've had some thoughts about even your own family. It's like these things, these things are very real. The existential anxieties are part of us. When we don't deal with and think about death, it actually ends up becoming more of an issue for us. Whereas if we're willing to go there and think about it, talk about it,

do the math, do the countdown every week or two just to stay in touch. with that diminishing number, that's the thing that actually ameliorates a lot of the anxiety around death. But back to your question, we will put it off and then we put life off. And then next thing you know, you know, shi happens and you're not going to be able to go to the Coliseum. Or you're not going to be able to start your big dream business or whatever these things are. Because maybe, oh, maybe you do die. Or maybe you're just maimed. Or maybe you're just sick.

Or maybe you're just tired. or maybe early onset Alzheimer's sets in. And I mean, the list goes on here. So the first one you mentioned is delusion. Yeah. That we are delusional about reality. Totally. That we think that either we're going to be living forever,

which is what happens when you're younger. Yeah. You think that everybody's around. You can take your parents for granted. You can take the people around you from granted. Yeah. We also live. Do you feel that one of the problems is that we live in a society

where death is largely removed from our, day-to-day experience. Can you talk about that? Totally. Well, picture, you know, years and years ago, any old literature you'd read. Well, first of all, the life expectancy, like 200 years ago is 35. So we'd all be like toast, you know, by now. I've heard mixed things about that. We'll come back to that in a second. Yeah. But yeah, we'll continue, please. Yeah, yeah. We didn't live as long in the past. And so death was just around us in that sort of sense of frequency and they didn't have a means and mechanism to clean it up. So there would be people in your family dying. And then the tradition was that you would have them kind of laid out in the parlor in the front room.

And funny history fact, they, once the world kind of came around and they started medicalizing death and like cleaning it up and taking it into the hospital and not making someone die at home, we're going to swiftly move this away and we're going to make, you know, death is like this failure of medicine in essence. But we're going to move it away. And we're going to move it away. keep it clean, make a taboo. They renamed the parlor in the front room where, you know, Uncle George would be like split out and everyone could just, I don't know, pay their respects or give him the finger or do whatever they wanted after he died. They renamed it the living room because it was no longer associated with death. It was like, we're going to get some living done around here.

And I'm not against that. But it just means death was removed. It's just, ew, it's disgusting. Let's move it aside. That's crazy. Used to be the death room, quote unquote, and now it's the living room. Right. So, I mean, you know, some progress. But yeah, what it means is unless, depending on your background, right, like a lot of people who have Eastern backgrounds or more of a Buddhist philosophy or stoicism, some people are very into like acceptance. So when I say that we're delusional, I, that's a very big paintbrush just designed to rankle. But for the most part, yeah, we've, we've come, we've come by it honestly that it's just, and it's disconcerting to think that we may not be around. Like, we're pretty egocentric, right? Like to imagine a world where you're not there or to imagine your complicated

ideas and sense of self is just going to poof not be here, most healthy functioning people aren't pleased with that. You know, you mentioned how we've removed ourselves from death. I come from an Indian background in our tradition for, I don't know the origin of it, but, you know, we don't bury bodies when people die. Probably land was a very scarce thing. And also living in India, a country that has a lot of viral, you know, bacterial, viral, all the things. It's a big reason why people do namaste instead of shaking hands is you just wouldn't want dead bodies around for a long time. So you would cremate them.

And also the spiritual tradition and the belief in India, primarily like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the belief that's sort of in reincarnation that a lot of people have and the idea that the body is really a vehicle that's there. But even still today in that tradition, even though largely, you know, my grandparents were all cremated. In India, when somebody passes away, their body is traditionally wrapped in white, taken through the village. And then the entire village gathers together. And then with the support of a priest, you are doing sort of a death ceremony and you're burning the body that's there. Now today when grandparents pass away, you know, or somebody younger, unfortunately, you go to, you know, you go to like a crematorium, right, in the back of a funeral home that's there.

And it's not this thing that everybody witnesses. It's typically just for like the most immediate family, if even that sometimes. So even in these traditional cultures where death was a lot more of a part of the culture, it's been removed this idea of our participatory. a patient in it, which is a natural process of life. And going back to when I said, I heard mixed things about it, what I really meant to say is that the reason that life expectancy was 35, from my understanding, is infant mortality was so high. And because infant mortality was so high, and a lot of women also died in childbirth, and that's probably one of the best things that's come from modern medicine, is that that that's no longer happening to that degree. You also had a lot

of families who, you know, women who even just 100 years ago who were having maybe a total of eight to 14 pregnancies to try to end up with six or seven kids, right? Yeah. And you just had a lot more loss that was there. And we don't have a lot of those reminders anymore. So when I was reading your book, which is fantastic, by the way, it feels like you're trying to help us step into the reminders that were naturally baked into society about the fact. that we're going to all die one day. That's a known. So why don't we start truly living in this moment?

Yeah, you caught on. You're totally right. And death is such a funny thing, isn't it? Because it's the, on one hand, it's a taboo. And we don't want to see the body paraded and burned necessarily. Yes, please, do it in the back room. And we must not speak of it. We must also say that so-and-so passed away. We can't say the word. He died. I'm sorry that your husband died. You say, I'm sorry, you know, we're, we've been trained to be super subdued to this. But on the other hand, we are so fascinated by death. We're so morbidly fascinated, right? Like you drive by any car accident and all we want to do is rubber neck because we just

want to see like a hint of maybe, that thing because we're, like, we're, we're, we're, fascinated with what could happen to us. Because we all deep down our inner knowing, like, this is not a surprise to anybody that we're going to all die. And so the ways in which we watch movies. and the ways that we read about crime and true crime is such a huge thing. There's like freaking crime con, like conferences. We're kind of obsessed with the thing that we shouldn't be because we're all just dabbling in it.

And I want to make it really okay. And I want to defang death. I'm going to make it so that we're all not necessarily all walking around rocking a funeral every day. Again, not to be morbid or sensational, but to be just real. Like, okay, it's coming. But let's not dwell there. let's flip it fast into, okay, in light of that inevitable shitty reality, how do I that use that, spark it, how do I spark the life I want to live now because time's ticking? And we need

a progress. We need a deadline in order to prevent what we usually do, which is just delay, delay, delay till the end. Is there one thing that our audience who's watching and listening today could do every single day to take this thing that's associated with so much negative death and flip it into a positive spark for them to start the date. Is there a practice, a technique that you would want to share with them? Yeah, because you only get to count your Mondays every week. And that, I mean, that leaves six other days where you don't have new math. I am a fan of having visual reminders just as a simple thing, like everything I have.

I don't know, I've always got a skull going on somewhere, but something visual that helps to anchor you. One woman I know that came to a workshop of mine, she created a little sticky in the workshop. and she's got it on her laptop at home where it just says it's it's carpe diem it's the simplest phrase that most of us have known for years right but it's the reminder to savor i'm a record i recommend being social with this i recommend having conversations with your family with your friends have a brunch where you talk about your bucket list but not i mean let's talk about bucket list in a second because i'm highly suspicious of that being just like a little reservoir for more delay however um but use this the motivation to live. And I'm actually going to edit a little bit because your point about how do we

get centered in this daily. Some people will meditate daily. If you're a meditator, look up like Google death meditation or read my book and there are five phrases you can repeat. That's a very historic tradition. But if that's not your jam, I am okay with you doing the mortality reminder every week as long as you're keeping yourself honest with it. I'd rather do the thing where we flip it pretty fast and talk more about the living, right? Having more vitality, having more meaning in life. So I don't want to not think about the Grim Reaper because he does not get enough airtime, strangely.

