Picture Your 96-Year-Old Self
Picture yourself at 96 in five categories, physical, mental, financial, spiritual and family, write three things you want to be true in each, and you will know what to work on today.
Dandapani describes the 50 year plan he works with: look at the end of your life, say at 96, and write three things you want to be true physically, mentally, financially, spiritually and family wise. He shows how each of those choices reaches back into today, and explains how to build the picture by taking segments from different people when you do not yet know what you want.
What this talk covers
- He works on a 50 year plan, looking at himself at 96 across five categories, physically, mentally, financially, spiritually and family wise, with three things written down in each.
- If you want a great memory at 96, stop saying you are terrible with names every time you meet someone, because saying that daily is what you arrive with.
- Physically he wants to be flexible at 96, not a gymnast but able to sit cross legged for extended periods, so he knows to work on flexibility and hip opening now.
- If he wants to hug his daughter fifty years from now, he has to hug her now, because a relationship at 96 is built by what is done today.
- If you do not know what you want, look around at role models and take segments like pieces of a mandarin orange, one piece from each person plus your own ideas, which is how he built his picture of an entrepreneur's life after leaving the monastery with no concept of money.
If I want to hug my daughter 50 years from now, I should start hugging her now.Dandapani
Questions
-
Look at yourself at the end of your life, for example at 96, and in five categories, physical, mental, financial, spiritual and family, write three things you want to be true. That picture tells you what to focus on now, and you can then come back and build a one, three or five year plan toward it.
-
Look around you at role models and take pieces from several of them, the way a mandarin orange comes in segments. He left the monastery knowing nothing about entrepreneurship or money, so he took a piece from one person, a piece from another, added his own ideas, and formed a whole picture.
-
Because it tells you where to invest your finite time and energy each day, and it lets you articulate what you are trying to achieve. It is very hard for anyone to help you if you cannot say what you want.
Transcript
784 words · 3:58
I like to work on a 50 year plan and 50 is a number that I use randomly. So I'm 51, for example. So one way you could approach this is look at the end of your life, just say you are 96 years old, for example, and look at yourself in five categories, physically, mentally,
financially, spiritually, and family wise. For each of those categories, write down three things that you would see yourself at the end of your life, just say at 96 years old, right? 50 years from now, for example.
So let's look at it mentally, for example. Someone may say, I want to have great memory when I'm 96. Then what do I do now? Well, one of the things I should stop doing right now
is stop saying, I'm terrible with names. How many times you meet somebody and you introduce yourself and go like, oh, I'm not going to remember that. I'm terrible with names.
Well, if you say that every day, I can guarantee you when you reach 96, you're going to have terrible memory. So now that you have a painted picture, a clear picture of where you see yourself mentally in the future, you know what to focus on now.
And there's only three goals that I may have mentally. Now I know what to go narrow and deep on. Same way physically. I meditate and I like to be flexible when I'm 96.
I don't need to be a gymnast. I don't need to wrap my leg around my head. But I want to be able to cross-legged for extended periods of time. So now that I have a vision of what it is I see myself when I'm 96 years old,
I know what to work on now. I know I need to work on my flexibility and my hip openings and be able to sit cross legged for extended periods of time. I have a daughter.
What is my relationship with my daughter when I'm 96? Can we have conversations on different topics? Do we hug? Do we shake hands?
If I want to hug my daughter 50 years from now, I should start hugging her now. Because if I don't hug her now, then I'm not going to be hugging her 50 years from now. Sometimes, then you come back and it's okay to work on a one-year plan or a three-year plan or a five-year plan, but having a greater picture of the future allows
us to know what the next steps are. And you know, to address one of the points you made, you know, Aaron, it's like, how do I know sometimes what I want? Sometimes people say, I don't even know what I want. Look around you. There's so many role models that you can pick examples for. So the way I build my painted picture of my life, so for example,
and I left the monastery, I didn't know anything about entrepreneurship. So I looked around me at entrepreneurs and I looked at it like a Mandarin orange
that has segments. And if I took a piece from you, Aaron, and I took a piece from Jim, and I took a piece from Julie,
and a piece from Sally, and I put those pieces together along with some of my ideas, those combined pieces and my idea form a whole
of what I would vision myself having an entrepreneur's life. Similarly, physically, I may not know what I want physically or financially.
I lived as a monk, I had no money. So I had no concept of wealth or how to make money, how to invest money, keep money, grow money. So I looked around me and I took pieces.
No one person can emulate everything for you, but if you took slices from different people, you could piece them together and have a clear painted picture.
So, okay, this is the vision of where I see my life going. Now, can I come back to today and create a one year goal a three-year goal and start working towards going there. Now also, if I wanted your help, for example, Aaron,
I could go to you and articulate to you and say, hey, Aaron, this is where I want to go. This is what I'm trying to achieve. Can you help me to get there?
But it's very hard for you to help me if I can't even articulate to you what it is I want. So having clarity around a vision of what we see for our lives is so helpful
in knowing where to invest our finite time and energy every day.