Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Mortality? With Jodi Wellman - Episode 18

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Welcome to another episode of the Makes Sense Podcast with Dr. JC Doornick and a very special guest in Jodi Wellman. In this episode we will be Making Sense of Mortality and whether death is your friend or foe?  Our guest is none other than Jodi Wellman, positive psychologist, TED Talk Speaker and author of soon to be best selling book, You Only Die Once , “How to make it to the end with no regrets".    Connect With Jodi Wellman Website: https://fourthousandmondays.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/fourthousandmondays  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fourthousandmondays/    Her book - You Only Die Once - https://amzn.to/4dovzNU    HIGHLIGHTS: 08:21 - Why do we need to almost die to live? 09:08 - Boundary Situations? 10:26 - Temporal Scarcity - Embrace the scarcity of your time left. 14:12 - Memento Mori 19:08 - Moving from dreaming and wanting to taking action 23:09 - The Three Main Regrets 31:36 - How many Mondays do you have left? 36:32 - How to live an astonishingly successful life? (Wider and Deeper) 41:43 - Would you recommend your life to someone?   Sponsor: Makes Sense Academy: https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about  Connect With Dr. JC Doornick: https://zez.am/makessense    #makessense #makesensepodcast #makessenseacademy #riseupwithdragon #fourthousandmondays # #grimreaper #mortalitymentality #adamgrant #tedtalk Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm, makes sense. All right, great morning, my friends. Great morning world. Always fun to recognize when I say great morning, and I'm recording something that's not in the morning. But although it could be time zone-wise, morning for our guest here, this is Dr. J.C. Dornick,

and welcome to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. Today, we're going to be making sense of the mortality mentality, and I want to put a little bit of a foundation and add some color to this amazing person that is a very special individual. I want to just kind of like unfold how I came across the amazing Jody Wellman. I don't know how people will interpret this, but I have this very deep fascination with death.

And I would say at this time now. And I don't know what happens in people's minds when they hear that. It's specifically in the area of the relationship that people have with death and whether or not it is a friend or a foe. one of the greatest stories I ever heard that really, really let me kind of go down, start going down this rabbit hole. I saw a video of the amazing Gary V. Vaynerchek, and he was driving by in his car, limo of some sort, and one of his fans noticed him from the side of the road. And they ran up to Gary, and he's the kind of guy that will talk to anybody.

He rolls the window down, and this really, really nice woman says, Gary, what's the secret to success? You know, give me, and she says, in three words, what is the secret to success? And without thinking at all, Gary looks at her and he says, you're going to die. And I just said, that's why he's the boss, you know. So anyway, I kind of went on a little bit of a death research tour, I call it. In all aspects, I actually have a guest coming on the show who calls himself Dr. Death. And, you know, he's a guy that gets people ready for death and all that stuff.

But my focus really is on the relationship of it. And as a result of this tour, I came across. just stumbled across, which is, you know, why I love being open and curious. This TED talk with the amazing guests that we have here, Jody Wellman, and the name of the talk was, and this is probably how I found it, she says, how death can bring you back to life. And I was like, I don't care who did this talk. I'm going to listen to it. I was hooked after I heard her talk.

And of course, in the show notes, we'll put that. Consequently, I, you know, reached out to her and she was just so kind to agree to be on our show and speak to our listeners. I'm very excited to say that she's got a new book coming out, I believe May 7th, which is the day that I'm going to pick my son Jackson up at school. So that's a very exciting day. So you pick the great day. But the name of her book is you only die once.

What a nice reframe. It's about how to make it to the end with no regrets. What I can say, I've had the honor before we get into this conversation of kind of reading like an early manuscript of it. How can I put it? I read a lot of books. I read a book about a book every week. First of all, it's fun. It's a fun, fun, fun book, which is important. You know, you won't be able to put it down. But another thing about it is she's just so good at helping guide you in a fun way with some interesting anecdotes. And she kind of holds your hand through the process to reframe your relationship with the Grim Reaper, who actually she kind of talks about as if he's like her sponsor of the book. What a great book, Jody. And I'm so excited for people,

to get into this. And I would say this is going to be a staple in people's library and might even, I don't know if this is going to ruffle some feathers, might even become the Holy Bible of death appreciation. That's what I'm going to call it. So anyway, welcome to the Make Sense podcast, Jody. We're honored and privileged to have you here. J.C., I was already excited to come talk with you, but with that warm, welcome. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for that. I work hard on that stuff. So here's where I'd love to start, because there's so many different things. We won't get anywhere close to what you'll get from reading the book. What I find interesting when I meet people like you that have just completely

committed themselves to their work. And you talk a lot about your work. I find it very rare that the person's story is, I just woke up one day and decided to teach people about developing a different relationship with death. Typically, there's a backstory. So what I'd love to do is kind of take us back, because this is a very interesting part of your story, take us back to that place. I always tell people I was messed up and now I'm blessed up.

And I believe it's only the people that know the dark that can really appreciate and want to pay forward the light. So what's the backstory here? When did you decide to just start doing this? Yeah. When did the Reaper really weasel his way in? When did I let him in? He was always knocking. And I, well, I've always been very interested in the idea of, let's just call it traditional

self-help. And so early career, I was in the physical fitness business. So I started off as a trainer approximately 27,000 years ago. And I always wanted us to feel good, enjoy our lives. And then I got into, I was in leadership for many years and then leadership development and coaching. And that's helping us like our lives more. But it was always so bizarre to me in stark.

juxtaposition. It's like, live like you mean it. And that's actually like my tagline, one of them, live like you mean it. But against the idea that we are all totally going to die, like you said, Gary V. style, you're going to die. And I've always found that to be so absurd that it has stuck with me. My mom wore a button on her acid wash jacket when I was a kid in school growing up and it just said, life sucks and then you die, right? And it was one of those, yeah, fascinating. We're all temporary. So it stuck with me. And then speaking about my mom, she passed away when she was in her late 50s. And while that in itself was not ideal, sad, all the typical expectations, the thing I didn't expect was to be more affected by my perception of all the regrets she had

when she died. And these aren't regrets, by the way, of things she did and wish she didn't. These are the more insidious kinds of regrets that I am terrified of personally. I've come to realize that's my greatest fear. My mom died with a bunch of the coulda, shoulda, woulda regrets. You know, all the ideas and dreams and business plans and manuscripts and all sorts of things she wanted to do but just didn't have the courage to move forward and try and do. And so that woke me up and made me realize, you know, the thing in life is that you know full well. The things that take your breath away or wrinkle you or bother you about someone else,

it's really just because you see it inside you somewhere. Maybe it ain't so deep down. And I realized, oh my gosh, I am living a life in many ways where I'm afraid to press the go button and take action on some of the dreams I have because of a lack of confidence or for whatever reason, mostly just fear. So that really woke me up and helped me realize. And so I just to round out the backstory and just a nice lovely little bow on it, I recognize I look back. I had 10 years of my life that I wasted to eating disorders that

at the time was, I like to think of it. It was like my mechanism to cope. And I see now with such clarity that I was, you know, not just dimming my light of life, but this idea that, oh my goodness, I want us all to live so full of aliveness before in fact we do go. And I recognize that in my instance, you know, that was 10 years where I was really not quite alive. And I know many of us find our own sneaky ways to cope that may not also be so healthy or productive. So all that together, finding death just absurd, it's coming for us and we don't know when. That's just, I mean, it cracks me up. I'm glad I see it as hilariously weird. And in addition to, you know, losing my mom with a bunch of regrets and also me recognizing, oh, honey, like I was wasting a lot of my time,

I am now hell bent on living squander-free lives. And that's what I want for all of us. the way you talk about squander-free. That'll play into, you know, something I want to ask you as well. Here, you just triggered something else. First of all, one thing that I know, I'm fascinated with near-death experiences. I've also, you know, done a lot of work in the realm of plant medicine. And that's what fascinated me with that as well. It's just this concept of even ego death. You know, it's like you can't appreciate something until you experience almost losing it. What's interesting about your story is you didn't necessarily have that, but you can also, it's almost interesting to recognize that you can have a near-death experience by watching somebody else go through something like that.

Because I'm fascinated what gets people charged and specifically into action. Is that kind of what happened when you evaluated that and said, I don't want that for me? Or? Entirely. Yeah. And in the world of psychology, they call it boundary situations. And these are these moments that we're faced with, you know, For some of us, it's just something as simple as having a big birthday with a zero. They can really wake us up and go, wow, my time is trucking on. What have I done? For some of us, it is, you know, an event we wouldn't wish upon ourselves, you know, bankruptcy or divorce. For some of us, it is the death of someone, you know, a grief and loss.

And for some of us, I mean, it's just any moment that makes us really feel this right of passage or a situation in life that does wake us up. And so you're right. I mean, you know I'm just as fascinated by near-death experiences. And I am so envious of people who have had them. And I dabble in it. I mean, that's the work that I longed to do is to create this, like, tiny miniature version, quite frankly, even in the book. I mean, the book will not cause you to almost die, trust me.

But I want to create the roar of awakening that they often call it. Existential psychologists call it. I love that phrase. That, like you said, you used great words a second ago, J.C. Bentley. We really only appreciate something when we've almost lost it. And because we can't live in a world where we do almost die, like that flatliners movie in the 80s, which I don't recommend. But it, you know, how do we create miniature versions? How do we create miniature, like almost initiate this existential crisis on purpose?

Initiate that feeling. And this is what I do is, like, temporal scarcity is what it's called. It's like, tune into the fact that you're temporary. Don't deny it because we don't want to talk about it. But how do you create those miniature moments? And you can fabricate it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this. This is totally possible.

It's the practice. It's the discipline. It's the consistently coming back to the reminder that, oh, right, I have 1,841 Mondays left. I guess I better get on with that dream because time's ticking. You know, so this is the spirit of this. This is where I think the juice is in it. You know, it's so funny. I just realized you have more Mondays than me.

Well, I am female. So we might in fact. That's true. That's true. I didn't get a longer runway. But after reading your book and after this podcast, episode we can add a couple of years. You said something before that I'm fascinated with. Remember, what we're attempting to do here is make sense of things. So every now and then you're going to

trigger a question. This concept of recognizing that you're wasting life or squandering your life, here's a question. It might be a challenging one. Had you not wasted and squandered your life, would you have known to appreciate it? Great question. I think there needs to be... I'm not saying, I'm not telling everybody to go out and waste and squander their life. life to appreciate it or have a near-death experience, by the way. We could come up with a great retreat. The first half is total squander and squalor. And then the second half is recovery.

I actually think there's merit in that. I do believe that we, some of us can learn a little better through recovery of some sort. However, it is not necessary. You know, so we can create our own jolting moments. And what that looks like is in many ways, it's this, it's the count. timer that I get people to do. So yes, adversity can end up adjusting us. Yes, there is such a thing as post-traumatic growth, but not for everybody. Yes, there is such a thing. Even we're talking about

the benefit of having a near-death experience that I always have to stop myself because I think I paint everybody with the same paintbrush. It's like not every single person that is in remission from cancer is now seeing the light in a new way. I mean, a majority are, but not everybody is. So sometimes you could have a life-jolting experience. It doesn't quite land on one guy. Whereas the the next person, it's like, hmm, you do the math about your Mondays and that's the thing that lights the bulb up. So I am fascinated too when you're, you know, you make sense of things. Like, can we engineer epiphanies? And that's really all it is we're talking about. We want to wake up. Like my mission in life is to wake people the F up to life.

Because again, it is, I can't, I can't stress it enough. Like the egg timer has been tipped upside down. And hopefully we get more than two and a half minutes or whatever an egg timer is. So yeah, I think we can engineer epiphany. I think that it is not necessary, like for me to have had 10 years of like, well, that was a bit of a trash waste, even though, to be honest, it wasn't. It was a great 10 years in many ways. But I love that because it means that, yes, we can turn adversity into our advantage and we don't even need to have the drama or trauma in order to actually wake up to life.

That feels pretty cool. That's so fascinating. The whole realm of personal growth and self-discovery is comical because what it shows is that humans, for some reason, need to put themselves through so much pain and torture to get anywhere in life. One of the ways that I put it in my book is this idea is, isn't it interesting and mysterious how the universe and God or the forces that be have just mysteriously placed everything that we desire conveniently on the other side of a big pile of shit? And we spend our entire lives, you said life sucks and then we die. We spend our entire lives basically learning

how to shit navigate just to get anywhere. So I want to get into, you have this really cool coin, you know, this Momentumori coin, but I want to tell you why I'm fascinated with it. Because it's, you know, it could be an anchor, could be a little bit of a cue for you, but I have one of them as well. And I think if this word plays very much into our conversation, this is mine. So I have a rock that just says gratitude on it. But I've had this rock for 18 years now, I always carry it in my pocket. And if I ever meet somebody and they're all jammed up and just having a really rough time, rather than trying to save them, I just take the rocket.

I put it in their hand and I say, hold that for a second. And it recenters them. And perhaps that's another wake-up. But you have a very interesting concept. And a lot of people have probably never heard of this. But tell us about momentum, Mori. Yeah, it is a Latin phrase. Been around for centuries.

and it translates to remember we must die. It's kind of like it's the whole summary of what we've been talking about so far. And most healthy functioning people will be like, okay, say what? Like I would rather focus on something lovely rather than death, but oh contraire. You know, it's this, it is through, back to your word about centering with your rock. It's this reminder and it's the acceptance. It's that we all get it. I mean, there's not a single adult around that doesn't know the.

ending. Like, we know how the story ends. So now we just have to decide, I guess, to be literal, like, how do we want the story to be written until there is the last page that says the end. And maybe the last page is actually in the middle of the book because it's coming faster than we know. So, yeah, I think that it is this, the spirit of getting in touch with it, don't deny it, which is your human instinct. We're too smart for ourselves sometimes, you know, or at least we think we are. We try to avoid it. And it doesn't pay off. You know, it was a lot of research. out there that says that when we do avoid the conversation and we just keep thinking, oh, I'm going to get to do this later. You know, the great, the grand deferral of all of our dreams is going to

be later, this elusive place that may not come. Memento Moria is that remember, you're going to die. You're temporary. And so it does orient us to this notion. And it's back to scarcity. And it goes back to really what you're saying about the pile of shit. It's like, I lament as a positive psychology practitioner that we're not all wired to just go pursue amazingness. No, because we have to actually, our preference is to avoid pain first. And so that's the, that's the land I play in now, is that if I have to rankle us, myself included, like I'm the chief rankler for me, like I got to wake my own self up every week to do the math. And yes, to have my coin and yes, to have them, you can't see, but I've got this place fricent littered with all of the paraphernalia to remind me

