Self-discovery and the funeral exercise

At the beginning of your life, you learn from your surroundings.

After learning basic physical and social skills by watching and mimicking the people around you, you start learning the rules of the culture, its social norms, and behaviours.

You start behaving in a way that is considered acceptable by society.

This stage is marked by a constant search for approval and validation.

Usually, this stage lasts until early adulthood, but many don’t move on from this stage.

Many people keep living by the generally accepted idea of a good life in the Western world: get a good job, build a house, start a family, and work hard until you retire.

Too few people question this definition of success. Maybe they are afraid of the answer.

I can empathise with that.

If you start doing something out of the “ordinary” path, you might become the “weird” person.

If you start to question social norms & behaviors, you might lose some friends, or you might be the black sheep at family reunions.

And if you are still searching for external validation and approval, this can be a painful experience.

What is worse, the pain of growth or the pain of regret?

The top regret of the dying is: “I wish I had the courage to live true to myself.”

The second one is: “I wish I hadn’t worked that hard”

Many people climb the ladder of success only to find out late in life that it is leaning against the wrong wall.

Developing your own definition of success will make sure that you live a life “well-lived” and won’t regret it on your deathbed.

A great exercise to gauge a direction of what success means to you is the funeral exercise - I will share it with you a the end of this piece.

Self-discovery as a gateway to finding more meaning in life

When I graduated from college, I wanted to become a consultant and make a lot of money. I was the product of my environment: a business school. It wasn’t until I got out of that bubble that I started questioning if that way is really for me.

When you start to critically think and question what has been imprinted in you, the next stage of life starts: self-discovery.

Self-discovery starts when you stop learning from your surroundings and start thinking for yourself.

It’s a process of making your own decisions and learning through trial and error.

Everyone's self-discovery is different. It might be a gradual process or some experience that changes your thinking profoundly.

To give you an example, I had a significant experience that challenged my previously held definition of success:

After my master's studies, I backpacked for 8 months through South America and experienced a different culture and way of life. Dancing to salsa music in a popular bar in Cali, Colombia, one night, I had an insight:

Due to where I was born, I am better off financially than a lot of people here, yet they all seem happier than I am. So, making a lot of money may not make me happy.

This is when my learned definition of success started to crack. (Exposing yourself to different cultures is a good way to challenge your definition of success.)

I started to read widely. Philosophy, happiness research, and everything that I could get my hands on that promised to “show me the way” to a good life.

What’s a good definition of success for the future

After more experimentation, different jobs, different cities, different people I met, I developed a new definition of success.

Yes, you need enough money to cover your basic needs, but then making a lot more money does not make you happier.

What really makes you happy is a nurturing community, good relationships, healthy food, time in nature, and being in charge of your time.

This is why I am committing now to building a regenerative village in nature. I see it as the mission to manifest my definition of success.

I feel that these islands of coherence of like-minded people that care for nature and seek to be self-sufficient will be more “successful” in the future that's coming compared to those who try to live up to the definition of success of society.

To be able to say this is a privilege, as land prices are rising and fewer people have the opportunity to live that life.

During my process of self-discovery (which is never-ending), I learned that if you have privilege, you have the responsibility to do something about the state of the world.

Doing something because you know deep down that it is the right thing to do might be a better definition of success than “becoming successful”.

Doing something out of internal motivation, rather than external validation.

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

― David W. Orr, ​Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World​

The funeral exercise

The process of self-discovery is not straightforward.

It requires courage to develop that personal wisdom. It takes time, too.

You can start by gauging a direction of where you want to go.

Here is how:

Visualize a funeral setting, maybe a church or a forest cemetery. You sit down in the first row only to realize that it is your funeral that you are attending.

Your best friend is going up to the microphone to share what was great about you - your character, your impact in the world, your contribution. Then your partner. Then a community member. Then someone you worked with.

Take a piece of paper and write what these people would say about you.

What kind of person were you in your life? How did you impact the lives of others?

Take time for this. Do it in nature. Engage your feelings and vision - don’t think too much.

You might fall into the trap of approaching this cognitively, rewriting the script that society handed to you.

The key here is to access your intuition, gut feeling, and vision.

If you have done it, feel free to share what came up. I would love to hear from you :-)

To a life well-lived,

Jonas