Lessons

Lesson Info

Overcoming Your Fear and Having a Checklist

When we have those moments where the important things become really really clear um a baby's born you hold your grandchild somebody graduates you graduate from the car barely misses you and hits the one behind you you're like oh my god life is so simple I know it's important I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna call my mom and he's like we have these moments of clarity where it's all very very very very simple and we have those little the light you know the fog clears and the lights come on and then often by the next day we're driving our car or walking down the street the same one where the car just narrowly missed us yesterday for example and we're late to a meeting and we have to go to the grocery store and somebody is driving slow behind you in front of you and you like god would you hurry up like in the transformation of the day so how do we hold on to those little things that are important the little little things that ripple out to make a really really big difference on dh mostly it'...

s being yourself turns out in the end nobody ever says when they like get their to their death bed at one hundred eighty seven like gee I really wish I would have spent more time faking it right like that just doesn't really so there you go so there are some things that I that the whispers came into, um, mostly big forehead smacking lessons. So, like, I should know, you should really do this to, like, go dough. If only I would have so here's the thing I had to do my life over again. And so if I had to do it over again in my situation by force and other people's situations, by choice or not choice, how is that going to do it in a way where I could remove as much of that optional suffering as possible? So I could just clear the runway for more fun, more joy, less stress and worry? And I had to then start a list because I didn't have one. And here was one of my first lists it's, very elegant, as you'll notice, super organized. And what I love about this is that one of my one of my things just says life insurance like that's. I was like, how much do I have? Maybe I should get some wills. Go to pro. Great. Get marriage license. Do this. I have to figure out all of this legal stuff started diary record everything. Get a financial planner and then at the same time on the top. Left, I have to do things like order wood chips for getty school, my son, and get his hair cut before kindergarten starts. Right like it's madness, it's madness that's not a list that's like that's, like a wall of woes is so not working for me. So what I had to do since I had a fire hose of information and not enough that was specific to me was start taking this redon oculus last and make it into something that I could actually use and figure it out and get it all in one place so I could get my arms around. What the heck it is. I'm actually supposed to d'oh, and so I ended up spending a couple of years slowly, slowly, slowly putting it together, and I needed it in one place, and I needed it to not be an elefant charging at me, but I needed it to just be bite by bite and digestible and understandable. I'm not going to be and a state planning uh, a legal person. I'm not a c p a but what I can dio in the same way that none of us are dentists, but we all know how to brush and floss our teeth, right, so this is a brush and floss your teeth list of the stuff you got to do and then we get just pulling experts when we need tio so after a number of years, I got into a place where I could pull out this checklist every month look at it right down the couple of things that I had to do next and just make it less like a wave smashing me on dme or like just a nice little cup of water in your face. And so what I realized was that, um this was helpful for me and maybe just maybe it will be helpful for other people to and not only might it be helpful for other people. Um, I was so intensely grateful for everyone who showed up in my life and helped me and brought me lasagnas and took my dog for a walk and did all of these things that I don't even know, you know, so somebody would come in and I'd come home from running around trying to manage some probate thing and my bathroom would be clean and the difference between having your bathroom clean and your bathroom not clean is sometimes that things just feel better. And so, after all of these years of going through a mountain of rocks that I had to pull off of me one by one, I wanted to thank the people who had helped may and that when you have some nugget of something that other people might be interested in um you should share that nugget out with other people, so I put it together in a little website and I called it get your shit together. I called it that moment, you know, named after the moment I was in the hospital and I realized I did not. I have my shit together at all and that these few basic things that kept popping up over and over again the will the living well having a list jotting some details down where the were the the structure of the site and the little lessons that I wanted to put out into the world. And I and I did. And finally about three and a half years after the accident, um, I sent out a little note on facebook, which is kind of you know what people do? And I said, hey, friends and family here's some things that I learned here's some stuff that I wish I would have done it saved had I done these few very basic ling's it would have saved me a mountain of suffering. So I hope this helps and here and I was really curious to see if it would get forwarded, um and really hopeful that it would help some other some people, you know, like my aunt and a couple of her friends