of the fact that time's temporary, all that. hourglasses and skulls and coffins. I mean, you name it. I even have candy skulls here. It's ridiculous. I need that in order to be the reminder to not take life for granted because that's our default. In addition to denying death, it's that we just squirrel about and squander and fritter away our time. And we need that jostle to stop and then say, wow, well, because it's limited, what do I want to fit in now? And like what matters? And then sometimes more importantly for some of us, what doesn't matter. What do I need to let go of? Stop caring about. Yeah, I love that. I actually, my wife, who pretty much tells me what to do, and I just say yes, most of the time. Usually I wear

funny shirts. And one of my famous shirts is it says, breaking news, I don't care. And what it means, and I love that interaction when somebody says, ah, that's funny. And I said, well, I care, but just not about shit that doesn't matter. So anyway, that's why I'm wearing this black shirt. It's for you. So there's There's so many things. We don't have time to talk about them all, but I just every now and then want to point out some things that I picked up from your book that I just really appreciate. We talk a lot in our community about the difference between a jacuzzi

experience where people just listen to this podcast or read your book and then go around saying, I know this and turning it into a pivotal one and doing something about it. So I love the fact that just something I picked up was this binding contract that you put in there. It's just so important. I just very much appreciate. appreciate people that recognize that most people like to look and maybe even touch, but not do anything about it.

But people have, and I guess this is my message to anybody once you read the book or even hear this show. You just have an amazing opportunity should you accept the challenge of actually learning what this amazing person's talking about, but doing something about it, you know. Oh, thanks for saying that, first of all, for your kind words. also you're highlighting the thing where I think you've tapped into something big that I believe and you're putting it in words that we have the capacity to dream. And so for some of us, we haven't slowed down enough to stop and imagine, like to fathom. Like, what do I want my remaining

Mondays to look like? So sometimes that's the work, you know, go on a personal retreat or just like lock yourself in the bathroom and like figure that shit out, right? That sometimes, and that doesn't come easily. But that's step one. The real thing is the action. step. And I've really come to notice that we are often more afraid of living than dying, which I mean, we all, that hits deep, right? Because it's like, it's kind of true. It's uncomfortable. And so we can have a dream. And then the difference between the dream and the do, though, that can be a chasm. And that can be the thing that represents, well, okay, so I want to learn how to speak Italian, for example. But that's going to mean.

that I have to figure out my week in a different way, and I don't want to change my routine. So sometimes it's just a matter of ease. It's easier not to do the thing that you yearn to do. And sometimes it is about, I do want to go and learn how to do printmaking, but then maybe you're afraid that you're going to look like an idiot while your first 17 prints look like total, total garbage. And that doesn't feel good, you know, or maybe that's a bigger dream. Maybe it's that I want to start my own business.

And that's, I mean, the bigger, obviously the stakes as they grow, the fear. shadow also commensurately grows. And then next thing you know, four years have passed and we haven't done the thing. You know, you haven't started Italian class or you haven't done a print or you haven't started your Etsy shop or whatever the thing is that might float your boat. And so we don't even put the freaking boat in the water to try. And that to me is like that action step is that I recognize it's scary. Like I am the first one to know because I stayed in a job too long myself for years where I was afraid to make the switch. I get it.

And I've experienced, I mean, fear daily in this way. But it's like, what's one small thing you can do in order to score one for you that really pisses the Reaper off? You know, like I talk about befriending the Reaper, but we're also adversaries, right? Like every time we make a choice to stay on the couch or not do the thing we long to do, every week that goes by that we don't launch the business or the podcast or the thing we long to do, the Reaper in the background's just going like, yeah. Because it's like, this is really gross because I am gross. But like, that's like tenderized meat for that guy.

Every time, like we're making one step closer to the grave. Every time we don't take action on a thing that we might love to do. And it could be small and don't underestimate the small. You know, this is a woman. So many people that I work with, this is a common thing. A lot of professionals or people who are interested in, you know, living fully. We read self-help and we read business books. And of course, we're totally going to read our books, right?

But a lot of people I know, we're like, I would really like to read a fiction book for a change or I'd really love to read a biography or like a murder mystery or something that just feels like a departure from the responsible thing to do, which is to grow and learn and read your business book. And so sometimes it's even as small as I think about one client in particular whose life just a tiny thing helped change her experience of lunch. She's like, I would just sit and I would read a chapter Monday through Friday, maybe not every day. Some days I had to get pulled into a meeting, but I would read maybe four days a week and I loved that chapter. It was the best part of my day. Like, this is a little, that's a small

little thing to do for a life worth living, right? That doesn't take a lot of it. I mean, that's not a fear choice. That's just often like one step for you is go online right now and buy the book. Give it a try, right? I love it. Death is easier than life. You know, maybe that's an interesting way of putting it. And then also one of my, my favorite concepts is just the idea of recognizing that learning, which is what people are doing listening to us right now, and what they'll do reading your book, is nothing more than another form of distraction in the absence of action. So it's action, you're so right, this action that we're afraid of. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

The Makes Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken, and The Dragon. The Make Saints Academy is a live inter-a-examination. active community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both Chicken and Dragon, where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www.org.org.com.com.com.com and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee.

