Why I Don’t Like the “Sudden Death” Question To Find Your Passion

You’ve probably heard it before: “If you knew you had X months/years to live, what would you do?”

I was recently confronted with that question when I found myself looking up a popular vlogger that I love from YouTube.

I got to their site, only to find that they had gone on an indefinite sabbatical. Naturally, they ended the announcement with the sudden death question, giving a timeframe of three years.

I thought about this for a few minutes and realized I would only do two things differently:

1. I would finally finish the first series I ever started, Waters Dark and Deep. It’s odd—I actually started the project in 2008! It’s now 2023 as I write this, so it seems like I should probably be done by now? Anyway, it’s one of those things that I keep putting off, year after year. This is supposed to be the year! Again. Ask me what my block is here, because I don’t honestly know at this point.
2. I would write a book to my child called Letters To My Child. It would not really be a memoir, but it would be all the things I wish to tell my kiddo about life. And I would make it general enough that it could be shared with the world—I would try to get a book deal with it.

I couldn’t come up with anything else, to be honest. Maybe that is because I’m already living so much of my dream life—I’m certainly comfortable, at least! But it’s also because I don’t think this question truly reveals your passion.

Are These Truly My Passions?

Nope! For me, at least, this question just reveals my upsets, not my passions.

You see, I’m definitely upset with myself that I don’t make enough time for this book series, especially since I’ve been living with these characters for 15 years and I basically know the ending. I know I’m blocked on writing it, or I would be writing it. That said, I don’t want to write it right now just because it’s my passion or purpose—on some level, I just want to assuage my upset around not writing it. The sudden death deadline for writing it is rooted in fear…What if I don’t get it done?

But the truth is, it will get done when it is meant to get done. And if it doesn’t, it is because it wasn’t meant to get done. Call it Higher Power, Universe, God, Source, whatever you’d like—all of it is working for me and for this project. I am uncomfortable with the organic timeline, but it is the right timeline.

I also don’t know that my passion is to write a book called Letters To My Child. Ideally, I’d just like to be here for my child so I don’t need to write their future self letters! Again, my want is rooted in fear. I can’t control my death, so I want to provide a “legacy” of some sort that will take the place of me when I’m gone. Of course, we all know that a young child is not going to be soothed by a book after losing their mother. My effort is one of control, not passion.

What Question Reveals Your Passion?

Here’s my belief: the only question that can truly reveal your passion is, “If you knew you had X months/years to live, what would you do?”

Wait, what?!

Isn’t that the same question you had at the beginning?

Yep!

But maybe you’ve already guessed the trick.

Instead of X being a small, scary number…

What if you replaced it with a huge number?

This was, in fact, what helped me finally uncover my true passions.

I legitimately don’t start things that I can’t see myself doing for a long time. Here are some of the things I started that remain among my passions today:

1. Writing – I started blogging professionally in 2006, the year I graduated college. And while I’ve taken years off and changed blogs a half dozen times, I’ve pretty much never stopped. Whether on a blog, on social media, on Substack, or on Medium, I’ve always written blog posts.
2. Publishing – I published my first book in 2009, a month before I graduated from my MBA program. I can’t really explain what it was about publishing a book, but I was absolutely addicted. I knew almost immediately that it was the “thing”—the thing I had been looking for my entire life to that point. I’ve published over 50 books at this point and I will probably never stop, as it’s a particular format that I love dearly. (In third grade, I decided I wanted to be an author when I grew up—how that eight year old might look at me now! She devoured two books every day, so I guess it’s no surprise.)
3. Spirituality – I was raised Catholic and took God seriously as a child. When I slowly stepped away from the church, I assumed my relationship with God was over, but I eventually found my way back to him through a backdoor of manifestation and spirituality. In looking back at my journey, I realize that I’m not a person who works well with gatekeeping. It wasn’t ever God I had an issue with… it was the idea that someone could gatekeep God from me that became a problem. As an entrepreneur, an independent publisher, and someone who tends to build on a platform she owns, it all makes sense—I don’t seek permission, nor forgiveness, really.
4. My Child – Being a mom has been the absolute best thing ever for me.
5. My Family – I love what my husband and I are building together.
6. Tarot and Oracle Decks – I’ve been obsessed with the cards since I was a child, but I didn’t learn to read them until adulthood. Now I have dozens of ideas and complete cards all the time! Decks are not really that different from books—really just a book that you can shuffle to tell a new story—and I love artistry, so it’s not a surprise that I love creating these.
7. LEGOs – I once told my mother-in-law that I had a plan—in my sixties, I was going to take a decade off from writing and spend all my time building every LEGO set I’ve ever wanted (in addition to hiking and gardening more). That Christmas she got me a small LEGO set that I built with my husband, and I got addicted. I realized that I should stop saying no to myself now and I haven’t looked back. LEGO has become a surprisingly big part of my life since then and my mental health is the better for it.

As much as we want to believe that life is short, for many of us, it’s the opposite. Life is soooo long. It is too long to not do the hard things.

And I think that’s the challenge of asking yourself what you would do if you had only a few months or years left to live. Because finding your passion is not easy. Sticking to your passion is not easy. Nurturing your passion day in and day out, even when you are not particularly good at it, or even when you are tired, or even when you’re not getting the results you want, is not easy.

If we are given too short a time period, we fall into fear patterns that cannot possibly lead to true passion.

But if we are given a l o n g s t r e t c h of time, we can’t help but seek things that we can invest in long term.

I Do Understand Why Sudden Death Works Sometimes

It’s an ideal question when we are in true crisis:

• Overwhelmed and overworked
• Stuck on a hamster wheel
• Making poor decisions
• Wasting our lives away
• Stuck in fear and anxiety
• Seeking attention and ego hits

This question can shake us out of our boots, and if you are there, definitely use it to give yourself a slap across the face and a wake-up call!

But I truly believe that uncovering passion comes from the latter question. So I’ll leave it here for you:

Let me know in the comments!