How Do You Want To Be Remembered?
By your resume virtues? Is it important for people to know how successful you were?
Is it crucial to have the ability to say you had executive jobs, spoke multiple languages and visited every continent? Should people remember me as the 5’10” blonde, homeowner, world traveler, spanish speaker?
Or will we want to be remembered by our eulogy virtues? If someone were to write or read your eulogy tomorrow ... what would it say?
Instead of your tangible success, would you rather be known for the goodness in your heart, the compassion you showed others, the care you had for the world and your deep desire to be the best and kindest version of yourself on a daily basis?
I choose to find a balance between the two. Every day.
My eulogy virtues take precedent as they become the basis for who I am in this world and how I carry out any resume-building action - yet the virtues that fill my resume allow me the freedom to pursue my best self. So really, they’re both connected.
It’s not that WHAT I AM is unimportant, it’s that the ‘what’ - the material, the achievements - is not what most people will remember us by when we’re gone - so why do we spend most of our lives trying to attain these things?
What if we focused just as much on our WHO and our WHY? Who are you? Who are you to the world? Who are you to your family? And WHY are these qualities important to you?
If we could strike a daily balance between success in our career, our bodies, our relationships AND a healthy dose of self awareness, compassion, kindness, greater resolve to express and feel gratitude for all that we currently have (not just that which may be coming to us in the future) … we may find that peace comes to us much easier.
What if you lived a full week leading with your eulogy virtues?
What would it look like to go to the grocery store with the intent on cultivating a proud eulogy? Would you care less about how you looked and more about how you treated the checker? Would you focus more on asking questions and connecting with the people around you than calculating how much your total bill will be?
In the work environment, would you be more focused on watching your team succeed than proving to your boss that you exceeded their expectations? Would you be more invested in the overall success and well-being of the people around you than in your income for that week?
Now you may be asking - does a focus on eulogy virtues mean you must negate all the rest, all of the success-based metrics we typically put so much emphasis on? Not at all.
If you lived a life completely devoted to eulogy virtues, you may end up as a worldly do-gooder, but lacking any tangible stability . . . by contrast, if you lived a life completely dedicated to resume virtues, you might end up in a corner office, driving your dream car but lacking any life substance.
Understanding, appreciating and wanting to grow our eulogy virtues only increases our self awareness and our ability to become a better, stronger more powerful version of ourselves. This growth does not mean that we stop striving for success, financial stability, physical health and well-being ... this means that those things are all built in to a greater desire to be the best person we can be on a daily basis - a kind, fair, brave, compassionate, loyal human being both for ourselves, our friends and for the world.
For me, my balance is 70:30, eulogy to resume. I know that if I don’t wake up each day grateful for my health, choosing happiness, and with the intent to better not only my life but the lives of those around me - then any material item or financial gain I achieve will be meaningless.
So what does your balance look like?
Love + Joy,
KJ
