I’ve often heard the question “What would you do if you had one more day left to live?” I find that, for me, this question isn’t as life changing as it might appear.

If I had only one day left, clearly I wouldn’t be spending it at work. It’s only 24 hours, so I would likely go to the beach or forest with my family and spend the day just in their company. I’d try to soak up all their laughter and joy and remember how they smell, how they laugh, and hug them all day long. I’d tell them how much I love them and how much they mean to me. I’d also take a bunch of time to send each friend a little note to thank them for who they are.

All of which is great but it’s not exactly correlated to how I might change my life in general. The fact is, I will (hopefully) not die tomorrow. If I only had one day to live, some of the longer term goals are unachievable. I cannot save more money for my kids’ future. Or do a longer term project that might be important to me. So comparing how I live my last day to how I might then change my current life isn’t realistic to me. (Sure they might be some takeaways but not as much as I’d like.)

I think a more interesting question is “What would you do if you knew you had five years left to live?” Five years is a long enough time that I would likely not quit working altogether. I have time to complete some of the longer-term goals. I wouldn’t just drop or uproot my life.

But I might still make some big changes.

Five years is long enough to make some lasting changes, long enough to think things through. But it’s short enough to not want to waste a minute of it. It’s short enough to envision the end and work backwards and put more value on each minute, on each day. On each week.

I think knowing I had only five years left would significantly change the way I live my life. I feel like I would get more choosy with how I spend my days. Who I hang out with. How much energy I spend worrying about different aspects of my life. I think thinking about five years allows me a more balanced perspective.

To be fair, there are some exceptions even in the “five year” scenario. For example, I might not worry about my weight or nutrition or exercise. At least not as diligently as now. One of the reasons I do a bunch of these health-initiatives is for long-term health. Which is sort of moot in the the “five year” scenario.

But despite those loopholes, I still think the “How would you change your life if you knew you only had five more years to live” gives you more food for thought. More ways to look at your life realistically and see what changes you could implement right now. There’s no reason you can’t live a more fulfilled life right now. One that aligns with your values and hopes and wishes.

So that’s my challenge for you today. Think about how you would live your life if you only had five more years. What would you change? What would stay the same? What would you never do again? What would you do more often?

I have this lovely pattern where one tiny event will happen and I will start doubting myself. It could be an unreturned email. Or a funny look that I completely misinterpret. Or maybe a legitimate mess up. Something will happen to make me go to my “bad place” and start the conversations in my head. From there on, I get stuck in this “bad place” and continually try to figure out why I am there. What did I do wrong? How could I have done differently? What is this person thinking of me now? It’s a cycle and it lives inside my head.

Sounds familiar?

Ruminating.

For the longest time, I thought every single person did this. Apparently it’s not the case cause I’ve since met people who don’t get caught up like I do. Who don’t trying to think their way out of these kinds of problems. The first time I met someone like that I remember thinking how lucky they were. How I wished I could turn mine off too.

And I was so right.

Here’s what I learned in this week’s class: Rumination is not good for you. For these kinds of problems, you cannot think your way out of them. This is not the kind of problem where you might collect more data, consult friends. think a bit and solve. This is you getting “hooked in” to a thought and then trying to ruminate your way out of it. The kind of stuff that hooks you in again and again. To make it easier to distinguish and remember, she put up two images. A fish hook and then the thinker. The first step is the thought that hooks you in and then the second step is sitting there and trying to solve it by thinking your way out of it. For those situations, ruminating mostly causes suffering.

As we meditated in class, she told us to pay attention to the thoughts that came up so we could recognize random ones like “this room is hot” or “oh i need to send email to so and so” vs the ones that hooked us in like ” oh i forgot to do this thing again. i always forget to do what i said i would. why do i behave like this each time and let down the people around me.” She said when such a thought came up, to notice it and then to let it go. (This was open awareness meditation where you imagine a blue sky and visualize your thoughts passing by like clouds. So you’d note the hooking thought but not get hooked by it.)

I’ve been thinking about this image of a hook since the class. And I think it’s so appropriate. My hooks are all around the stories I’ve created for my life. When a situation hooks me in, I don’t even notice, I just fall into the abyss of the story. My goal now is to start paying more attention to the situations, words, people that cause me to get “hooked in” so instead of ruminating, I can notice them and say “aha! there it is again, i’m not getting caught in it this time.” And maybe if I can notice it and let it go enough times, it will stop hooking me in at some point.

Like most other things, here’s another area where raising awareness is the key. The more I recognize it, the less I might fall into the abyss.

If I’m lucky.

This year has been a challenging one for me. I feel like I fell into some kind of hole back in March and took forever to get out of it. And when I finally did for a few months, school started and my schedule went upside down and some of my peace went along with it. I’ve been working consistently in the last few weeks to bring it back.

One of the things I’ve been doing in this vein is to reframe my thinking. I’ve noticed that my most common point of view is of anxiety and worry. I make a lot of things bigger than they are and then I feel like they will swallow me whole if I don’t do them perfectly. That the world will tilt on its axis.

But the trick, I think, is to do the opposite.

The trick to life, I’m learning, is to show up, be/do your best at that moment, and then just let things be.

That’s pretty much all we can do. All the worrying leading up to things and afterwards is quite pointless. This is not to say there isn’t room for preparation and reflection. Both are useful. But not the anxiety and stress I seem to add. Also not the identity-attribution. No one thing defines me. If I mess up at work, it doesn’t mean I am a worthless person. If I yell at my kid, he will not hate me forever. It doesn’t make me less worthy. To me, each and everything I do seems to be super-most-important. Because somewhere along the line I decided that integrity was of utmost importance to me and that I had to commit to everything with equal vigor.

Here’s what I am learning: not everything is equally important. It’s good to learn to say no and turn things down that I cannot follow through on. But even after all those, not everything on my plate is equally important. If I live as if they are I end up either burning out or stressing out.

And here’s the worst part: for me, my kids and husband are what’s most important. Hands down. But when I am burned out or stressed out, they are the first people I treat badly. Partly cause they are right there and maybe because deep down I know they’ll forgive me.

But they shouldn’t have to.

So I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to remind myself that I will not be able to do it all equally well. I can show up at this moment and deliver my best and then I have to let it go so I can save my best energy for the most important things and people.

In an effort to reframe, I’ve also been trying to look at things from different points of view. Instead of thinking of something as make or break, I’m reminding myself that it’s an opportunity to learn and grow and if it works out, great, but if not, I’ve learned and that’s valuable on its own. When looking at it as a learning experience, things seem less scary to me. I put less pressure on myself. And when the anxiety is gone, I can be so much more present. Which often allows me to perform better, be more authentic, and feel more empowered.

All because I choose to look at the same thing differently.

It’s not easy to turn off who you are and I know anxiety and worry are a part of who I am but I’ve noticed that this reframing does work and it’s a trick I can use to bring more peace into my life, my tasks.

And anything that brings more peace is always welcome in my life.