Now, back to the Make-Sense podcast. You spoke a little bit about regrets before, about your mom, and I know that you talk about, I believe, the three main regrets, and then you also talk about pre-grats. I love people that make up words, by the way. I make them up all the time. Tell us a little bit about those regrets. Happy to. Yeah.

So much of what we're talking about, this whole discussion about living a squander-free life. is in the service of living in a way that you won't get to the end and feel like, oh, man, I totally squandered it. Could or shoulda would have. So regrets are fascinating to me. The research is super clear. There are regrets of commission, meaning regrets of things we did and wish we didn't do. And we can't change them.

And generally, the good news is psychologically, we do find a way to just sort of manage those regrets. They will fade with time. But the most insidious kind of regret that haunts some of us are called regrets. of omission. And these are the regrets about things that we wanted to do but didn't, otherwise known as the pads not taken. And so that is the thing where it's like, oh, I always wanted to write that book, you know, where I wanted to fix that relationship, or I wanted to travel and do that African safari or whatever, you know, insert here, your version. And the good news is that for most of us, when we do that silly but effective deathbed regret

exercise, imagining like those things that would give you pangs of regret if tonight was your last nut. Sorry about you. We're not on our deathbed. Like news flash. We do have a chance now. So I'd play a trick on people. It's not very evil, but it's like right on a huge long list of things that you might regret. They could be tiny, you know, like never having caviar or it could be large, like never having kids or whatever the thing might be. And then when you have this, of course, the perspective of that, okay, you're not dying. You presumably have a bunch of Mondays left. What do you want to do about those? That's why they're called pregrats because the regrets in the making, but you could totally course correct them. And all it takes is one small step. So I don't know, I'm going to,

I don't know why I'm going with a caviar example, but let's do it. It's like, you know what you could do? You could die with one less regret if you just go drive to the market today and order caviar or order it on Instaccar. You need to have to leave your house and they have caviar tonight and like laugh at the fact that you're having caviar on like a random weeknight. I mean, that to me is actually like a lovely idea. Same thing. I mean, maybe getting on the kids thing might be a little bit bigger mission. But if it matters to you when you think it would haunt you, life is too short. Guys, like, this is so precious, right? We busy ourselves and we're going on with our days and we're all, we're answering our emails and our things and we got to go pick up the thing at the

store. We got all the thing. We get, we're so busy. And it's all too easy to get lulled into autopilot and just take this life for granted and stop and go, yeah, I'll get to do that later. What if you don't have time to do it later? We all know the stories about people who wait till retirement. And then, well, first of all, back to the kid example, you might not want to meet until retirement in order to adopt or have kids. But whatever, you do you. Deferring our existence is scary. Because not just because you might not have later, like that's possible.

But most of us are going to live till around 80s. So we're probably going to have some miles in front of us and Mondays. I'm more concerned about, like, who's sticking up for the life you're living? now. Who's the one who's going to say, yeah, but I deserve to have a pretty fantastic week because I get to be here. I'm alive and why not break out the good China? And back to the caviar, I guess. I don't know. Like, why not, you know, do the thing and book the trip and commit and make a choice to, like, take a stand for yourself that, like, what's it going to take for me to feel a little bit more alive this week? And again, for most of us, it's actually something that's super

sweet and simple. And it doesn't, and often it's free. So let's not dupe ourselves into thinking that it's going to be costly or it's going to take a ton of time or energy. Not even. Yeah. Amazing. I'm going to take with me today omission. You know, I mean, like I never used that word. You know, I would just call it like denial or something like that.

I heard somebody the other day talking about one of the things that hold people back is this idea of if you truly did go all in with life and no regrets, you know, addressed your regrets. There's this fear that if you. you had everything that you wanted, you'd end up not wanting it. So it's interesting how humans have also been programmed to not outshine one another, to not be obsessed, to not be excessive in nature. And I just question if whether or not those are just fabricated to give us haul passes to get out of actually doing shit. I think you're so right.

And whoever it is, yes, there's a, I think sometimes even a potentially scarier fear about not so much that what if I tried it? and it's not the thing I want. What if I try it? What if I do the thing? What if I move to Oregon? Or do the thing that just for some reason has been a yearning and you get up the gumption and you do it.

And then what if I'm still not happy? Right. That like what if there's still some sort of a vacant spot inside me that I thought this would do? And we know that, you know, well, there's this concept of hedonic adaptation as an example. You know, we might have something really good happen to us or create something. And we're going to get used to it. We're going to adapt and it's not going to be as snazzy as it was. Like the new car smell is going to fade after a little while and that new car is not going to

make you as happy as it did on the first day. You drove it off a lot. Our lives, we will adapt and we do need to keeping creative and tapping into something that might give us more joy. But I think it's in the risk. It's in the commitment to saying, I'm going to give it a go to go to go to go to go to go to and ask Jane out. Or I'm going to give it a go and I'm going to dye my hair blonde.

