Yes I have written my obituary. I have written it a few times throughout my life and it is time to write it again. When I write this current obituary it will again focus on the future and not the past. My experience in writing my obituary has always been helpful and revealing.
This exercise I first encountered in Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Over the years I have mentioned this idea and rarely has anyone gotten very excited about it. People do not like writing about death and especially their own.
I suggest writing your obituary beginning now and progressing until the end of your life. Writing about what has already happened is just reviewing history. You want to be writing about how you would want the rest of your life to be. Be fanciful and be realistic. It is most likely too late to join the space program or become a pole vaulter. This is about what you can really reasonably and fancifully create.
Your obituary is more than speculation, it is a constructive influence creating the future. Write it the way you would most like it to be, how you would feel fulfilled. If you later want to go back and write the history of life up until now, great. Now, write the future as you best imagine it. Write whatever comes to mind. You can come back and change it anytime so perfection is not necessary.
Do you know why Dr. Alfred Nobel established the peace prize? Because in 1888 a French Newspaper in error published a headline about him. The headline read: “The Merchant of Death is now Dead”. (He had invented and patented dynamite which became a very popular means of killing in warfare.)
What do you want the rest of your life to represent? How do you want to be remembered? Take up to an hour to write this. From this exercise you may more clearly define what you desire. You will gain in your sense of destiny, improve your clarity, purpose, and meaning.
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. This process has power.