What happened to my goals when I wrote my own eulogy?

Recently, one of my mentors asked me to write my own eulogy. He wanted me to write it from the perspective of somebody I love reading it at my own funeral: maybe my wife, maybe one of my sons.

I'll confess, it felt a bit morbid. But the process completely changed what I thought was most important, and it put the emphasis on a new set of priorities.

A tribe of goal setters

As a founder and owner of seven different businesses and operating entities, I attend tons of conferences and read no shortage of business and self-help books. Many are dedicated to 10-year targets, 3-year pictures, 1-year plans, and career visions, where our people are encouraged to write out their perfect life as it relates to career, finances, and whatever else is important to them.

We're a tribe of goal setters. We write plans to achieve those goals, and scorecards to track results and celebrate productivity. Most of our business conversations come down to whether or not we're achieving our goals.

I'm all for that. But what made this exercise so different was how much it changed my perspective on goals, and on time.

What seemed important 10 years out

When I set goals focused on my career, or even on what's important to me about life 5 or 10 years from now, my priorities tend to center on:

1.) How much free time I'm going to have

2.) What I want my workdays to look like

3.) How much money I'm going to earn

4.) What my net worth, and therefore my passive income, may look like

There are also some things in there about my fitness and health and how many vacations I'm taking with my family. All of it seems critically important when I'm looking 5 or 10 years out.

Then I sat down to write my eulogy, as though my son were reading it after I'd passed, and most of that list suddenly seemed irrelevant.

What took shape at the end

When we go out to the end of our lives and think back on how we want to be remembered by the people we love, completely different things take shape. For me, all of a sudden, these became the priorities:

1.) Living in my true God-given identity as His beloved son.

2.) Having a deep, abiding relationship with God, realizing I'm fully known and loved by Him, and deeply loving Him in return.

3.) Having a thriving, deep, fulfilling relationship with my wife, marked by authenticity, vulnerability, affection, and sacrifice.

4.) Having a lifelong connection with my children, with our kids living a life where they genuinely want to be with us even when they don't have to.

5.) Faithful stewardship and generosity: stewarding financial resources wisely and generously, helping others find freedom in a life with Jesus, and sharing the Gospel.

6.) Deep, abiding friendships with the people in my small group from church, and an authentic church community.

All of the metrics around income, net worth, work hours, and achievement fell into the background.

To be clear, your list may look different from mine. My faith sits at the center of my life, so it sits at the center of my eulogy. I'm not pushing that on you here, I'm just challenging you to consider what would show up on yours.

What my dad talked about at the end

While I was working on this, I reread the eulogy I wrote for my dad when he passed in 2021. It reminded me that in the last year of his life (after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer), I asked him 80 questions about everything that was important to him through his whole life. With his answers, I wrote a book called The Life of Bill Hooke.

Now, if you knew my dad, you know the majority of his life was spent working. With partners, he built 23 housing subdivisions, multiple hotels, apartment complexes, and real estate agencies. He was sometimes known to work until 2 in the morning. Dad was divorced 3 times and had 4 different spouses. He prioritized work for most of his life, and growing up, I remember him talking about it all the time. I share that with love, as simply part of his story.

Yet when I printed his answers to those 80 questions, I noticed that only one time, in a fraction of a sentence, did he mention anything at all about his work. He said almost nothing about real estate, the developments, all the housing he built, his net worth, or any of it.

After spending 60 hours a week working for who knows how many years, at the end of his life he talked about his relationships: with his friends, with God, with his wife, and with his kids. Those relationships, and the stories that came with them, made up almost the entire book.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know about what's most important in life. Sometimes it just helps to hear it from somebody who's at the end.

Walking it back to today

Once I finished my eulogy, I went 20 years out with those things in mind and realized they were still the priority. I brought them in to 15 years, then 10, then 5, and it was evident they were still the priority. When I brought them into 1 year, next month, and next week, it was clear those were still the priorities.

Stephen Covey called this beginning with the end in mind. When I started with the end and worked my way backward, the things I know to be true stayed the priorities, whether it's today or 50 years from now. When I start with how I'm feeling today and project out a year, that's when things get blurry and, quite honestly, not all that accurate.

Starting with the eulogy

Going forward, I'm going to set my goals in life by starting with my eulogy and working backward to today. I'm much more confident that when I get to the end of my life, I'll have had my eyes on the things that were most valuable. Hopefully, I'll have invested the majority of my time and energy into those things as well.

If you'd like to try it, I wrote out the simple steps I used in How to write your own eulogy (and plan backward from it).

And if you write yours and notice a gap between what's on that page and what's on your calendar, I'd love to talk it through with you. You can book an Unstuck Call anytime.

Thank you!

-Dave Hooke.