The Power of Mortality™ is not about death. It’s about life! Accepting your mortality isn’t about giving in to death - it is about truly living your life on purpose.
Today, I want to discuss the first, and most difficult step in using the Power of Mortality: accepting your own mortality. Not the idea of your mortality - but rather the fact that you are mortal. On one level, we all know that we are mortal and will one day die. But I’m not talking about accepting it at the intellectual level - I’m talking about accepting it at the deep down, gut level. The same level that I felt when I was told my expiry date. The same level that has been felt by anyone who has ever had a police officer knock at their door at 3AM, or had a doctor show them a strange spot on an x-ray. THAT level.
In my workshops and keynote presentations, I often get a great deal of resistance from people about this particular step in the process. They squirm uncomfortably in their seats, look at the floor and wait for me to move on to the next point. But without accepting and even embracing your mortality, all of the other steps that I will outline in the next few posts are simply handy goal-setting exercises. The true power comes from your willingness to face the thing that we fear most.
In my presentations I always tell people that they have a choice. They can face death on their terms, or on its terms. If you wait for death to come to you, then you will face it from a position of powerlessness. After all, it is hard to make changes in your life when you are at the end of your life. On the other hand, if you take the initiative and face death now, you can do so from a position of immense power - the power to make meaningful changes in your life!
As I said at the beginning, this is the first and most difficult step in the process. So it will take some time. Just to help you along, consider the following:
The August 2006 issue of National Geographic has a very interesting article on the topic of death. Based on 2003 data from the US National Safety Council, here are the lifetime probabilities of a U.S. resident dying from various causes.
Heart Disease - 1 in 5
Cancer - 1 in 7
Stroke - 1 in 24
Motor vehicle accident - 1 in 84
Suicide - 1 in 119
Falling - 1 in 218
Firearm assault - 1 in 314
Pedestrian accident - 1 in 626
Drowning - 1 in 1,008
Motorcycle accident - 1 in 1,020
Fire or smoke - 1 in 1,113
Bicycling accident - 4,919
Air/Space accident - 1 in 5,051
Accidental firearm discharge - 1 in 5,134
Accidental electrocution - 1 in 9,969
Alcohol poisioning - 1 in 10,048
Hot weather - 1 in 13,729
Hornet, wasp or bee sting - 1 in 56,789
Legal execution - 1 in 62,468
Lightning - 1 in 79,746
Earthquake - 1 in 117,127
Flood - 1 in 144, 156
Fireworks discharge - 1 in 340,733
In my mind, the most interesting statistic of all is the one that is most often overlooked. Namely:
Total odds of dying - 1 in 1 (100%)
