César Astudillo via Compfight

Last week I wrote a blog post about living the life you want, by crafting the ending first.  I followed that up with a post identifying six questions to ask to ensure your life matters.

I went through my own exercise, answering each of the six questions, in order to define the ending I want for my life’s story.  It was hard–really hard.

My answers revealed to me that how I am currently living my life will not achieve the ending I want.

Here is how I answered my questions:

If I found out I were going to die in one hour, what would be my regrets?

I prioritized these, in descending order.

1.  I am not connected with Mary the way I want.  I want to be best friends.  I want to support and encourage her.  I want connection, and vulnerability, and to dream together.  Even on my best days, I fall very (very) short.

2.  I am not as encouraging and positive with my daughters as I want to be.  I want to be quick to point out the things they do right, and very (very) slow to point out what they do wrong.  I’m better at this, but still have a long way to go.

3.  I have wasted too much time trying to find meaning, value and significance.  I have defined myself in terms of my accomplishments, seeking to derive value from what I have to offer the world.

How many people do I want at my funeral?

I want a small, but intimate funeral.  I want people who know me deeply, and who have done life together with me. I don’t want a big mass of strangers at my funeral.  I don’t like big crowds while I’m living, so this one seems like a no-brainer (yet I was still surprised by my answer).

What emotions do I want people to feel at my funeral?

After the sadness that I will no longer be around and a part of people’s lives, I want people to feel delighted, happy and excited as they tell stories and remember my life.  I want them to remember the love and connectedness they felt with me.  I want them to feel excited, challenged, and inspired, as they remember my life.

What do I most want people to miss about me?

I want people to miss the authentic connection they had with me.

What stories do I want people to tell at my funeral?

I want stories to be told of the adventures I went on, by the people who experienced them with me.  I want my family to recall the whimsy we experienced on a regular basis.  For the most part, these stories have yet to be lived.  I tend to play it safe, and avoid risk and whimsy.

What accomplishments do I want people to remember?

My work with Gambella is definitely something I am proud of, as is the volunteer work that I do with a men’s organization I am involved with.  Before doing this exercise, I thought I wanted to be remembered for my work with poor villages, and for leading and challenging others to make a difference in their worlds too.  I thought maybe I would build this blog readership up, or even write a book, and inspire many people.

What I found though, after answering these questions, is that none of these accomplishments are what I really want to be remembered for.  I want to be remembered for having the courage to look my fears in the face, and for forging deep connections with my wife, kids, and a few close friends.

I feel sick

I can’t think of anything worse than getting to the end of your life, and realizing you have wasted it–that’s how I started my post outlining these six questions to ask yourself to ensure you live a life that matters.

After answering my own questions, I can clearly see that if I were to die today, I would feel like I had wasted my life–and it is an awful feeling.

I have some hope though.  I am not writing this from my death bed, but I have been afforded a look back at my life as though I were.  These questions have allowed me to see that the ending I have been writing, is not one that I really want–just the one I thought I wanted.  I still have time to change the ending.

How do I create a middle, that leads to the end I have just identified?  I’m not sure yet, but I will be working on it.  I will need to cut out some things that don’t lead to the ending I want, and replace them with things that do.  I don’t know what that looks like right now, but this blog may be one of the things that get cut.

Have you answered these questions for your own life?  Were you as surprised by the results as I was?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Kevin Dooley via Compfight

I can’t think of anything worse than getting to the end of your life, and realizing you have wasted it.

I posted earlier in the week about crafting the life you want by starting with the end in mind, and working back to the middle.

If you know how you want your life to turn out, you can move in that direction.  If you don’t know what a meaningful life will look like for you…do you even have a chance of living a life that matters?

As Emma Coats points out in her tweet about story basics, once you have the ending, filling out the middle is easy.

Umm, how do you figure out the end?

As I tried to craft what I wanted at the end of my own life, I realized how hard that really is.  I needed help–I needed some rails to ride on.  But this is my life, and no one else can define it for me.  I wanted to figure this out on my own.

I did what I often do when I don’t know the answer–I started asking questions until a path began to emerge.

I want you to be able to figure out your ending now, so that you can live a life that gets you to your desired finish.  Here are the questions I used to create a vision for how I want my life to matter.  I encourage you to use them as rails to guide you as you figure out your ending.

1.  If you found out you were going to die in one hour, what regrets would you have?

Would you have relational regrets?  Would you regret spending too much time in certain endeavors (would you regret not spending enough time in others)?

2.  How many people do you want at your funeral?

Do you want to have a huge turnout, with a lot of people you knew only superficially (and maybe many that you didn’t know at all, like a celebrity would have)?  Do you want to have a more intimate gathering, with a handful of family and friends that knew you intimately?  Maybe you want something in between.

3.  What emotions do you want people to feel at your funeral?

Aside from sadness, what other emotions do you want your mourners to feel?  Will they feel empowered by your life, or sit in admiration (or even envy)?

4.  What do you want people to miss the most about you?

Will people miss your laugh?  Maybe your wisdom.  Do you prefer to be remembered for your encouragement?

5.  What stories do you want people to tell at your funeral?

Do you want people telling stories about your epic adventures?  Would you rather have them telling funny stories, recalling times when you would do things that led you to laugh at yourself?  Or perhaps you would like them to tell stories about how you changed the world.

6.  What accomplishments do you want them to remember?

Will they remember the orphanage you built?  Did you build a business from scratch?  Will you amass large sums of money, that you can leave to your family, or to charity?

Figuring out the end is hard–perhaps even more difficult than actually living the middle.  However, compared to getting to the end of your life and realizing it didn’t matter, doesn’t it seem to be worth the effort?

Question: Were these questions helpful to you in figuring out the ending of your story?  Are there any questions you would add?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front. – a tweet from Emma Coats, of Pixar

This may be one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever seen on Twitter.

Emma Coats, a storyboard artist at Pixar Animation Studios, composed a series of 22 story basics (you can read the full list on her blog ).  These tips are fantastic for writing stories!

However, from the perspective of living a purposeful life, these 22 tips are even more powerful.  They give me goosebumps!

What story do you want to tell with your life?  You can’t fill in the middle of your life, if you don’t know what the ending looks like.

Unfortunately, most of us simply take life as it comes at us.  When we look back at our lives, we see little more than a collection of reactions–not very compelling, and not very proactive.

What do you want your ending to look like?

I like movies, and I like books.  I’m not too particular about the subject, but the ones that inspire me the most, all leave me with the same response at the end.

When the credits roll, or I close the book, I sit there in silence for a bit (I always watch all of the credits at the end of a movie).  If the story was really good, emotion swirls inside of me, and I don’t have words (yet) to express them.  After a pause, I begin to breathe again.  Slowly the emotions begin to crystallize, and words begin to form.  My emotions expand until they can no longer be contained inside of my body.  I have to get them out of me–either through action or word.  I feel as though I will explode and die if I don’t act!

What do you want the ending of your story to look like?  What emotion do you want observers and participants to feel?  If you don’t know this, you cannot make a path to get there.

Are you like me?

I want my friends and family to be inspired to take action when they see my story.  I want the emotion to swell inside of them, until they have to take action, or die.

When you are moving toward a destination, you can react–with purpose–to whatever life throws at you.  Figure out your ending, so you can fill in the middle.  If you have an ending in mind, and keep it in front of you, your middle has no choice but to be interesting.  There simply isn’t a way to get from here, to an interesting ending, without going through an interesting middle–it’s impossible.

Go, right now!

Take a notebook and a pen, and go somewhere you can think.  Describe your ending with as much detail as you possibly can.  Read it every day for a week.  Then read it every week for a year.  If you really want that ending for your life, take a big risk, and read your ending to someone else.  The simple act of reading it out loud to another person will unleash magic and power that will amaze you.

Questions: Have you ever considered what you want the ending of your story to look like?  Have you shared the ending with another person?  What did you come up with when you did the exercise?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

~dgies via Compfight

“Aid is arrogant.”  “It hurts the dignity of those being ‘helped’.”  “People who give aid have a messianic complex.”

I’ve heard these arguments before, but I don’t buy them.

I’m a consultant by profession.  I work for a small company that gets hired by much (much) larger companies, to build eCommerce websites for them.  These companies make much (much) more money than we do, but they recognize there is an area of their business that needs improvement or growth, and they are smart enough to bring in an outside perspective.

We have seen and helped other companies going through the same issues, and our clients recognize how we can help them.  We are fairly compensated for our efforts, and at the end of the day, we feel satisfaction for a job well done, and are pleased with the benefits our clients experience.

Messing it Up

There are, however, many mistakes we can make with our clients, particularly because we have entered into a relationship with our clients, and relationships are dynamic and can get messy.  Aside from the relational aspects, there are two big mistakes we can make that will cause the project to end unsuccessfully:

• We don’t listen to their needs, and instead implement the solution that we think will work best for them
• We don’t create ways for our clients to manage their websites independently after the engagement has completed

Aid Done Well Is Collaborative

Good aid is like a consulting relationship.  The community or individual receiving aid recognizes their need, and sees how an outside individual or group can bring a new perspective, and help them solve their problems.  Just like a good consulting relationship, aid done well provides an enormous benefit, and values the collaboration of those it works with.

