The Mortality Clock

What if you knew when your last moment was?

Imagine if on your wrist, instead of a normal watch, there was a stopwatch, embedded in your skin, like a holographic tattoo. Now imagine if this stopwatch was running, counting down to the exact moment when you were going to die.

You look at your wrist and see the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds you have left on earth, with the seconds ticking away, right before your eyes. How would you feel about such a display of mortality, staring back at you, making you aware of the exact moment you were about to die?

What would you do? Would you live your life differently? How? Why aren’t you living that life now?

Most people are content to live their life with the “possibility” of achieving tomorrow what they dream about today. Complacency can always be justified by our minds when we use the mindset of “I’ll get right on that tomorrow!”

We will dream up any and every excuse to put off doing today what needs to be done to achieve our goals, our vision, our passion, for the possibility of tomorrow always sits at the forefront of our conscious minds, and with the concept of tomorrow we build a false wall of hope, of what could be, might be, and more importantly in our minds, what will be eventually. But will it?

Imagine the death countdown watch existing on your wrist and when you look at it the display it reads 1 day, 3 hours, 42 minutes, 2 seconds! Suddenly, you are out of tomorrows, the false wall of hope has crumbled and the sheer reality of one’s mortality lies before you. What would you do with that remaining time? 

What if it said 15,000 days, 8 hours, 5 minutes and 45 seconds? Forty-one years is a far cry from 1 day! Would you react differently? Why? Have you built that false wall of hope based on this? How long would you keep building that wall?

The truth is, if we knew exactly when we were going to die, we’d all live our lives differently than we do now. Depending on the amount of time displayed we’d obviously react differently from a long time to a short time. 

Unfortunately, none of know the exact day or time of our demise, and maybe that’s a fortunate thing, for the mental duress of knowing would certainly outweigh the benefits. Why do we live as if there’s always another tomorrow? We place our hopes and dreams on a false hope of waking up tomorrow and doing what we could get done today. 

If we knew, if we had such a mortality countdown watch, we’d get after that dream, that vision, we’d live the best life we possibly could in the time we had left! Unfinished business, goals that never begun, jobs left partially completed, relationships never materialized, we’d be all over it giving it our all, achieving all we could before that final moment.

When faced with deadlines in our everyday lives we react the same way as if we knew our mortality time. Who hasn’t crammed for an exam? Who hasn’t raced to the DMV on the last day to renew a driver’s license? We’re famous for putting things off, for in moments of time crunch, of do or die, we react, we give it our all and we get it done.

Why don’t we do the same when it comes to living our dreams, of following our passions, of achieving the greatness we want? As I discuss in my book on Warrior Leadership, we seldom live in the present moment, we hang onto a past that can never be relived, or dream of future that will come at some point.

If we live in the present moment, we are living as if the mortality watch is displaying that 1 day discussed earlier, not 41 years! It lives within all of us, you manage to get it done in everyday aspects when out of time, but neglect to utilize that same time crunch mentality to achieving greatness, of living your dreams.

The next time you think of something that you should be doing to achieve your goals and dreams, imagine the mortality clock is displaying one day left on your wrist, and attack it with that mentality, of it’s now or never. The truth is, it might just be now or never, for there is no guarantee of tomorrow, just a false wall of hope to strengthen a foundation of excuses. Live as if that watch is always displaying 1 day left, not 41 years, for you will never know really which one is reality, but you will live your best life possible, based on 1 day left, of living and excelling in the present.

Kerry is a Leadership Specialist, a Professional Engineer, Leader, Author, Speaker, Trainer and Mentor. He has amalgamated his corporate leadership knowledge with his martial arts training, to produce his own style of Warrior Leadership, where Development of Mind, Body, and Spirit are amalgamated and transcended. His book, “Warrior Leadership - A Transformation of Mind, Body & Spirit for Everyday Life and the Workplace” is available worldwide on Amazon. He is currently working on his 2nd book on Attaining Greatness & is available for speaking engagements, seminars, workshops and personal coaching/mentoring through www.intellivateinc.com.

Be sure to follow him on Twitter @KerryKBrown as well as @intellivateinc and at kerrykbrown1 on Instagram.