at her bridge club and, you know, like you know the uncle who always tries to tell you by penny stocks or whatever like I was thinking a few dozen people maybe a couple hundred, but that night I kept hitting the refresh button I was like, that can't be right there are thousands of people hitting the site right now it just spread all on its own and then the next day I got this email from ron lieber at the new york times saying that he wanted to write about it and apparently a lot of people read the new york times on down now in the next couple of months everything really exploded and it the project just kept getting shared and shared and shared and shared, and since january less than a year tens of millions of people have gotten the message and nearly a million people have been to that little teeny website. The checklist alone last time I checked had been downloaded itself over two hundred fifty thousand times. All of the documents have been downloaded about half a million times, and I've gotten hundreds and thousands of letters from people from all over the world really sharing their stories too. And so what that tells me is that this is something we care about this is something we feel terrified about and that every now and then it takes one person being willing to walk to the middle of the room to put their hand up and say oh guess what dumb thing I did and if somebody does that a lot of people will walk into that room and say thank god you said that me too so this is where we talk about a couple of important things in a comfortable way and we take the scary away from it you know, like there's this whole thing about uh in all caps um one of the things about being a gorgeous mortal human that we are is it just is the finish line that were all goingto we're all going across that ribbon at some point right let's make everything until you cross that ribbon as awesome as possible or what the hell are we doing right? So is death to death e yeah pretty much it is pretty much it is death and loss and change are the things we fear the most if you look at the list of the things that are the most stressful death is the most stressful change and death retirement lost divorce he's big scary, uncertain life changes the deal is they they come and so wouldn't it be nice to not be afraid of something that you can plan for? In fact, we actually I don't mind talking about death at all so cut like a day or two ago I'm like oh what movie is the number one box office for the dark world number one book sycamore row, which is a story, frankly, about someone dying and writing a will and it turns the whole family into this courtroom drama about about wills and so and then tv show defiance it's apparently show about aliens and blowing things up and guns. I think last year it was one of those crime unit shows where people basically just do autopsies all day, and we watched that so we actually don't have a problem talking about death at all, especially if it's a zombie invasion or if aliens air coming in fact, apparently we know there we have fast running zombies. Now we have zombies who fall in love, you know, there's like where wolves and vampires who are, like, warring with zombies like death, death, that we don't mind talking about it as long as we're not talking about our death, which is kind of interesting, but what we're going to talk about his are life and making it, um as bomb proof as possible, but it's really curious to me why we don't do this stuff right? Like a zombies well placed on the game's forever, but if you say, hey, you know, I guess what I think, oh, honey, we need to do our wills were just married it's so exciting you're like that's, great, I yes, we should it's super important not singling you out you're here because you know I am actually singling you out but I guess what we're here because we want to do something about it right honey it's time to do our wills right let's do that let's put it that on the list but right now that bathtub needs to be regretted right like there's so many ways that we can do something else and so if you look at why why it is that we don't do it there's a lot of reasons but here's one specifically that I think is really exciting um the first one is why don't we do this stuff and so instead of me asking you why you don't do this I'm going to tell you why everybody else doesn't and then I want you to count how many of these actually applied to you ok? And then you could just say this or that or that right? Um the first one is the belief that you should do it I love this we don't do something e o that's one right? So we don't want to do something because we know we should or we're told that we're supposed to sure that totally makes sense but like we're not in middle school anymore, right? We're now or not sometimes sometimes I think I am yeah, but there's no man to fight here when it comes to pulling your life in your life your the man right? So if you are like not doing it because you're making a point about something like you're the only person you're hurting is yourself so ok number one we know that we should do it we don't want tio let's just cross that off the list right? Uncomfortable telling strangers about personal details totally fine we generally don't have a problem facebook in your instagram and everything we have lunch right or where we are checking in but we don't want to tell somebody that we don't have a savings fund so it's not that we don't mind over sharing a lot of things it's the things that were uncomfortable about we don't not ready to make important life decisions fair right? Not ready scary a little bit I know um unaware of the consequences of not having a will I'm aware of that yeah, I mean well, I don't