I want us to do that, but I think that if we're going to spend time, it's like, yes, I'm reminding myself I have as many Mondays left, like make that a Monday ritual, and then get on with the business of living and checking in. Am I doing something today that makes me feel alive? Do I have something in my calendar over the next week that makes me feel like I look forward to it, even if it's the silliest, littlest thing, like ordering tie dinner on Friday or something that's just simple and fun. So, yeah, that's where we straddle the line between thinking about death, oh, but also thinking about an action-oriented life.

You know, one of the key concepts in the book that you start off with is taking an inventory of where you stand right now in your life. Can you talk about that concept? Yes. And of course, it's called the premortem because we cannot use deathy lingo. it's this mechanism in a way where I ask probably no less than 989 questions, hopefully in a fun way, to get you thinking about how's life right now? Like, again, we go through the motions. We are productive and efficient and we don't often stop and like literally take our pulse about aspects of our life. And our lives are so complicated, right? We've got all these domains.

You've got your love life or lack thereof, your social life, your work life, which is usually quite chunky in your working years, your finances, your funding. in recreation, which usually is like tumbleweed blowing around in that domain for most adults, because all we're doing is working. We get really kind of one or two dimensional. There could be your spiritual domain, your health, which is why we listen to you. And it's a way to actually look at it and go, wait a minute, am I feeling alive in these areas? And I call it diagnosing the dead zones. Like where have I flatlined? Where might I want to, you know, pick up the pace a little in my life and maybe resurrect a little bit of energy there? So it's designed to get you thinking about how's it going and starting to think about and how

might you want it to be. Because, you know, most of us, it's funny to me. And I realized this one, I used to coach executives one-on-one and work with teams in ways where when you get people to think about like, what do you want? It could be a corporate strategy or it could be in their life. Many people, you know, we're just kind of like dears and headlights like, oh, I don't know. Let me think about it for a sec. And then the beauty of having a workshop is like you have someone else say, this is what I want

because they might know. And then we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I want a little piece of that. I want a little piece of that. And then we get rolling. But we're just not trained enough right now to go, how do I live a life that's going to make me feel like I lived a life of consequence? How do we feel like I lived and I actually showed up and I got more than just a participation ribbon that I actually, you know, went on the proverbial field and I gave it a go and I failed a lot, which made it so evident that I gave a shit and tried, you know? What are some of those top questions that we can ask ourselves right now? And the audience can, like, listen in.

They can ask themselves that question, maybe even pause, write it down. What are some of those top questions that will help us take inventory of where we stand right now in life and how we're doing? Okay. This one sounds super simple, but it might stump you. Take out a pen and write out. 30 things that make you happy. And here's the caveat.

They cannot be things that are extravagant and require a ton of time or money. like, you know, oh, I love to take a cruise around the Antarctica. Yeah, whatever. Like, I want stuff that you can do generally in the vicinity of your life right now. And so this, again, stumps a lot of women because we're very clear about, we know about what other people need and want, but when I want to know what you, what lights you up, that's okay. Just work on it. And and these can be mostly they're really sweet, simple things, which to me is just the best thing, because we don't have to spend a lot of money. We don't have to take a lot of time to orchestrate our lives to love them more before we die. So they can be little things like one woman I'll never forget.

She's like, I keep coming back to because I got her to do this list. She's like, I keep coming back to how much joy I got when I would tend to my orchids. I just used to love and, you know, I would just go and tweez and do the little bits and pieces and I had a whole bunch of them. And she had moved, like two years prior to a new home. And she didn't, for whatever reason, I don't know, maybe the orchids didn't make the move. But she'd gone two years without even having this thing that brought her so much unfathomable joy in a sweet way. That was an opportunity for her to go out and get some more orchids, right? Just that little awareness about what used to bring you joy. You can probably rekindle that. So that's actually part two to that list. So you can take the list and go, well, there's your little

menu. When you have 10 or 15 minutes between meetings or when you've got a Saturday morning and you're like, do I do the usual ho-hum or do I want to do a little thing? Oh, wow, I forgot that that little thing brings me joy. Maybe I should actually program it and do it in my day. And then the second part would be like, what stuff did you do as a kid that brought you joy that maybe you lost the plot on because you grew up and became a responsible adult? And you just, you know, you didn't have time anymore to do the collages you used to love to do or the woodworking or the lessons in Spanish conversational, whatever.

we, oh man, you know, we get so caught up in all or nothing thinking. Like we got to go out and reinvent the wheel and find a new passion. Okay, do that. If one's grabbing you, like don't not let it grab you. But for most of us, we're walking around a little bit panicked. Like, I don't have a passion. Okay. Did you used to love to do a thing when you were a kid?

Go do that again. Or like, go pick up the hobby that you used to do before you had the kids or before you started the crazy job and do that again and just watch. Maybe it's fizzled. That's fine. Let it go. But maybe you actually still do love, you know, nude painting class. Well, would you be open to you and I sharing like five examples each?

Like you can go, then I can go just to give the audience a little bit of a sense. Let's do it. Okay. Great. Yes. Ladies first. Oh, okay. Simple things that bring you joy as you shared.

Yes. What's one? Browsing through a good old-fashioned bookstore. Right? What do you like about that? Oh, the smell, the possibility. I could read this book and it could change my life. I could read this book in a hammock and I could have fun.

I could, don't even, I mean, just taking my breath away. Your turn. Something that brings me a lot of joy is every week or every other week, my wife and I do like a planning session. We like block off like two hours. But we talk, we ask ourselves questions like, who's somebody in our life that we haven't seen in a little while

that we want to connect with? We do go through the regular sort of what are the, you know, evenings and the other stuff. And as much as there's a little bit of resistance to do it in the beginning from both of us, we get excited because once we get in the rhythm, we feel a lot more peace that's there for the next couple weeks of our life or the next month. What do we, we write down things that we're looking forward to. We write down things for each other that we want to like, quote unquote, like, this is something that I'm like praying for you. or this is something that I'm like, you know, wishing you well on that you're working towards. And so that's something.

And we've worked on making it fun. We try to go to like a coffee shop and do it together over there. Or at least we like try to do it on like a Sunday while we have like a nice breakfast that's sitting. So that's something that brings me a lot of joy that I look forward to. You're covering so many positive psychology highlights in that example. I love it so much. I love it. All right.

Let's do three. So let's do it one more for you, two more for you and two more for me. I love writing a note to somebody that I will put in the mail. A little note that it could be just as simple as thinking of you, or I might recall a quick fun memory from, oh my God, remember that crazy bar in Nashville? Or I don't know, I'll just send my dad a smiley face. And he loves it.

And he tells me every time he gets this thing in the mail in Toronto. He's like, oh, I got your note. Thank you for taking the time to do it. I'm like, well, first of all, it took me about 38 seconds, but you're so welcome. And it brings joy to the giver and to the receiver. What about you? That's beautiful.

Something brings me a lot of joy is I have a weekly walk most weeks out of the year. Sometimes I'm traveling. I'm not here. But it's a group that I help start with a couple of my friends. And it's called Man Morning. And it happens every Thursday morning. We meet here in Los Angeles. We'll go on a walk together.

And there's usually a question of the day. And there's a captain of the month and they decide to question the day. If we don't have a question of the day, we borrowed from this group summit series that a few of us are part of. And we say, tell us one thing you're celebrating. Tell us one thing you're navigating. A group of guys who are all like high achievers, entrepreneurs, they're working on themselves to get that time to share like in brotherhood.

And, you know, men are typically not good at that as like women are in general. So to get that time to be outside, to be in nature because we're often walking and talking, there's just something really incredible about it. And it's like one of the highlights of the week and it's something that I look forward to. And I know the rest of the guys in the group look forward to it as well. Okay, I just have to say, because I can't not dissect this. You also have in this, there's the outdoor nature piece, which I know is resident for you. You've got the thoughtful parts, the social part.

I mean, you're hitting all the freaking high notes again. This is just like, I love your examples. Oh, thank you. Let's do one more before we move on. Yeah. One more thing that brings you joy, happiness. And again, for everybody listening, you know, you've shared that these can be the tiniest things. It could be enjoying your morning cup of coffee outside in the sun for five minutes before you start your day.

Yeah. Right. Here's a super easy one for those of us that like to, not move from our chair. Go on to, have you ever been to explore.org? Explorer.org? Just explore. Explore.org.

It is a nonprofit that has live video cameras on animals all around the world. And it's like a little tiny little tidbit of nature, but also just other animals because like as humans, we, you know, we're so centered on ourselves. I am obsessed with watching eagles and unfortunately a big eagle in the eagles. nest in Big Bear Lake did not. They did not produce chicks this year. Devastated, but that's fine. Life, death happens. But I'm also watching a kitten shelter in L.A. I'm a cat fan. Sorry to those of you. I don't agree with that. But I watch kittens. Like for like three minutes. Like not even three minutes. I'll just want to check on them. Oh, there's the gray one. He's so silly. And then I just,

and then I go over to my stupid email. But I'm happier for that 40, 40 second snippet of kittens and owls. Oh, God. Just good luck with your productivity people now that you know about Explore.org. I love that. You're next. You'll ask. I am, I really love when I go visit my family. There are certain people in my family that, like, maybe didn't grow up with as much, like, affection.

Like, their parents didn't, like, hug as much. Or it's very common in, like, Indian, you know, Eastern families, like, even a lot of my friends who grew up at, like, Asian background. You didn't really hear as much as like in America, like, I love you, even though your parents loved you and were there for you. They may not express it that way. So I love, it sounds kind of crazy, but I love like, I will like go and bear hug some of these friends or family members. My mom actually grew up with parents who were, you know, did the best they could, but were not as loving, didn't really give a lot of hugs. So like, even just going in and like bear hugging my mom. And my favorite thing is when she's like, okay, that's enough.

like I get it like you you're giving me a hug holding on like an extra 10 seconds and say like nope I'm not letting you go and just like the playfulness that comes out from her I see that like a little girl inside of her come out and her just like have this big smile and like you know laugh a little bit and we both joke about it so yeah like bear hugging people especially people who have not really kind of grown up with a lot of you know affection and love oh I love smother I love that yeah yeah those are great examples and I think those examples are because like you said, we can often think of needing to have these things that might have to sound good or look good to other people when really so much of the juice of life is how do we

triple down on prioritizing the things that give us small, frequent, regular amounts of joy during the week. hallelujah like one of the best things i found in as a positive psychology practitioner it's like show me a study and i'm going to love it and i'm going to love the fact that it's simple so uh we do want to compare we do want to we do think we have to have this outsized life we do think that we have to have well happiness is going to mean okay well i'm living for my vacation okay kids we got two weeks off in august we're going to really have fun then but what there can be no fun or joy until then and we do for ourselves that it's the little increments in the in between that where life does happen

And if we get a little more intentional about how to fill those little spots, those little 10-minute spots of explore.org or the smother hug, the bear hug, or, okay, send your data postcard or just a little bits that if you do one of those a week, don't underestimate the impact that that has on your experience of being alive in your perceived well-being. It matters. It counts. And that's all that a life is, is one tiny little moment that you're making a choice for five or 10 minutes, just a bunch of those added up. That's it. That's, that's the, that's the of life, the good life. I'm going to jump around a little bit. Let's do it. Before we get into your story here, our audience is really interested and very curious, as am I, about the topic of near-death experiences. I've shared with you before we've covered on the podcast. We've interviewed some of the top researchers and medical doctors in this space.

Yeah. And really, not just for the stake of learning about it, but for the lessons that come for the individuals that have gone through it or the people that might have been around it. And this is something that you write about inside of your book. Yeah. What are some of the top lessons that we can learn from people? Yeah. For those of us who are alive, what are some of the top lessons that we can learn from people

who have gone through near-death experiences? Oh, those lucky little buggers. And you never think we'd say it, right? Oh, my God, I've had a brush with death. Like, that's not what I would ask for. Of course not. But you're here now, and they have such clarity about things we don't. one of the main lessons that people who've had brushes with death.

By the way, near-death experience is the more serious kind where it's like, they may have seen the proverbial light. Like, they almost died on the, or maybe they did die on the table and they were resuscitated and whoo. Where a brush with death, just differentiating some of the semantics is like, I had a thing happen that, whoa, I was on the precipice. You know, it could be that I had a, maybe it was a diagnosis that I'm now in remission from cancer.

Maybe I was held up at gunpoint for a robbery. maybe it was the moments where you have this brush and it can be very jarring and serious. The priorities that come up, the priorities that clarify to me are astounding. So people typically get this little clarity like, I know what matters now and what I want to pursue the good things. And almost more importantly, I now know what doesn't matter. And so there tends to be this little dismissing of trivial stuff, which I'm fascinated by. because some of our days can get so worked up in the belief of the little nit the petty grievances, the little nitpicking the judgment about did I answer that email or I've got to say yes to that

request to join that group to do the thing or the barbecue. Many people who've had these NDEs or brushes with death, who've had wake up calls, let's just say it. And I just, I can't not say the psychologist, existential psychologist called the roar of awakening, which I think is a really powerful phrase to talk about this. they've been awakened to know, yeah, I have boundaries now. I don't care about your stupid barbecue. Now, they don't have to say it like dicks.

They can say it lovingly, right? Unfortunately, I'm not available. Have fun. And we'll hopefully catch you the next time around. And then they go get to live their Sunday the way they want to live it. Well, the rest of us are going in through obligation or we're sweating the small stuff in life in ways that if we came home from the hospital, and this is the exercise I want us all to do. It's imagine that you got to come home today from being in a coma for like three, three months and you're very clear, holy shit, I almost died, but I didn't. And I get to be here now.

Not only another benefit is that you're just outright gratitude for life, appreciation for being here, but even just gratitude for the sweet, simple things. Like, this is a really beautiful mug. Like, it's not just your average mug, you know, or the reality of like, I am so grateful that I have, you know, this, this pet who I normally would take for granted or all the little things. So there's the reminder of the value. But there's the ability. but there's the abandonment of the stupid stuff that doesn't matter and the prioritizing of what does. There is often a sense of reconnection to people. Because again, that's part refinement of like, now I know what matters.

