Daily Architecting: Building a Life of Purpose and Peace

The book, Who Will Cry When You Die, is presented as the third in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari series. It aims to distill lessons on the art of living into a book designed to help transform the reader’s life. The central message is that the tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live. The author encourages readers to move from living life by chance or default to living by choice and design. The book emphasizes that having knowledge is not enough; one must act on that knowledge to create the desired life.

The fundamental question posed is, “Who will cry when you die?” and how one’s life will touch others and what legacy will be left behind. The author suggests that if you don’t act on life, life has a habit of acting on you, leading to regret over a life half-lived. The book is structured around 101 simple “life lessons” or practices.

Here are some of the core themes and key lessons highlighted in the excerpts:

• Finding Your Calling and Purpose: The author believes everyone has special talents waiting to be engaged in a worthy pursuit, a unique purpose or noble objective to manifest higher human potential and add value to others’ lives. Finding your calling doesn’t necessarily mean changing jobs but bringing more of yourself into your work and focusing on what you do best. This involves being the change you wish to see in the world.
• The Power of Daily, Simple Acts: A meaningful life is not built solely on grand achievements but on a series of daily acts of decency and kindness. Every person represents an opportunity to show compassion and courtesy. Simple acts like paying a toll for the car behind you, offering a seat, or being the first to say hello can make a day worthwhile by making even one person smile or brightening a stranger’s mood. Kindness is the rent paid for space on the planet.
• Maintaining Perspective: Life is short, “mere blips on the canvas of eternity”. Having the wisdom to enjoy the journey and savor the process is crucial. This theme is illustrated by a story of two patients where one, by describing the outside world, highlights the importance of appreciating what you have, even when faced with limitations.
• Self-Discipline as Tough Love: Self-discipline is called “Tough Love” because being stricter with oneself is seen as a loving gesture. It allows one to do the things they know they should do but don’t feel like doing. Highly successful and fulfilled people make the wise choices, not just the easy or convenient ones. By doing just acts, we become just; by doing self-controlled acts, we become self-controlled; by doing brave acts, we become brave.
• The Value of Self-Reflection and Awareness:
  • Keeping a Journal: This is one of the best personal growth initiatives. It’s not a diary (recording events) but a place to analyze and evaluate experiences, develop self-awareness, clarify intentions, and record insights. Writing for as little as 15 minutes a day can improve health and attitude.
  • Awareness Precedes Change: One cannot eliminate a weakness without being aware of it. Becoming aware of a habit is the first step to changing it. Awareness also attracts solutions.
  • Listing Your Problems: Writing down problems helps lift a weight, making one feel lighter and calmer. This technique helps manage the mind’s tendency to dwell on problems.
• Managing Your Inner World:
  • Talking to Yourself (Mantras): Selecting a phrase (mantra) and repeating it can train the mind to focus on desired outcomes like inner peace, confidence, or prosperity, reshaping the person you are. Repeating a mantra hundreds of times a day for weeks can yield profound results.
  • Scheduling Worry Breaks: Too much worry burns the living. Scheduling specific times to worry helps contain it and prevents it from consuming all free time. Many worries never happen.
  • Creating a Pure Environment: Thoughts form the world, and what is focused on grows. Managing thoughts and purifying thinking begins by improving the personal environment.
  • Curing the Monkey Mind: Being completely present is key to getting the best from life. The mind often jumps between thoughts like unchained monkeys. “Focused Reading” (making a mark when the mind wanders) can increase awareness and help build concentration skills.
  • Not Worrying About Things You Can’t Change: The Serenity Prayer encapsulates this wisdom. An executive found that 94% of his worries were about things that wouldn’t happen, couldn’t be changed, or didn’t matter, highlighting the wastefulness of such worry.
• Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future: Dwelling on past mistakes steals from the future. Instead, use lessons learned from difficulties to fuel future growth. Life’s greatest setbacks can reveal biggest opportunities. Happy people manage their memories to enrich their lives. The future is “spotless,” and every dawn is an opportunity for a new life. One can rewrite their life story.
• The Importance of Rituals and Practices:
  • Starting Your Day Well: A morning ritual, including physical activity (like walking), silent contemplation, focusing on gratitude, envisioning the day, and reading wisdom literature, can lead to a joyful and peace-filled start, centering one on what truly counts. The author describes his own sanctuary and ritual.
  • Taking a Weekly Sabbatical: Planning a weekly period of peace helps revitalize and nourish oneself, reducing stress and fostering creativity. It involves setting aside a few hours to do things you love, like reading or walking.
  • Creating a Daily Code of Conduct: Writing down personal values, virtues, and vows to live by each day helps one live more intentionally and stay connected to highest priorities.
  • Decompressing Before Going Home: Taking a few minutes to transition after work helps ensure one has energy and a positive attitude for family. This could involve sitting in the car, walking, or listening to music.
• Mastering Your Time and Priorities:
