Last week I wrote to you about a macabre motivational idea…

A ‘Memento mori’ is a reminder that we’re all going to die, eventually.

Not a pleasant thought.

Well not at first, anyway.

Yet it can also be hugely enlightening, because it helps you strip your life down to what’s truly important.

What you want to spend your time on…

What kind of relationships do you want…

What kind of business you want…

What kind of legacy you want to leave….

So I suggested a series of mental exercises where you imagine you’ve been given a memento mori…. and then you adjust your priorities and goals accordingly.

My aim was not to make you miserable (apologies to anyone who might have found it a bleak or troubling exercise) but to help inspire and motivate you.

Anyway, after I sent that email, I received an extraordinary reply from an 81 year old reader.

He’s had not one but TWO near death experiences that he claims have changed him for the better.

A Truck Driver’s Brush With Death

“Your explanation of Memento Mori has had me reflecting more deeply than I have of late,” he says. “Most of my life, my mindset has been on setting my direction… then head down and achieving what I could but, making sure I enjoyed it.”

For a while, he was running his own haulage business, a job which took him hurtling in his truck across Europe and into the Middle East…

In one incident, he was halfway down Mont Blanc in the Alps in pitch darkness at 2am when a minus 8 degree blizzard struck.

He was full of fear and wondered if he was going to die right there on the mountain.

“Then it’s 10 am, and the sun breaks through showing the mountain in all its magnificent glory,” he writes, “making me feel that life’s good with all it has to give, if you’re prepared to accept the lesser pleasantries.”

The second incident happened in Turkey, when an intruder broke into his truck as he slept in the bunk.

“As I sat up I was confronted by a person brandishing a rather large knife,” he writes. “Fortunately my baseball bat was enough to change his mind about whatever were his intentions, and he left rather quickly.”

As he lay thinking about what had just happened, a thought struck him:

“I could have been dead now, had he entered my truck more stealthily.”

This notion made him feel terrible at first…

But then as he cooked breakfast in his truck, eggs crackling on his tiny in-cab cooker, life suddenly felt MORE precious.

“Had I not had these and other negative experiences,” he writes, “I feel that I could have been a very different, life-poor person today. “

Even though he’s now in poor health, my reader finds that the premise ‘live your life as if today could be your last’ keeps him going.

And he’s still looking for another business adventure!

What Would Help Inspire YOU To Move On With Your Goal?

I love getting emails like this, because it takes these motivational ideas away from a computer screen and shows how they can work for real people in the real world, with all its ups and downs.

Because here’s the truth…

You can’t always control your circumstances – for instance, your health, your family situation, and your financial burdens.

But you can choose how you respond to them.

Even when things get hard, or even scary, there’s often something good that can come out of it – even if it’s just an appreciation for what you DO have, or the seed of an idea for a new project.

That’s why I wanted to share my reader’s story..

Those moments of fear in his life were also the moments that made him see it clearly, and truly value it.

Similarly, it’s points of near-disaster that can be most illuminating for you, too – if you’re willing to reframe them.

Not because it’s likely that you’re fending off a knife-wielding intruder with a baseball bat or stuck on the side of a mountain in a blizzard.

But it could be that you’ve suffered an illness… lost a lot of money…. experienced burnout, fatigue or depression… messed up a business project.

Sometimes those painful times where everything goes wrong at the same points that bring about positive change later on!

For example, because of past setbacks you might have convinced yourself you’re too inexperienced, too slow, too unfit, too poor, or too behind the curve to pursue a home business.

Or you might be telling yourself it’s just not the right time…

If so, bear in mind that my 81 year old reader is not phased by his advanced age or his poor health.

His motto is, “Head down and onward.”

If you can harness that clarity of a ‘memento mori’ to move forward with what’s important, you can do great things…. even if you feel everything’s against you!

On the subject of which, before I go…

If you’ve had a brush with disaster, disappointment, or something more serious that changed your outlook, hit reply and let me know.

I promise that I will read every message!