And I was busying myself with all that stuff and worrying about, I don't know, launching the new product for Q4. But now I kind of go, but my values actually, now that I realize that my values are maybe more over here. And I'd really rather spend time in nature and with my family. sudden that like, ah, ambitious thing, maybe it doesn't cut it for me anymore. Or it could be the reverse. Like, there's no right or wrong. But there's like this distillation that tends to happen that I want us to benefit from without having to peer over the edge, you know? Hmm. You can't talk about this topic of death and what we can learn about life without approaching the topic of regret. And regret is something that you write about inside of the

book and I'd love to sort of have you share your framework and dive into the topic. Yeah. I just love talking about regrets so darn much because I think most of us were afraid of them, but they're so instructive. And most of us do get that kind of intuitively. We're like, yeah, we know that we learn from regrets and we can like shape our future behavior to be less crappy. But I can write off the top. Can we just do one thing with regrets? Because I think it's important. There are two camps and one matters, one doesn't. So in the spirit of dismissing what doesn't matter, let's just get rid of it first. There are regrets. There are regrets. of commission, which are things we did that, oh, golly, if we had 20, 20 high, we wished we didn't

do it. You know, like you wish you didn't cheat on that exam and get caught or you wish you didn't do the, you know, you wish you didn't buy that house at the bottom tank of the market or whatever it is. Typically over time, psychology does us this gift of like helping us to just, eh, soften and we just tend to not let it haunt us. Let's dismiss those right away. We don't need to talk about the stupid things we did. What we do need to talk about are the other side, which are regrets of omission, which are the things that we wanted to do but didn't, or that we wondered about but didn't take the path. And I call them coulda shoulda what is. These are the things that are insidious. These are the things that hospice workers say that when people are on their deathbeds, they can

ruminate on a little bit, that idea about like, oh man, but what if I did take that job in London? You know, but what if I did start that Etsy shop? Like, I could have been happy. Or what if I did buy that house with, you know, that one that we let get away, you know, the ideas of the things where you didn't take the risk or you weren't bold or you didn't have a confidence or you just, again, thought you'd have time. And those are the things that I think we need to be really aware of. And they're powerful. And I'm not afraid of them because I think like death, if we use it to our advantage, it can make our lives so much better. So I call them pregrats.

I don't know. It's really cheesy. I love that term. But like if, you know, like do the typical deathbed regret exercise. You're splayed out, feeling pretty good, looking back on your life. And again, it doesn't matter that you had that dumb thing happen. What is something you wished you had done that you didn't? And can I ask you even like, is there a path not taking?

It could be really small. Could be big. Could be medium. They all count just for conversation's sake. Is there a thing that you've always kind of wanted to do? But you just haven't taken action for whatever really? You would think on your deathbed, oh, Drew, I really wish I did it. I mean, I think about this stuff all the time.

Yeah. So I am constantly sort of evaluating my life and taking action in the direction of. I'll just say this. I had a really beautiful experience last year where I went through a guided, and I'd love to get your take on this, a guided psilocybin journey. in Hawaii and my my parents were there they did it as well too my wife was there my brother-in-law and a couple of my best friends and we as a group went through this medically guided experience and I took what is if anybody's not familiar with this world I took a dose that was quite large hardcore that was the experience that I wanted to take and I felt the support that was there so I felt

like I could go deeper with it. And I had like an incredible experience. And I had taken mushrooms like recreationally like one or two times. And I was like, okay, cool. I get why people do this. It's not something that I really want to, you know, do on an ongoing basis. But this setting was a little bit different. And I got a chance to go deeper. And there was something really beautiful about also doing it with my parents. So something came up pretty strongly for me there. And it was about the idea of I work with both of my sisters in the businesses that I've had. And I had a vision of what we were sort of meant to do together as a team of working together and how I needed to prioritize that. It wasn't that I had to go quit a bunch of other things. It was that I got to make sure that

that doesn't get deprioritized. And then since that time, which was last February of last year, I've been working towards that. And so I'm in the process of, you know, executing on that vision. I love that. So that you're just going to show that when you have this, and this might come from the premortem we talked about in the book, but like when you have the awareness of you and you, you had this process that sounds like a cool journey to get there about now I see

what matters in a unique way. And then when you see it, it's like, well, you can't unsee it. And so if you didn't take action on it, that would be a little bit of a coulda shoulda woulda down the road, which sounds like you're taking action on. Right. Yeah. You're reminding me, too, that I sometimes frame it in a way that I leave out important ideas

of regrets because regrets can also be about our ways of being. It doesn't have to be that, oh, man, I always wanted to learn how to speak Italian. Sucks, I didn't. It's also, like, I regret that maybe I wasn't bolder with my choices. So boldness regrets are actually a whole camp like Dan Pink has done a lot of really cool. I've felt that many times in my life. Have you? Yeah.

Yeah. And could I add something to that? Yeah, please. is that usually on these bigger visions that we have, it'll take time to execute them. There'll be ups, they'll be downs, they'll be zigzags, you feel like you're making progress. Then all of a sudden you feel discouraged. Life is messy in that way. And in particular, going through a little bit of a messy transition with the obligations

that I had there previously, meditating on that regret of like, hey, this is why I chose this path. And if I don't prioritize these series of actions that will let me actualize this vision that I have, even if it's tough to get there, I'm constantly thinking about the regrets and that kind of the regrets that if I don't do this, I will regret not putting attention into this area of my life. So it kind of keeps me going because it's not like you just make a decision one day. And then you're like, okay, great, the vision is together. Yeah. Some visions take years in the making. Yeah. One of the toughest things that I put my parents through when I was younger, being from an Indian

background and other stuff. You know, a lot of families they have, oh, you know, our son or daughter is the first to graduate college, you know, in this family. I was the first to drop out in our family, right? And being a very learned student prioritizing, you know, good grades and other stuff, always doing good in school, when I decided that I wanted to drop out of school, it was a very tough thing for my parents as expected because they didn't see the vision that I had. And I didn't even know exactly what steps I was going to take. But even then still, I knew that, okay, I might be

disappointing them for a short period of time in the interim. But long term, I'm going to live with a life of regret if I don't go forward with this path that was there. Right. And obviously, they're my biggest fans. They're so happy. They understand. They understand the difference between formal education and like getting educated on, you know, your own path, you know, and I was an entrepreneur. I started a business and everything like that. Yeah. So I had the trust that it was going to work out. Yeah.

But I knew that, okay, that might mean you're going to have to disappoint some people in the short term so you're not living a life of regret. Oh, ho ho. God, there's so much there. You've got so much compacted into all this. That by the way, knowing that you might disappoint somebody is the is the uncomfortable point about boundaries in general, right? for pleasers that don't want, they're living for other people, not for themselves. It's acknowledging, like, if I am living true to myself, and I love the regret test is how I

make all my decisions too. And it's that, will I regret doing this or will I regret not doing it? And that helps often with like A, B scenarios too, which one? And I love yours. Yours is a little unconventional, right? It's that I would regret not going and pursuing this entrepreneurial pull that I can't even explain. It's just happening to me.

Whereas some other people in different camps would say, well, I really would regret not finishing my schooling. It all, like, what folks are your boat? Yeah. They're both the same vibration. Right. Right. What, what, are you listening to what's calling you and are you making that?

What would I regret? Another way that I get out of like life situation sometimes is that phrasing about life's too short to dot, dot, dot, dot. And then conversely, you can say like life is not long enough to dot dot dot dot. It kind of suits your needs. But like life is too short to not go give that a go, you know, to give it to give it a try. And one of the things about regrets that I think this leads to is that, all right, we're on this. Okay, great, awareness.

Cool. Like maybe some people, and a lot of people will, when I'll do like a keynote or a workshop, they'll come up with lists of things. And it's kind of cute because they're like kind of hiding their notes from their colleagues about their regrets. Maybe there's like deep dark secrets there or whatever. It doesn't matter. But then when I do the thing about, okay, now's your chance because now good news,

you're not dying. We don't think. Knock on what? now it's about taking action. And here is then where we're faced with this breathtaking moment. And I think we're going to touch on where you talk a lot about this and a lot of your episodes and what you do, fear. I think that, as I said, that words that I said in my text, the fear of death is

rivaled only by the fear of living, that we can have a wake-up moment, we can have a near-death experience, we can see the light, come back, feel appreciated, and that tends to give people a little more of that, the confidence to move forward even in the face of fear. But for the rest of us mere mortals who haven't had that real brush, even when we do the thing where we say, yeah, you know, I would regret not going and starting my entrepreneurial thing, or I would regret not coming out of the closet or I would regret not going and, you know, moving to Portugal or whatever your thing is. What's the difference between awareness of that and actually doing it? The strongest impetus I have found is the threat of death, to be super honest. But, and that is why I use it.

And it's a scarcity tactic. And it kind of goes against the concept of any kind of coaching model about, ooh, it's all about abundance. Yeah, but it doesn't work as well. You know, like that's where it's like, yeah, but dude, you've only got 1,870 some on Mondays, or less if you're me. Do it, but we're still a little bit stuck, right? Because we're still afraid about what might happen if we do it and it doesn't deliver, what might happen, like what could go wrong. We're living in a world where, of course, we tend to value safety and security. And so I'm going to say, I just would be remiss if I didn't point out that oftentimes back to the bucket list thing, we could record, We put all the things down on your spreadsheet or your journal or wherever you keep your special stuff, your vision board.

And is it really just a holding place for things you're afraid to pull the trigger on? I think sometimes it's a safe, delusional place for us to say, yeah, I'm going to do it. And it actually, some psychology science shows evidence that when we dream and it's called positive fantasy about a goal, we might imagine the crews we're going to take our family on. Or you might imagine how it'll feel to win the humanitarian of the Euro war because you're going to start this thing and it's going to succeed. When you imagine it, you feel just good enough that it actually pulls the rug out from underneath your motivation

because you feel just good enough. Oh, that's good. Now I'm going to go and clean the counter. But we don't take action, you know? So that's where I get like rabid about still do the countdown. Because like time is coming and it may not even be that long. It's probably, it could be longer, you know, chances are it's longer. Technology is doing good things.

We're going to live longer. We're going to listen to you and we're going to live longer. But maybe not. And what's it going to take to overcome that fear? You know, the fear of living. Like Nietzsche said, man is the only animal that has to be encouraged to live. And yet we're all walking around talking about dreams we have. But they're just kind of dormant.

Yeah. Let's talk about some of your dreams. fears and a little bit of your background that brought you here where now you are a speaker, an author, a coach that works with executives. You have a viral TED talk that has over a million views that people can check out. We'll link to in the show notes. Tell us a little bit about your origin story and how these themes played a role in your life. Right on cue talking about fear and dreams that have gone dormant,

I do come by some fear honestly from my dear mother. My mom died when she was 58 of a heart attack. And obviously that was shitty. And the thing that sticks with me, and I'll never forget, the feeling I got when I was cleaning out her apartment, was this experience of an overwhelming avalanche of what I call the land of dormant intentions and dreams. Like all her drawers drew were stuffed with like she was a writer. She would write stories, short stories, manuscripts, children's books. She would illustrate.

She had business ideas. She even printed out her own business cards for some of these businesses she wanted to launch. She was a dreamer. Like she was so creative and gifted and she didn't do anything with it because she didn't have the confidence. But that was really the main reason. And when I was cleaning all this stuff up, of course it was like I knew over the the years that she'd had these ideas, but seeing it all at once was so powerful. It was really sad. And it was also powerful about, oh, honey, bunny, like, you are going down that path,

hopefully not the heart attack path at 58. But the, you have dreams. You are, I was in a corporate job at the time that I was really kind of at my max, but I was too scared to make a change. I like, not that anybody can relate to that, you know, when you're like, I want to make a change, but I don't know what it's going to look like. So I'm just going to wait and have somebody pluck me out of here. Well, keep waiting like month after month, right? So here I was kind of languishing at work. I see my mom's display of dreams that got buried with her.

And I was such a wake up of like, time is so short. And like, wouldn't it be just so great if we identified what we want, prioritize those things, and just waded through the fear anyways and just took one step at a time towards one goal at a time. that would feel like life got lived. Because then if I got snuffed out at 58 or 48 or 98, I would at least feel proud that I gave it a shot.

Where did your mom's, and we'll come back to your story here in a second, where did your mom's lack of confidence come from? It seemed like it was just part of her all the time. Like I grew up with a mom who was super scared and afraid of everything. She passed on her fear of spiders to me. She passed on her fear. I was not allowed to learn how to do a, what I have I? call I can't even what's it called when you do it's not a somersault it is a cartwheel I was not allowed

to learn how to do a cartwheel because my mom was so scared that I would break my neck so I listened and I was like well I don't want to break my neck she was just a very fearful anxious woman she had bipolar disorder she was troubled and she had these manic highs where all these ideas were born and she had deep dark lows that was probably where the fear took over. And so it was confidence that just never really took root. She didn't really have a lot of support growing up for someone to champion her and say, go send that manuscript out. And it's okay that you got four rejections back. Give it a go again. Yeah. And when you're struggling with the mental health condition, like a bipolar,

you know, schizophrenia, something on that spectrum, even just severe depression. Yeah. your brain is also not working optimally to support the good intentions that you have. Even just getting up some days is a severe struggle. Such a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a really powerful sort of education. And then it, you know, and then from that point, you know, I'd always been interested in this idea

about how the fact that we're going to die is weird, absurd, and also a potential motivator. you know, this idea that it can be a way to seize the day, however many days we have. But I was too afraid, speaking of fear, I was afraid to figure out how to bring it to life. Ha, ha, ha, get it, how to bring death to life. In the work I did working with corporations, because I told myself a story, those powerful narratives, that, well, no one's going to want to talk about this. I should just keep talking about embracing conflict and change, you know, more traditional stuff. And I went to school.

So my first step was I went to University of Pennsylvania to do their master's of applied positive psychology program. And I had no idea. I love how life sometimes you have a niggling in a sense and you follow it and you don't even know what's going to blow the doors of your life wide open. And that was it for me. I just, I gave myself permission to study this topic of memento mori, which is the Latin phrase that means remember that you're going to die. I made that my thesis. I got all the background that I could feel comfortable using around the evidence that this is a thing, not just a notion. And it gave me the confidence then to go and say, okay, corporations, we're going to talk about your legacy. We're going to talk about motivating your team to just do the, get on with these really cool things while they're lucky to be here. So I was able to start 4,000 Mondays as a result of that. that's my momentum morey story you know a lot of corporations you would also probably have the fear that so many corporations just want to maintain the status quo they don't want people to be

thinking about you know is this really the job that's giving them meaning or is this the job that allows them to have the resources attention energy to go give love and attention to other things in life that matter. Yes. And that's changing for good reason because a lot of people realize that if they have happy employees and not everybody's meant to go start their own business or wants to go take a risk and go start their own business, they're actually super happy in their job and their profession and they just want to dial it in a little bit more.

