The One Question That Should Guide Your Daily Life: "How Do I Want to be Remembered?"
Whenever I’m asked the question of “if there’s one dead person you can revive and meet again in your life, who would it be,” I never hesitate to answer: “My grandfather.”
He was a self-made man who emanated an infectious larger-than-life spirit. And although he only graced my life with his presence for a short 15 years, I still remember him very fondly: A resilient businessman who rose every morning at 5.00 am, a loving father who devoted the entirety of himself to his family and friends, and a kind and generous human, loved and respected by many for his unwavering commitment to higher ideals and utmost self-respect.
Every time I am pulled back into the wave of his recollection, I smile, for it’s one that splashes with love, yearning, and nostalgia. He continues to be a big source of inspiration in my life, and to this very day, whenever I speak of him, my heart softens and my eyes sparkle.
It's this warm memory of him and the impact it has left on me that has got me wondering, perhaps there’s a better question that should guide our daily life?
Nowadays, we tend to consume too much of our finite daily energy exerted upon the wrong questions. Time and again, whenever we’re feeling lost, unsure of which direction to take ourselves, and are searching for some urgent clarity, we’re promoted to ask ourselves these rational questions:
“What do I want?”
“Who do I want to become?”
“What do I want my life to look like in five years?”
“How can I achieve the success I so desperately crave in my field?”
These are all great questions, but they’re not exactly the right questions we should begin with. Why? Because they fall short on two fronts.
First, they assume you know exactly what it is you want, and that’s often not the case. Second, they tend to be self-centred and thus neglect to factor in the potential impact we will have on others.
The One Question That Should Guide Your Daily Life
Sometimes we chase things that we think we want, only to discover, as we pursue them, that we don’t actually want them. Other times, we can be somewhat certain that we know exactly what it is we want to achieve in our personal life, relationships, or career pursuits.
In either case, we must not allow those ambitions to solely guide our everyday life choices. Because the meaning of life is less about how much we accomplish in this world (the destination) and more about how present, content, and connected we are to our truest selves and everything else around us (the journey). It’s also less about the work we do and more about how deeply our actions touch the lives of others.
Hence, blindly pursuing whatever it is we think we want at the expense of everything else is not the way we should be going about our lives.
We need to be more intentional, more aligned with our own values.
We need a timeless overarching question that we can revert back to time and time again. A question that reflects our core personal values, shows us what we stand for, and guides our daily actions.
That question is this:
“How do I want to be remembered?”
It’s a Question With Three Core Benefits
How do you want to be remembered as a father or a mother? As a brother or a sister. As a friend. A parent. How do you want to be remembered as a colleague at work? As a manager or a leader. As a writer or content creator. How do you want to be remembered as a human being?
These are the questions we should be asking ourselves time and time again.
For me, as a human, a son, a brother, and a friend, I want to be remembered as a calm, kind, generous, and loving soul who reminds you of the joy of being alive. I want to be remembered as someone who was a pleasure to be around.
As a writer, whose words are not bound by time or space, I want to be remembered as the one who challenges you to keep creating, exploring, and growing while giving you an optimistic lift of the heart. The one who empowers you to search deeper for the beauty inside yourself.
As a creator, I want to be remembered as the person who was bold enough to chase his own calling and pave his own path, inspiring others to do the same, while spreading goodness with his time on earth.
When you take a minute to considers all the roles you play in your life and then write down how you want to be remembered through them, you’re slowly surfacing what truly matters to you—you’re revealing your own cards to yourself.
This has three benefits:
It tells you what you stand for (what your core personal values are).
It shows you how you want to show up in your daily life.
It roots you in the present.
Once you’re clear on how you want to be remembered, all you have to do is start acting in that way, right now.
If you want to be remembered for being kind, then you clearly stand for kindness and compassion. Start acting with kindness and compassion, today.
If you want to be remembered as the caring person who helped others heal, then start guiding others onto the journey of healing, today.
And if you want to be remembered for your courage and fight for human rights—if that’s what you stand for—then start being that conversation changer, today.
Another Way of Asking this Question: “How do You Want to Make People Feel?”
There’s a beautiful quote that has been attributed to Maya Angelou:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Asking yourself “how do I want to be remembered” is another way of asking, “how do I want to make people feel?”
Why? Because in their most basic form, human beings are first and foremost emotional creatures. We are feeling and sensing beings. We respond to another’s actions emotionally, and our own emotions drive us to adopt certain behaviours.
So, if you’re a leader, think about your employees and how you want them to feel when they work with you. If you’re a writer, think about your readers and how you want them to feel after they read your words.
And if you’re a parent, think about your children and how you want them to remember their childhood. Is the most important thing for them to say, “We always had a perfectly tidy house?”
Or, as author Beth Kempton writes in her book Wabi Sabi, do you want them to say: “Our house was a lovely happy house, where we felt safe and comfortable. We were always loved and look after, and we were taught how to love and look after one another. We learned to treasure what we had, and even more than that, to treasure our time together.”
In short, decide what you stand for and show up to it, today. Decide what your story is going to be.
Allow The Answers to Guide Your Actions and Your Actions to Shape You Into Who You’re Becoming
The way I see it, when we first reflect upon how we want to be remembered, we unravel what we stand for and what truly matters to us. This helps us better understand how we should show up in this world and what actions we can start taking today. And as we continue to follow through on that promise, so will we continue to become who we’re consciously choosing to become.
In other words, while we tend to start with the question of “what do I want” or “who do I want to become,” if we instead begin by asking ourselves “how do I want to be remembered,” the answers will naturally lead us there. They will serve as a compass to guide your daily actions. And the actions you act upon day after day will more clearly shape who you’re becoming.
How Do You Want to be Remembered?
When it comes to my grandfather, I’m not exactly sure how he wanted to be remembered, but within our family, we remember him as a kind, loving, and generous soul who opened the beauty of his own heart and poured it upon every person who crossed his path.
Time and again, unexpected events will remind us of the universal truth of life: That death hangs over us and lingers in the space we cannot touch. In the blink of an eye, in the flash of a second, it can capture us and strip us bare of the most precious blessing of all: The gift of being alive.
While you’re still here, you’re still writing your story.
So, how do you want to be remembered for your time on earth?
That’s the first and foremost question that should guide our everyday life.