How Thinking About Our Death Can Radically Energize Our Life Today with Jodi Wellman

Dhru Purohit
Jody, welcome to the podcast. I'd love for you to get a chance to introduce yourself. And most importantly, you have a powerful truth that you're here to share with our audience. Today I have 1814 Mondays left as of this Monday to live. And my message, as I am to hear on behalf of the Grim Reaper.

Jodi Wellman
I'm gonna die. You're gonna die. We're all completely gonna die. And that's totally okay. Because the good news is, when we do tune in to the fact that we're all gonna kick the bucket, it helps us live with more intentions.

So this is not a morbid thing. This is a good thing. You still game to keep chatting? And that's what our conversation is about today. And yes, let's explore that.

Dhru Purohit
Why does meditating, thinking about and stepping into the fact that we're gonna die, how does that help us live a happier, more meaningful life today? Yeah, let's start with the pain, because that's what we all feel. But it's a weird pain because most of us just do this thing where we take life for granted. We're not even aware that we've slipped into autopilot because it's what we do, right? We want to be efficient.

Jodi Wellman
I do too. I'm not an animal. But we come up with these routines and then we follow them. And it's Monday and then it's Tuesday, and then all of a sudden, it's like Thursday's indiscernible from Wednesday. And we find ourselves in these ruts in life.

And sometimes we're just not aware until, you know, years have flown by. So that's the pain I see. And the way that death helps us. If I could get science eve with you, and I know you love your science called temporal scarcity. And it's this idea that whenever there is something that is called an asset, and in our instance, we will refer to our lives that way.

When we see an asset as limited time only situation, like a pumpkin spice latte, we tend to value it way more than if we just think, oh, I can get that stupid pumpkin flavored thing any time of year. You don't like pumpkin spice lattes, do you? Please tell me you don't. I'm more like a cold brew type of guy. Yeah, yeah.

But you can get your cold brew anytime. And if you knew that you could only get your cold brew for maybe another 1814 Mondays, you might take it a little more serious. That's how this idea works. It's like, we'll just keep prolonging our dreams and our hopes, maybe forever, but forever isn't real. Now, I want to have everybody do some math.

Dhru Purohit
There's a very simple formula that you have. You mentioned a very specific number of how many Mondays you have left here on earth based on your estimate, can you share that number again? Yeah. Well, mine's 1814. Okay, great.

Let's have everybody bust out a calculator. Or you can do some basic math in your head as well. Walk us through the formula here, and I'll do it as well, too. How do we estimate how many Mondays we have left? Yes.

Jodi Wellman
Okay. If you identify as a male, start with 78. That's the number you're punching into your calculator. If you identify as female, start with 83 years. And if you don't identify with, either, start with 80.

Dhru Purohit
Or if you listen to this podcast and you prioritize your longevity and you're healthy and you're focusing on your lean muscle mass, and you have a target age of, let's say, 90 or 100. You could use that, too. How about we do the real first, and then we're going to add in some bonus drew years? Does that sound cool? Okay, cool.

Jodi Wellman
So you're starting with 78 or 83. Or, which is what you're saying is the average lifespan of a person here in the US. Now, you could fact check me, and it's actually a little bit lower of post Covid, but I'm deciding that Covid has smoothed over. So let's work with these numbers. Also, is there something, too, that if you've made it to a certain age.

Yeah. Then you're probably going to live at least till your mid eighties. Yeah. Tons of cool research around. If you hit the hurdles of 70 and then 75, it's great.

Dhru Purohit
Okay, but let's start off with. Okay, so I'm a male. Yeah. I'm going to type in 78. You got this.

Jodi Wellman
You are halfway there. Okay. Minus your current age. Okay, great. I'm turning 42.

Dhru Purohit
So 36. Okay. Multiply by 52. Okay. Times 52.

1872. You beat me. All right. Now what we can do is add in some fun bonus, you know, weeks or years. It's all just, you know, TBD.

Jodi Wellman
But I think most of us have a sense. Let's pause right there just to make sure that the audience understands and those that are listening and watching. Yeah. 1872. Mondays.

Dhru Purohit
And if you don't like Mondays, you could say Fridays or Saturdays or whatever. I have 1872, and those are at home that are doing the math themself and step into this and just sit with that for a second. That's a big thing that you talk about. What do you want people to sit and think about with this number before we get into the bonus math? Yeah.

Jodi Wellman
What does it feel like? Like, actually ask yourself, can I ask you, what does that math feel like to you? Well, I'm cheating a little bit because I did this before in preparation of the interview, but all share the feeling that I've had. And I've done similar exercises and meditations on my death. Yeah.

Dhru Purohit
And the initial feeling is like, whoa, that's way less than I would've thought. And I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. Like, only 1872 Fridays, Saturdays, or Mondays left. That doesn't seem like a lot. This episode is brought to you by cozy Earth.

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Dash I t.com filter and get $100 off when you try aqua true for yourself today. And you are. You are hitting on the sort of perverse pleasure that I'm getting. And this is exactly why I want us to do this, is because we have these little delusions of. It's not of grandeur.

Jodi Wellman
It's delusions of immortality, in a way. Right? Like, it's a very comforting place, and we come by it honestly. Psychologically, we deny death. It's a very basic instinct we have.

Otherwise, we'd go squirrely every day if all we focused on was that. But I like the dose of it. So this math is exactly the thing that can help you go a little bit of a wake up, a little bit of a whoa. And now I want you to take that discomfort, and now we're going to work with it and flip it so that it motivates you to get on with the things that maybe you have been putting off or the dreams that you've been deferring or delaying. That's the point of it.

Dhru Purohit
We're going from wow, or, I only have 1800 Mondays left. To oh, shit, I only have 1800 Mondays left. Let's go. He just said it so perfectly. That needs to be a t shirt, and I'll doodle the grim reaper for the back.

Jodi Wellman
We'll sell a lot of them. Before we go a little further, because my podcast is focused on longevity, wellness, other things. Let's do some of the bonus math. That you talk about. Well, every time I'm in a workshop, it's my shtick.

I do a fun thing where everybody gets a bonus week or year because you've paid membership dues for this organization or whatnot but let me ask you, when you, your typical, average, fabulous, healthy listener, in your experience, are they on the path towards becoming, you know, centenarians, blue zoners? What's your take? I probably say that a lot of them would like to get there, and a lot of them are asking themselves, how do I get there? And most importantly for this conversation, a lot of them are asking themselves, how do I live as long as I can with great health? Because I'll tell you the number one fear of not just my audience, but so many people when they're caring about this topic of longevity, and I'm sure you know this because this is your world, is, I don't want to live a long life, but the last 20%, 10% of it, I'm riddled with poor health, cognitive decline, cancer, God forbid, whatever it might be.

Totally, yeah. You're opening up the whole topic that I think is the juiciest, which is the quality versus quantity. And I think, you know, you're all like minded listening in here, right? We're all, we all want to live well. And just badge of honor, getting to 98 if you feel like garbage isn't going to feel super great.

It reminded me of research. There's cool research that social scientists call the James Dean effect. And they ask people, however they manipulate them, pull them in studies, and what comes up is people value a life that ends on a high, like a really good experiential life, even if it means dying early, like James Dean, the famous actor in the fifties or sixties. So this idea of, if you could rate your life. So then this leads me to then research I've done where I'm like, would you rather lead a nine out of ten life that, you know, ratings, subjective ratings, but die at 60?

Would you rather lead an eight out of ten life but die at 70? Would you rather lead a seven out of ten life and die at 80? And I mean, it's easy from the distance, right, of having, oh, I've got some time left. Oh, I'm going to go for. What do you think most people would, would vote for?

Would choose? I think most people probably choose, I'm gonna take an eight out of ten wife. Yeah, yeah. Maybe die a little earlier if they were given those choices. If given the choices, absolutely.

And what this points to is that, of course we value the quality. And so I get obsessed, not just in the length of life. Sure, I'd love to live long if it meant that it was a fully, astonishingly alive life, to use my language. But let's talk about living wider and deeper, because I think those are the dimensions that most of us are actually interested in, because that reflects our day to day experience now and on the way to 78 or 83 or 98 or however long we get to live. Right.

Dhru Purohit
What are the top things that get in the way from us? Living a meaningful and purposeful, enjoyable and happy life. Yeah. Okay. Starting off with our lovely delusions.

Jodi Wellman
So I referred to denial a bit earlier, and we just. We do some fancy freaking footwork. We'd come by it like we don't want to think about it or talk about it. So we do this. La, la la.

All the things that I long to do. Oh, I'd love to go and do that mediterranean cruise. Oh, we're gonna do that later. And we're gonna do this in retirement. Like, don't even get me started on retirement.

