We Have One Life (The Questions We Need to Ask Ourselves to Live Legendary)

Do you know what the odds are of YOU being alive, right now?

According to the internet, the probability of your existence is 1 in 10^2,685,000.

That’s 1 in 10 followed by almost 2.7 million zeros.

For context, the number of atoms in the entire universe is only 10^80.

How come you ask?

This probability calculation comes from this requirement: the unbroken stretch of survival and reproduction of ALL your ancestors, reaching back 4 billions years to single-celled organisms.

The odds of your parents meeting up and having you are 1 in 400 quadrillion alone, thats 10^15.

Isn’t that absolutely crazy?

What is NOT crazy is death.

The odds of you dying are 1 in 1.

It’s absolute. It’s ordinary. It’s not special.

Whereas breathing, experiencing, living - that’s near zero probability.

It is the greatest miracle that you are here.

So why don’t we all live like it?

Why do we place limits on ourselves?

Why do we risk regretting what we didn’t do?

That realization really bothers me, because just as Gary Vaynerchuk says: “the biggest poison in us is regret”.

And I don’t ever want that.

BASE PRINCIPLE

“We all have two lives, the second starts when we realize we have only one.” Confucius

WHAT IF?

What if you were able to give everything you had to give? What if instead of saving yourself, you poured it all in? What if the things you were doing, perfectly lined up with who you are on the inside?

Bronnie Ware is Australian and she worked for many years in palliative care. Her patients were those who wanted to die in their homes. During this period, Bronnie was with them as they lived their last weeks on Earth.

She learned that people grow a lot when faced with their own mortality and when she asked them about their regrets, some key ones appeared time and time again.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

These are great reminders for our lives, but what I want to go deeper on is the first regret - living a life true to myself.

How do we know what that is?

Here are the eleven questions I’ve collected over the years that can give you a clue about where you should go:

1. How do you measure your life?

   Money? Happiness? Recognition? Titles? The more honest we are with ourselves about what is important to us, the more clarity we will have about our life.

2. What is your favorite flavor of sh$t sandwich?

   Fulfillment is about doing the hard things which gets you what you want. What are you willing to struggle for? What problems do you love to solve?

3. You are going to die in 5 years. What would you do different?

   Death is a strong motivator. As seen earlier, people grow quite a lot when they are faced with death. What if we grew before our imminent demise? It’s not so soon that you’ll just hang out, but it’s not so much time that you won’t care.

4. What did you do as a kid that annoyed the heck out of your parents?

   Chances are you enjoyed doing something and because it wasn’t convenient, it was squashed. Guess what? You’re an adult now.

5. What is true about you today that will make your 8 year old self cry?

   What have you lost along the way to becoming an adult? What has society pounded out of you?

6. If you had to help a hundred people today, who could you help? Doing what?

   When we lift others up, we lift ourselves up. How can we help more people with the skills we have right now?

7. What do you really love doing but you are giving yourself excuses to not do it more?

   Finding our passions is crap advice. We don’t find them, we’re already doing them, we’re just ignoring what we love doing. And if not, you just have to try more things.

8. What do you do now that you sometimes forget to eat or resist going to the bathroom?

   When we are really into what we’re doing, even if we don’t label them as our “passion” it’s where we find our flow. Do more of that.

9. If you couldn’t fail and no one have done what you are going to do, what would that be?

   We often stop ourselves from doing something because we’re afraid to fail and we’re comparing ourselves to those who are ahead of us. Let’s take that out of the picture.

10. If you started afresh in a place where no one knew who you were, who would you become in 3 years?

    Our limits are sometimes not our own, but from those around us. What if no one cared? Who could we become?

11. If you projected 3,5,10 years into the future doing what you are currently doing, where would you be and would you be happy?

    We are often ok with sticking with something we don’t like because it’s comfortable. Even bad situations when experienced often enough becomes comforting. But if we projected forward a bunch of years, what would that look like? Should we change course?

Our lives are an amazing gift. YOU are an amazing gift to everyone around you.

I hope these questions helped you get additional clarity for your life. I ask myself these questions especially when I feel a lack of energy or feel stuck.

I wish for you a life of meaning, love, and fulfillment.

​Live your legend,

Howie Chan

Creator of Legend Letters

​Read my story​

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Sources:

1. Manson, Mark, 7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose - LINK

2. Oprah Winfrey -The Path Made Clear & Using Her Platform as a Force for Good (Quote 5:21), The Daily Show, YouTube - LINK

3. Kultgen, Colby, 5 Powerful Questions That Will Transform Your Life, Instagram, October 12, 2023 - LINK

4. Ware, Bronnie, Regrets of the Dying - LINK

5. Vaynerchuk, Gary, One Life, No Regrets, GaryVee, YouTube - LINK