And actually, they'd be happier at their job if they could get a little bit more meaning from their day-to-day life or there's simple things that they could do at work where they could create more meaning and connection with the team. or address conflict or speak up about Sally who's, you know, creating so much negativity and drama in the office, but in a loving way, you know, a lot of those things, they matter. Those things matter for a lot of people. Oh, my gosh, you're speaking in my language. I love that so much.

And you are right. There is a fine line between not rankling people to think, wait a minute, the life I want to live involves quitting and moving to Portland and picking up, you know, that those grand gestures are rare. But one of the things that I've done with groups that I think is fun is helping them find ways to support each other to live a life outside work too. So some of the best teams that do the best work together are ones where they all have a retreat say and they all talk about, here are the things that I want to do. I want to try improv or someone's like, I really want to get back into whitewater rafting or I want to start to sketch or I want to go and volunteer

and I've never made the time and they all hold each other accountable to it, whether it's like their bigger vitality goals. And then it's really cool because then they come back together and they're like, hey, did you go do, we're going to come see you on open mic night or we're going to go and well, we're not going to watch you raft down the river. But, you know, did you book the trip? Like enough to know that your colleagues care. Same thing about checking in on like, what did you do this weekend that was fun?

Or are you reading a book like book clubs? Like more diverse ways to live a well-rounded life that are go beyond. Here is the job description. And you have to say it like that in the robot way. Like that is just thinking really kind of old school, like early 2000s minded of meaning at work. Because I think the best leaders now are the ones who are like, wait a minute. If I acknowledge that you actually are a human being that has a life outside of here. And I foster that.

And I encourage that. And I want to see your pictures from ideally the nude painting class, but maybe not. Then I want to have that be like that's the kind of culture I want to create is where we care about us thriving in life. Because yeah, like you said, when you thrive in life, you're going to be a way. better contributor on this team. You know, one of the things you wrote about inside the book, which is very personal, is you shared about some eating disorder that you had been struggling with for a long time. I'd love to just touch on that for a second and really from the sense of how exploring this

topic of what it really means to be alive through looking at the lens that we're all going to die and how that impacted how that you were able to handle that eating. and ultimately overcome it. Yeah. Well, my experience was a decade of struggling with the combo platter of anorexia and bulimia, which is super fun. So unfun, you know what I mean? I recognize now with a distance that it was just my means of coping. And, you know, many of us are just trying to get through our days, our weeks, and we find these mechanisms that will work. And they're not always functional. Some of them are severely dysfunctional, obviously. Some of we're just remotely dysfunctional scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, or gambling or shopping or,

I mean, we know the range of ways that we find to numb our existence and just handle the cacophony of stuff that's going on that might be scary for us. And for me at that time, it was actually feeling a sense of dis-ease with my work situation because work means a lot to me. And I was unsettled. Like I was in that corporate job where I was just like, what a lot? I do now? And instead of dealing with it in the most healthy way, I chose to just shut down and handle it in a disordered way. So now, skip forward. And I look back and I'm like, well, look at us.

Look what we do. You know, I know we do the best with whatever tools we have available. But I look back and I go, these are moments of life where we can make a choice where we are like either alive or dead. And I think any time we are in a setting where we are compromising our life where we're settling, where we're tolerating, where we are doing some kind of deficient behavior, drinking too much, any kind of drug too much, anything too much. Arthur C. Brooks, whom I love at Harvard talks about the potential about if you're doing something and it's alone, like some possible addictions. If you're doing it with friends, if you're going up for drinks with friends, then that could be a fun social thing. And of course, you could take that too far too.

but if you're doing it at home alone too much, that's an indication that may be a problem for you. But moments where we can reflect and go, is this part of my life alive or dead? Am I just plugging into like a life machine? Because that for me was a decade of just like plugging into a life machine, just trying to cope and survive. And so by increasing the awareness of life short,

do you really want, like would you regret? Would you look back? and regret having another decade go by, barfing your brains out around town, you know? Is there more to life? Like you asked earlier, like what's an example of a question that helps us to kind of tune in and it was what makes you happy? Another big question is what makes you feel really alive?

And we can, when we get really deliberate, about making a choice to live. And it's a conscious choice. It's like what you do with your wife when you look at your week and you say, what do I have to look forward to? What's interesting? when you make a plan to say, I'm going to make this thing on my bucket list come true, this is a goal I have for the year and here's how I'm going to take a step forward towards it this

week. And you're showing yourself that you give a shit about yourself. There's something really cool that can happen, especially with a dawning awareness that, like, I want to fit this in because it matters so much to me. It can tend to give you enough of a purpose and a direction to overshadow some of the other garbage, the garbage ways that we fill our existence. I applaud you for writing about it and, you know, sharing about that aspect and kind of weaving into story and, of course, talking about it here because you never know the things that people

are struggling with. And even if some more audience members aren't dealing with that situation, there might be another habit that is not supporting them in the way that is supporting their long-term vision and goals that they're struggling with. And when they hear somebody talk about it and what they went through, it's an opening and a permission of, okay, you know what? Maybe I don't have to beat myself up every day that this is going on. And yet still, I can still have the energy and the resolve to want to also change this thing. And the interesting thing about you sharing is that from what limited knowledge I have of somebody, you know, a friend of a friend that struggled with anorexia is there's some element of thinking in modern day psychology

that there's a control element that's there. Right? You can't control a lot of stuff that's going on in your life, but this is one thing that you can control. And obviously, there's so many other layers that are there to it. Yeah. And yet, if you look at that and you look at the opposite hand of this interest in death, death is like the ultimate thing and the reminder that actually we're not in control of anything. And I could see, I don't know exactly when the timeline of these all were, but looking

from the outside and just hearing your story, I could see the draw towards this topic of death as just the constant reminder that we literally, have no control in anything that we're doing in life. Ultimately, we're all going to be gone. Yeah. And even the people that love us, 200, 300, 400 years from now, they're all going to be gone too, right? Definitely in like a couple hundred years. And largely all our belongings are going to be gone, sold in a landfill, recycled. And for most of us, even if we lived a beautiful life. You know, our great, great grandkids, or if you don't have kids, family members, whatever, they're probably not going to remember you. Just like we don't remember, you know,

do you know who your great, great grandfather was, what his life was like, what was going on with them? You're appreciative and you might have heard little gems and obviously their legacy led to, you know, the things both positively and negatively that we can experience in our life. Yeah. But we don't know who they are and we're all going to be forgotten. one day. And so death is that reminder that it's like, as you mentioned before, we just cannot sweat the small stuff and this two shall pass no matter how good or how bad it is. Can I just say that that was like the best therapy moment I've ever had? Really profound. I like your connection point because you're right. We, you're into control. This is the ultimate uncontrollable. You're so right.

And this leads back to this giant big thing of acceptance. And acceptance and embracing. Because it's one thing that most adults would be like, yeah, yeah, no, I know, I know we're going to die. Like, what else? What's for lunch? But the, right, like, let's have lunch with it. You know, like, let's pull up a chair and think about it. Do that math.