That, like, elusive place, that, first of all, you may not get there. Second of all, you might get there and you might be hobbling around for whatever reason. Right? So life will change on us in ways that are reliable. Um, so we deny the ide, our mortality because it sucks.

And so rather than facing it, which, ironically, it's like when we don't face death. If you have any death anxieties, I've heard your podcast before. I know you've had some thoughts about even your own family. It's like these things, these things are very real. The existential anxieties are part of us.

When we don't deal with and think about death, it actually ends up becoming more of an issue for us. Whereas if we're willing to go there and think about it, talk about it, do the math, do the counseling down every week or two just to stay in touch with that diminishing number. That's the thing that actually ameliorates a lot of the anxiety around death. But back to your question. We will put it off, and then we put life off, and then next thing you know, you know, happens, and you're not going to be able to go to the coliseum or you're not going to be able to start your big dream business or whatever these things are, because maybe, oh, maybe you do die, or maybe you're just maimed, or maybe you're just sick, or maybe you're just tired, or maybe early onset Alzheimer's sets in.

And, I mean, the list goes on here. So the first one you mentioned is delusion. Yeah. That we are delusional about reality. Totally.

Dhru Purohit
That we think that either we're going to be living forever, which is what happens when you're younger. You think that everybody's around. You can take your parents for granted. You can take the people around you from granted. Yeah, we also live.

Do you feel that one of the problems is that we live in a society where death is largely removed from our day to day experience? Can you talk about that? Totally. Well, picture, you know, years and years ago. Any old literature you'd read?

Jodi Wellman
Well, first of all, the life expectancy, like, 200 years ago was 35, so we'd all be like, toast by now. I've heard mixed things about that. We'll come back to that in a second. But, yeah, we'll continue, please. Yeah, yeah.

We didn't live as long in the past, and so death was just around us in that sort of sense of frequency, and they didn't have a means and mechanism to clean it up. So there would be people in your family dying, and then the tradition was that you would have them kind of laid out in the parlor in the front room. And funny history fact, once the world kind of came around and they started medicalizing death and cleaning it up and taking it into the hospital and not making someone die at home, we're going to swiftly move this away, and we're going to make death just like this failure of medicine, in essence, but we're gonna move it away, keep it clean, make it taboo. They renamed the parlor in the front room where Uncle George would be splayed out, and everyone could just, I don't know, pay their respects or give him a finger or do whatever they wanted. After he died, they renamed it the living room because it was no longer associated with death.

It was like, we're gonna get some living done around here. And I'm not against that, but it just means death was removed. It's. Ew. It's disgusting.

Let's move it aside. That's crazy. It used to be the death room, quote, unquote, and now it's the living room. Right. So, I mean, you know, some progress, but, yeah.

What it means is, unless, depending on your background, right, like, a lot of people who have eastern backgrounds or more of a buddhist philosophy or stoicism, some people are very into, like, acceptance. So when I say that we're delusional, I. That's a very big paintbrush just designed to rankle. But for the most part, yeah, we've. We've come.

We've come by it honestly, that it's just. And it's disconcerting to think that we may not be around like, we're pretty egocentric, right? Like, to imagine a world where you're not there or to imagine your complicated ideas and sense of self is just going to, poof, not be here. Most healthy, functioning people aren't pleased with that fact. You know, you mentioned how we've removed ourselves from death.

Dhru Purohit
I come from an indian background in our tradition, for. I don't know the origin of it, but, you know, we don't bury bodies when people die, probably. Land was a very scarce thing. And also living in India, a country that has a lot of viral, you know, bacterial, viral, other things. It's a big reason why people do namaste instead of shaking hands is you just wouldn't want dead bodies around for a long time, so you would cremate them.

And also the spiritual tradition and the belief in India, primarily, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the belief that sort of in reincarnation that a lot of people have, and the idea that the body is really a vehicle that's there. But even still today, in that tradition, even though largely, you know, my grandparents were all cremated in India, when somebody passes away, their body is traditionally wrapped in white, taken through the village, and then the entire village gathers together. And then with the support of a priest, you are doing sort of a death ceremony, and you're burning the body that's there. Now, today, when grandparents pass away or somebody younger, unfortunately, you go to a crematorium in the back of a funeral home that's there. And it's not this thing that everybody witnesses.

It's typically just for the most immediate family, if even that, sometimes. So even in these traditional cultures, where death was a lot more of a part of the culture, it's been removed. This idea of our participation in it, which is a natural process in life, and going back to when I said I heard mixed things about it, what I really meant to say is that the reason that life expectancy was 35, from my understanding, is infant mortality was so high, and because infant mortality was so high, and a lot of women also died in childbirth. And that's probably one of the best things that's come from modern medicine, is that that's no longer happening to that degree. You also had a lot of families who, you know, women who even just 100 years ago, who were having maybe a total of eight to 14 pregnancies to try to end up with six or seven kids, right?

And you just had a lot more loss that was there, and we don't have a lot of those reminders anymore. So when I was reading your book, which is fantastic, by the way, it feels like you're trying to help us step into the reminders that were naturally baked into society about the fact that we're going to all die one day. That's unknown. So why don't we start truly living in this moment? Yeah, you caught on.

Jodi Wellman
You're totally right. And death is such a funny thing, isn't it? Because on one hand, it's a taboo, and we don't want to see the body paraded and burned, necessarily. Yes, please do it in the back room. And we must not speak of it.

We must also say that so and so passed away. We can't say the word. He died. I'm sorry that your husband died, you say, I'm sorry. You know, we're.

We're. We've been trained to be super subdued to this, but on the other hand, we are so fascinated by death. We're so morbidly fascinated, right? Like, you drive by any car accident, and all we want to do is rub our neck because we just want to see, like, a hint of maybe, ugh, that thing. Because we want, like, we're.

We're. We're. We're fascinated with what could happen to us because we all, deep down, our inner knowing, like, this is not a surprise to anybody, that we're gonna all die. And so the ways in which we watch movies and the ways that we read about crime and true crime is such a huge thing. There's, like, fricking crime con, like, conferences.

We're kind of obsessed with the thing that we shouldn't be because we're all just dabbling in it. And I want to make it really okay. And I want to defang death. I want to make it so that we're all not necessarily all walking around rocking a funeral every day. Again, not to be morbid or sensational, but to be just real.

Like, okay, it's coming, but let's not dwell there. Let's flip it fast into, okay, in light of that inevitable shitty reality. How do I. That use that? How do I spark it?

How do I spark the life I want to live now? Because time's ticking, and we need a deadline in order to prevent what we usually do, which is just delay, delay, delay till the end. Is there one thing that our audience, who's watching and listening today, could do every single day to take this thing that's associated with so much negative death and flip it into a positive spark for them to start the day? Is there a practice, a technique that you would want to share with them? Yeah, because you only get to count your Mondays every week.

And that, I mean, that leaves six other days where you don't have new math. I am a fan of having visual reminders. Just as a simple thing, like everything I have, I don't have a. Always got a skull going on somewhere, but something visual that helps to anchor you. One woman I know that came to a workshop of mine, she created a little sticky in the workshop, and she's got it on her laptop at home where it just says, it's carpe diem.

It's the simplest phrase that most of us have known for years. Right? But it's the reminder to savor. I recommend being social with this. I recommend having conversations with your family, with your friends.

Have a brunch where you talk about your bucket list, but not. I mean, let's talk about bucket lists in a second because I'm highly suspicious of that being just, like a little reservoir for more delay, however. But use this as the motivation to live. And I'm actually going to edit a little bit because your point about how do we get centered in this daily? Some people will meditate daily.

If you're a meditator, look up, like, Google Death meditation or read my book, and there are five phrases you can repeat. That's a very historic tradition. Uh, but if that's not your jam, I am okay with you doing the mortality reminder every week as long as you're keeping yourself honest with it. I'd rather do the thing where we flip it pretty fast and talk more about the living. Right.

Having more vitality, having more meaning in life. So I don't want to not think about the grim reaper, because he does not get enough airtime, strangely. Um, I want us to do that, but I think that if we're going to spend time, it's like. Yes, I'm reminding myself I have as many Mondays left. Like, make that a Monday ritual, and then get on with the business of living and checking in.

Am I doing something today that makes me feel alive? Do I have something in my calendar over the next week that makes me look. Feel like I look forward to it, even if it's the silliest, littlest thing, like ordering Thai dinner on Friday or something that's just simple and fun? So, yeah, that's where we straddle the line between thinking about death. Oh.

But also thinking about an action oriented life. One of the key concepts in the book that you start off with is taking an inventory of where you stand right now in your life. Can you talk about that concept, yes. And of course, it's called the pre mortem because we cannot use death Elingo. It's this mechanism, in a way, where I ask probably no less than 989 questions, hopefully in a fun way to get you thinking about, how's life right now?

