Why An Obituary Clarifies Life

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Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, the show where we have honest, grounded conversations about the inner work of being well in real life. I'm your host, Yusuf, and today I'm joined by Maylina Sutton. Mylena is a leadership consultant, growth coach, and the founder of both Pink Boxes Club and Voltage Vista Consultancy. She is known as the leadership fanatic, and her work runs on a single through line that all leadership is personal. And that the version of you at work and the version of you at home are not actually two different people. So today we are talking about something bold, beautiful, and a little uncomfortable. Why writing your own obituary might be one of the most clarified things a woman or a person or really any of us can do. With that, I welcome my guest Maylena to the shoch.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Hi, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I think this is gonna be great.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So before we dive into the heart of it, I want to start somewhere personal. So when you think back to the moment this idea, the obituary as a clarifying tool first landed on you, what was happening in your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

You know, it's funny. Um I don't remember how I got the aha, but I was turning 40. So it seemed like the perfect timing because not quite at what I think of as the halfway mark of life, but getting there. And um it was just uh a wonderful uh opportunity after I had come back from celebrating my birthday in Jamaica with my cousins. And then when I got back, I said, you know, I want to do a little introspection and think about my life, who I am, where I'm going. And it was probably not probably, it is definitely

Urgency, Regret, And Relationship Repair

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the best personal growth activity I've ever done.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Okay. You know, the misconception that writing your own obituary is morbid, dark, or somehow tempting fate. But the way you frame it sounds like the opposite of that, almost like a love letter to the life you still get to live. So, what is your understanding of it and what is the misconception that is there around it?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

You know, uh, I happened to bump into a guy at a store over the weekend, and we started talking about obituary writing, and he was of that mindset that that is creepy, that is weird, why would he want to do that? And because my lena is cynical sometimes, I'm like, well, he's kind of old. He might feel like he's on deck, that might be creeping him out. But in general, um, the reason that I like the activity, and it's actually one of the tools that I use in my coaching work, is because I look at it through this lens. There's two things. If, in fact, if life ended for you today, do you realize it is not about the body per se, but you have no more opportunity to fix anything, to change anything, to complete anything. So it creates this sense of urgency in the sense that yes, life is a long-term marathon, we hope, but the things that you can take care of today, you should. The relationships that you need to repair today, you should, because you never know when your time is over. So it creates that sense of urgency to make you stop taking for granted what you have. And then the second part that I think is absolutely beautiful, um, because you recognize what's behind you can't be recovered even if you're unhappy with it, you have to make decisions about what you're going to do moving forward. Um, to give you an example, there is a person in my life, um, it's actually my dad, frankly. He and I were in the middle of a really rough relationship. And when I completed that obituary process, I decided I was no longer arguing with him. Um, because we were in a vicious cycle where we were going around and around on the same thing. He wasn't budging, I wasn't budging, but because of my family culture, the expectation was that that is your father, you do these things. And um, the only other conversation that I had about that with anybody in my family was with my favorite cousin. She was 90 years old. And what I said to her, and it was, you don't do this in my family. I said, I understand how you feel about the situation, but I am not going to discuss that with you anymore because I've made a decision about what I'm going to do. And there is nothing that you can say that is going to change that. So we don't need to fight about it. And I made several decisions in my life about how I was going to change my behavior after I wrote the obituary because I realized what we sometimes do, we just kind of spin in circles. We want perfection, we want exactly what. And sometimes there's a tension in life where you can't get exactly what you want. Make a decision, move on.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

And that is such a beautiful reframe. You know, we have been taught that thinking about endings is a way of inviting them in. But sometimes thinking about the ending is the only way we finally start paying attention to the middle

