What If You Had 10 Minutes To Live?

There are books that start by hitting you in the face and end by shaking your heart. One is undoubtedly Stumbling on Happiness , by Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor. In the first pages the question is asked: What would you do if you had 10 minutes to live?

Obviously, it can be absurd because we are convinced that we have more time and that if we did not have it we would not know it either. But it is there, in the absurd, where his magic and his strength lie.

Wich is your excuse?

Isn’t it absurd to answer that if we stayed 10 minutes we would make peace with our brother, for example, and let the whole day go by without doing it? Or be convinced that we would finally confess our love to that person and, on the contrary, continue to pretend that we are just friends? Or that we would go to that restaurant that we like so much and enjoy a good meal and instead eat from a tupperware? Or not, maybe we would simply regret not having learned to play the piano, having stopped smoking or taking better care of ourselves …

Whatever, but we can all see the absurdity of not doing what we want to do and that, deep down, we can. And do not forget that power means “to be able to …”. And we are powerful the more we are capable of doing.

Perhaps the 10 minute question is absurd, but more absurd are the excuses for not exercising the power we have in our lives. And therein lies the magic. Decide that yes, that we have 10 minutes to live, of the life we ​​know, because now, in 10 minutes, we can (we are able to …) decide to do everything that we do not want to regret in the future.

You want to do? Start here

1. Make a list

Without thinking too much. The first thing that comes to mind. Anything goes. The important thing is to remove it from within and put it in front of the mirror, which is a sheet of paper. Because if it is reflected, it is that there is something real within us that worries us.

2. Find the reasons

Let’s ask ourselves why those things are, undone, on that list. What is holding us back? What do we feel when we feel we can do it? When do we visualize ourselves achieving it? Fault? Afraid? Joy? Laziness? Let’s be honest.

3. Filter

Let’s eliminate. Perhaps, having taken our imagination to the limit of 10 minutes, we realize that in that first dump of the list there are things that do not suit us.

For example, let’s say you think you would go back to smoking a cigarette after having quit for thirty years. Well, surely in point two we will have discovered that this is one of the things that is best postponed until we only have 10 minutes left. Those that attack us in any way, let’s eliminate them.

If we think that our life is made up of successive periods of 10 minutes, it will be easier for us to think about which things to choose from the list.

4. Prioritize

Let’s pick three. Only three, but we are going to do them. Let us select those that represent a challenge, those in which we will need courage. Let’s choose those in which we will have to give our best version and will require positive feelings in relation to the world and ourselves.

5. Make a commitment

Let’s write it as the objective that we are going to meet. That is, as a contract with ourselves, a commitment to life and the energy that we are going to need. And it is that if before we have said that a list on a blank paper is a mirror, a writing, handwritten, in our own handwriting, it is a commitment and a reminder. Because if we get lost, we can go back to that newsroom and regain the strength with which we decided to commit ourselves.

Now, let’s ask ourselves: Will we wait until we have 10 minutes to live or are we going to change things in our lives in the next 10 minutes?