know especially chase and I it's sort of like what does it matter? We don't have kids you don't know, you know we're not married, we don't know in homes actually could mean more because you don't have any of those things wait, we're going to talk about that so I find that, um young people especially um and old people this is not this is not just in age rage it's over half of people in the united states don't have one it's us and our parents too so there's just that the second thing is that if you're single and you don't know my own home and you don't have a lot of assets you I do have to because if something happens just for example somebody has got to come take care of your stuff for you and if you have a friend or a sister or brother or parents who are totally set up to leave their life for weeks or a month and financially stable enough to do that, come here live in your apartment, dig through your drawers, clean up your stuff and make all of your arrangements for you then and like so there's, you may not need one because you don't care what happens maybe to your stuff, but somebody has to and so it's not just you in your life, it's who you want digging through your underwear drawer if something happens oh, right, so there's that, um avoiding with avoiding dealing with family issues we're all really good at avoiding something's, right? There's there's an avoidance thing it's kind of fair eventually you deal with them whether you avoid it and then deal with the you know, the atom bomb that happens or if you deal with it ahead of time like aunt sue thank you so much for bringing that cranberry dressing every year for so long either you let on subaru in it or you just ask her to bring something else right it's really not that big of a deal disagreeing disagreement between partners that's uninterested one so we disagree about stuff all the time but if the house is on fire and you disagree about whether you should get the water to put it out from the sink in the kitchen or the sink in the bathroom it's super not helpful to have that disagreement right now, right let's disagree about something else. You know what the house burned down? Well you're disagreeing about the details okay um belief that it takes too much effort by the end of the day we're going to have wills drafted it doesn't take too much effort I would actually say that worrying about it and stressing about it takes a lot more effort than just doing it right. I'm sure where to start uh right on believes that young people don't need wells. We just talked about that a bit so here's where we're at, we've already knocked most things off the list so out of all of our ten reasons why we shouldn't or we haven't or we won't we don't think we can we've gotten rid of most of them and we're going to go through those today and tomorrow and that the uncomfortableness or the not readiness or the disagreement pieces will be able to talk through those as well I guess what happens like what we're talking about her feelings right? We're not talking about information we're not talking about time what we're talking about now is really feelings and a lot of what that feeling adds up to this fear can I add one more to your list I'd love to hear yours what else have you got? I think there's another thing about searching out the right person for the job like you know, to write a will you need a lawyer but if I want to set up for instance a living trust who actually does that how does that work so there's it might be may be part of your line number two but it's actually searching out the right professional and a professional you khun press once you figure out what type of professional you need right exactly exactly and I think that sounds a lot like um not knowing where to start yeah, it is maybe not having the information that you need yeah and does the does the fire host thing ring a bell to because we there have no information or we almost have too much information yeah yeah and trying to put it so it and then this district will back around to not knowing where to start what order do you do things and you know right so that was part of it to take a little overwhelming and overwhelming right it's like googling what do you d'oh oh are just searching and then having a stack of information come to you like that's great, but what do I do? I wanna know what I'm supposed to do right on getting started is hard and I've heard other people say that they don't know who to go to to get started at first not just with legal stuff but also perhaps insurance or financial planning on dh that ah and session two will go over will's really, really specifically, but there are three essential categories of options one absolutely is hiring attorney and finding somebody who is experienced and that you can trust who will explain it to you is really, really important. There are also a lot of online options and also some software you can buy so you can do it in your home there step by step guides as well. Um and the third one is that you have the ability to create a legally binding document on your own yeah that's what I thought you don't actually have to have an attorney you're not legally required to have an attorney or use a purchase a template or use a free one to make a legally binding document what what a will you wanted to be correct so for your first thing is you want to make sure that it's right trust is a question that comes up a lot will also talk a little bit about that what are they? Why do people do it? Do I need one? And um much of this stuff varies from state to state on dh that's important to know on a lot of these topics, but but pretty much getting a will is the same thing, so you can do it on your own as well. It is an