Last Year To Do List – Reflections and actions
Background of the Last Year Experiment
It’s been 10 days since I decided to live my life as if it is my last year. This came thanks to Tina who shared with me Stephen Levine’s book, and asked me to join her.
We were playing Ping-Pong in a park in Berlin, and sipping on fruity beers. “Lets start today” I said, knowing that there is never a good day to begin such a project. She began calculating if it is a good time to start. “Who will die first?” she wondered. “Should we have one die before so they can take care of the other?”
If I would start debating, I knew I would not do it. I have a big project in it’s baby steps, the Doron Yoga & Zen Center in Guatemala. So June 14 was the day.
I love new projects so it sounded fun and I love organizing and cleaning, so it sounded liberating.
The Ongoing Practices and Clean Ups
This year will include lots of reflection, meditations and making peace. I do this regularly, so it does not seem like a big deal. I have one person on my list to contact and improve my closure with them. I regularly send gratitude to my loved ones. I may need to get over the regret of not doing it in my earlier years, but I have already fixed all that could be done in that regard years ago – sending thank you notes, forgiveness messages, virtually and written.
The good news is that from all this moving, I have constantly been giving things away. Just recently in Israel, I gave away most of my art, let go of love letters from the past 30 years, gave away any clothes I was not using and more. One of the most fun projects was to walk around Tel Aviv and leave my poetry book on benches, so people can have them for free.
This already feels liberating and lighter.
My Last Year To Do List – Reflections and Actions
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- Living will and last will, creation, details and debates.
- What actions am I going to take this year, if it is my last? (Reflections, meditations, what else?)
- Which patterns in my life will I change? (Food, spending, love, teaching, exercise)
- What I am afraid to regret on my deathbed
- How do I deal with fear in general, and fear of death and dying in particular?
- My life review – an honest and transparent review of life situations and their mental effects until this day.
- Reflections on how I have shifted emotionally, thoughts or patterns if any.
And you? If this were your last year to live, what does your to do list look like?
Leave us a comment below with any things you’d do differently if this were your last year to live. Share this article with friends and start a discussion!
Blissful Living,
Doron
I don’t need to pretend like I have a year to live before dying as I actually lived that. In 2014, I was diagnosed with very aggressive Breast Cancer. I followed my doctors orders and the two tumors were removed during my bi-lateral Mastectomy. When you get a Cancer diagnosis, life comes into perspective. I had never been out of the US and my daughter was soon to be spending a semester in Costa Rica. I got my passport and went! I didn’t hesitate, I said yes more. I forgave more easily, because was it really important if someone wronged me about something small? I also learned to get rid of negativity and negative people in my live. Who needs that; time is so precious! I enjoyed the beauty of nature much, much more than I had. I was already a nature lover, now I spend hours outdoors. I took up new hobbies, including yoga. I think you get the idea.
While I don’t wish Cancer on anyone, it was a blessing in disguise for a beautiful wake-up call.
Hi Karen,
thanks a lot for sharing! It is very inspiring what you wrote and let remind me on my eye opener I had when I started working with people with cancer in an oncology unit thirteen years ago. There I experienced very close and every day what it means to lose the illusion of an infinite life and doing all the things “later” or “some day” – or try to please everyone or….or…..
So my task since this time was to live life in conscious of the finiteness and that we have only this life and no one knows how long we will have it. My “mantra” to help me with this is following question which someone would ask me on my death bed: “Please complete the sentence: I wish I had……” – and my answer will be: No idea how to complete this sentence.
There is nothing to regret. Hopefully. Life has no dress rehearsal. So I loved to hear what your wrote about forgiveness more easily, being more outdoor to be with the nature, and getting rid of negative people and negativity – and setting life in an new perspective.
Thanks so much for sharing. Much appreciated. This simulation, and feeling it as real as can be, is allowing me to live more like you just wrote.
Saying more yes. Living, doing, with less worry about what may be.
SO happy you are alive!