Latest / YINWorldWide / The Near Death Confession
Transcript
- Liv Yin: This is yin. And these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. When I was 18, I found out how short life can truly be. A spider bite. Six days in a hospital, my red blood cells were breaking down, and for days I was in and out of consciousness, not knowing which side I was going to wake up on. Or if I was gonna wake up at all. However, thank God that I did. And from that moment, I've been operating on borrowed time. Time that God, the universe, whatever you believe, gave back to me. And I don't take that lightly. I never have. I'm not telling you this story so you can feel sorry for me. I'm telling you. Because everything I'm about to say comes from that place. From a man who's known since he was eighteen that his time is finite, that none of us are here forever, and that most of us are spending the time we have without ever deciding what it's actually for. There's a moment coming for every single one of us. We don't know when, we don't know how, but it is coming. And the only thing we get to decide is what we did with the time before. Most people never decide. They move through life handling what's in front of them work, bills, family, obligations, all of it real, all of it necessary. And somewhere underneath all of the noise is a quieter question they keep promising they'll get to eventually. And that question is, who am I? What am I actually here for? What is this life? Eventually, never comes for most people. They run out of time before they run out of distractions. And here's what I want you to understand this isn't about being afraid of dying. Death is not the enemy. Death Is the thing that makes any of this matter in the first place. If you had forever, you wouldn't have to choose. You wouldn't have to mean it. You wouldn't have to find what's actually yours and protect it. You don't have forever. You have a quest, whether you've named it yet or not. Something you were put here to do. For some people, that's raising children who grow up knowing they were loved. For some, it's teaching, showing other people the path you had to find on your own. For some, it's building something that puts food on other families' tables. The shape of it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's yours, that it's real, and that it's specific. Something only you can do in the way only you can do it. And the world will not help you find it. The world will Will hand you a thousand other things to chase instead. Things that look like purpose but aren't yours. Things that fill your time but not your life. The work isn't just finding your quest. The work is protecting it once you do. Because when this is over and it will be over, the only thing that's going to actually matter is whether you can look back. And know you actually lived the life that was yours to live. Finding your quest is not a process, it's a decision. But before you can make that decision, you have to admit something most people will not admit. You don't know what your quest is, what your purpose is, and that is not a weakness. That's the truth for most of us. We're all searching. Some further along than others, but searching all the same, trying to figure out what we're actually here to do, what this life is supposed to be about, what our piece of it is. And that searching takes time. It takes honesty. It takes willingness to try things and to be wrong, to pursue something for a while and realize that wasn't it. To get quiet and listen to what keeps pulling at you even when the world is loud. Most people don't search. They settle. They take whatever life put in front of them and call it good enough. A job they didn't choose, a path somebody laid out for them, a version of success they never actually questioned, and they convince themselves this must be it. That this is what they were here for, that the deeper question was never really theirs to ask. That's not the same as finding your quest. That's avoiding the search. The search is uncomfortable because it asks something of you. It asks you to be honest about what's working and what's not, to pay attention to what makes you feel alive and what slowly drains you. To notice the things you keep coming back to when nobody is watching. The work you do even if nobody paid you, the people you can't stop thinking about helping, the version of yourself you can almost see but haven't fully become yet. That's where your quest lives. In those quiet pools, in the things that won't leave you alone. You may not have the full answer yet. And that's fine. None of us start with the full answer. But you have to be in search. You have to be moving, asking, listening, and trying. Because the people who find their quest are not the ones who got lucky. They're the ones who refused to stop looking because time is not on your side. You don't get to search forever. You don't get unlimited chances to figure this out. Every year you spend not looking is a year you don't get back. And one day the searching is over whether you found anything or not. That's the truth nobody wants to say. You can spend your whole life avoiding the question, and the question will still be there at the end, waiting for an answer you never gave it. Don't let that be how it goes. Don't settle for an answer that isn't yours just because the searching is hard. Keep looking while you still have the chance to. Most people use their obligations as a reason they never search. They tell themselves they don't have time. The job is demanding. The kids are too young. The bills are too heavy. They'll get to the deeper question someday when things slow down, when life gets easier, when they finally have a moment to breathe. And that moment doesn't come. And even if it did, you don't have it to spare. Because here's what you have to remember: time is finite. You don't get a guarantee that the season you're waiting for is going to arrive. You don't know how many years you have left to figure out who you are and what you're here for. None of us do. And that should change how you treat the time you actually have right now. The job, the bills, the people who depend on you. All of that is real and none of it is negotiable. You have to work. You have to provide and You have to show up. That is part of being a person with people in your life. We're not pretending that goes away. But there are hours every day that don't belong to your obligations. The early morning before anyone else is up, the thirty minutes in the car, the hour after the kids go to sleep, the weekend afternoons. Most people fill those hours with nothing. scrolling, watching, numbing out, telling themselves they earned the right to waste them because the rest of the day was hard. That's the time. That's where the search happens. That's where you sit with the quiet questions. That's where you read, where you write, build, pray, think, and try things. That's Where you find out what keeps pulling at you when nothing is forcing you to be anywhere else. The hours nobody is watching are the hours that decide whether you actually go looking for your quest, or just keep telling yourself you'll get to it later. Discipline is what makes the search possible for people with real lives. Not the discipline of a workout program, the discipline of refusing to waste the time you have left. Because every one of those hours is a piece of life you don't get back. Every evening you throw away is one less evening you ever had. You don't know how many you have. That's the whole point. Death isn't a someday problem. Death is the reason today matters, the reason the next hour matters, the reason the The reason what you do with the time after the kids go to bed actually matters more than you've been treating it. Carry your