Or I'm going to whatever the thing. is that you want to do, again, bigger, small. It's like, give it a try with the, with almost like, with equanimity, one of my new words I love. It's like, with just, it might work and it might not. And yet, aliveness and that feeling of being proud of the way I handled my life is going to come from, I gave it a shot. And hilariously, Oregon was a bust, you know, or whatever, you know, like, that didn't quite work out for me. But you know what? I'm so proud that I made, that I gave it a go. tried. And while I was there, I took up glass blowing and now I'm like a professional glassblower. And by the way, I'm making it. This is me. I'm just making all this up. But I love that that commitment

to living does involve taking shots you might not make. But the courage and the pride and the confidence and that astonishing sense of aliveness comes from the give it ago, not from the wondering, you know? Yeah, everything carries risk. But the highest risk, if people are into guarantees, We live in a world where people love guarantees. The only guarantee is if you do nothing, you know, that carries the highest risk is you'll know nothing. So let's talk just briefly on this idea of the Mondays.

Jesse Etzler does this a lot. He just makes references to looking at the average amount of time people should live or could live. You know, he'll start to evaluate different metrics like how many moments he still has with his parents, because there are a different Monday list and stuff. So talk a little bit about that because one of the things, and I have to tell you that I did this exercise,

I was telling my community, I was going to have this interview, and I did the Monday exercise. There were some people in there that were 78, and I felt a little bit bad. But at the same time, it was an interesting reference point because they were like, I feel great, you know,

so I'm like, you know, maybe you have more Mondays than the formula. But tell us a little bit about the how many Mondays you have left. I had 1,456, but that was two weeks ago when I first met you. So now I have 1,454. That's the problem. The timer counts down and it's insidia. It does not stop.

Yeah. The granularity, I think, is crucial. You know, we need to stop and do the math, in my opinion, in order to really recognize and see. Because we're too used to the language of how many years we think we're going to live. And, like, for women, 83 sounds lofty and looming. large, like out there, and for men, roughly 78. And so, of course, there are exceptions. Some people will live way longer than 4,000 Mondays, and some will live way less.

So I want us to do the math. I really think it is this mortality math is where I believe a lot of this Memmento Mori secret lives. And in doing it regularly, that is the wake up. So I get in every workshop I do or keynote, that's the one of the very first things, is doing that math. And for some of us, there is some, for some people, it looks like a large number and that feels kind of, well, that's great. For most people, though, it is that eye opener of, huh, like I did this

recently. So back to your point about Jesse Itzler, there are so many ways you can slice and dice this math in order to figure out how much you have left. Because it is, we're just playing completely on temporal scarcity, that concept we talked about earlier around how when you see something as limited time only countdown timer-esque, the perception of its value definitely goes through the roof. that's what we want with our lives. But same thing around recognizing, well, how many big trips do I have left? Some people will only take a grand big trip maybe once every few years. And then by the time you, let's be honest, quality of our Mondays near the end of our lives,

we may not be hiking big time through the Swiss Alps. You know what I'm saying? So sometimes if we're thinking about imagining things we want to do and trips we want to take and the life we want to live and crossing off bucket list items, sometimes we have to manage and put an asterisk at some of those, oh, you know, Mondays near the end, that they may not be ones where we're as vibrant. And so the math of calculating, okay, wow, I may only have seven big trips left. Well, all of a sudden, this world, you get to dupe yourself into living and thinking, like, I get to go anywhere I want. Someone says, hey, would you go to Croatia?

Absolutely, I would love to see the coast. And all the places that you've dreamt and fathomed, I'm at a stage in my life now more than that, more, well, more than the halfway mark. It's like, I have to start being judicious now with my choices. You know, like I'm not going to get to go to all the cool places I always said I was going to go. Or when I did my Monday math about working Mondays, I don't really plan on formally retiring ever, I don't think. Knock on wood, you know, health depending. But I did the math about an age that I would like to just be able to pull back as much as I darn well want, you know. And I looked at that and I was like, wait a minute.

Like a mild wee bit of appropriate panic sets in like, I don't. that's not enough Mondays to do all the things that I'm longing to do. And then that's the point, though, is it stops and makes you go, well, then if I have to now prioritize, what are the things that matter the most? These are things that are nice. These are the things that are the things that are the things that like, sorry about your luck, but you just got deleted off my Excel spreadsheet. Whatever.

But I have to, we have to, that prioritizing is the thing. You're right. There are no guarantees. But what you can guarantee is that you gave a shit and you tried. And you said, now I know that because I have to prioritize, these are the top three. trips I must take. Or these are the, I know now I need to really prioritize seeing my dad more often, because you're right. He is, as he calls it, playing with house money. At 87, he's well out, lived his average. And does that mean that I have to stop and say, oh, gosh, I have to make sure

I get back to Toronto a little more often? Yeah. So I think that this math is the very animating thing that helps us to take life seriously and make better choices. For anybody that is not so mathematically inclined, you know, what you would do is, I would assume that what is the average, men are living on average to what, 74, 75? Well, I still like to say 78 because COVID threw all that for a loop for a while. That's right. But let's just go into COVID. 78 combined for the two.