Like, again, we go through the motions. We are productive and efficient, and we don't often stop and literally take our pulse about aspects of our life. And our lives are so complicated, right? We've got all these domains. You've got your love life, or lack thereof, your social life, your work life, which is usually quite chunky in your working years, your finances, your fun and recreation, which usually is like tumbleweed blowing around in that domain for most adults, because all we're doing is working, we get really of one or two dimensional.

There could be your spiritual domain, your health, which is why we listen to you. And it's a way to actually look at it and go, wait a minute, am I feeling alive in these areas? And I call it diagnosing the dead zones. Like, where have I flatlined? Where might I want to pick up the pace a little in my life and maybe resurrect a little bit of energy there.

So it's designed to get you thinking about how's it going and. And starting to think about and how might you want it to be. Because most of us, it's funny to me, and I realized this when I used to coach executives one on one and work with teams in ways where when you get people to think about, what do you want? It could be a corporate strategy or it could be in their life. Many people were just kind of like deers and headlights, like, oh, I don't know.

Let me think about it for a sec. And then the beauty of having a workshop is like, you have someone else say, this is what I want, because they might know. And then we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I want a little piece of that. I want a little piece of that.

And then we get rolling. But we're just not trained enough right now to go, how do I live a life that's gonna make me feel like I lived a life of consequence? How do I feel like I lived? And I actually showed up and I got more than just a participation ribbon that I actually, you know, went on the proverbial field and I gave it a go, and I failed a lot, which made it so evident that I gave a. And tried to, you know, what are.

Dhru Purohit
Some of those top questions that we can ask ourselves right now? And the audience can, like, listen in. They can ask themselves that question, maybe even pause, write it down. What are some of those top questions that will help us take inventory of where we stand right now in life and how we're doing? Okay, this one sounds super simple, but it might stump you.

Jodi Wellman
Take out a pen and write out 30 things that make you happy. And here's the caveat. They cannot be things that are extravagant and require a ton of time or money. Like, you know, oh, I love to take a cruise around the. Antarctica.

Yeah, whatever. Like, I want stuff that you can do generally in the vicinity of your life right now. And so this, again, stumps a lot of women because we're very clear about. We know about what other people need and want, but when I want to know what you. What lights you up, that's okay.

Just work on it. And. And these can be mostly, they're really sweet, simple things, which to me, is just the best thing, because we don't have to spend a lot of money. We don't have to take a lot of time to orchestrate our lives to love them more before we die so they can be little things. Like one woman I'll never forget.

She's like, I keep coming back to. Because I got her to do this list. She's like, I keep coming back to how much joy I got when I would tend to my orchids, I just used to love. And, you know, I would just go and tweeze and do the little bits and pieces, and I had a whole bunch of them. And she had moved, like, two years prior to a new home, and she didn't, for whatever reason.

I don't know, maybe the orchids didn't make the move, but. So she had gone two years without even having this thing that brought her so much unfathomable joy in a sweet way, that was an opportunity for her to go out and get some more orchids. Right. Just that little awareness about what used to bring you joy. You can probably rekindle that.

So that's actually part two to that list. So you can take the list and go, well, there is your little menu when you have ten or 15 minutes between meetings, or when you've got a Saturday morning and you're like, do I do the usual ho hum or do I want to do a little thing? Oh, wow. I forgot that. That little thing brings me joy.

Maybe I should actually. Oh, um, program it and do it in my day. And then the second part would be like, what stuff did you do as a kid that brought you joy? That maybe you lost the plot on because you grew up and became a responsible adult, and you just, you know, you didn't have time anymore to do the collages you used to love to do or the woodworking or the lessons in spanish, conversational, whatever. We.

Oh, man, you know, we get so caught up in all or nothing thinking, like, we gotta go out and reinvent the wheel and find a new passion. Okay, do that. If one's grabbing you, like, don't not let it grab you. But for most of us, we're walking around a little bit panicked, like, I don't have a passion. Okay.

Did you used to love to do a thing when you were a kid? Go do that again. Or, like, go pick up the hobby that you used to do before you had the kids or before you started the crazy job and do that again and just watch. Maybe it's fizzled. That's fine.

Let it go. But maybe you actually still do love, you know, nude painting class.

Dhru Purohit
Would you be open to you and I sharing, like, five examples each? Like, you can go, then I can go. Just to give the audience a little bit of a sense. Let's do it. Okay.

Great. Yes. Ladies first. Oh, okay. Simple things that bring you joy as you shared.

Jodi Wellman
Yes. What's one? Browsing through a good old fashioned bookstore. Right? What do you like about that?

Oh, the smell. The possibility. I could read this book and it could change my life. I could read this book in a hammock, and I could have fun. I could.

Don't even. I mean, just taking my breath away. Your turn. Something that brings me a lot of joyous is every week or every other week. My wife and I do, like, a planning session.

Dhru Purohit
We, like, block off, like, 2 hours. But we ask ourselves questions like, who's somebody in our life that we haven't seen in a little while that we want to connect with? We do go through the regular sort of, what are the evenings and the other stuff? And as much as there's a little bit of resistance to do it in the beginning from both of us, we get excited because once we get in the rhythm, we feel a lot more peace that's there for the next couple of weeks of our life or the next month. What do we.

We write down things that we're looking forward to. We write down things for each other that we want to, like, quote unquote. Like, this is something that I'm, like, praying for you, or this is something that I'm, like, you know, wishing you well on, that you're working towards. And so that's something. And we've worked on making it fun.

We try to go to, like, a coffee shop and do it together over there. Or at least we, like, try to do it on a Sunday while we have a nice breakfast that's sitting. So that's something that brings me a lot of joy that I look forward to. Oh, gosh, you're covering so many positive psychology highlights in that example. I love it so much.

Jodi Wellman
I love it. All right, let's do three. So let's do one more for you, two more for you, and two more for me. I love writing a note to somebody that I will put in the mail. A little note that could be just as simple as thinking of you.

Or I might recall a quick, fun memory from, oh, my God, remember that crazy bar in Nashville? Or, I don't know, I'll just send my dad a smiley face. And he loves it. And he tells me every time he gets this thing in the mail in Toronto, he's like, oh, I got your note. Thank you for taking the time to do it.

And I'm like, well, first of all, it took me about 38 seconds, but you're so welcome. And it brings joy to the giver and to the receiver. What about you? That's beautiful. Something that brings me a lot of joy is I have a weekly walk most weeks out of the year.

Dhru Purohit
Sometimes I'm traveling, I'm not here, but it's a group that I helped start with, a couple of my friends, and it's called man morning. And it happens every Thursday morning. We meet here in Los Angeles. We'll go on a walk together and there's usually a question of the day and there's a captain of the month, and they decide to question the day if we don't have a question of the day. We borrowed from this group summit series that a few of us are part of, and we say, tell us one thing you're celebrating.

Tell us one thing you're navigating. A group of guys roll like high achievers, entrepreneurs. They're working on themselves to get that time to share, like in brotherhood. And men are typically not good at that as women are in general. So to get that time to be outside, to be in nature, because we're often walking and talking, there's just something really incredible about it.

And it's one of the highlights of the week and something that I look forward to. And I know the rest of the guys in the group look forward to it as well. Okay, I just have to say because I can't not dissect this. You also have in this, there's the outdoor nature piece, which I know is resident for you. You've got the thoughtful part, it's the social part.

Jodi Wellman
I mean, you're hitting all the freaking high notes. Again, this is just like. I love your examples. Thank you. Let's do one more before we move on.

Yeah. One more thing that brings you joy, happiness, and again, for everybody listening, you know, you've shared that these can be the tiniest things. It could be enjoying your morning cup of coffee outside in the sun for five minutes before you start your day. Yeah, right. Here's a super easy one for those of us that like to not move from our chair.

Go on to. Have you ever been to explorer.org dot? Explorer.org dot. Just explore Explorer.org dot. It is a nonprofit that has live video cameras on animals all around the world.

And it's like a little, tiny, little tidbit of nature, but also just other animals because as humans, we're so centered on ourselves. I am obsessed with watching eagles and unfortunately, a big eagle in the eagle's nest in Big Bear Lake did not, they did not produce chicks this year. Devastated. But that's fine. Life, death happens.

But I'm also watching a kitten shelter in LA. I'm a cat fan. Sorry to those of you who don't agree with that, but I watch kittens, like for like three minutes. Like not even three minutes. I just want to check on them.

Oh, there's the gray one. He's so silly. And then I just, and then I go over to my stupid email. But I'm happier for that 40 42nd snippet of kittens and owls and, oh, God. Just good luck with your productivity, people.

