My husband and I are doing a weekly “book club” call with our 22-year-old son, at his suggestion. The book we have been (re)reading and studying is Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Each week we discuss two chapters of the book, and now having completed discussion about each habit, we are sharing our drafts of our personal missions, our "Quadrant II" goals, and our own eulogies.

To go through this exercise is an eye-opening experience that everyone will gain from. To go through this with two people very close to you, and to be able to learn and iterate on your eulogy based on the approaches that others have taken in writing theirs is even more rewarding.  The exercise honors your achievements so far, and defines a new path for what else you want to do. 

For some, the exercise helps to reveal your path, and helps you find focus. For others, it is about putting into words what has been implicitly driving you all along. This process of making conscious and explicit what we each know to be authentic and true helps us find courage and support from within ourselves to take the next big steps forward. It gives us the words by which we can start articulating who we are to others. That articulation of who we are immediately begins to connect us with others who share a piece of our mission, or who have something to contribute to what comes next.

Sometimes people struggle to find the right words. But the struggle is always worth the effort.