I’ve had my own brush with “the other side.” At age 47, I went flatline on stage after giving a speech. Someday, I’ll write a blog post about what I saw on “the other side,” but suffice it to say I had an extreme allergic reaction to an antibiotic soon after having broken my ankle, which then went septic in my leg.

Almost exactly ten years later, the day after I launched my book “Wisdom@Work,” and the day before I was giving a TED talk at their NYC headquarters, I found out I had intermediate-stage prostate cancer. While this wasn’t as dramatic a brush with death as my flatline experience, I once again came face-to-face with death as an organizing system for life.

Here’s an exercise we do at MEA called “An Obituary You Can Live With.” You begin by writing your obituary as a true account of your life to date. When it’s ready, look it over and ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I need to do in order for my obituary to be “complete?”

• What and/or who did you impact or change? Why?

• What character traits and values did you consistently demonstrate over your life? At your core, who were you?

• Who did you care for? How did you impact or change this person/these people?

• What were the major accomplishments in your life? At ages 40, 50, 60, 70?

• What was your legacy?
  

Extra points for those who can distill this down to a Tweet (280 characters max), not because you’re going to send it out on Twitter, but because a Modern Elder becomes an editor who knows how to distill things down to the essential.