Now that you know about explore.org dot. I love that you're next. You're last. I am. I really love when I go visit my family.

Dhru Purohit
There's certain people in my family that, like, maybe didn't grow up with as much like, affection. Like their parents didn't like, hug as much or it's very common in like indian, you know, eastern families. Like, even a lot of my friends who grew up and are of like, asian background, you didn't really hear as much as, like, in America. Like, I love you. Even though your parents loved you and we're there for you, they may not express it that way.

So I love it sounds kind of crazy, but I love, like, I will go and bear hug some of these friends or family members my mom actually grew up with parents who were, you know, did the best they could, but were not as loving, didn't really give a lot of hugs. So, like, even just going in and, like, bear hugging my mom, and my favorite thing is when she's like, okay, that's enough. Like, I get it. Like, you. You're giving me a hug, holding on, like, an extra 10 seconds and say, like, nope, I'm not letting you go.

And just, like, the playfulness that comes out from her, I see that, like, little girl inside of her come out and her just, like, have this big smile and, like, you know, laugh a little bit and we both joke about it. So. Yeah, like, bear hugging people, especially people who have not really kind of grown up with a lot of, you know, affection and love. Oh, I love smother. I love that.

Yeah, yeah. Those are great examples. And I think those examples are useful because, like you said, we can often think of needing to have these things that might have to sound good or look good to other people, when really so much of the juice of life is, how do we triple down on prioritizing the things that give us small, frequent, regular amounts of joy during the week? Hallelujah. Like, one of the best things I found as a positive psychology practitioner.

Jodi Wellman
It's like, show me a study and I'm going to love it. And I'm going to love the fact that it's simple. So we do want to compare. We do think we have to have this outsized life. We do think that we have to have.

Well, happiness is going to mean, okay, well, I'm living for my vacation. Okay, kids, we got two weeks off in August. We're going to really have fun then. But what? There can be no fun or joy until then.

And we dupe ourselves that it's the little increments in the in between that where life does happen. And if we get a little more intentional about how to fill those little spots, those little ten minute spots of explore.org or the smother hug, the bear hug or, okay, send your dad a postcard or just a little bit. So if you do one of those a week, don't underestimate the impact that that has on your experience of being alive and your perceived well being. It matters, it counts. And that's all that a life is, is one tiny little moment that you're making a choice for five or ten minutes, just a bunch of those added up.

That's it. That's. That's the essence of life, the good life. I'm going to jump around a little bit. Let's do it.

Dhru Purohit
Before we get into your story here, our audience is really interested and very curious, as am I, about the topic of near death experiences. I've shared with you before. We've covered on the podcast. We've interviewed some of the top researchers and medical doctors in this space. And really not just for the sake of learning about it, but for the lessons that come, for the individuals that have gone through it or the people that might have been around it.

And this is something that you write about inside of your book. What are some of the top lessons that we can learn from people, for those of us who are alive? What are some of the top lessons that we can learn from people who have gone through near death experiences? Those lucky little buggers. And you never think we'd say it right.

Jodi Wellman
Oh my God, I've had a brush with death. Like, that's not what I would ask for. Of course not. But you're here now, and they have such clarity about things we don't. One of the main lessons that people who've had brushes with death, by the way, near death experience, is the more serious kind where it's like they may have seen the proverbial light, like they almost died, or maybe they did die on the table and they were resuscitated and woohoo, we're a brush with death.

Just differentiating. Some of the semantics is like, I had a thing happen that, whoa, I was on the precipice, you know, it could be that I had a. Maybe it was a diagnosis that I'm now in remission from cancer. Maybe I was held up at gunpoint for a robbery. Maybe it was the moments where you have this brush, and it can be very jarring and serious.

The priorities that come up, the priorities that clarify to me are astounding. So people typically get this little clarity. Like, I know what matters now and what I want to pursue, the good things. And almost more importantly, I now know what doesn't matter. And so there tends to be this little dismissing of trivial stuff, which I'm fascinated by because some of our days can get so worked up in the belief or the little nit, the petty grievances, the little nitpicking, the judgment about, did I answer that email or I've got to say yes to that request to join that group to do the thing or the barbecue.

Many people who've had these ndes or brushes with death, they who've had wake up calls, let's just say it. And I just can't not say the psychologist. Existential psychologists call it the roar of awakening, which I think is a really powerful phrase to talk about this. They've been awakened to know, yeah, I have boundaries now. I don't care about your stupid barbecue now.

They don't have to say it like dicks. They can say it lovingly, right? Unfortunately, I'm not available. Have fun, and we'll catch a. We'll hopefully catch you the next time around.

And then they go. Go get to live their Sunday the way they want to live it, while the rest of us are going in through obligation or we're sweating the small stuff in life in ways that if we came home from the hospital and this is the exercise I want us all to do, it's imagine that you got to come home today from being in a coma for, like, three months. And you're very clear. Holy shit, I almost died, but I didn't, and I get to be here now. Not only another benefit is that you're just outright gratitude for life appreciation for being here, but even just gratitude for the sweet, simple things.

Like, this is a really beautiful mug. Like, it's not just your average mug, you know, or the reality of, like, I am so grateful that I have, you know, this. This pet who I normally would take for granted, or all the little things. So there's the reminder of the value, but there's the abandonment of the stupid stuff that doesn't matter and the prioritizing of what does. There is often a sense of reconnection to people because, again, that's part refinement of, like, now I know what matters.

And I was busying myself with all that stuff and worrying about, I don't know, launching the new product for Q four, but now I kind of go. But my values, actually, now that I realize that my values are maybe more over here, and I'd really rather spend time in nature and with my family, and all of a sudden that, like, ah, ambitious thing maybe doesn't cut it for me anymore. Or it could be the reverse. Like, there's no right or wrong, but there's, like, this distillation that tends to happen that I want us to benefit from without having to peer over the edge, you know? Hmm.

Dhru Purohit
You can't talk about this topic of death and what we can learn about life without broaching the topic of regret. And regret is something that you write about inside of the book, and I'd love to sort of have you share your framework and dive into the topic. Yeah, I just love talking about regrets. So darn much because I think most of us were afraid of them, but they're so instructive. And most of us do get that kind of intuitively.

Jodi Wellman
We're like, yeah, we know that we learn from regrets and we can, like, shape our future behavior to be less crappy. But I can, right off the top, can we just do one thing with regrets? Because I think it's important. There are two camps, and one matters, one doesn't. So in the spirit of dismissing what doesn't matter, let's just get rid of it first.

There are regrets of commission, which are things we did that, oh, golly, if we had 2020 high, we wished we didn't do it. You know, like, you wish you didn't cheat on that exam and get caught, or you wish you didn't do the, you know, you wish you didn't buy that house at the bottom tank of the market or whatever it is. Typically, over time, psychology does us this gift of, like, helping us to just soften and we just tend to not let it haunt us. Let's dismiss those right away. We don't need to talk about the stupid things we did.

What we do need to talk about are the other side, which are regrets of omission, which are the things that we wanted to do but didn't, or that we wondered about but didn't take the path. And I call them coulda, shoulda woulda's. These are the things that are insidious. These are the things that hospice workers say that when people are on their deathbeds, they can ruminate on a little bit that idea about, like, oh, man, but what if I did take that job in London? But what if I did start that Etsy shop?

Like, I could have been happy? Or what if I did buy that house with the one that we let get away? The ideas of the things where you didn't take the risk, or you weren't bold, or you didn't have the confidence, or you just, again, thought you'd have time. And those are the things that I think we need to be really aware of. And they're powerful, and I'm not afraid of them because I think, like death, if we use it to our advantage, it can make our lives so much better.

So I call them pre Gret. And I know it's really cheesy, I love that term. But do the typical deathbed regret exercise. You're splayed out, feeling pretty good, looking back on your life. And again, doesn't matter that you had that dumb thing happen.

What is something you wished you had done that. You didn't. And can I ask you even, is there a path? And it could be really small, could be big, could be medium. They all count.

Just for conversation's sake, is there a thing that you've always kind of wanted to do, but you just haven't taken action for whatever reason that you would think on your deathbed? I really wish I did it. Um, I mean, I think about this stuff all the time. Yeah. So I am constantly sort of evaluating my life and taking action in the direction of.

Dhru Purohit
I'll just say this, I had a really beautiful experience last year where I went through a guided, and I'd love to get your take on this, a guided psilocybin journey in Hawaii. And my parents were there. They did it as well, too. My wife was there, my brother in law and a couple of my best friends. And we as a group went through this medically guided experience and I took what is, if anybody's not familiar with this world, I took a dose that was quite large.

Jodi Wellman
You're hardcore. That was the experience that I wanted to take and I felt the support that was there. So I felt like I could go deeper with it. And I had like, an incredible experience. And I had taken mushrooms recreationally, like one or two times, and I was like, okay, cool.

Dhru Purohit
I get why people do this. It's not something that I really want to do on an ongoing basis basis, but this setting was a little bit different and I got a chance to go deeper, and there was something really beautiful about also doing it with my parents. So something came up pretty strongly for me there, and it was about the idea of, I work with both of my sisters in, in the businesses that I've had, and I had a vision of what we were sort of meant to do together as a team, of working together and how I needed to prioritize that. It wasn't that I had to go quit a bunch of other things, it was that I got to make sure that that doesn't get deprioritized. And then since that time, which was last February of last year, I've been working towards that.

And so I'm in the process of executing on that vision. I love that. So that you're just going to show that when you have this, and this might come from the pre mortem we talked about in the book, but when you have the awareness of you and you had this process, that sounds like a cool journey to get there about now I see what matters in a unique way. And then when you see it. It's like, well, you can't unsee it.

Jodi Wellman
And so if you didn't take action on it, that would be a little bit of a coulda, shoulda, woulda down the road, which sounds like you're taking action on, right? Yeah. You're reminding me, too, that I sometimes frame it in a way that I leave out important ideas of regrets, because regrets can also be about our ways of being. It doesn't have to be that. Aw, man.

I always wanted to learn how to speak Italian. Sucks. I didn't. And it's also like, I regret that maybe I wasn't bolder with my choices. So boldness.

Regrets are actually a whole camp. Like, Dan Pink has done a lot of really cool. I've felt that many times in my life. Have you? Yeah.

Dhru Purohit
Yeah. And could I add something to that? Yeah, please. Is that usually on these bigger visions that we have, it'll take time to execute them. There'll be ups, there'll be downs, there'll be zigzags.

You feel like you're making progress, then all of a sudden, you feel discouraged. Life is messy in that way, and in particular, going through a little bit of a messy transition with the obligations that I had there previously, meditating on that regret of like, hey, this is why I chose this path. And if I don't prioritize these series of actions, that will let me actualize this vision that I have, even if it's tough to get there. I'm constantly thinking about the regrets and that kind of the pregrets that if I don't do this, I will regret not putting attention into this area of my life. So it kind of keeps me going, because it's not like you just make a decision one day, and then you're like, okay, great.

The vision is together. Yeah. Some visions take years in the making. Yeah. One of the toughest things that I put my parents through when I was younger, being from an indian background and other stuff, you know, a lot of families, they have, oh, you know, our son or daughter is the first to graduate college.

You know, in this family, I was the first to drop out in our family. Right. And being a very learned student, prioritizing, you know, good grades and other stuff, always doing good in school. When I decided that I wanted to drop out of school, it was a very tough thing for my parents, as expected, because they didn't see the vision that I had, and I didn't even know exactly what steps I was going to take. A.

But even then, still, I knew that, okay, I might be disappointing them for a short period of time in the interim, but long term, I'm going to live with a life of regret if I don't go forward with this path that was there. Right. And obviously, they're my biggest fans. They're so happy. They understand.

They understand the difference between formal education and getting educated on your own path. And I was an entrepreneur. I started a business and everything like that, so I had the trust that it was going to work out. But I knew that, okay, that might mean you're gonna have to disappoint some people in the short term, so you're not living a life of regret. Oh, God, there's so much there.

Jodi Wellman
You got so much compacted into all this that, by the way, knowing that you might disappoint somebody is the uncomfortable point about boundaries in general, for pleasers that don't want. They're living for other people, not for themselves. It's acknowledging if I am living true to myself, and I love the regret test is how I make all my decisions, too. And it's that, will I regret doing this, or will I regret not doing it? And that helps often with, like, a b scenarios, too.

Which one? And I love your. Yours is a little unconventional. Right. It's that I would regret not going and pursuing this entrepreneurial pull that I can't even explain.

It's just happening to me. Whereas some other people in different camps would say, well, I really would regret not finishing my schooling. It all, like, floats your boat. Yeah. They're both the same vibration, right?

Are you listening to what's calling you? And are you making that? Would I. What would I regret? Another way that I get out of life situations sometimes is that phrasing about life's too short to dot, dot, dot.

And then, conversely, you can say, like, life is not long enough to dot, dot, dot. It kind of suits your needs, but life is too short to not go give that a go, to give it a try. And one of the things about regrets that I think this leads to is that, all right, we're on this. Okay, great. Awareness.

Cool. Maybe some people, and a lot of people will. When I'll do, like, a keynote or a workshop, they'll come up with lists of things, and it's kind of cute because they're, like, kind of hiding their notes from their colleagues about their regrets. Maybe there's, like, deep, dark secrets there. Whatever, doesn't matter.

But then when I do, the thing about, okay, now's your chance, because now, good news. You're not dying. We don't think, knock on wood. Now it's about taking action. And here is then, where we're faced with this breathtaking moment.

And I think we're going to touch on where I. Where you talk a lot about this in a lot of your episodes and what you do. Fear. I think that, as I said that words that I. That I said in my TEDx, the fear of death is rivaled only by the fear of living.

That we can have a wake up moment, we can have a near death experience. We can see the light, come back, feel appreciated. And that tends to give people a little more of that oomph, the confidence to move forward even in the face of fear. But for the rest of us mere mortals who haven't had that real brush, even when we do the thing where we say, yeah, you know, I would regret not going and starting my entrepreneurial thing, or I would regret not coming out of the closet, or I would regret not going and moving to Portugal or whatever your thing is, what's the difference between awareness of that and actually doing it? The strongest impetus I have found is the threat of death, to be super honest.

But, and that is why I use it. And it's a scarcity tactic, and it kind of goes against the concept of any kind of coaching model about, ooh, it's all about abundance. Yeah, but it doesn't work as well. You know, like, that's where it's like, yeah, but, dude, you've only got 1870. Some odd Mondays or less, if you're me, do it.

But we're still a little bit stuck, right? Because we're still afraid about what might happen if we do it and it doesn't deliver. What might happen? Like, what could go wrong? We're living in a world where, of course, we tend to value safety and security.

And so I'm gonna. I just would be remiss if I didn't point out that oftentimes, back to the bucket list thing, we could record. We put all the things down on your spreadsheet or your journal or wherever you keep your special stuff, your vision board. And is it really just a holding place for things you're afraid to pull the trigger on? I think sometimes it's a safe, delusional place for us to say, yeah, I'm going to do it.

And it actually, some psychology science shows evidence that when we dream, and it's called positive fantasy about a goal, we might imagine the cruise we're going to take our family on. Or you might imagine how it'll feel to win the humanitarian of the year award because you're going to start this thing and you're going to, it's going to succeed. When you imagine it, you feel just good enough that it actually pulls the rug out from underneath your motivation because you feel just good enough. Oh, that's good. Now I'm going to, now I'm going to go and clean the counter.

But we don't take action. So that's where I get rabid about. Still do the countdown because, like, time is coming and it may not even be that long. It's probably, it could be longer. You know, chances are it's longer.

Technology's doing good things. We're going to live longer. We're going to listen to you and we're going to live longer, but maybe not. And what's it going to take to overcome that fear? You know, the fear of living?

Like Nietzsche said, man is the only animal that has to be encouraged to live. And yet we're all walking around talking about dreams we have, but they're just kind of dormant. Yeah. Let's talk about some of your dreams, fears, and a little bit of your background that brought you here, where now you are a speaker, an author, a coach that works with executives. You have a viral ted talk that has over a million views that people can check out.

Dhru Purohit
We'll link to in the show notes. Tell a little, tell us a little bit about your origin story and how these themes played a role in your life. Right on cue, talking about fear and dreams that have gone dormant. I do come by some fear, honestly, from my dear mother. My mom died when she was 58 of a heart attack.

Jodi Wellman
And obviously that was shitty. And the thing that sticks with me, and I'll never forget the feeling I got when I was cleaning out her apartment, was this experience of an overwhelming avalanche of what I call the land of dormant intentions and dreams. Like all her drawers drew were stuffed with. Like, she was a writer. She would write stories, short stories, manuscripts, children's books.

She would illustrate. She had business ideas. She even printed out her own business cards for some of these businesses she wanted to launch. She was a dreamer like she had because she was so creative and gifted and she didn't do anything with it because she didn't have the confidence. But that was really the main reason.

And when I was cleaning all this stuff up, of course it was like I knew over the years that she'd had these ideas, but seeing it all at once was so powerful. It was really sad. And it was also powerful about, oh, honey bunny, like, you are going down that path. Hopefully not the heart attack path at 58, but you have dreams. I was in a corporate job at the time that I was really kind of at my max, but I was too scared to make a change.

