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Have you ever had the realization that you were spending time on something that just wasn’t worth it?

Have you ever looked at a situation and said “Life is too short for this!”

And I don’t mean the time you decided that the lineup at Starbucks was too long to wait. I’m talking about BIG things. Life altering things.

If you’re familiar with my story, it won’t surprise you that I’ve had more than my fair share of “life is too short” revelations over the years. In fact, I use this phrase on a daily basis! You see, when you live your life using the Power of Mortality™, it becomes part of your built-in decision-making process.

Here’s how it works: If something is causing you some degree of stress, frustration, anger, anxiety – or ANY other negative emotion, simply ask yourself: “Is this worth it? If I knew that I only had six months left to live, would I want to spend my time and energy on this?”

I’ll give you one example from my own life.

I was once engaged to a woman who is not my wife. That’s right, I bought the diamond ring… got down on one knee and proposed. And she accepted! We set the wedding date for a year later. But as I drove away from the scene of the proposal, I couldn’t help notice a feeling that wasn’t quite right.

Don’t get me wrong – I was happy. I proposed… she said yes… so of course I was happy. But I wasn’t thrilled. And growing up I always imagined that I’d be thrilled when I got engaged. As the months progressed, I became less and less convinced that I’d made the right decision. Was it just “cold feet”? I couldn’t be sure – after all, I’d never been engaged before.

And here was the really tough part. There was nothing about the situation that was wrong – it was just that I knew that it wasn’t right. If something were clearly wrong, then my decision would have been simple. But given that I couldn’t point to one thing as the source of my unease, I felt trapped in the situation.

It took a few months, but I eventually I managed to quiet down the voice in my head (the one that was telling me to ‘suck it up and stick to your decision’) long enough to listen to my heart. And the second I did that, I realized one crystal clear truth:

Life is too short to spend it married to someone that you’re not thrilled about!

So I broke off the engagement (and the relationship) seven months before the wedding! We already had a deposit on a hall, we had already purchased the bonbonnières, and of course both families were gearing up for the nuptials. It was one of the most difficult days of my life and I was deeply sorry for the hurt that it caused my fiancée – but I knew in my heart that I was doing the right thing – life is too short!

(And for the record… my wife was the one who proposed to me! And I was so thrilled that I don’t even remember driving home that day!)

So what about YOU? Have you had any “life is too short…” realizations? Let’s hear about them in the comments!

I’m planning to interview some people who’ve made serious changes to their lives thanks to the realization that “life is too short”, so please come back soon to be inspired by their stories! (Or better yet, subscribe to email updates by entering your email address in the box on the upper right corner of the page or subscribe to my RSS feed.)

Yes, I may be the last person on the planet to give-in and join Facebook, but I’ve done it!

I see it as yet another opportunity to connect with anyone who has:

• attended one of my presentations or seminars (or just wanted to)
• seen me on TV (or YouTube) or heard me on radio
• read my book

I’ve added a link to the left-hand navigation bar of my blog so that you can reach my profile on Facebook. So feel free to add me as a friend.

I found an interesting FB application called Testimonials, so if you have something nice to say…

Last week, an article titled “Are We Happier Facing Death?” appeared on Time‘s website.

The answer to the question goes against logic and common sense, but it didn’t surprise me a bit! After all, I’ve known the answer to that question for thirteen years.

I encourage you to read the article for yourself and please feel free to leave comments below.

By the way: here are some other links to articles about the same research

Death-Defying Thoughts  – findcounselling.com

How our minds counter the fear of eventual death – anxietyinsights.info

Faced With Death, Our Minds Turn To Happier Thoughts – sciencedaily.com

As I mentioned in my last post, the past year has been a challenging time for me and I’ve been hiding those challenges from the world. I’ve been hiding because of a fear that people would say: “Wait a minute…! You mean Patrick doesn’t have all the answers? Then why would I listen to anything he says?” (For more on why I was thinking that way – read Down from the Mountain.)

So today it’s confession time. Ready? It’s a big one.

I have not been living my own message.

It’s very difficult for me to admit. And the past year was so challenging because I was “preaching” one thing and “practicing” another thing. I feel like a fraud.
Somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to fall into a number of traps:

Trap #1 - Listening to “them” rather than listening to my heart.

In my heart, I always knew that The Power of Mortality™ was an intimately personal message for individuals. After all, I’m talking about YOUR life and death. Instead, I allowed myself to be swayed by other “experts” who tried to convince me that in order to “make it” as a professional speaker, I had to be speaking to corporate audiences.

This trap was like very slow moving quicksand for me. It kept me paralyzed for months and months as I tried to find the right corporate audience. There aren’t too many companies that will pay to you tell their employees that life is short and they need to live with power and passion. And I just couldn’t bring myself to twist my message to fit a corporate agenda that wasn’t in line with the ideals of the Power of Mortality™. (“Ladies and gentlemen… that’s how embracing your mortality today will help you sell more photocopiers!” – I don’t think so.) I wasted so much time and energy trying to find the right fit that I drained myself and began to allow doubts to creep in. Doubts about the value of my message and doubts about my ability to deliver it.

Trap #2 – Losing focus

After my first year of speaking, audience members kept telling me that I should write a book. So I did. And I’m thrilled that I did! I’m quite proud of What’s Your Expiry Date? It was a lot of fun and it allowed me to reach an entirely different audience. But the process of writing a book is no small task. I’ve often said that it is the closest that I’m ever going to come to experiencing childbirth firsthand!

Writing and publishing a book demands a lot of attention and energy. And I allowed myself to get swept up in that process and somewhere along the way I began to think of myself as “a writer”. I knew that something was wrong when I found myself worrying about my Amazon ranking. Then in the spring of 2006 my book distributor declared bankruptcy. They hadn’t yet paid me for all of my book sales through Wal-Mart and Chapters, so in an instant I lost a very large sum of money and I was without distribution.

It took a long while before I was able to regain focus and remind myself that I was a speaker with a book, rather than an author who speaks.

Trap #3 – Buying into my own hype

As I mentioned in my “Down From The Mountain” post, I had consciously set myself up as an expert – a “guru”, if you will. The more success I achieved, the more I needed. My ego was now running the show and the more my ego took over, the more difficult things became. I became very preoccupied with carefully orchestrating each and every move I made. I wanted to be 110% certain that any new action would be “properly” perceived and would contribute to my success. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I let things become all about ME, rather than all about YOU – the people that I set out to help in the first place.

I’m sorry.

(And the real irony of the situation is that by allowing that to happen, not only did I lost sight of YOU, but I lost touch with myself too!)

So now, with this new clarity and new humility, I am going to get back to living the principles of the Mortality Manifesto! I am taking ownership of my circumstances. I’m going to recapture my life again and I am going to live from a place that is more inline with my beliefs of a life that is FEARLESS, FOCUSED and FREE FROM REGRETS!

And I’ll start with freedom from regrets! As I said, I’m deeply sorry that this unfortunate turn of events happened, but I won’t waste any time or energy with regrets. As I say in the book, “hang on to the lessons and let go of the circumstances that brought them to you.” ONWARD!

ENJOY NOW!