Discover Your Dream: The Obituary Exercise

Exercise: To help you discover your dream, you are going to write your own obituary. In this obituary, you are going to be imaging your dream life. Be sure to include:

• What did you accomplish with your life? Get specific.
• How did you gave back to those around you?
• How will you be remembered? How do your loved ones, friends or fellow professionals remember you? How does the world remember you?
• Where did you live? Where did you travel?
• Did you do anything really fun, adventurous, exciting, or cool?
• What is the lesson people will learn from your life? (i.e. dream big, give back, always keep learning…)

Now, set a timer for fifteen minutes and write your obituary, as fast as you can.

Once your time is up, reflect back on your obituary by answering the following questions:

1. Out of the accomplishments you listed, which one do you want to work on first? Go with your gut answer.
2. Are there any common themes in the accomplishments you listed? (For example: animals, working outside, the arts…)
3. What can you do today to start working towards the goals in your obituary? Pick something small and easy as your first step. (For example if one of the accomplishments in your obituary was ending homelessness in the U.S., can you find a homeless shelter in your area to volunteer at sometime this week or weekend?)
4. What are 5 mini-goals you can set for this month to get you closer to the accomplishments you wrote about in your obituary or explore them further?