The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (Bk Life) - Softcover

Izzo Ph.D., John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576754758 ISBN 13: 9781576754757

Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

“What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn’t?” asks Dr. John Izzo. Based on a highly acclaimed public television series, this book takes the reader on a heartwarming and profound journey to find lasting happiness.
 
Imagine for a moment that you are about to take a foreign vacation to an exotic destination. You have saved your entire life to travel there. It is a destination with almost unlimited choices of how to spend your time and you know you will not have enough time to explore every opportunity. You are fairly certain that you will never get to take a second trip to this destination; this will be your one opportunity.
 
Now imagine that someone informs you that there are several people in your neighborhood who have been to that country, explored every corner. Some of them enjoyed the journey and have few regrets, but others wish they could take the trip again knowing what they know now. Would you not invite them over for dinner, ask them to bring their photographs, listen to their stories, and hear their advice?
 
This is precisely the journey explored in this book. Dr. John Izzo and his colleagues interviewed over 200 people, ages 60-106, who were identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning.” From town barbers to Holocaust survivors, from aboriginal chiefs to CEOs, these people had over 18,000 years of life experience between them. He asked them questions like, “What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn’t?”
 
Here Izzo shares their stories—funny, moving, and thought-provoking—and the Five Secrets he learned from listening to them. This book will make you laugh, bring you to tears, and inspire you to discover what matters long before you die.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Izzo, PhD, is the bestselling author of Second Innocence and host of the public television series The Five Things You Must Discover Before You Die. Holding advanced degrees in religion and psychology, Izzo has spoken to over one million people on four continents about living more purposeful lives.

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why do some people find meaning image die happy?

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

—Theodore Roosevelt

Wisdom outweighs any wealth. —Sophocles

Why do some people find meaning and die happy? What are the secrets to finding happiness and living wisely? What really matters if we want to live a worthy human life? These are the questions this book seeks to answer.

To live wisely, we must recognize that there are two fundamental truths of a human life. The first is that we have a limited and undefined amount of time—it may be 100 years, it may be 30. The second is that in that limited and undefined amount of time we have an almost unlimited number of choices of how to use our time—the things we choose to focus on and put our energy into—and these choices will ultimately define our lives. When we are born there is no owner’s manual provided, and the clock begins ticking the moment we arrive.

We do not like the words “die” and “death.” Many human activities are designed to shield us from the truth about life; that it is limited, that at least here in this place, we do not have forever. Some of you may have hesitated to pick up a book with the word “die” in the title, fearing somehow that something bad might happen to you for even recognizing the reality of your own mortality. You may even find yourself a bit uncomfortable as you read these words, wishing I might move on quickly to another topic.

Still, it is the fact that we die and that our time is limited that makes discovering the secrets to life important. If we lived forever, there would be little urgency to discover the true paths to happiness and purpose since given the luxury of eternity we would surely stumble on them sooner or later. This is a luxury we do not have. At whatever age we find ourselves, death sits nearby. When we are young, we may feel that death is a distant and far-off reality, but having conducted memorial services for people of all ages, including a recent friend who died at 33 while traveling in Kenya, I suggest that death is always close at hand, reminding us to get on with life. Derek Walcott, the Nobel-Prize-winning poet from St. Lucia, called time the “evil beloved.” On the one hand, we know that time appears evil because it will take from us all that matters to us, at least in this life; on the other hand, time is also “beloved” because it is our very mortality that gives life a sense of urgency and purpose. Our time is limited and must be used wisely.

knowledge versus wisdom

Knowing how to use this one life to its fullest requires wisdom more than knowledge. Wisdom is different and fundamentally more important than knowledge. We live in a time when knowledge (the number of facts) doubles every six months, but wisdom is in short supply. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, whereas wisdom is the ability to discern what matters and what does not matter. Unless we can discover what really matters, we cannot find true meaning in life.

In my first profession, it was as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. When I was in my twenties I had the privilege of spending a good deal of time with people who were dying. Through those experiences I discovered that individual human beings die very differently. Some people die having lived a life of deep purpose with few regrets. These people come to the end of their lives with a deep sense of having lived a full human life. Others die looking back with bitterness at having missed what really mattered. Even as a young man I realized that some people found the secrets to life and some did not.

Death has never been an abstract concept to me. My father died when he was only 36 years old. He stood up one day at a picnic and that was it. His life had been far from perfect, and now it was over. There would be no do-over. By the time I was 28 years old I had conducted dozens of funeral services and sat with many people in the final days of life. I consider this intimacy with mortality to be a great gift. Maybe because of these experiences, I have always searched for the “secrets” to living a purposeful and fulfilling life. I vowed as a very young person that when my time came, I would not look back in regret for the life I might have lived.

My wife is a nurse by training, and from a young age she too was witness to the reality of our mortality. She worked in the operating room, in a pediatric cancer ward, and in the emergency room. We talk about death regularly. We try to live aware of its presence.

Leslie, my wife, almost died a few times in her life. She was born with a deformed heart and had several major operations beginning when she was a few days old, but three years ago we had an experience that reminded us anew of the fragility of our lives.

She was going into the hospital for a routine and non–life-threatening surgical procedure. To this day I can remember our daughter Sydney, then ten years old, saying: “Mommy, you don’t really need to have that surgery, do you?” Leslie reassured her and the next morning was admitted for surgery.

What happened in the next 72 hours is still a blur to me. The surgery went well, she was groggy and then uncomfortable. The kids and I stayed with her at the hospital into that evening. The next day she felt a little better, and I left her room early in the evening so she could rest, telling her that I was going to get some things done at the office and that I’d come visit the next day about noon. We anticipated she would be home within a day.

The next morning I called the hospital around 11 a.m., and my wife was saying things that made no sense, talking to me in sentences that were unintelligible. Rushing to the hospital I soon discovered that in the middle of the night she had experienced a stroke at the age of 37. She was seeing triple and was being transferred to the neuro–intensive-care unit. Later that day, the neurologist asked me to make the hardest decision of my life thus far. “Your wife has had a stroke and we don’t know why. We have to make a choice now as to whether to put her on blood-thinning medication. It could save her life, or it could lead to more bleeding, depending on what caused the stroke. The decision is yours.” With the information available to me, I decided to authorize the use of the medication. The next several days were tense and frightening.

When something like this happens, we each have our own story. I cannot speak for my wife’s experience but the next few months set off a whirlwind of emotions for me. My life was busy and crowded with meetings and tasks. Even while Leslie was recovering at home, I continued to busy myself with these many tasks, and in retrospect I realize that I was not there for her in the way I would like to have been. I kept asking myself: Is this really the right way to live my life? What really matters?

A friend of mine, Jim Kouzes, told me that “adversity introduces us to ourselves,” and I was not sure I liked the person I was meeting. While she slowly recovered and I sadly watched her daily struggle to regain the ability to do simple tasks once taken for granted, I struggled to think about the rest of my life. The stroke reminded both of us that life was fragile, but it also served as a wake-up call.

By the time the year was finished, Leslie was mostly back to normal, and I was very thankful. I felt we had been granted a reprieve. But we had been paid a visit. Our belief in the certainty of health and life was shattered by this experience. Life was short. And I began to ask myself: Have I really discovered what matters? If my time came now, could I say I had discovered the secrets to life? Approaching 50, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1576754758
• ISBN 13: 9781576754757
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 200
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland