THE FIVE SECRETS YOU MUST
DISCOVER BEFORE YOU DIE
BY
JOHN IZZO PH.D.
Kamaluddin Ali Muhammad
ITREB Pakistan, 31-05-2012
Acknowledgment
I sincerely thank my friend
Abdul Malik Rajan
of Calgary
For introducing this book to me
About the author
JOHN IZZO, Ph.D., 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 in four continents about living more
purposeful lives.
Background of the book
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There is no monopoly on wisdom
To know the secret of “living well and dying happy”.
To identify people who found meaning in life and listen
to their stories.
Asked 15000 people across USA and Canada to
suggest names of wise elders in their lives.
About 1000 names were suggested, after preinterviews 235 people were shortlisted and
interviewed.
Background of people interviewed
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Age: from 59 to 105 years
Diverse group in terms of ethnicity, culture, religion,
geography and professional status.
Not famous but extraordinary people
Town barbers, teachers, business owners, authors,
homemakers, priests, poets, Holocaust survivors and
aboriginal chiefs.
Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and
atheists.
Questions asked
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What we must discover about life before we die?
What brought you the greatest happiness?
What gave life meaning?
What are your regrets?
What matters and what turned out not to matter?
What were the major crossroads?
What do you wish you had learned sooner?
What do you feel about dying?
What do those who are nearer to the end of their lives
have to teach us about living life?
Two fundamental truths
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We have limited and undefined amount of time
We have unlimited number of choices of how to use
our time
Two things we want most: happiness and meaning.
Happiness is about the moments of our lives, and
meaning about our sense of connection.
Why talk to people over 60
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Life is analogous to a trip experience.
Those who have already taken the trip
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of
listening when you’d have preferred to talk”.
Importance of elders in the family and the society.
1. Be true to your self
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“The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole
life fishing only to discover that it was not fish you
were after”. Henry David Thoreau
Chose to live life awake
Is your life missing the mark?
Finding your destiny; listen to your inner voice.
Following our hearts requires courage
Sometimes the nature makes us listen (heart attack,
accident, tragedy)
2. Leave no regrets
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“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words
left unsaid and deeds left undone”.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
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“I wish I had”
Most people die with their music still within them.
A life of no regret means risking more
Living as if the time is short
Regrets are best let go
Top 5 Regrets of the Dying
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to
myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish I had let myself be happier
3. Become love
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The highest form of giving attention is to accept and
love a person for who he/she is.
Love is life. If you miss love, you miss life.
At the end of our lives, when we only have a short time
left, love is the only thing we will care about.
It is a choice to be a loving person.
Love your self
Make love a priority
Don’t love things more than people
Become love
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14 negative comments against 1 positive
Choosing to see others with kindness
Do good if you can, but always do no harm
By what we say and do we can either make
someone’s day or ruin it.
A lady at the funeral
Example of a teacher who made difference in so
many lives.
Become Love
To the world you may be but one person
But to one person you may be the world
What a grand thing, to be loved
What a grander thing still, to love
(Victor Hugo)
“Being deeply loved summons your strength. Loving
deeply summons your courage”
(Lao Tzu)
4. Live the moment
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When you are young, 60 years seems like an eternity.
But after you have lived it, you realize it is but a
moment.
Choosing to be in every moment
Every day is a gift
Living as if it were your last sunset
Every show is your last show
The present moment is the only moment
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but it always
robs today of its joy.
5. Give more than you take
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Happy people are always givers, not takers.
Nothing but joy (Reader’s Digest, December 2010, p 116)
Keep what you need and share what is in excess.
The great tasks of our life: find ourselves and lose
ourselves
Nature is the biggest selfless giver
Merging subject with object
“Life in the ultimate analysis has taught me one
enduring lesson. The subject should always
disappear in the object. In our ordinary affections
of one for another, in our daily work with hand or
brain, most of us discover soon enough that any
lasting satisfaction, any contentment that we can
achieve, is the result of forgetting self, of merging
subject with object in a harmony that is of body,
mind and spirit.
Merging subject with object
And in the highest realms of consciousness all who
believe in a Higher Being are liberated from all the
clogging and hampering bonds of the subjective
self in prayer, in rapt meditation upon and in the
face of the glorious radiance of eternity, in which
all temporal and earthly consciousness is swallowed
up and itself becomes the eternal.”
(From Memoirs of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah S.A.)
Putting secrets into practice
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Knowing is not enough, practice is important
Natural learning: walking, mother tongue
What we pay attention to grows
Some rituals of life
Preparing to die well
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We prepare for many uncertain events but forget
the most certain.
With wisdom death becomes a part of daily mental
landscape
Integrate the awareness of death into life
Those who live with wisdom are never afraid of
death
Wisdom comes when we go beyond competition,
comparison, judgment, pride etc.
Conclusion
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It’s never too late to live the secrets
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
The second best time is today. (Chinese proverb)
The secret of life in one sentence or less
Interviewing your own wise elders (with
questionnaire)
List of interviewees
Life
Life is a great and noble calling.
Not a mean and grovelling thing
to be shuffled through as best we
can but a lofty and exalted
destiny.
(From Memoirs of His Highness Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan)