What do you want people to say in your eulogy?
If you’re reading this, two things are true:
You are alive today
You will die one day
That is the universal truth.
Strange Encounter with the Deathly Kind
My first friendly encounter with death was very interesting. One day my best friend and roommate at the time left for work in the morning.
I remember I was doing the warrior pose on my yoga mat in the living room when I said bye to him.
There were 3 of us living together in the apartment. We were friends from our undergraduate days and accepted job offers at the same company.
This was back in Mumbai. We used to take the local train from Mira Road to Gurgaon.
Btw if you haven’t looked at how locals commute in Mumbai, check out the Youtube video on “Mumbai Local Train During Peak / Rush Hours”.
Anyway, that friend I told you off earlier — he never came back from work that day. Coincidentally, the next day was his parents’ 25-year marriage anniversary.
They called me in a semi-panic mode. Because their son never called them. This had never happened.
I went on a search for him with the help of the local law enforcement for 50+ hours.
Nothing.
This was now the 3rd day of him going AWOL. I had almost wrapped up posting 300 of the “Missing” headshot of my friend on the street poles.
And then I got a call. I was asked to meet up at the Dahisar railway station.
An officer led me to one of the platforms. I was anticipating what was to come next.
One of the cops who stood right across from me pulled the white cloak. And there he was.
My friend — he was lying dead in front of me. I looked at his dead face. I was horrified. But I remember there was no sound coming out of my mouth as I cried.
Only 6 months ago we had kickstarted our career after college. Now he was gone in thin air.
Life indeed is ephemeral, I learned that day.
I broke the news to his family and our common group of friends from college.
We had his funeral. Life went back to normal. Or at least that’s what I hoped for at that time.
But after 9 months of suffering, I took an exit. I figured it would be easier to start from scratch.
So I moved to the US to attend grad school. More on what happens in the US later.
But let’s look at the 5 most common regrets of the dying —
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This research on the top regrets of the dying leads to an interesting question.
So instead of having a list of regrets when we are on our deathbed, what if we optimized our lives to not have any regrets?
Jeff Bezos, you probably have heard of him or at least use one of his products in your day to day — left an interesting trail on this topic with his Regret Minimization Framework.
You can find him on YouTube saying this:
So I wanted to project myself to age 80. Looking back in my life, I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have. I knew when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this.
Having tried to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that.
But I knew that one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. And I knew that would haunt me every day.
So when I thought about it that way, it was an incredibly easy decision.
Amazon, as of this writing on May 1st, 2020, is one of the only 3 companies in the world with over a trillion dollars in market cap.
My Eulogy
Having experienced the death of my friend closely and considering the fact that death happens to all of us, I figured it would be wiser to reverse engineer death.
As an engineer, that’s what I did.
This may sound silly but have you ever put some real thoughts on what you want people to talk about at your funeral i.e. your eulogy?
I wrote mine after my 28th birthday. I revisit it every quarter to see how I’m doing.
You can read it below or skip straight to the process to write one for yourself.
Ankurman acted like a bold general; marching forward no matter what. One of his primary philosophies in life that he lived by — you're either moving forward or moving backward, and staying where you are is moving backward.
He would set ambitious goals; sometimes sounding irrational and absurd.
But he also had an indomitable spirit. One of the things he was really good at was execution. He would not sit around coming up with the most effective strategy. He'd pick a general direction and implement like hell.
His most favorite strategy — he called it 'doing things'. Ankurman was a man with a strong bias for action.
But he was also kind, thoughtful, appreciative, open, honest, transparent, and candid.
It would be fair to say that he was a human being attuned to his thoughts and feelings who balanced it well with doing things and not just talking about doing things.
You could sit down with him and talk for hours straight — often about topics you cared deeply about.
Ankurman was a purpose-driven man; self-aware of his values which he practiced judiciously. He was very energetic and enthusiastic — obsessed with continuous self-improvement.
He had high expectations of others - mainly his inner circle. But more so, he had wild expectations of himself. He once gave me his secret.
He said — "The reason why I tell my brain I want to become the best version of myself is because I know there is no best version of me. You never become the best. It's all about continuous improvement. It’s about having an infinite mindset.