Is that what you're saying? Or is 78 for men and then 83 for women. Okay. Okay. So you would take that date add a year because you've now met Jody or two years and just actually just, you know, do the math and subtract your age, right? That's where we do that. And then multiply that number by 52 and that's your Mondays.

What's interesting is this is about urgency. You know, it's awakening and taking shit seriously is about saying, that's the value of it. It's about not living with regrets because you can't, right? It's like I have no time for that. But it's interesting also to evaluate that most people are counting their Mondays in a way that they're waiting for a certain amount of Mondays to be done for something else. And I feel like a lot of people are like a little bit of a holding pattern. Tell us a little bit about, I love this idea of, you know, those four quadrants that you put up.

And there's a 68 question assessment on living an astonishingly alive life or assessing where you stack up. Talk a little bit about that. I love that. Oh, I'm glad you do. Thanks. This notion, we all would love to live longer. But I think most of us would choose to say, well, I don't want to live longer unless the quality of my life's good. So I love this framework where I've come up with this idea, but we want to live wider and deeper, not just longer.

And living wider is associated with vitality. And that's the more traditional stuff we associate with happiness. It's about fun, doing cool things, need experiences. It's going to the new cocktail bar. It's going out to the concert. It's doing your hobby. It's something that's fun and frothy. It's great.

that's wider with vitality. And we also want to not just go to the carnival all day and eat cotton candy. We want a little bit of depth in our lives and that's associated with meaning. And that is more about do I have a sense of purpose? Am I connected to something maybe bigger than I am spiritually or so on? Do I have deep, meaningful relationships that matter? Am I living a life of good character and virtues? And so that is a whole other dimension.

And when you put those two together, oh, it's beautiful because you get quadrants and it's, you know, great for a way to assess your life and say, where am I today? I have thousands of data points from people who've taken my surveys where the research I have come up with to me is it's consistent that most adults find themselves meaningfully bored, which is the one quadrant of four where they've admitted, okay, I think I have enough meaning in my life to feel okay. Maybe they have a job that gives them meaning in some way. Maybe they're looking after kids or adult parents or something that makes them feel like I've got some good anchoring purpose, but they're bored. You know, they're feeling like, oh, but I just need a little more excitement in my life.

I need to go out for brunches again or I want to, like, when was the last time I went and tried something new and learned something new and had fun and I was challenged? And so I think many people are very cognizant that they need to spice up their life again, have something a little more exciting in the mix. Now, it's not everybody. You know, some people are low on meaning, but high on vitality. And some people are in the dead zone, unfortunately, which. is where they're just lacking in both, but kind of hanging on for dear life, which is good.

And sometimes for people in the dead zone, just doing one thing this week that they even remotely enjoy is, again, another little vote of confidence. Like, you can do this. But where we're all angling to get to, of course, is the quadrant where we are anywhere positive on vitality and anywhere positive on meaning. And that's what's called astonishingly alive. And it doesn't need to be flashy or shiny or look super good on social media. it's about you. Like what makes you feel like, oh, you know, I feel vitally alive and I feel like

life has meaning. It's, you know what, today's been a good day. So whatever that looks like for you, but choice is like we have to design it. This is the thing that, I mean, let's just all just get pissed off for a second. Like, it doesn't happen. It will not get handed to you. Every now and then someone hands you a great day. Maybe you get a promotion or someone gives you a free lunch. I don't know. But for the most part, we have to design our days and our Mondays. And this goes back to the whole point you were talking about earlier, J.C., but action, we have to be the one to say, what do I have to look forward to in my calendar? You know, how do I make this afternoon feel kind of special because I get to be alive? You know, like, think about the people who have

had the brush with death and they're out of the coma and they came home from the hospital and they're like, hallelujah, I get to be alive, I'm here, I am thrilled to bits to be alive. Are they just going to sit and do nothing on the couch and watch Netflix, which, by the way, is like my very happy default setting. I love TV and movies. But they may be the ones to say, let's break out the good China and order in pizza on Great China and play a game tonight.

Let's play a board game that we haven't played in a million years just for fun. That's just a simple little example of making a small choice as a vote of choosing to do something different or a little bit livelier than, again, that same whole hum routine that is the hallmark of life not getting lived anymore. It's interesting to look at those four quadrants, and I mean, this comes from just working with so many people that present from one of those quadrants. And what I find interesting about it is that they all have value. If you're in the dead zone right now, I think it's also important to recognize that in some way, shape, or form, it's serving you at this time. So there's a timing element.

One of the things that I loved about your book also is that, and this is rare, you know, in personal growth, self-development, any of these kind of educational books, very often there's this vibe of telling people what they should do. Jody does a great job of also empowering you to realize that you decide what an astonishingly alive life leap means. So when you look at the chart, I just would recommend that you make that decision and not do it according to how you were programmed to do it. Love this idea that she asked you this question, would you recommend?

your own life to other people. So just quickly, how would you answer that if I asked you? Would you recommend your life to other people? Because when people say to me, oh, I would love to be like you. I'm like, you sure about that? You know, how would you answer that question? Oh, I've never been asked that back. Thanks. I would say, I would recommend it with a little asterisk that be prepared like you. I would recommend it to an introvert. So I have introverted tendencies and I love a homebody. And so my version of an astonishingly alive life in that quadrant may not be as jazzy as it might be for somebody else who wants to be out socializing and going to all the places many nights a week. Like that for me already just makes me feel tired to talk about.