Think about what it means. Think about back to this thing of what regrets might you have that you can course correct. Love that. You know, and that if you did back to these exercises, How would you be thinking differently with this remaining time of acceptance if you knew that you did just emerge from a moment where you almost died? We have to play these mental tricks on ourselves. And back to the idea about how, like, I wish abundance was enough for us. I wish that just like in any psychology, you know, the idea, like we're more wired to avoid pain than seek pleasure.

Most people are. This is the play. You know, it's that we need the poke in the ribs to take things seriously. Action usually comes from an inciting event. And it's usually not from a super inspired one. I think it could come from like what you did with your family in Hawaii with psilocybin, et cetera. That can be a really cool inciting event. Such cool research around that now.

But for most of us, there needs to be. I don't, it doesn't need to be rock bottom. But it could very well be. Oh, right. The Reaper. Oh. That math. And like, let's just get a little more scarce with the scarcity as if we weren't already having enough fun with the countdown. But like, all right, 1,870 some odd Mondays. But then you

could go, well, okay, there's one of the readers of my blog, I really love them because he keeps reminding me. He's really quite persistent and hilarious. He's like, yeah, but don't forget that the remaining Mondays near the end, they don't, they're not really like the best of your Mondays. You know what I'm saying? Like, so like we can probably lop off. for many people the last chunk of years because we're not going to necessarily be as crystal clear mentally and physically. And so I'm just going to like I'm ratcheting up the ante here, right? So maybe now that leads you to a few hundred Mondays off that. And we're taking the number down. And then we're saying, okay, well, how many big trips do you have left? Depends how often you travel.

But if you look at that window of time and you say, okay, well, I'm going to work for this many years in a traditional model, people like at retirement or whatever, okay, but really, like a lot of people that I know are like, well, we take a really big overseas trip like every four or five years. Okay, let's do that math. Like, oh, you've got six left? Like all of a sudden, like all the countries that you just deludedly thought you were going to get to visit. Oh, yeah, on my leisure time, all of a sudden, like, you're going to need to make some choices, honey. Like, you've got to prioritize because they're on enough countries to fit into six big trips, right? Or as summers left with your kids, is one that people will do.

Right? Like, or there's a woman I know who I just love her to pieces this year. She's like, this summer, my kid is finishing junior kindergarten. And I'll never have another kid in junior kindergarten. And there are eight sessions left. And every Friday, I'm going to take my kid out for lunch. And we're going to go to Subway. And my kid's going to, because Subway's kid's favorite place to go.

I'm like, we're going to go. And it's going to take 30 minutes. And so, again, it's not a lot of time, not a lot of money. It's a good example of savoring. we've only got eight junior kindergarten weeks left. You could look at that with how much time you have left working. And that is really profound because I know a lot of us don't plan on a formal retirement these days, but many people do, or at least a retirement that you might define as like my option to say no.

And I did that math personally about a year ago, maybe with when I was writing the book, actually, because I hadn't done it recently. And I want to keep talking about this shit forever until I end up getting snuffed out. but the way I average like my full time, full time, I think I had something like 642 Mondays left. It fell like a gut punch. I was like, that is not enough. I will not have enough mountain tops to scream this message from in 642 Mondays.

It was fabulously panic-inducing. And I should clarify, not panic. Like, I'm saying all these things and I'm creating all these examples. And I know your listeners are right now are like, thanks, Drew, for the existential crisis that you just gave me. No, like, wait a sec. Let's get, let's, we can choose how we're perceiving this. It's not about urgency based in panic.

It's about urgency based in a desire to live like we mean it, to get to the end and feel like we did this life that we've been given justice. So that's the whole thing. So if we can get creative with those countdowns, because you're right, we will just keep thinking that there's time that there isn't. powerful. You know, another thing I'll add to that is that I'll do little micro versions of that, of that, for example, we're at the mid-year point. And so one of the questions that I'll be asking soon on our man morning group is like, hey, just how's the year going so far? And between

now and the end of the year, if there was one thing that you would regret not giving love and attention to. And the reason that I like asking it this way is something important that you wrote about in your book is that it's not that we're going to, we don't regret not achieve, we don't regret like that we didn't achieve something. We regret that we didn't try to pursue it. So if between now, mid-June, the halfway your mark and the end of the year, if we didn't make progress on this one or two things, one thing in your personal life, one thing in your business life, what would those things be? And what type of regret would you feel around that? You know, because sometimes for younger people, especially, death and that many Mondays can have the opposite

effect of I have tons of time that's there, right? Are plenty of time, especially big dreamers, as you mentioned earlier. You have such a big dream, such a big vision. I got plenty of time. So you can play with shorter timelines of that. And take a look at it. And another version is I have friends who are like, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to get old one day and I'll die and that's not really a big motivator. But then you find something else that they care about, right? Maybe they don't have kids themselves and they're an auntie and an uncle. Yes. To a family member. Yep. Right. Hey, you'll only have X amount more time with this nephew or niece, right? Quality time. Yep. Like, let's say you like to do with my nephew niece, like once a year, I'll have them come to

LA and we'll do, I did this with my nephew. I didn't get a chance to do it with my niece because we ended up sending her to the Taylor Swift concert. She got a great time there. With my nephew was like, hey, we'll do a yes day with you. Like, pick a list of all the things that you want to do in LA. Like you plan the trip, right? I gave him a budget, right? A couple hundred dollars, whatever. And he put a day like that together. And we went to like some touristy stuff. We went to some anime stores that he's like really a fan of he like is super into ramen so he went to like a ramen shop and he had that day and that day seeing him feel so excited he's about he's just turned 13 yeah about the autonomy of like going through the day and the happiness and the joy and feeling that

sense of ownership of what was planned and checking it on me like are you having a good time to like that brought so much energy yeah to me yep and i thought wow i want so many more of those days. And he's 13, right? So he has high school left. Then he's going to be a college. Then he's going to be starting his own family. Like, realistically, how many of those, if I'm doing him once a year, how many

those do I have? Six maybe over the course. And then once he's much older and I'm much older, maybe we get a chance to do a couple again. So maybe seven? Yeah. So you only have seven more of those times. So if there are any part of me that,

feels bombarded with just how much is going on to the degree that I'm not prioritizing those things. Yep. That reminder of like, I only have six more of those opportunities to do that with him. That makes me feel both sad and happy at the same time. And it really brings a sense of value of like, I want to make sure that I don't miss any opportunity to have those with him in a year. You just took this to the next level.

I also think that we need to start a campaign where you start creating yes days for us. so you'll pick one lucky person a month where you all take them on a yesterday, maybe with a slightly higher budget. You are on to this because where this boils down, I think, is what do you value? We all know we can do that exercise where you write down your top five or ten values. And sometimes we find ourselves just at a sink. We're living a life where we're not actually honoring our values. And this one example that you just gave, because it's not like you're already consciously

living a life that is designed to be regret-free because you're already in tune with all this stuff. You're like the perfect you only die once, you know, person to read. Like you're in this already. But this value you have, which is very clear because it comes up in so many of your shows, is a value of family connection. That is an example where if we get to look at our list and go, like, what is that thing on my list? And, oh, wait, what would I regret around that?

That feels like a little bit of a shortcut to it too. And your example helped highlight that. Like, for some people, a really big value could be creativity, right? And then that might mean, oh, I bet you'd have that hole in your heart. If you didn't launch that pop-up book that you were designing, oh, God, please one day interview a pop-up book designer. I wanted me to pop-up book designer.