And one day you just die while you’re on your path to self-growth.
But I want to trick my brain to believe there is one final destination after which it can stop working hard and chill. Sometimes you just have to play tricks with your own brain to guide it to do the right things."
To some, he may have come off as too pushy sometimes. But within his inner circle, we all knew he believed we were capable of much more. Thus, he would inspire us to raise our standards by setting his own standards higher than what the society sets for us.
But his heart was pure. He believed that when you help someone cross the river on a boat, you also end up getting on the other side of the shore. Ankurman lived up to that.
Ankurman was insatiably curious; always learning what's out there and he used the knowledge to fuel his strengths and ultimately to be able to go out and help as many people he could.
Right around in his late 20s, he made a significant shift in his life that was visible to others. He went from being a 100% achievement-driven guy to someone who deeply cared about leading with purpose, meaning, contribution, and fulfillment while striving for growth and continue to stay curious and hungry.
Ankurman truly lived to serve. He worked hard to share his knowledge, network, and experiences with others. He found his authentic voice and he did not shy away from using it around others whether in the business world or his personal circle.
He was also a very open-minded person — willing to reevaluate his principles and ideologies to create paradigm shifts within him. Ankurman would constantly reinvent himself.
His take on life was that life is a series of experiments. You never really fail. It's just that your hypothesis is incorrect and you need to keep tweaking the experimental conditions and ultimately you'll get the results you want.
Ankurman made you feel good when you're around him and talked with him. He believed and practiced that his success was in the success of others.
He took risks. He celebrated failures. And he experimented fearlessly.
"To Live Inspired and Live to Inspire Others" — he was vocal about his purpose in life. In fact, he had it inked on his arms.
I know Ankurman you're up there looking down at us and smiling. You can now rest in peace. Because you continue to inspire us all even after you’re gone!
7 step process to writing your eulogy
Now if you’re down to writing your eulogy, I have broken down the process for you:
Step 1: Find a place where you won’t have any external interruption from people or pets for an hour or two. Play music in the background if you happen to have a favorite that immediately grounds you into a state of calm and peace. “Now we are free” — the gladiator theme song does that for me. Sit or lay down on your back and take 3 to 10 or more deep breaths.
Step 2: Close your eyes and visualize yourself lying in your coffin or on top of a lego tower of woods (that’s how they cremate the dead in India). Visualize yourself in the 1st person i.e. you’re in the scene instead of observing it from the outside like a movie.
Step 3: Now slowly see yourself floating higher and higher up to the sky. As you go up, you see the blue sky spanning wide across with white clouds over you. See yourself elevating upwards, going through the clouds.
Step 4: Once you’ve made the journey through the clouds and have reached the top - now at a significantly higher place than where you started on the ground, turn your gaze back to the funeral, and this time focus on the people present there.
Step 5: You can see your loved ones - your family, your friends, the people whose lives you impacted are attending your funeral. Look at them. Observe their faces, their emotions.
Step 6: Take a moment to feel the overall energy at your funeral? Do they look sad or melancholic? Or do they look optimistic and hopeful?
Step 7: Stay there for a while. As you see and hear your loved ones share a few words about you, what are they saying about you?
Are you hearing people talk more about your achievements? Or are they sharing stories of how you impacted their lives in a positive way and how you left them feel inspired, energized, loved, cared for, encouraged, etc?
Now you may open your eyes and sit in a comfortable position. Note the words you heard your loved ones say at your eulogy.
With the memory still fresh, let’s jot down your answers.
How do you want people to feel when they remember you?
Jot down up to 10 feelings. Below is a list of feelings for you to choose from:
What are some guiding principles that you heard your loved ones say you lived by?
Jot those down - your philosophies, your principles, any frameworks or systems that helped your decision-making process that ultimately produced your anticipated outcomes. Write down quotes that have inspired you throughout your life to date.
What’s a message you want to leave behind for your loved ones?
Only you can answer this.
Where do you go from here?
Death is inevitable. One moment you are here and the next moment you could be gone.
But life is a choice and this is your life.
It may be worth making choices consciously that are guided by the core values that drive you to take actions that fulfill your needs and wants.
“But how do I know my core values?” — you ask.
Let’s discuss it next.