  • Learning to Say No Gracefully: Clarity about life’s highest objectives makes it easier to decline requests that don’t align. Effective people focus on their “areas of excellence” and high-impact activities, making it easy to say no to distractions. As the sword-crafter focused only on swords, concentrating on worthy pursuits is key.
  • Getting Serious About Setting Goals: Goals restore focus, provide a framework for choices, keep one alert to opportunities, and commit one to action. Setting big goals is encouraged. Carrying a goal card and reviewing it daily helps keep the mind centered on what counts.
  • Mastering Your Time: Everyone has the same 24 hours. How time is used separates those who create great lives from others. The secret to control is restoring focus, knowing what needs to be left undone, and spending time on high-leverage activities that advance one’s mission and legacy.
• Learning and Growth:
  • Always Carry a Book: Given the time spent waiting in lines, carrying a book turns unproductive time into learning time. Ideas are the commodity of success, and one idea from a book can transform life. Reading exposes the mind to the thoughts of great people, improving one’s own thinking and wisdom.
  • Building a Library of Heroic Books: Reading “Heroic Books” by great philosophers, poets, and thinkers helps center one on what life is really about and profoundly affects character. The author lists examples like Meditations, Walden, and As a Man Thinketh.
  • Learning from a Good Movie: Films can restore perspective, reconnect one to values, and inspire about life’s possibilities. The author cites Life Is Beautiful as an example that reminded him that living is a gift to make the best of daily.
• Relationships and Connection:
  • Getting Behind People’s Eyeballs: Truly understanding another’s point of view by seeing the world from their perspective builds deep, high-trust relationships.
  • Writing Thank-You Notes: This simple act builds and cements relationships, showing care and consideration.
  • Recruiting a Board of Directors: Seeking advice from wise individuals (real or imagined) helps make effective decisions and reduces mistakes. The author describes a client who consults an “internal” board during silent contemplation.
  • Creating a Master Mind Alliance: Forming a group of mutually supportive individuals provides a support network, friendships, and access to specialized knowledge, cutting the learning curve and adding enjoyment.
  • Finding Your Six Degrees of Separation: Making a list of people you admire and wish to meet can increase awareness and attract opportunities to connect with them, demonstrating the principle that we attract what we focus on.
• Physical Well-being:
  • Caring for the Temple: The body needs to be treated like a temple. Regular exercise improves health, clarity of thinking, creativity, and stress management. It can add years to life and life to years.
  • Drinking Fresh Fruit Juice: This simple habit can boost energy levels and mood. The author highlights the value of investing in a juicer.
  • Sleep Less (Quality over Quantity): The key is the quality and richness of sleep, not just the hours. Fatigue can be mental; when life is exciting, less sleep is needed.
• Courage and Action:
  • Taking More Risks: On one’s deathbed, the greatest regrets will be the risks not taken and the fears not faced. On the other side of fear lies freedom. Life is a game of numbers – more risks, more rewards. The real secret is pursuing opportunity over security. The author is inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s quote about being “in the arena”.
  • Practice the Action Habit: Paths are made by walking, not waiting. The smallest action is better than the boldest intention.
  • Becoming the CEO of Your Life: Seeing oneself as the chief executive of destiny encourages proactivity. Effective CEOs realize “if it’s going to be, it’s up to me”. One must take steps to get things done rather than waiting for luck.
• Contribution and Legacy:
  • Becoming a Volunteer: Giving time to serve others helps remind oneself of personal abundance and prevents taking things for granted. Serving others is a way to pay back debt owed to those who have helped you. The only happy people are those who have sought and found how to serve.
  • Selflessly Serving: Moving from a life chasing success to one finding significance is key. Success ensues as the unintended but inevitable by-product of a life spent serving people. Gandhi’s story of giving away his other shoe illustrates this ethic.
  • Writing a Legacy Statement: While a mission statement defines what you create while you live, a legacy statement expresses what you aim to leave when you die. Starting to build a legacy today, not later, helps avoid regret. Greatness comes from beginning something that does not end with you.
  • Increase Your Value: In the new economy, compensation is based on value added, not just time spent. To earn more, become a more valuable person by acquiring skills, reading, and thinking differently.

The book advocates for a continuous journey of self-discovery, growth, and intentional living. It suggests that transformation takes time, effort, and patience, citing the “Rule of 21” which states it takes about 21 days to develop a new habit. It encourages facing fears, dreaming bigger dreams, and avoiding living within limited zones. Forgiveness is presented as a selfish act that frees oneself from carrying the burden of resentment.

Ultimately, the book culminates in the idea of living fully so you can die happy. It cautions against waiting until the end of life to discover its meaning. Happiness is not a destination but a state created by committing talents to a purpose that makes a difference in others’ lives. The true meaning of life is to live for something more than oneself. The purpose of life is a life of purpose. This resonates with George Bernard Shaw’s words about being “used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one,” being a “true force of Nature,” and wanting to be “thoroughly used up” when one dies, making life a “splendid torch” to be held up brightly.