Three Hours to Live
Shrink the time you have and your priorities come to the surface, which is why asking what you would do with three hours left to live tells you immediately who and what is important in your life.
Dandapani describes the question he asks at his events: if you had three hours left to live, what would you do? He shows how the answers change as the time shrinks from fifty years to one year to three hours, and asks you to take the priorities that surface and build them into your daily routines now.
What this talk covers
- When he asks an audience what they would do with three hours left to live, almost everyone is immediately clear, and every one of them would get up and leave the room.
- With three hours left, Joe would collect his wife and children and go home, and he would skip the sale at his favourite store, skip the twenty minute coffee line, and not answer a call from someone he did not like.
- If the same people are told they have fifty years to live, they all stay; hands go up as the time drops to ten years, then one year, until at three hours the room is empty.
- Shrinking time brings to the surface both who and what is important in your life and who and what is not.
- Take the priorities that surfaced and insert them into your existing life and daily routines now, rather than waiting until death is knocking on your door.
How do you get orange juice? Very easy. Squeeze the orange. How do you figure out your priorities in life? You squeeze time.Dandapani
Questions
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People with families almost always say they would pick up their spouse from work, collect their children from school, and go home to spend the time with them. They would not stop to shop, would not queue for a coffee, and would not take a call from someone they did not like.
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You squeeze time. Imagine you have only a few hours left and notice who and what rises to the surface of your mind, and who and what does not. That is the same way you get juice out of an orange.
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Insert them into your existing life and start incorporating them into your daily routines. If facing death is what would make you focus on them, there is no reason to wait for death before doing it.
Transcript
737 words · 4:37
I often ask this question at my events, if you had three hours left to live, what would you do? And it's interesting to hear the answers. Almost always people are very, very clear
what they would do if they had three hours to live. The first thing is they're not gonna sit here listening to me continue to talk. They would all leave.
No one has ever raised their hand, no matter where I was speaking, speaking in which country around the world and said, no, I'll spend the remaining three hours listening to you talk. Nope. Everyone said they were going to get up and leave.
I don't think most of them would even say bye to me. They'd be out the door. And I usually would pick one or two people from the audience and I would ask them like, Joe, what would you do if you had three hours to live? The common answer for people that have families It would say, well, Joe would say, I'd go pick up my wife from work and grab my
kids from school and go home and spend time with them. Okay. Then I would ask Joe, if you are passing by your favorite store that had a big red sign outside that said 90% off, everything must go, would you swing by and pick up
something from your favorite store? Joe would go with three hours to live, absolutely not. Then I asked Joe, would you swing by Starbucks to pick out one last cinnamon almond milk latte? It's down in line for about 20 minutes.
He was absolutely not going to do that. I'll skip the latte. What if someone you didn't like was calling you, would you pick up the phone and talk to them? He answers as well.
Nope, we didn't do that. So when I tell Joe that he has three hours to live, all of a sudden he becomes really, really clear who and what is important in his life. When I shrink his time, his clarity of focus increases exponentially. If I said to Joe, you have 50 years to live, would you stay for the rest of my workshop?
The answer always is yes. I've never had anyone, anywhere in the world I've spoken to when I've asked them, if you had 50 years to live, would you leave this workshop? No one's put up their hand.
Every single one of them would stay. I reduced the time and I said, what about if you had 10 years to live, would you leave? A few hands go up. What if you had one year to live? Would you leave? More hands go up and by the time I get done, three hours, the room is empty. Everyone's gone. So what's it saying? When you shrink time,
you increase the clarity. When you tell someone they only have a few hours to live, what it does is it pushes to the surface who and what is important in their life. When you tell someone they only have this much time to live, like three hours to live, it brings to the surface of their mind who is important in their life,
what is important in life. It also brings to the forefront of their mind who is not important in their life and what is not important in their life. What What that does is all of a sudden it tells you very, very clearly what are the priorities in your life.
How do you get orange juice? Very easy. Squeeze the orange. How do you figure out your priorities in life?
You squeeze time. You squeeze time, your priorities come to the surface. And once your priorities come to the surface, now you know what you should be focusing on.
all of a sudden you become really clear who and what's important in your life. Take those priorities that have come to your surface of your mind, the forefront of your mind, take those priorities and insert it into your existing life. Start incorporating them into your daily routines, making them a greater part of your life because
if you were faced with death, that's what you would focus on. So why wait till death is knocking on your door before you start focusing on those things? Start focusing on them now. Adjust your life to your priorities.