Contradictions And The Stories We Tell

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or to the present.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Indeed, absolutely. You have to think about it. Um, I think to avoid thinking about the end, um, I don't personally enjoy introspective work. I do. Um, I don't get why it would make you so uncomfortable as to run from it unless you know that you have quite a few internal contradictions, um, and you don't want to do the work to work that out. I mean, we all have those contradictions, but you've got to be willing to face yourself. I mean, something as simple as this. I used to say that um I was really concerned about being really, really healthy. And I was getting up every day running for about four or five out miles, and I enjoyed it. But almost every afternoon, there's a restaurant around the corner. I would go and get the French fries when they were piping hot in this huge container of ice cream. And I would sit in the bark lot and dip the fries in the ice cream. It's the best sweet and salty thing ever. And one day I'm putting that in the car and I had this aha moment. Are you running because you want to be healthy, or are you running because you want to be thin? The person who doesn't know you doesn't know the difference, but you know you. Um, all they see is this relatively small person. Um, and I think when people are unwilling to look within, I think they are afraid to be honest about their contradictions.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, that is true.

The Quiet Signs Of Avoidance

SPEAKER_01 7:48

And you know, I want to bring this into everyday life. Like walk me through what avoidance actually looks like in someone whose life appears on the outside to be perfectly fine. The capable leader, the present mother, the dependent, the dependable partner. So, what are the signs that they might be quietly, you know, there is there needs to be something that should be changed?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Uh, there are a couple things that I think of are really good indicators that the person is struggling to confront themselves and to address the things that they need to address. Um, one of the things that I see that happens often, um, they keep, again, going around the same mountain because you've got to eventually make a decision. When you see that um the behaviors you're indulging in aren't giving you a different outcome, no matter how many different ways you try to engage in the same behavior, you need to make a choice. And I think the longer somebody is stuck in a cycle where they aren't seeing any improvements or anything happen differently, that's an indication that they are avoiding something else. Even if the something else is simply accepting that they've got to move on. The other thing that I see with people when they are avoiding themselves, when they are on the line between accepting responsibility, but not wanting to completely own the impact or the consequences of their actions. I often will see in those conversations a hedging instead of outright saying, this is what I did, it turns into I was having such a very hard time. And I don't want to reduce it to excuse making, but you can be right in the sense that you have problems and you are still responsible for what you did. Um, one of the things I think that people struggle with when they are avoiding themselves is that they don't want to take on the full weight of the things they did wrong. And what I often say is this if you are not responsible for any of the things that went wrong, you are not responsible for any of the things that went well either. You are just a victim of circumstance. So if you are willing to give away the credit for the good things, I might let you have a discussion about not being responsible for any of the bad things. So I think when people don't want to confront themselves, they have a really hard time with holding both of those truths together. I did have problems, but I did make those choices. And I often think, last but not least, the third thing people do in terms of just self-medicating or avoiding themselves. Um, frankly, I think they give in to excesses that allow them to escape themselves, whether it is food, whether it is shopping, whether it is some other sort of way of checking out. I think people find things to help them numb themselves.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah.

Reconciling Logic With Feelings

SPEAKER_01 11:06

You know, the detail lands because the signs are really dramatic. They are like whispers. The dread on a Saturday evening, the way her shoulders drop the second she's alone in the car. We just don't always trust those whispers as data.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

I think we don't trust it because I don't know about other people, but I've grown up in an environment where we are told that it's your logic that matters. And if you can't think it through and see every particular detail, then it's just your feelings, and your feelings are unimportant. Um, I hear that all the time. I even hear that at church. It's not about how you feel, it's what you do, it's what you think, and the two might not be aligned. And that is the problem. Oftentimes, what we see people struggle with is their thought process or what they think they should do logically is different than how they actually feel. You don't necessarily have to uh honor completely one or the other, but you should do the work to reconcile the two. Asking yourself, why is there a gap between what I think and how I feel? You have to be able to work that out because if you can't do that work to understand what's going on with you, then you will keep making the same choices, you will keep going around the same cycle, you've got to be willing to do that. And I think that's one of the challenges that we have at the end of the day. Um, the issue is that we are looking for ways to um frankly feel good without the work that comes along um with looking at who we are.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

And you ask people to write their obituary, but you also do something, bringbare. You ask them to live differently because of what they wrote.