Not that anybody can relate to that, when you're like, I want to make a change, but I don't know what it's going to look like, so I'm just going to wait and have somebody pluck me out of here. Well, keep waiting month after month, right? So here I was kind of languishing at work. I see my mom's display of dreams that got buried with her, and that was such a wake up of, like, time is so short and, like, wouldn't it be just so great if we identified what we want, prioritized those things, and just waded through the fear anyways and just took one step at a time towards one goal at a time that would feel like life got lived, because then if I got snuffed out at 58 or 48 or 98, I would at least feel proud that I gave it a shot. Where did your mom's, and we'll come back to your story here in a second.

Dhru Purohit
Where did your mom's lack of confidence come from? Mm hmm. Seemed like it was just part of her all the time. Like, I grew up with a mom who was super scared and afraid of everything. She passed on her fear of a spider's to me.

Jodi Wellman
She passed on her fear. I was not allowed, I was not allowed to learn how to do a. What do they call. I can't even. What's it called?

When you do, it's not a somersault. It is a cartwheel. I was not allowed to learn how to do a cartwheel because my mom was so scared that I would break my neck. So I listened, and I was like, well, I don't want to break my neck. She was just a very fearful, anxious woman.

She had bipolar disorder. She was troubled, and she had these manic highs where all these ideas were born, and she had deep, dark lows. That was probably where the fear took over. And so it was confidence that just never really took root. She didn't really have a lot of support growing up for someone to champion her and say, go send that manuscript out, and it's okay that you got four rejections back.

Give it a go again. Yeah. And when you're struggling with a mental health condition, like a bipolar, schizophrenia, something on that spectrum, even just severe depression. Yeah. Your brain is also not working optimally, to support the good intentions that you have.

Dhru Purohit
Even just getting up some days is a severe struggle. Such a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a really powerful sort of education.

Jodi Wellman
And then it, you know, and then from that point, you know, I'd always been interested in this idea about how the fact that we're gonna die is weird, absurd, and also a potential motivator, you know, this idea that it can be a way to seize the day, however many days we have. But I was too afraid. Speaking of fear, I was afraid to figure out how to bring it to life. Ha ha ha. Get it?

How to bring death to life. In the work I did working with corporations, because I told myself a story, those powerful narratives that, well, no one's gonna want to talk about this. I should just keep talking about embracing conflict and change, you know, more traditional stuff. And I went to school. So my first step was I went to University of Pennsylvania to do their masters of applied positive psychology program.

And I had no idea. I love how life, sometimes you have a niggling, in a sense, and you follow it and you don't even know what's going to blow the doors of your life wide open. And that was it for me. I gave myself permission to study this topic of memento mori, which is the latin phrase that means, remember that you're gonna die. I made that my thesis.

I got all the background that I could feel comfortable using around the evidence that this is a thing, not just a notion. And it gave me the confidence then to go and say, okay, corporations, we're gonna talk about your legacy. We're gonna talk about motivating your team to just do the get on with these really cool things while they're lucky to be here. So I was able to start 4000 Mondays as a result of that. That's the.

That's my memento mori story. You know, a lot of corporations, you would also probably have the fear that so many corporations just want to maintain the status quo. They don't want people to be thinking about, you know, is this really the job that's giving them meaning? Or is this the job that allows them to have the resources, attention, and energy to go give love and attention to the other things in life that. That matter?

Dhru Purohit
Yes, and that's changing for good reason. Because a lot of people realize that if they have happy employees and not everybody's meant to go start their own business or wants to go take a risk and go start their own business, they're actually super happy in their job and their profession. And they just want to dial it in a little bit more. And actually, they'd be happier at their job if they could get a little bit more meaning from their day to day life. Or there's simple things that they could do at work where they could create more meaning and connection with the team or address conflict, or speak up about Sally, who's creating so much negativity and drama in the office, but in a loving way.

A lot of those things, they matter. Those things matter for a lot of people. Oh, my gosh, you're speaking my language. I love that so much. And you are right.

Jodi Wellman
There is a fine line between not rankling people to think, wait a minute, the life I want to live involves quitting and moving to Portland and picking up, you know, that those grand gestures are rare. But one of the things that I've done with groups that I think is fun is helping them find ways to support each other, to live a life outside work, too. So some of the best teams that do the best work together are ones where they all have a retreat, say, and they all talk about, here are the things that I want to do. I want to try improv, or I someone's like, I really want to get back into whitewater rafting, or I want to start to sketch, or I want to go and volunteer, and I've never made the time. And they all hold each other accountable to it, whether it's like, their bigger vitality goals.

And then it's really cool because then they come back together and they're like, hey, did you go do we're going to come see you on open mic night or we're going to go and, well, we're not going to watch you raft down the river. But, you know, did you book the trip? Like, enough to know that your colleagues care? Same thing about checking in on, like, what did you do this weekend that was fun? Or are you reading a book?

Like, book clubs, like, more diverse ways to live a well rounded life that are go beyond. Here is the job description. And you have to say it like that in the robot way. Like, that is just thinking really kind of old school, like early two thousands minded of meaning at work. Because I think the best leaders now are the ones who are like, wait a minute, if I acknowledge that you actually are a human being that has a life outside of here, and I foster that and I encourage that, and I want to see your pictures from, ideally the nude painting class, but maybe not.

Then I want to have that be like, that's the kind of culture I want to create is, like, where we care about the US thriving in life because, yeah, like you said, when you thrive in life, you're going to be a way better contributor on this team. You know, one of the things that you wrote about inside the book, which is very personal, is you shared about some eating disorder that you'd been struggling with for a long time. I'd love to just touch on that for a second. And really, from the sense of how exploring this topic of what it really means to be alive through looking at the lens that we're all gonna die and how that impacted how that you were able to handle that eating disorder and ultimately overcome it. Yeah, well, my experience was a decade of struggling with the combo platter of anorexia and bulimia, which is super fun.

So unfun, you know what I mean? I recognize now with a distance that it was just my means of coping. And, you know, many of us are just trying to get through our days, our weeks, and we find these mechanisms that will work and they're not always functional. Some of them are severely dysfunctional. Obviously.

Some of them are just remotely dysfunctional. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Or gambling or shopping or. I mean, we know the range of ways that we find to numb our existence and just handle the cacophony of stuff that's going on that might be scary for us. And for me at that time, it was actually feeling a sense of dis ease with my work situation because work means a lot to me.

And I was unsettled. Like, I was in that corporate job where I was just like, what do I do now? And instead of dealing with it in the most healthy way, I chose to just shut down and handle it in a disordered way. So now skip forward, and I look back and I'm like, well, look at us. Look what we do.

You know? I know we do the best with whatever tools we have available, but I look back and I go, these are moments of life where we can make a choice, where we are, like, either alive or dead. And I think anytime we are in a setting where we are compromising our life, where we're settling, where we're tolerating, where we are doing some kind of deficient behavior, drinking too much, any kind of drug too much, anything too much. Arthur C. Brooks, whom I love at Harvard, talks about the potential about if you're doing something and it's alone, like some possible addictions, if you're doing it with friends, if you're going out for drinks with friends, then that could be a fun, social thing.

And of course, you could take that too far, too. But if you're doing it at home alone too much, that's an indication that it may be a problem for you. But moments where we can reflect and go, is this part of my life alive or dead? Am I just plugging into a life machine? Because that for me, was a decade of just plugging into a life machine, just trying to cope and survive by increasing the awareness of life short.

Do you really want, like, would you regret, would you look back and regret having another decade go by barfing your brains out around town?

You know, is there more to life? Like you asked earlier, like, what's an example of a question that helps us to kind of tune in, and it was what makes you happy? Another big question is what makes you feel really alive? And we can, when we get really deliberate about making a choice to live, and it's a conscious choice, it's like what you do with your wife when you look at your week and you say, what do I have to look forward to? What's interesting, when you make a plan to say, I'm going to make this thing on my bucket list come true.

This is a goal I have for the year, and here's how I'm going to take a step forward towards it this week. And you're showing yourself that you give a shit about yourself. There's something really cool that can happen, especially with a dawning awareness that I want to fit this in because it matters so much to me. It can tend to give you enough of a purpose and a direction to overshadow some of the other garbage, the garbage ways that we fill our existence. I applaud you for writing about it and sharing about that aspect and weaving into story and of course, talking about it here, because you never know the things that people are struggling with.

Dhru Purohit
And even if some of our audience members aren't dealing with that situation, there might be another habit that is not supporting them in the way that is supporting their long term vision and goals that they're struggling with. And when they hear somebody talk about it and what they went through, it's an opening and a permission of, okay, you know what? Maybe I don't have to beat myself up every day this is going on, and yet still, I can still have the energy and the resolve to want to also change this thing. And the interesting thing about you sharing is that from what limited knowledge I have of somebody, friend, of a friend that struggled with anorexia, is there some element of thinking in modern day psychology, that there's a control element that's there. You can't control a lot of stuff that's going on in your life, but this is one thing that you can control.