Or it could be any value, right? It could be nature. Someone might then really regret that they didn't go and maybe dedicate some time and energy and start some kind of a campaign in their community to save the trees in the town square. I don't know. So that might be a cool shortcut is to do exactly what you did. It's like, wait a minute, my nephew matters to me. This is a value I possess.

What around that? If I was to pick around with my tool would be a thing I'd regret after that. That's cool. You know, the last part of the book, you're focusing on this topic of purpose and stepping into a life that drives meaning. Yeah. And that's different for everybody. But often the question that I hear from the audience sometimes is that I don't know.

I don't know. Or how do I figure out? How do I figure out that thing that drives meaning that is my ongoing booster rocket that helps me get through the difficult times? Yeah. And using, of course, the tools of the death meditation and the lists that are inside of the book, which are fantastic, everybody should get a copy. we can use those tools to drive us towards that.

But how do we find a life of purpose? How do we find a life of meaning for ourselves? Love that you've asked. And I feel the need also just to put it in context because this is the deepening part of life, that dimension. And it's in contrast, even though it plays nicely in the sandbox with the idea about widening our life with vitality, which is more of the fun stuff.

That's like, in a way, your yes day with your nephew, that for him was a day full of vitality of like getting to do all those cool things. and that was fun for you, but you also got meaning out of it. I think I got more, I mean, he had fun. Yeah. And I got a lot of meaning. I'm not saying he didn't have meaning, but like what I got out of it was like, I feel like 10 times.

Totally. More. Yep. And he still had a blast. Such a good example. So you guys had different dimensions at different things. And so there will be overlap. And the meaning thing is the, just so it tracks back to positive psychology,

it's the eudamonic dimension of well-being. And it has to do with. the area of our virtues using and demonstrating good character, having that sense of purpose. Maybe it's about connection to other people or to a God or a spirit or anything bigger than us, you know? So it has a lot of range. And I think that you are super right. Like, people get freaked out about this purpose thing.

There are some words that freak us out easily. They're all pieces. There's purpose. There's passion. There's potential. Like, oh, am I reaching my potential? These are stress inducing. And I think so much of it is because we believe that it needs to be something shiny and oppressive.

And what if we recalibrated it? This is something that I see a lot working with individuals that I used to work with or teams. It's like not everybody is going to create a nonprofit that solves the water problem in Africa. And that doesn't make that person the hero of purpose. You win the purpose prize. some of the best conversations I've seen happen have been through people where they've realized that their purpose is actually something that is undeniably, it gives them that sense of pure righteousness satisfaction. Like being a really good uncle is part of your purpose, is it not?

Yeah, being a good family member, brother, uncle, huge part of my purpose. So if you go back to your values, and again, if all of us are whipping out or, you know, back of a napkin, whatever we're doing. And it's like, these are the things that matter. Back to, you know, creativity. If creativity makes your heartbeat fast and you just know somehow, you don't even need to explain why. You just know that it's part of you and it's something you hold dear or it's family or it could be achievement or it could be nature. Back to examples we just were using for ease. That use that as your starting point and be like, what's something that I do in and around there that just makes me feel like I felt like, I felt like,

there was depth there without anybody gauging it or measuring it or how impressive it sounds to my friends or what could I put on Instagram? And I recommend that you start as small as you can. So rather than going big, like, I've got to start an empire that gets me on the Forbes 40 under 40. I mean, don't not do that if you want to, like grow your way into it. And or what if it meant that if you were really interested in, you know, starting a business, it would be like that your purpose is like like what would be an outcome that would make you feel really good.

Wow, I'd really like to, I don't know, purpose I would really like to create some kind of a service. You don't even know what it is yet, but I would like to create a service that helps people enjoy their lives more. Boom. That's my purpose. And if you start using that as your or your compass that you align every day and be like, okay, what's one more thing I could do to learn about that might get me more in tune with a business

that could help people live better. And so it's like always orienting kind of with the smallest, like smallest sense that's aligned with your values. That can help us feel that we're on, living on purpose. And again, let's recalibrate. Let's just manage our expectations. It doesn't need to be grandiose. Hmm. You know, as we're winding down here and I'm going to pass it back over to you to give some concluding thoughts,

I wanted to share that one of the quotes that I loved most from the book that I wrote down here in my notes, was thinking about death is a natural gratitude booster. I often think about gratitude can't come up for us if we don't have contrast. And death is the best contrast that we could ever imagine to help us understand that no matter how bad the traffic was today, no matter how challenging the conversation was with your spouse, no matter how tough it was to receive that email from your boss or lack of appreciating. from your parent, whatever it might be that somebody's struggling with when you think about the fact that we're still alive, breathing, that we have a chance to have a second shot tomorrow

at it, that there's something beautiful in that. So I just want to share that quote one more time for the audience here. Again, it's from your book. Thinking about death is a natural gratitude booster. And to go along with that, all the exercises that you have in the book. walking people through the death meditation, walking people through all the questions they can ask themselves about what death means to them and what parts of their life are they living or maybe are a little bit more dormant as you mentioned and how they can awaken them. I just found it

to be a really incredible read. And I want to acknowledge you and thank you for being on the podcast today. Final thoughts that you want to share here with our audience as we conclude here and then we share how our audience can keep in touch with you. Oh, well, first of all, speaking of gratitude. I'm grateful for that endorsement and just the opportunity to chat with you here. So open to this and that really helps. And by way of sign off, you know, my encouragement remains the through line, which is to be not afraid and to befriend the Grim Reaper as counterintuitive as it is because, yeah, I mean, he'll obviously totally take you in the end. But it's only because of how you've beautifully highlighted it, that when we have the contrast of this precious thing,

it is precious because it is temporary. And when I sit with a Reaper and we share a stiff drink or green juice, whatever, float your boat, and we realize that this thing is a short-term situation. And I get to see an absolute perspective shift. That's the very thing that might help you make better choices. It might help you connect better. It might help you have more fun and vitality, more yes days. It might help you have more depth and meaning and feel that sense of poignancy about life and more gratitude. It's the wake-up call that we don't know we need that is right there and available to us. So be not afraid. Powerful. Jody, this has been fantastic. The book is out. If you wouldn't mind mentioning the title

for our audience. Thank you. Okay. It's called You Only Die Once, How to Make It to the End with No Regrets. And also two years ago you did a TED Talk that's available that's out there. It has over a million views. Congratulations. Thank you. Apparently people are interested in death. They're interested. To live.

To live. To live. So we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And where are you most active on social media? Well, I am on Instagram at 4,000 Mondays and you have to spell it out, F-O-U-R, etc., at 4,000 Mondays. And then I live kind of in my website where I do a blog every Monday. it's called 4,000 Mondays.

Beautiful. Jody, thank you so much, again, for coming on this podcast and talking about this important topic, which sometimes I'll be parts of my day

where I'm just thinking and I'll kind of zone off a little bit and kind of look up at the sky or look out the window and I'm like, man, we're all going to die one day. And nobody today that I've encountered has talked about it.

And it's kind of weird that nobody's talked about it today. But at least today for our audience, you talked about it and even if it might have been a little bit uncomfortable, you reminded us why it's so important to acknowledge our mortality if we really want to live here powerfully. So thank you for that. Oh, so well said. Thank you. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.

And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health.

We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health. sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.