I’ve always been a bit of a history buff, especially when it comes to the Roman Empire—great characters, epic tales, and endless insights into human nature. As a mental trainer, I particularly like one custom from that epoch that has to do with the Latin expression memento mori, which translates into “remember that you will die.” According to Roman scholars, the ruling senate would often celebrate army generals returning from a victorious raid with a triumphant parade. This event was considered the highest mark of honor, and no expense would be spared for the general and his men as they were led through streets lined with cheering crowds.
The general himself used to stand atop a gilded chariot, looking down on the teeming masses. There was always a slave behind him, holding the hallmark crown of laurels above the general’s head as a sign of victory. The slave served another purpose, however. Every now and then, amid the cheers and roars, he would lean forward and whisper into the general’s ear, “memento mori.” The words were a reminder that, despite the general’s great and heroic victory in battle, he was still a mortal being with limited time on Earth. Today might be a day of celebration. But tomorrow he would have to return to battle and the pursuit of human excellence.
Why am I sharing this story with you now? Because with the end of Hell Week in sight, I believe you’ve accomplished a major feat. You should certainly feel good about the accomplishment, like the Roman general riding high aboard his chariot. But the end of Hell Week must also be a period of reflection, and there’s no better way to do this than by coming face-to-face with your own mortality. Think of me as the slave whispering into your ear.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” —DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
As with Saturday, there’s little in the way of an actual agenda for this final day of Hell Week. I still expect you to be up at 5:00 a.m. with the same eager approach for the day. Assuming you don’t have a job to get to, you might plan a particularly rigorous workout, followed by extended quality time with family or friends. At some point in the day, however, you should definitely carve out some alone time, at least an hour, and preferably two. During this time you will put the events of the week and your life as a whole into perspective.
Without dwelling too heavily on the mortality theme, I truly believe the finality of life is one of the greatest motivators we have at our disposal. I’ll often ponder the fact that, like every other person on the planet, I shall one day die. I actually picture myself in the final moment, as time stops and everything comes to an end. Though I realize it could happen at any time, I do at least grant myself the best-case scenario, one where I’m an old man lying on my deathbed, with a lifetime of experiences behind me. I ask myself, Am I proud of my life? Did I accomplish all that I hoped to accomplish?
It might sound a little melodramatic, but there’s nothing negative or ponderous to the fantasy. It’s simply a way of imbuing life with a measure of urgency. I once read about an extremely wealthy Norwegian entrepreneur, who supposedly keeps a clock on his computer that’s counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds left in his life, assuming he lives the average life span. That certainly puts life into perspective. I’ve found that professional athletes are often good at this as well, given the very finite nature of their careers. Baseball players seldom play past the age of forty. Football players have even shorter runs, while gymnasts and swimmers might be done by the age of twenty. These are the simple realities of their given sports, and it’s an excellent motivation for them to be the best they can be while there’s time left on the clock.
It can be harder for the rest of us to put life into perspective. As a result, I often end up taking a very hard line with clients on this point. There was the forty-year-old advertising executive who was in a sort of professional paralysis, unable to make the changes needed to move his career and his life forward.
“You can continue on this path for the next two decades,” I told him. “But unless you commit to real change, the only thing that will happen is that you’ll get older. You’ll turn fifty and feel the same way you do today. Then you’ll turn sixty and feel the same. All of a sudden you’ll be talking about retirement, wondering what the hell happened to the last quarter century of your life.”
He started to get the message. A lot of people don’t. Think about how much is said and written about the midlife crisis, in blogs and health journals, on talk shows and radio call-ins. Some people laugh it off as a narcissistic construct of the Western world. But I think the crisis is real, and I think it happens not because we’re afraid of death but because we refuse to acknowledge its imminence. And so, as a first step toward putting your life into perspective, I want you to embrace mortality.
All those days that came and went, Little did I know that they were life. —STIG JOHANSSON
The second task for Sunday, which I believe will bring your life into sharper perspective, is to clearly define your value system. When I meet a client for the first time, I ask a series of simple questions designed to draw this out. Who are you? How would your mother characterize you? How would your friends describe you? What relationships matter most in your life? What are you most proud of? The answers to these questions form a value system. If you’ve experienced illness, you will probably value health. If you grew up in poverty, wealth and security will likely define your value system. The value system you create will reinforce your behavior. If health is your main value, you will probably eat a healthy diet and exercise on a regular basis. If knowledge is a top value, you will probably become an avid reader and a believer in continuing education.
As you define your value system, it’s important to think about how it lines up with your goals. I once had a client who valued economic security above all else. He’d grown up in a single-parent household with a lot of hardship, including time spent in homeless shelters and living on the street. One of his dreams, he told me, was to start his own business. Though I thought his concept for the business was strong, it was in a very volatile industry. As you know, I’m a big proponent of risk, but in this particular instance, it worked so directly against my client’s value system that I felt compelled to point out the fact to him. If, on the other hand, wealth had been the foundation of his value system, my advice would have been different. He recognized the dilemma and decided to redirect his goals so that they lined up more directly with his values. He still went on to own and operate a successful business, but he took longer with the launch and chose a lower-risk industry.
Remember, your values map your course in life. They tell you what to do, but also what not to do. At every turn, they’ll let you ask yourself, Is what I’m about to do in accordance with my values? If the answer is yes, you can go forward. If not, you need to rethink your motives.
As a final step toward putting your life into perspective, I want you to spend some time thinking about people you admire and wish to emulate. This is another mental sparring exercise I do with clients, and it always yields results. “Tell me about someone you look up to,” I’ll ask them. “Whom do you envy?” Especially if they’ve already achieved a measure of success in their life, just getting them to admit that there are people out there who’ve done more than they have can be a challenge. I have to remind them that no matter how accomplished they might be, there will always be someone out there who has done more. And that’s a good thing! It means there’s always something more to strive for.
Drawing comparisons with other people can be a source of inspiration in other ways. As a child, I used to love reading biographies of famous people like Louis Pasteur, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Edison. The more I read, the more I realized that many of history’s most accomplished people had to overcome huge adversity early in life. Pasteur came from poverty. Kennedy was beset by health problems from an early age. Edison was borderline deaf and, by most accounts, a dreadful student. These revelations encouraged me to rethink my own adversity. Instead of seeing my scrawny build as a source of weakness, it became a challenge. The isolation I experienced in school made me all the more curious about what makes people tick and come together.
Who are the people you relate to most, whether actual contacts in your life, historical figures, or modern-day notables? Understanding what it is about these people that you admire is another great way to direct your energy and thoughts. If there’s someone from your industry or line of work who is separating herself from the pack, how has she done it? And what would it take to do the same?
Along with facing your mortality and defining your value system, identifying role models and rivals will help put your life into perspective. Seeking perspective is an exercise that most people do only at certain times and under certain situations—on New Year’s Day, perhaps, or at the start of a new decade in life. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, except that the introspection is somewhat arbitrary. By instead making it the very deliberate end to your Hell Week, I promise you that the perspective you form will be far more meaningful. And it will provide a clear vision for the next vital stage of your life, which I call Life After Hell Week.