option is a right that you have to create your own legally binding dot documents. You can write a will on your kitchen table every day before work place I'd declare that I want everybody tio like, do something something something, a coffee mugs for everyone and swing by the bank. I have two people their witness it get a notary and bam like every morning on your way to work, you can create in the will if you want the deal. Is that even tio? Because that's what we're all going to do, right? Like from now on? Yeah, I actually rewrite my wills frequently, you know, s macy in in our chat rooms? Yes asked, so do I need a lawyer to come up with my own state plan or is that we're going to go through all those bits and pieces these next couple days of yesterday's lawyer for this you know you don't need a lawyer for that. The answer is yes, we're going to go through all of that in the next couple of days how to get a will, how to get a living well, insurance all of the different things that you need and the answer is, um you have a lot of options available to you and a lawyer is absolutely a great option, and many people recommend getting one or getting one to review your legal documents. The key is to make sure that it's specific to your state and that it's correct and that you understand everything, and while we're amazing humans who do complicated things all the time, right operate heavy machinery like make a souffle like somehow some people the perfect mechem l like that's hard that's hard for may like writing a will and understanding what that means like I can do that, but it but if you I think the trick is to make it is easy for you based on what you need and what your life is and to get it done so actually in session to we're going to come back and talk dive in with will's as our starting place great and that's this session to today section two today? Yes, yes before lunch cool. We'll figure it all out for lunch before lunch west coast time? Yeah that's a great question and actually one of the ones that people ask all the time to river yeah, yeah, um so back to fear. So if I can buy a bus at lunch I'm cool your there's a notary and we write your thing down ahead of time yes, it will be coffee cups for everybody costume cat costumes and I would like to have that scarf way if that's cool. Ok, so here's, what we're going to do, we're going to take this little bit by little bit and in this world where there are so many things that are out of our control, right, we get that like, there is a firehose, a giant wave, a tsunami, whatever you want to call it there's a lot that we just can't control we're going to be okay with that because what we're gonna dio is we're going to take care of this stuff that we can change, right? So here's, what we're doing noise, noise, nyse we're taking care of the stuff that we can change and how we're going to do that again isthe a checklist we're going to start with a checklist we're gonna hit will's gonna goto living wills we're going talk about details today and then tomorrow we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about money and insurance, and actually, I would say that there much more of the yin and yang the money and insurance and money and insurance on, but we're gonna talk about communication, we're going talk about talking about it, and we're gonna practice talking about talking about it. Um, and then in the end, we're going to take what these adorable little binders are we're gonna put it all in one place we're going way have, uh, work sheets in here, so as we go through the process, weaken log everything you can take notes, you khun scribble all over it if you want there's post, it notes, if you're a posted, her and smacker move things around, whatever you need to dio there's also little notebook in here for how you work and how your style is. The other thing that we might want to do is we'll talk about details later, we can even try a ll a couple of the aps online, and we can even start keeping track of your details. There's a brazilian free ones out there, however, this works for you, but we're going to start here and we're going to figure out how it make it make sense for you and what that brings me to is this there are going to be a lot of questions and I want you to get used to this answer because I'm going to say it no less than eighty seven times if there's anybody oh city out there totally check and see if I say it more than eighty seven I bet you it's going to be right around eighty seven that's why I got you are yeah ok just a little bit I love it I love it but it does depend right we are all very different very very different even though you two are both single which um and you are under fifty you have very different lives they're different priorities very different goals one of you might want to like your financial goal is a helicopter somebody else's financial goal is to own nothing and then wander off with a backpack into the world whatever it is it depends because it's up to you especially when we start talking about states specific things and really like legally legally things it does really, really, really really depend and because it depends I wantto be really clear that this what we're talking about his information this is not a legal advice I'm not telling you how to maximize your for a one k what I'm telling you is you need a retirement fund and we're gonna work on that um so as always as with anything nobody can tell you who to fall in love with nobody can tell you how you like to be kissed. Nobody can tell you how you like your coffee in the morning if you drink coffee, right, it's, your life rocket like a boss, right? That's, the disclaimer, it's, your life rocket the way you rock it!