What better topic to discuss at the start of the new year than your death? :) Nothing, you'll come to learn, will ignite change and ruthless prioritization better than remembering your inevitable death. Join me in the exploration of the ancient practice of Momento Mori, and why it's so powerful to keep the end of your life top of mind. This episode promises to reshape your perspective and equip you with the philosophical toolkit needed for a more meaningful, intentional year ahead.
What better topic to discuss at the start of the new year than your death? :) Nothing, you'll come to learn, will ignite change and ruthless prioritization better than remembering your inevitable death. Join me in the exploration of the ancient practice of Momento Mori, and why it's so powerful to keep the end of your life top of mind. This episode promises to reshape your perspective and equip you with the philosophical toolkit needed for a more meaningful, intentional year ahead.
This is the Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. Alright, durable Dad, episode number 43. Happy New Year, happy 2024.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to talk about death today, which can seem less light and less exciting, but thinking, contemplating our death will actually help us live more, live with more urgency. Today, in this new year, we're going to focus on things that matter to us, to focus on things that are important to us, to spend our time wisely, not to waste our time thinking about the shit that's going wrong, or to focus on social media and the numbing out activities that we do. So we're going to think about death today, and it can be an uncomfortable subject, and that's fine. Maybe you haven't thought about your death, or you feel anxious when you think about your death totally normal, and there's a lot of power in contemplating our death. And when we contemplate our death, we can release a lot of that anxiety towards it. And this is a practice that you'll see throughout history, throughout cultures, throughout religion. The Buddhists call this Maranasati, which translates to death, awareness, meditating on the impermanence of our life. The Stoics and the Romans practiced Memento Mori, which translates to remember death. And that's what we're going to talk about today is Memento Mori, with the purpose being, when we remember our death on a monthly basis, weekly basis, daily basis, acknowledge our mortality. That time is finite. Here we have a bigger appreciation for everything that's going on in life right now, everything we already have. We start enjoying the moments more and, like I said, we release some of the anxiety around death.
Speaker 1:
So one of the Stoic philosophers, marcus Aurelius, said if you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do, say and think. And he's writing this quote in his daily journal. So this quote isn't meant for me and you to read. This is to himself. So when he says you could leave life right now, he's actually saying I could leave life right now, let that determine what I do say and think. That's what memento mori is thinking about. Leaving life right now, how would I conduct myself, how would I respond to what's around me? Right with this perspective that Life is short, that death could be just around the corner? We don't let the little things annoy us as much the short emails, the neighbor's dog they don't bug us and we start to appreciate the people in our lives more, the things that we already have, rather than going after more, always trying to get more, always pushing harder to get more money, always pushing harder to buy new things, and we start using our time differently. And that's that's really what memento mori remembering death is about. It's about valuing our time. It's about time being our biggest resource and acknowledging keeping that front of mind.
Speaker 1:
In the get organized course that I hosted recently, we played with this concept of memento mori. Before we dove into the tactics and the skills of time management and essentialism, we did a death Visualization and if you've never heard of a death visualization before, it can kind of be summed up by another Marcus Aurelius quote. He said think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now Take what's left and live it properly. So that's really what a death visualization is. We Visualize being on our deathbed, we look around what's with us, what's important to us, and then we come back to today and we start focusing on those things because on your deathbed, your boss isn't there, your co-workers aren't there, the car you have, the clothes you wear, those aren't there on your deathbed.
Speaker 1:
And memento mori keeps life in perspective and we focus more on our relationships. And the death meditation actually Hits us emotionally. We actually internalize it and feel it. It's not just words. You know, we can say life is short and enjoy every moment when we just keep that up in our head. Intellectually that's helpful, but getting the visualization and internalizing this concept is where it really starts to affect our daily life. And then, once we have that perspective, then we can Stop saying yes to the things that take us away from the things that mean something to us. We can get out of a meeting on time and not let meetings run over, because we know that our time is important. We don't try to get one more thing done at work before we close our computer and head home.
Speaker 1:
And when we have this perspective that Time is short, I'm gonna value my time right now. We stop putting things off and this, being the beginning of the year, is a perfect time to remember life is Only getting shorter. We are halfway through our life and we only have halfway to go Grab it and start doing what we want to be doing. And this is where an annual review can really Be a solid combo with memento mori. I talked about an annual review a few podcasts ago and we have one available on our website if you want to check it out. But pretty much what an annual review does is it looks at the past 365 days and it pulls out what was exciting to you, what fulfilled you, what you want to spend more time on. Like that can answer the questions what do you want to work on this year? What do you really care about? Where do you want to focus your energy? And comboing a annual review with memento mori and a death visualization Can really be a powerful Mindset perspective to start taking action and getting shit done in 2024.
Speaker 1:
And this isn't about Quitting our job and taking huge risks. That's not the point of memento mori. You don't have to change your entire life, but you do change the way you're living. You Prioritize the relationships. You make an extra text message or call to the people that mean something to you. You stop rushing around. A lot of dads rush through life. We're rushing in the morning so we can get out of the house and get to work. We rush through our meals and we rush in the car. We rush through bedtime. I was listening to a Ryan Holiday Ted Talk and he was talking about this, how we are moving quickly through life, and the Stoics would ask what are we rushing towards? And the answer is death. Death is the only thing at the end of this race, at the end of this journey. Then when we rush, we miss life.
Speaker 1:
Right now, momentum Mori had such a big impact in the Get Organized course. It kept coming up throughout the different sessions that we had and one of the clients and his wife made these really cool Momentum Mori tokens and he sent one to everybody and I have one right here on my computer stand and when I look at it it slows me down for a second and it is that reminder in my head to not take life so seriously. And that client runs through my head. All of our conversations in the course run through my head. The death visualization runs through my head really quickly and internally. I know that checking Facebook one more time, going on LinkedIn again, isn't what I'm supposed to be doing at my desk. I'm supposed to be focusing on my work, getting the meaningful tasks accomplished, so I can close it down, so I can go hang out with my family, so I can go cook a good meal after work's over or get a walk in. That's what Momentum Mori does and that token that my client gave me.
Speaker 1:
You can do the same thing. You can do a little token or a little reminder and you set it on your computer during the work day. You peek at it a few times, so constant reminder that our time is short, that everything dies, everything that's living dies and our time here on earth is only decreasing. Nothing material matters at the time of death. Setting that daily reminder, pausing for a second instead of just rushing to the next task and the next email, is going to reset your perspective. It's going to slow you down a little bit because our kids can be yelling and screaming, the house can be a total disaster, work emails can be piling up and we can take it in because we know that this moment isn't going to last, that our time here is really special and the things that we have right now are special. And, man, when I keep that in mind, I don't do it all the time, but when I do I'm so much more productive, I feel so much better and everything just seems to flow and my time is being spent the way I want it to be spent.
Speaker 1:
So this message, momentum Mori, internalize it. Listen to this podcast again. Go read some stoicism. When you Google Momentum Mori, you'll find TED Talks or you'll find articles. And how does it apply to your life right now? So that's my message, that's my little pep talk at the end here 2024 is going to be an awesome fricking year and let's focus on the good stuff, let's create some good stuff and I hope you guys have an awesome week. Happy New Year.