Two Weekend Exercises For Change

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So, for someone listening today who's curious about this practice, what is the actual exercise you want them to try this week and how do you guide them through it?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

So, if there was something I would say that they could do this weekend, um, as a matter of fact, I'll give them two if you don't mind. If you think about your life and think about all of the things that are in motion for you right now. Um, whether it's you are trying to have a baby, whether you are going to college, whether you are caring for your mom, what think about all of the things that you have going in your life right now, things that are just ongoing. If you think about each of those, write them down. If you think about each of those things, then I'm gonna challenge you to ask yourself this. If you died today, are you okay with the condition that you've left that thing in? Whether it's a relationship, an activity, a pursuit or goal, if you stopped today, are you okay with whatever it is you've done up to this point? And sit with that, because that gives you a lot of the motivation and the power that you need to start to think about how you might change how you live, at least in that one particular in a particular area. You might say, I don't have the capacity to change all of these things, but I can focus on one of those things. If I had to do, if I had to give somebody a tip or something to try this weekend, I would say that simply because if you are in a place where you are constantly in motion, you're doing things, but those things aren't getting you to where you want to be in your life and it's not making your relationships there. I think you are putting yourself in a place where you have a lot of stress and potentially a lot of resentment. So I would encourage you to do that. If you had no other choice over the weekend and you were stuck in the house, it's raining, you need to do something with yourself. I would say investigate who you are and the status of your relationships. And if you had another opportunity, um, I would say this. If you find that you keep repeating a same cycle or same sort of choices, I would encourage you to not only think about that situation, but literally to write out what actually took place, like write it in details and not just the events, but also record how you felt about them. Because one of the things that lures us back in when we keep repeating the same negative cycles, we focus on the things that we liked about that situation without remembering why it keeps going wrong. So I would encourage you to honor that. Literally look at what it is that makes that thing so unhealthy, uh, something that you know you need to cut. And every single time you are tempted to do it again, I want you to revisit what you wrote to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Wow. That is such a useful instruction. And the slowing down is not a side note, it is the whole exercise. The blank page is only honest with you if you are honest with it first.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Exactly. You have to slow down and you have to want to look within, you have to want to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

But Mylena, clarity is not a one-time event. People will write their obituary, feel the shift, and then a few months in, life will sand it down. The

Keeping Clarity Alive Over Time

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boundary will slip, you know, the hard conversations will get postponed again. So when that happens, what do you tell them so they don't lose faith in the work they have already done?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

To me, that one is probably the easiest question you've asked all day. Um so I don't know if you ever have made bread. But when you're making bread, you're often trying to mix into the uh the ball that you have new flour so that you can make it larger, so that you can expand it. And that's how we are as people. Um, you're not just that one piece of bread, you're always having to work in the new things you learn, the new experiences you have. Um, that actually is what makes growth possible. If you are the same person today that you were 10 years ago, um something is wrong, frankly. Um, you should be working in new things. You should actually set aside time to think about what is working in your life, what isn't, and how to work it in. I I think that's a very easy thing to do in terms of clarity. Um, that's something we will all do, frankly, even until the day we actually need to use that obituary that we wrote.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Perfect. Mylena, for listeners who want to connect with you or just want to learn more about your work, where can they do that?

Where To Connect And Final Challenge

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Uh, come to my website, which is very simple. It's my first and last name, mylenasutton.com slash invitations. If you come to my website, it's absolutely a joy to have you choose any of those particular invitations. I'm also on LinkedIn under my name. So if you want to connect there, you're welcome to do that as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes. So just go and check those out. My lina, is there any last message that you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yes. And all that you do, remember that all leadership is personal. Who you are at home, who you are at work, you are the same person. You just change who you present yourself to be because you are worried about how the people in that space are going to react to you. I challenge you to own who you are and to recognize that you are the same and that people in those spaces should not have that kind of influence on you, if you will. You get to be who you are regardless of who's in a space.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Thank you so much, Mylena, for sharing your wisdom and spending this time with us on Healthy Mind Healthy Life today.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Thank you. I appreciate uh the opportunity and the time.

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And to everyone listening, the life you keep promising yourself is not waiting for the right time, it is waiting for you to stop pretending the time you have is unlimited. Thank you for being here. I'll see you in the next conversation.