weight, all of it, but stop using it as an excuse for why you've stopped searching, because the time is there. You just have been wasting it. Finding your quest is not the end of the work. You see, that's what nobody tells you. They make it sound like the hard part is the searching. Like once you figure out who you are and what you're here for, the rest takes care of itself. It doesn't. Because the moment you find it, something else starts. The slow work of protecting it. And the work is harder than the searching ever was. Because the threat to your quest is not what you think it is. It's not the world. It's not the noise. It's not the people who don't understand what you're doing. Those things are real, but they are not what takes most people down. What takes most people down is complacency. The version of you that found the path was disciplined, hungry, paying attention. You showed up every day. You did the small things. You held the line on habits that other people couldn't see. That's how you got there. And then something starts working. You make some progress. Things get a little easier. You start to feel like you've earned a break. And maybe you have. But then that break turns into a week. And then another. And then you stop doing the morning routine. You stop reading. You stop building. You skip the workout. You let the standard slip just a little because nobody is watching and nothing seems to be falling apart. That's how it starts. Complacency does not announce itself. It does not feel like failure. It feels like rest. It feels like you've finally arrived. It feels like the version of you that was grinding so hard. Can finally relax. And by the time you realize you've drifted, months and sometimes years have gone by. The habits that you built are gone. The hunger that got you out of bed is dull. You're still telling yourself you're on the path, but the path moved a long time ago and you didn't move with it. That's how people lose their quest. Not in some dramatic moment. Not in a single bad decision, in a slow, quiet drift away from the things that made them who they were. Until one day, they look up and they're somewhere they've never meant to be, wondering how they got there. Protecting your quest means refusing to let success make you soft. It means doing the work that got you here even when the work doesn't feel as urgent anymore. It means holding the standard. When nobody is forcing you to. The discipline that found your quest is the same discipline that keeps it. You do not get to coast, not on something this important. Because the time you have to live this out is not infinite. The years to actually do your quest are passing, whether you stay sharp or not. Every season you drift is a season you don't get back. The world doesn't take your quest from you. You give it away slowly without noticing. Let me tell you something you have to understand about time. It is not just yours. Every person you love is also living on this same clock. Your mother, your father, your partner, your children, your closest friends. Every one of them is Is moving towards the same ending you are. And most of us live like that's not true. We act like the people in our lives will always be here. We push the call to next week. We say we'll visit them when things calm down. We sit at the dinner table with our phones in our hands instead of our attention on the person across from us. We assume that we have more time with them. Than we actually do. And one day, and you don't get to pick the day, that person is going to be gone. And every hour you had with them and didn't use is going to come back to you. Every conversation you didn't have, every moment you were present in the room but absent in your mind. Every time you chose almost anything over them, that's what most people don't realize until it's too late. Your quest is not just about you. If finding your purpose makes you a worse parent, a worse partner, a worse son, a worse daughter, a worse friend, you have not found your purpose. You found ambition dressed up as purpose. Real purpose includes the people you love. It accounts for them. It makes room for them. It does not sacrifice them for the appearance of progress. The people in your life are part of why you are here. Some of them might be the entire reason that you're here. The way you show up for them is part of the work. It is not a distraction from your quest. It is part of your quest. And the time you have with them is finite in a way most of us refuse to think about. The version of your child who is sitting across the table right now will not exist a year from now. They will be older, they will be different. You will not get this version of them back. The same is true for your parents. The same is true for everyone you love. You are not just running out of your own time. You are running out of time with them as well. That should change how you show up. Be in the room. Have the conversation you've been putting off. Tell people what they mean to you while you still can. Stop assuming that you have more time than you do with yourself or with anyone else. Because one day, this is going to be over for you, for them, and For me, and the only thing that's going to matter is whether you were actually there for the people you said you loved, or whether you spent your life almost there, close enough that it looked right from the outside, but never close enough to count. Don't let it be the second one. Here's what I want you to take from all of this Death is not the enemy. Death is the reason that this matters. If you had forever, you would never have to choose. You would never have to find out what is yours. You would never have to protect it. You would never have to show up for anyone with any real urgency, because there would always be tomorrow. But the blessing is you don't have tomorrow. You have a finite number of days. You don't know the number, nobody does, but you have one. And inside that number is a life that is yours to live, a quest that is yours to find. People that are yours to love. Time that is yours to spend or to waste. Most people will waste it. Not because they meant to, but because they never stopped to decide. Don't be most people. Find your quest. Even if you don't have the full answer yet, just start looking. Be in search. Pay attention to what keeps pulling you when nobody is watching. The version of you that you can almost see. Go become that. Be disciplined with the hours that you have. The time after work is done. The early mornings, the quiet moments. Those hours are not throwaway hours. Those hours are the life you're building when nobody is looking. Protect what you find from your own complacency. From the slow drift that takes most people down. The discipline that got you on the path is the same discipline that keeps you on it. And show up for the people you love all the way, not almost, not when it's convenient, not when you have time left over. Show up like they are not going to be here forever, because they are not. And neither are you. Because one day this is going to be over. And when that day comes, whether it's tomorrow or fifty years from now, you should be able to look back and know that you actually lived, that you found what was yours, that you protected it, that you loved the people in your life with your full attention, that you used the borrowed time you were given. For something real. None of us are promised tomorrow. But if you can leave this world knowing you conquered it, you can leave this world with a smile. A smile knowing you didn't waste the time God gave you. This is yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And if you want to go deeper, visit our website at live yin.com. That's www.livin.com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.