Perhaps the sentiments of arrogance mentioned at the beginning of this post are directed toward people who are doing aid wrong.  There are two cardinal sins against sustainable aid:

• Creating dependency on your aid, instead of sustainable independence
• Imposing your ideas on the community or individual you are working with, rather than working with them to find out what their ideas are, and how they want to solve problems

If your aid falls into either of these categories, you may be arrogant, and you may be hurting the very people you are trying to help.

If this describes you, don’t panic.  We all fall into those categories at different times in our lives.

I want to draw attention to a distinction that needs to be made.  Feeling satisfaction and pleasure from helping others, and for working with them to improve their situation, is not wrong, arrogant, or messianic.  We are hardwired to derive satisfaction from our efforts, especially when they help someone else.  No one criticizes a consultant for feeling good about herself after a job well done.  Quite the opposite–it is an indicator of engagement and ownership, and should be celebrated.

Time to Act

Once you recognize these symptoms, take corrective action.  Be ruthlessly and rigorously honest with yourself and your methods.  Seek feedback and counsel from others with different perspectives.  Determine what needs to change.  But whatever you do, don’t quit or give up!  The world needs you!

Question: Is aid arrogant?  What do you think?  Share your thoughts in the comments section.

There are many things that are described as being simple, but not easy.  I’m sure you’ve heard of some of them, or maybe even used the phrase yourself.

When it comes to extreme poverty, aid and development are not simple, but they are easy.  The complexities of extreme poverty, and interplay of causes, symptoms, and solutions (and the masquerading they do as each other), make aid anything but simple.

Easy

Aid is easy though.  Any ordinary person can do it.  You don’t need a 12-point plan.  You just need to follow these three, easy steps:

• Do some research
• Take action
• Evaluate your actions, make changes, and repeat

I started my first aid project in 2009.  I wanted to dig a deep well for a village in Africa, to provide for the most fundamental need in life – access to clean drinking water.  I started to research how to do this, and I found estimates that nearly one third of all wells drilled in Africa are inoperable.  As my research continued, I started to feel the need for a more holistic approach for my project.  I came across Global Hope Network International (GHNI), and their adopt-a-village program.  GHNI takes a holistic approach, focusing on food, water, wellness, income, and education.

One of the many things I like about GHNI is their approach toward aid.  They follow these three iterative steps, to hone in on the best strategies for each village they work with.  Using previous learnings and local leaders as a starting point, they develop a strategy, start a small project, and then evaluate and adapt the approach.

Not Simple

Because poverty is so immensely complex, and the combination of variables that factor into it approaches infinity, most people feel overwhelmed and do nothing.  They don’t know how to do it right, so they don’t do anything at all.  As this post from Jennifer Lentfer describes, you will never know without any doubt if you are doing aid right.  In fact, there is no such thing as a single right way to go about aid.

Start Small

What I propose is that you just go out and do something–anything.  Start small.  Get it wrong. Do some initial research up front, but don’t get caught in analysis paralysis.  Don’t be afraid to start something.

Honest Evaluation

Yen H Nguyen via Compfight

The third step, evaluate your actions and make changes, is critical.  If you’re not willing to evaluate your actions honestly and rigorously, don’t start at all.  Our intentions to help people can actually hurt them, or others.  Unfortunately, this happens regularly.  In fact, it happens in any relationship, not just in the arenas of aid and development.  However, the possibility of hurting others should not prevent you from starting.  As long as you start small, and honestly evaluate your efforts and their impacts, you will correct any such issues, and begin to truly make the world a better place.

This is the critical piece to doing aid.  Welcome feedback, even if it is filled with venom and condemnation (which it very well may).  Go out of your way to request feedback, and learn from it.  Put your feelings aside, and look for the wisdom in the criticism.

Change the World

The biggest obstacle to overcome before changing the world, is inertia.  You have the power to change the world, and make it a better place.  Don’t leave that to the big programs, and their billions of dollars–they are much more likely to get it wrong and cause harm than you are.  Use the small, iterative approach, and change the world.

Questions: Have you ever let fear prevent you from jumping in and starting something?  Have you followed this approach of starting small, learning, and repeating?  What were the results?  I would love to hear from you in the comments section.