But I love a little, I love doses of it, and I love planning and having great times in those experiences. And it's just maybe not as often as some people. So I feel like I'm being defensive about my life right now, defending it. but I also want to make room in this conversation for, oh, man, like, we're all shapes and sizes, you know, like, again, your Friday night could be different than the next guys and the next gals, and that's cool. Just make sure, are you enjoying a lot of your Friday nights and your Mondays and your Wednesdays, you know, whatever that looks like for you. But I would say, yes, I would,

I would recommend my life, can I ask you? Would you? I have, I knew you were going to do that. I would say, take it for a ride and see what you think, right? You know, it's like, because there's also this cool element that, you know, any day, this is part of what's so great about being alive. Is that any day, you know, if you wake up and you're fortunate enough to have a breath in your lungs and, you know, your heart beating, it's like you get to, you get to do it again, you know? Do it again. I have a very strange question for you. This is going to be fun. I know nobody's asked you this question and we're coming to the end of this.

Are you ready? Are you up for that? I'm braced. Okay. So have you ever heard? of a guy named Aubrey Gray? No. Okay.

So Aubrey Gray is what you call a biogerontologist. So this is a guy that is studying longevity. And I don't know if you're, I'm very, very fascinated with this idea that many very, very smart people are basically showing and proving by science that there's a good chance that in the next five to ten years, they will have figured out how to let people live for 500 years. So the idea is this. He refers to this observation. It's really fascinating to think about it,

where a person's remaining life expectancy, which is going to mean increase your Mondays, will be extended longer than the time that is passing based on the idea that science is evolving and extending life. So the idea is every year that you live, while science is moving faster, you're basically going to extend your life. So here's my question.

the word question. If I took death away from the woman that loves and appreciates it so much, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? I'll be torture. You know, I love this question so much, by the way. I'm so high-fiving you. And I think he would be torture. Nietzsche, I think he was the one that's not a, that man is the only animal that has to be encouraged to live. Guys, we can't even handle 80 years. We can't even handle 4,000 Mondays, like doing life justice, living. And I'm disparaging our entire human race, myself included. But we had a word. We got to work at this thing called Living Like We Mean It, you know? And it's not easy.

And as discussed, we're kind of afraid to engage sometimes. And it's easier to zone out. And I have great eye-widened fear about 500 years of that. So let's presume the quality will be lovely. And that will allow us to see more things and do more things. What I also fear is that it's just going to heighten the feeling of I can still do it later. And so we may end up with just a larger-sized procrastination problem. It's such a fascinating concept.

And it's one that we have to really consider because it's kind of like a careful what you ask for you just might get it type thing. My prediction is that because it's going to happen. You know, I mean, if you follow the science, I think that it could be a disaster in many ways. but then again, what do I know? I've never experienced what it's like to be there. But I think that will be the moment that people will appreciate death. Oh, fascinating.

Because the urgency will be removed. And what the hell is life worth living without urgency, right? Right, right. Because there will be like any deadline we know we need in any kind of a work project or something we got going on. I'll get back to you. Right, right. So we'll just keep deferring.

And well, now I love the fact. you've had you've sent to my head spinning for a while but now all the more reason why we can pull down on this idea we need the reaper um and fine like i'm i'm prepared to say let's extend to a hundred i think that's we could probably manage that but uh the infinity uh approach you know that thought experiment is also equally horrifying and so yeah let's let's keep death close enough to keep us honest uh this has been wonderful it's funny to say this has been wonderful talking about death But, you know, I guess my takeaway is that this mortality mentality, meaning momentum, this idea of embracing the potential suck of death, embracing it and using it as, you know,

looking at the Grim Reaper as the ultimate accountability coach, you know, that you've always wanted. But then again, looking at the quality of your life and looking at the Grim Reaper and saying, are you giving him a little bit too much tenderized meat excitement or is he bored with you because you're living such an extraordinary life and you know perhaps you can let him go focus on somebody else so thank you so much for being here the book obviously we're going to we're going to put this book in the hands of everybody because it's just it's just such a great everybody's out there working on whatever they're working on but they're most likely a little bit jumbled up in this topic and I just love it's not a scary thing it's a wonderful thing it's a blessing and it might

actually be that rocket fuel that you needed to just get up and freaking go and enjoy um this day right now like my rock with gratitude um so thanks so much for being here uh you know let's potentially I mean technology will be way more advanced but like let's say in like 150 years we do it again is that cool you're rankling me and I love love it. It's a date and we will have lived fully 17 times over by then. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. This has been wonderful. Have a great day. You too. Makes sense.