How to use the Eulogy Exercise

Have you heard of the eulogy exercise before? If not, it is most likely going to sound morbid to you. It definitely did to me the first time I heard about it. Honestly, it took me several years before I could wrap my brain about this little goal setting exercise. But once I did, it really caused me to make different decisions for my life.

So what is it? The Eulogy Exercise is simply to sit down and write out what you want people to say about you during your funeral. I told you it was a bit morbid.

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Eulogy Exercise: Why is it important?

This exercise works to strip back all of the fluff in order to dig deep and understand what is most important. I have talked a lot about what is most important throughout this series. When you understand what is most important in your own life, it helps you to make clearer decisions. It helps you to see where you need to make adjustments, and then actually make those adjustments because you know how important it is.

Considering and even a bit of reflecting are in order to figure out what is most important to you. It takes time, and it takes work, but it is worth it. Wouldn’t you rather be able to say a strong yes or no to a situation? Instead, you often will feel put on the spot. You may answer with the opposite answer than you ought to be giving.

Taking time to work on this eulogy exercise will give you the confidence to know what you should be doing. It is a measure that you can use time after time because you have taken the time to figure out exactly what, and who, matters most to you.

How do you conduct this exercise?

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I really love how Lara Casey used to frame this exercise in the PowerSheets Goal Planner. She would tell you to imagine your life at 80 – looking back, what mattered? And more importantly what did not matter? The first time I did prep work back for my goals, this was really interesting to me. I had never considered thinking about what would have mattered over the course of my life, I was always forward thinking.

Being forward-thinking isn’t a bad thing. It is great to have a growth mindset, and it is important to know where you want to go. But, if you don’t take the time to consider what your values are, who and what actually matters to you, it will be harder to actually have the right growth mindset for you.

Eulogy Exercise: Multiple Ways to Conduct

Take a few minutes right now and grab your goals notebook. There are a couple of ways to set up this exercise. The first is to really treat it as a eulogy. Set the scene, think about who would be there. Then you are going to write key themes – values, lessons you hope to pass on, big life contributions, and personal qualities. Then you write it. You want to highlight the impact you had.

The other way, and the way that I like to work on this type of exercise, is with lists. Surprise, surprise! If you like lists, you can do a couple of things. First, divide your page in two with a line straight down the center. One side is for what will have mattered, and one side is for what won’t have mattered. Or, if you are like me and need a lot of space, have two separate pages for these lists. When you think back on your entire life, what are the things that you want to stand out to you? What are the messages and life lessons you will have passed on? Who did you spend time with?

Either way will work just fine!

What do I do with this information?

The next step in the eulogy exercise is to figure out where there are gaps and priorities. If you look at your eulogy, or your lists, are there gaps between where you are now and where you hope to be at the end of your life? My guess is an absolutely. There are always new things we want to try and recognizing those gaps is a great first step in understanding what goals we should think about having now in order to make it to that end point.

Are there things that you see that you are not prioritizing right now, even though they are really important to you? Why aren’t you prioritizing them? Often it is because of busyness. There are just so many things we need to focus on every day, and it takes its toll. We can’t focus on the other stuff because it is crowded out.

This is the point where you need to make the tough decisions. Is the busyness, or even the exciting activities, that fill your day the ones you want to be remembered for? Are they things that are adding to your “what will have mattered” list? Or are they time sucks? Is it a case where part of the activity is enjoyable and important, but not the whole activity? And is there something else you could do that would be a better fit?

The Bottom Line

Going through this type of exercise can be scary. You don’t want to look back on your life and see stress and burnout. Your life can be chaotic, but you want your relationships to be highlighted. It can be hard to sit down and do this eulogy exercise because you are facing your own limitations and mortality. That is scary. Especially if the things you are doing today do not actually support your long-term vision.

But, it is 100% OK if you aren’t happy with your life trajectory at this moment. The good thing? You can change it. There is nobody saying that you have to continue living life this way. If you want to focus more on service, focus more on service. If you want to spend more time with your immediate family, don’t sign up for all kinds of activities that push everyone in opposite directions. You get to make that decision. It may seem sometimes like society makes the decision for us, and we just float along. You can change course. But, you have to make the active decision to do that.

Have you done the eulogy exercise before? What insight did you gain from it? If not, what is holding you back?