Live Your Obituary

What would you like your obituary to say about you? If you want to feel confident in what those final words say, you may want to write them yourself.

That’s what Pennsylvania schoolteacher Ashley Koozma did. She faced a losing battle with cancer and wrote her own obituary, explaining what she discovered about life by contemplating her death. She closed her reflections with these words: “What do you value in life? In the end, that’s what matters.”

Ashley is right. We should live life with the end in mind. That’s why writing your own obituary can be a great exercise, especially if you answer two questions about yourself: “Who am I?” and “What do I do?”

Write down accomplishments you want to be remembered for, the things you want people to say about you, and what you would you like your marriage and your relationship with your children to look like. Do you want people to remember you for your faith? For your optimism? Write it all down.

Then comes the challenging part – but also the most exciting: living it out! Whoever and whatever kind of person you hope to become, get out there and do it. Build a business. Become more generous, more kind. Work on your marriage. Live with the end in mind, because – when you think about it – whether you write anything down or not, you’re living out your obituary every day.

Make it count!