Page 13 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

1. Get on your deathbed

A number of years ago when I was working with psychotherapist Devers
Branden, she put me through her “deathbed” exercise.

I was asked to clearly imagine myself lying on my own deathbed, and to
fully realize the feelings connected with dying and saying good-bye. Then she
asked me to mentally invite the people in my life who were important to me to
visit my bedside, one at a time. As I visualized each friend and relative coming

in to visit me, I had to speak to them out loud. I had to say to them what I wanted
them to know as I was dying.

As I spoke to each person, I could feel my voice breaking. Somehow I
couldn’t help breaking down. My eyes were filled with tears. I experienced such
a sense of loss. It was not my own life I was mourning; it was the love I was
losing. To be more exact, it was a communication of love that had never been
there.

During this difficult exercise, I really got to see how much I’d left out of my
life. How many wonderful feelings I had about my children, for example, that
I’d never explicitly expressed. At the end of the exercise, I was an emotional
mess. I had rarely cried that hard in my life. But when those emotions cleared, a

wonderful thing happened. I was clear. I knew what was really important, and
who really mattered to me. I understood for the first time what George Patton
meant when he said, “Death can be more exciting than life.”

From that day on I vowed not to leave anything to chance. I made up my
mind never to leave anything unsaid. I wanted to live as if I might die any
moment. The entire experience altered the way I’ve related to people ever since.
And the great point of the exercise wasn’t lost on me: We don’t have to wait
until we’re actually near death to receive these benefits of being mortal. We can
create the experience anytime we want.

A few years later when my mother lay dying in a hospital in Tucson, I
rushed to her side to hold her hand and repeat to her all the love and gratitude I
felt for who she had been for me. When she finally died, my grieving was very
intense, but very short. In a matter of days I felt that everything great about my
mother had entered into me and would live there as a loving spirit forever.