And obviously, there's so many other layers that are there to it. And yet, if you look at that and you look at the opposite hand of this interest in death, death is, like the ultimate thing. And the reminder that actually, we're not in control of anything. And I could see, I don't know exactly when the timeline of these all were, but looking from the outside and just hearing your story, I could see the draw towards this topic of death as just the constant reminder that we literally have no control in anything that we're doing in life. Ultimately, we're all going to be gone.

And even the people that love us, 200, 300, 400 years from now, they're all going to be gone, too, right? Definitely in, like, a couple hundred years. And largely, all our belongings are going to be gone, sold in a landfill, recycled. And for most of us, even if we lived a beautiful life, you know, our great great grandkids, or if you don't have kids, family members, whatever, I. They're probably not going to remember you, just like we don't remember, you know?

Do you know who your great great grandfather was, what his life was like, what was going on with them? You're appreciative, and you might have heard little gems. And obviously, their legacy led to the things, both positively and negatively that we can experience in our life, but we don't know who they are, and we're all going to be forgotten one day. And so death is that reminder that it's like, as you mentioned before, we just cannot sweat the small stuff. And this, too, shall pass, no matter how good or how bad it is.

Jodi Wellman
Can I just say that that was, like, the best therapy moment I've ever had? Really profound. I like your connection point, because you're right. We yearn to control. This is the ultimate, uncontrollable.

You're so right. And this leads back to this giant, big thing of acceptance. An acceptance and embracing, because it's one thing that most adults will be like, yeah, I know, I know, I know we're gonna die. What else? What's for lunch?

But the right, like, let's have lunch with it, you know? Like, let's pull up a chair and think about it. Do that math. Think about what it means. Think about.

Back to this thing of what regrets might you have that you can course correct, love that you know, and that if you did back to these exercises, how would you be thinking differently with this remaining time of acceptance if you knew that you did just emerge from a moment where you almost died? We have to play these mental tricks on ourselves. And back to the idea about how, like, I wish abundance was enough for us. I wish that just like in any psychology, you know, the idea, like, we're more wired to avoid a pain than seek pleasure. Most people are.

This is the play, you know, it's that we need the poke in the ribs to take things seriously. Action usually comes from an inciting event, and it's usually not from a super inspired one. I think it could come from, like, what you did with your family in Hawaii with psilocybin, etcetera. That can be a really cool inciting event. Such cool research around that now.

But for most of us, there needs to be, it doesn't need to be rock bottom, but it could very well be. Oh, right, the reaper. Oh, that math. And like, let's just get a little more scarce with the scarcity. As if we weren't already having enough fun with the countdown.

But, like, all right, 1870 some odd Mondays. But then you could go, well, okay, there's one of the readers of my blog, I really love him because he keeps reminding me he's really quite persistent and hilarious. He's like, yeah, but don't forget that the remaining Mondays near the end, they don't. They're not really, like, the best of your Mondays. You know what I'm saying?

Like, so, like, we can probably lop off for many people the last chunk of years because we're not going to necessarily be as crystal clear mentally and physically. And so I'm just going to, like, I'm ratcheting up the ante here, right? So maybe now that leads you to a few hundred Mondays off that, and we're taking the number down, and then we're saying, okay, well, how many big trips do you have left? Depends how often you travel. But if you look at that window of time and you say, okay, well, I'm going to work for this many years and a traditional model, people look at retirement or whatever, okay, but really, like, a lot of people that I know are like, well, we take a really big overseas trip, like every four or five years.

Okay, let's do that math. Like, oh, you've got six left. Like, all of a sudden, like, all the countries that you just deludedly thought you were going to get to visit. Oh, yeah, on my leisure time, all of a sudden, like, you're going to need to make some choices, honey. Like, you got to prioritize because there aren't enough countries to fit into six big trips, right?

Or summers left with your kids is one that people will do, right? Like, or there's a woman I know who, I just love her to pieces this year. She's like, this. This summer, my kid is finishing junior kindergarten and I'll never have another kid in junior kindergarten. And there are eight sessions left.

And every Friday I'm going to take my kid out for lunch and we're going to go to Subway, and my kid's going to. Because subway's kid's favorite place to go. I'm like, we're going to go. It's going to take 30 minutes. And so again, it's not a lot of time, not a lot of money.

It's a good example of savoring. Like, we've only got eight junior kindergarten weeks left. You could look at that with how much time you have left working. And that is really profound because I know a lot of us don't plan on a formal retirement these days, but many people do. Or at least a retirement that you might define as, like, my option to say no.

And I did that math personally about a year ago maybe with, when I was writing the book, actually, because I hadn't done it recently. And I want to keep talking about this forever until I end up getting snuffed out. But the way I average, like, my full time, full time, I think I had something like 642 Mondays left. It felt like a gut punch. I was like, that is not enough.

I will not have enough mountain tops to scream this message from in 642 Mondays. It was fabulously panic inducing. And I should clarify, not panic. Like, I'm saying all these things and I'm creating all these examples, and I know your listeners are right now are like, thanks, Drew, for the existential crisis that you just gave me. No, like, wait a sec.

Let's get. Let's. We can choose how we're perceiving this. It's not about urgency based in panic. It's about urgency based in a desire to live like we mean it, to get to the end and feel like we did this life that we've been given justice.

So that's the whole thing. So all. If we can get creative with those countdowns, because you're right, we will just keep thinking that there's time that there isn't powerful. You know, another thing I'll add to that is that I'll do little micro versions of that. Of that, for example, we're at the mid year point.

Dhru Purohit
And so one of the questions that I'll be asking soon on our man morning group is like, hey, just how's the year going so far? And between now and the end of the year, if there was one thing that you would regret not giving love and attention to, and the reason that I like asking it this way is something important that you wrote about in your book, is that it's not that we're gonna. We don't regret, not achieve. We don't regret like, that we didn't achieve something. We regret that we didn't try to pursue it.

So if between now, mid June, the halfway year mark, and the end of the year, if we didn't make progress on this, one or two things, one thing in your personal life, one thing in your business life, what would those things be? And what type of regret would you feel around that? Because sometimes for younger people, especially death, and that many Mondays can have the opposite effect of, I have tons of time that's there. Plenty of time. Especially big dreamers, as you mentioned earlier, you have such a big dream, such a big vision.

I got plenty of time so you can play with shorter timelines of that and take a look at it. And another version is, I have friends who are like, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to get old one day and I'll die. And that's not really a big motivator, but then you find something else that they care about, right? Maybe they don't have kids themselves and they're an auntie and an uncle to a family member.

Jodi Wellman
Yep. Right? Hey, you'll only have x amount more time with this nephew or niece. Right? Quality time.

Dhru Purohit
Like, let's say you like to do with my nephew niece. Like once a year, I'll have them come to LA and we'll do. I did this with my nephew. I didn't get a chance to do it with my niece because we ended up sending her to the Taylor Swift concert. She had a great time there with my nephew, was like, hey, we'll do a yes day with you.

Like, pick a list of all the things that you want to do in LA, like, you plan the trip, right? I gave him a budget, right? A couple hundred dollars, whatever. And he put a day like that together. And we went to, like, some touristy stuff.

We went to some anime stores that he's, like, really a fan of. He like, is super into ramen. So he went to, like, a ramen shop. And he had that day. And that day seeing him feel so excited.

He's about. He's just turned 13. Yeah. About the autonomy of, like, going through the day and the happiness and the joyous and feeling that sense of ownership of what was planned and checking in on me, like, are you having a good time too? Like, that brought so much energy to me, and I thought, wow, I want so many more of those days.

And he's 13, right? So he has high school left. Then he's going to be at college. Then he's going to be starting his own family. Realistically, how many of those, if I'm doing him once a year, how many of those do I have?

Six, maybe, over the course. And then once he's much older and I'm much older, maybe we get a chance to do a couple again. So maybe seven. Yeah. So you only have seven more of those times.

So if there are any part of me that feels bombarded with just how much is going on, to the degree that I'm not prioritizing those things, that reminder of, like, I only have six more of those opportunities to do that with him, that makes me feel both sad and happy at the same time. And it really brings a sense of value of, like, I want to make sure that I don't miss any opportunity to have those with him in a year. You just took this to the next level. I also think that we need to start a campaign where you start creating yes days for us. So you'll pick one lucky person a month where you help take them on a yes day, maybe with a slightly higher budget.

