Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 3 - Episode 42 - The eulogy

Transcript

Season 3 - Episode 42 - The eulogy · Good Morning From The Chicken Coop!

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  Welcome to the Good Morning From the Chicken Coop Podcast with
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  Kim Johnson, your creative strategist and mastermind set
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  coach. Filled with inspiration,
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  distinctions, perspectives, and possibilities, we help you to
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  cultivate a mindset that leads you to create the best version
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  of yourself you could ever imagine.
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  Join Kim every morning from one of her favorite happy places,
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  her chicken coop along with all her chickens.
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  Hey, everybody. Good morning from the chicken
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  coop. So today we're going to do a
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  little bit of a different exercise and this is going to be
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  a bit of a stretch for the things that we normally do on
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  here. But I think it's important to
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  recognize in your life sometimes you have to think about the dark
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  side of things in order to be, you know, more productive, more
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  on point with the light side of things.
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  So today we're going to talk about the eulogy, and the eulogy
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  is an exercise. Admittedly, the first time I
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  heard this, I hated it. And there are some of you on
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  here that may feel the same way and resist it.
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  And it took me a long time to say, OK, this is a good
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  exercise. But basically what it is comes
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  down to the fact that think about a eulogy, it's for someone
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  that's passed away. You're going to go and you're
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  going to listen to people talk about this person and what they
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  have to say about this person and they're passing.
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  My father was always very funny about this because he would say,
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  well you know you go and you listen and they're only going to
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  say good things because they feel bad.
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  They can't say the bad things. They can't tell you the truth
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  about the person. Always made me laugh every time
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  he said it because he's probably wasn't wrong about that.
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  We always choose to pick up all the good stuff.
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  But over Christmas, I was watching, you know, the my, all
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  my favorite Christmas movies. And Love Actually is a big, I'm
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  a big fan of Love, actually. And he has her.
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  There's a scene in the movie where one of the characters
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  wives die and there's a eulogy and a funeral going on and how
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  he was, you know, going through it.
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  And he was saying he was doing it the way she wanted because
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  she planned it. And it got me thinking, you
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  know, at some point I'm going to talk to everybody about doing
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  this exercise where you write your own eulogy, which is so
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  wonderful when you think about it, because right now,
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  obviously, that's not happening. But you start thinking about,
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  well, what do I want people to say about me?
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  And from the perspective of like what my father said, do you want
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  them to say just the things that are like the positives, but they
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  really don't believe them or do you really want them to believe
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  what they're saying? Do you want them to really like
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  as one of my clients once said to me, I really want to make
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  them cry that I'm gone. I want them to really miss me
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  because I did such a good job being me.
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  And I thought that that's such an interesting take on it.
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  You know, she, she wants them to really miss her because she did
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  such a great job being herself. And I thought that's exactly
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  what my father did. He such a did such a great job
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  being himself that missing him everyday even all these years
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  later. Hell yes yes 100% that is that
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  is 1000% true. And doing the exercise is not
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  easy my friend. So as you get ready to do it you
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  have to sit down. You have to say OK well if I was
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  to write my own eulogy what would I want to say?
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  How would it sound? What would I want that to look
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  like? How would I want people to think
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  of me? And you just start sketching it
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  out for yourself. And it's not just about your
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  accomplishments. It's not just about, oh, they
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  were members of this and this and this.
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  I had this when we used to get the newspaper when I was a kid.
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  And every single time the paper would come, I would always read
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  the obituaries. And my mother would say to me,
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  why do you read the obituaries? And I'm like, well, I'm just
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  curious who these people were. And I could never understand it.
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  And then once I got past the fact that I didn't want to write
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  my own eulogy, when this exercise was given to me many
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  years ago, I actually said, you know, this could be useful.
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  And I was wondering who these people were.
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  I was curious. But in those obituaries, they
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  always gave such facts about what the person accomplished on
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  paper, but not so much about the character.
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  So the eulogy is where the character comes in, where you're
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  talking about who do you want to be?
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  How do you want to be remembered in that?
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  Do you want to be remembered for just an accomplishment?
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  Like, you know, you were in the Navy for so many years and you
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  had this, this many awards? Or do you want to be remembered
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  for the acts and the moments and the person that says, well, they
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  always had time, they always stopped by, they always sat,
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  they always gave me their attention.
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  How do you want to be remembered?
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  And that's the trick to this. So grab a piece of paper when
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  you have a chance, sit down and start the exercise.
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  You probably won't be able to do this.
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  If you're like me, you will not be able to accomplish this in
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  one sitting because it feels awkward.
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  And the first time you put it down, it's going to be like,
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  wait, what? I don't know if I even want to
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  do it this way, and it's not easy.
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  I I don't know what to say. This is hard.
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  You'll get into that stirred up place, but you keep coming back
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  to it. You keep coming back to it.
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  You keep coming back to it. And you'll start to figure out,
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  OK, this is what I want, this is how I want to be remembered.
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  And then once you have that, then you can figure out how do I
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  want to reverse engineer my life living like that person that's
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  on that piece of paper. Putting yourself in the position
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  where you know you can live like that person that's on the paper.
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  Give it a shot. All right, my friends, I hope
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  you have a blessed day and I will see you tomorrow.
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  Bye.