Jodi Wellman
You are onto this because where this boils down, I think, is, what do you value? We all know we could do that exercise where you write down your top five or ten values, and sometimes we find ourselves just out of sync. We're living a life where we're not actually honoring our values. And this one example that you just gave, because it's not like you're already consciously living a life that is designed to be regret free because you're already in tune with all this stuff. You're the perfect you only die once person to read like, you're in this already.

But this value you have, which is very clear because it comes up in so many of your shows, is the value of family connection. That is an example where if we get to look at our list and go like, what is that thing on my list? And, oh, wait, what would I regret around that? That feels like a little bit of a shortcut to it, too. And your example helped highlight that.

Like, for some people, a really big value could be creativity, right? And then that might mean, oh, I bet you'd have that hole in your heart if you didn't launch that pop up book that you were designing. Oh, God, please. One day interview a pop up book designer. I want to meet a pop up book designer.

Or it could be any value, right? It could be nature. Someone might then really regret that they didn't go and maybe dedicate some time and energy and start some kind of a campaign in their community to save the trees in the town square. I don't know. So that might be a cool shortcut, is to do exactly what you did.

It's like, wait a minute, my nephew matters to me. This is a value I possess. What around that, if I was to pick around with my tool, would be a thing I'd regret after that. That's cool. You know, last part of the book, you're focusing on this topic of purpose and stepping into a life that drives meaning.

Yeah. And that's different for everybody. But often the question that I hear from the audience sometimes is that I don't know. I don't know. Or how do I figure out?

Dhru Purohit
How do I figure out that thing that drives meaning? That is my ongoing booster rocket that helps me get through the difficult times. And using, of course, the tools of the death meditation and the lists that are inside of the book, which are fantastic. Everybody should get a copy. We can use those tools to drive us towards that.

But how do we find a life of purpose? How do we find a life of meaning for ourselves? Love that you've asked. And I feel the need also just to put it into context, because this is the deepening part of life, that dimension. And it's in contrast, even though it plays nicely in the sandbox with the idea about widening our life with vitality, which is more of the fun stuff.

Jodi Wellman
That's like, in a way, your yes. Day with your nephew, that for him was a day full of vitality, of getting to do all those cool things. And that was fun for you, but you also got meaning out of it. I think I got more. I mean, he had fun, and I got a lot of meaning.

Dhru Purohit
I'm not saying he didn't have meaning, but what I got out of it was like, I feel like, ten times. Totally. More. Yep. And he still had a blast.

Jodi Wellman
Such a good example. Yeah. So you guys had different dimensions at different things, and so there will be overlap. And the meaning thing is just so it tracks back to positive psychology. It's the eudaemonic dimension of well being, and it has to do with the area of our virtues, using and demonstrating good character, having that sense of purpose.

Maybe it's about connection to other people or to a God or a spirit or anything bigger than us. So it has a lot of range. And I think that you are super right. People are getting freaked out about this purpose thing. There are some words that freak us out easily.

They're all pieces. There's purpose, there's passion, there's potential. Like, oh, am I reaching my potential? These are stress inducing. And I think so much of it is because we believe that it needs to be something shiny and oppressive.

And what if we recalibrated it? This is something that I see a lot, working with individuals that I used to work with or teams. It's like, not everybody is going to create a nonprofit that solves the water problem in Africa, and that doesnt make that person the hero of purpose. You win the purpose prize. Some of the best conversations ive seen happen have been through people where theyve realized that their purpose is actually something that is undeniably that gives them that sense of pure righteousness, satisfaction.

Being a really good uncle is part of your purpose, is it not? Yeah. Being a good family member, brother, uncle, huge part of my purpose. So if you go back to your values, and again, if all of us are whipping out our back of the napkin, whatever we're doing, and it's like, these are the things that matter. Back to creativity.

If creativity makes your heart beat fast and you just know, somehow, you don't even need to explain why. You just know that it's part of you and it's something you hold dear or its family, or it could be achievement, or it could be nature. Back to examples we just were using for ease. Use that as your starting point and be like, what's something that I do in and around there? That just makes me feel like, I felt like there was depth there without anybody gauging it or measuring it or how impressive it sounds to my friends, or what could I put on instagram?

And I recommend that you start as small as you can. So rather than going big, like, I've got to start an empire that gets me on the Forbes 40 under 40, that, I mean, don't not do that if you want to, like, grow your way into it. And, or what if it meant that if you were really interested in, you know, starting a business, it would be like that. Your purpose is like, what would be an outcome that would make you feel really good. Wow.

I'd really like to, I don't know, purpose. I would really like to create some kind of a service. You don't even know what it is yet, but I would like to create a service that helps people enjoy their lives more. Boom. That's my purpose.

And if you start using that as your compass, that you align every day and be like, okay, what's one more thing I could do to learn about that might get me more in tune with a business that could help people live better? And so it's like always orienting, kind of with the smallest, smallest sense that's aligned with your values, that can help us feel that we're on living on purpose. And again, let's recalibrate. Let's just manage our expectations. It doesn't need to be grandiose.

Dhru Purohit
You know, as we're winding down here, and I'm going to pass it back over to you to give some concluding thoughts, I wanted to share that one of the quotes that I loved most from the book that I wrote down here in my notes was, thinking about death is a natural gratitude booster. I often think about, gratitude can't come up for us if we don't have contrast. And death is the best contrast that we could ever imagine to help us understand that no matter how bad the traffic was today, no matter how challenging the conversation was with your spouse, no matter how tough it was to receive that email from your boss or lack of appreciation from your parent, whatever it might be that somebody's struggling with, when you think about the fact that we're still alive, breathing, that we have a chance to have a second shot tomorrow at it, that there's something beautiful in that. So I just want to share that quote one more time for the audience here. Again, it's from your book.

Thinking about death is a natural gratitude booster. And to go along with that, all the exercises that you have in the book, walking people through the death meditation, walking people through all the questions they can ask themselves about what death means to them and what parts of their life are they living or maybe are a little bit more dormant, as you mentioned, and how they can awaken them. I just found it to be a really incredible read, and I want to acknowledge you and thank you for being on the podcast today. Final thoughts that you want to share here with our audience as we conclude here, then we share how our audience can keep in touch with you. Oh, well, first of all, speaking of gratitude, I'm grateful for that endorsement.

Jodi Wellman
And just the opportunity to chat with you here. You're so open to this. And that really helps. And by way of sign off, my encouragement remains the through line, which is to be not afraid and to befriend the grim reaper, as counterintuitive as it is, because, yeah, I mean, he'll obviously totally take you in the end, but it's only because of how you've beautifully highlighted it that when we have the contrast of this precious thing, it is precious because it is temporary. And when I sit with a reaper and we share a stiff drink or green juice, whatever floats your boat, and we realize that this thing is a short term situation, and I get to see an absolute perspective shift, that's the very thing that might help you make better choices.

It might help you connect better. It might help you have more fun and vitality, more yes days. It might help you have more depth and meaning and feel that sense of poignancy about life and more gratitude. It's the wake up call that we don't know we need that is right there and available to us. So be not afraid.

Dhru Purohit
Powerful. Jodi, this has been fantastic. The book is out. If you wouldn't mind mentioning the title for our audience. Thank you.

Jodi Wellman
Okay. It's called you only die once. How to make it to the end with no regrets. And also, two years ago, you did a TED talk that's available, that's out there, has over a million views. Congratulations.

Thank you. Apparently people are interested in death. They're interested to live, to live, to live, to live. So we'll link to that in the show notes as well. And where are you most active on social media?

Well, I am on Instagram at 4000 Mondays, and you have to spell it out f o u r, etcetera, etcetera. 4000 Mondays. And then I live kind of in my website where I do a blog every Monday, and it's called 4000 Mondays. Beautiful. Jody, thank you so much again for coming on this podcast and talking about this important topic, which sometimes I'll be parts of my day where I'm just thinking and I'll kind of zone off a little bit and kind of look up at the sky or look out the window and I'm like, man, we're all going to die one day.

Dhru Purohit
And nobody today that I've encountered has talked about it. And it's kind of weird that nobody's talked about it today. But at least today for our audience, you talked about it. And even if it might have been a little bit uncomfortable, you reminded us why it's so important to acknowledge our mortality if we really want to live here powerfully. So thank you for that.

Jodi Wellman
Oh, so well said. Thank you.

Dhru Purohit
Hi, everyone. Drew here, two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me.

And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called try this. Every Friday.

Yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free, and get my weekly step by step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called try this. Or just go to druprowit.com, that's dash rupurohit.com, and click on the tab that says try this.

How Thinking About Our Death Can Radically Energize Our Life Today with Jodi Wellman

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1: Introduction

2: The Concept of Temporal Scarcity

3: Practical Applications

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