Concept
Mortality Perspective
Mortality perspective is the practice of remembering that you will die so that anxious efforts to make yourself permanent lose their grip and the few things actually worth caring about become clear.
Mark Manson ends The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck with a borrowed idea. In The Denial of Death, the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that humans are the only animals who know they will die. He held that this knowledge is so uncomfortable that we spend our lives building ways to outlast it. Becker called these immortality projects: a company with your name on it, a reputation, a cause, children who will remember you, a body of work. Each one promises that some part of you survives when your body doesn't. Manson calls that part the conceptual self, meaning the story and image of you. The trouble is that guarding the story makes us anxious, rigid and petty. Looking straight at death does the opposite. It shows the image won't last anyway, so you can stop defending it and spend your limited care on the people, values and work that matter now.
A real-life example
Daniel is 41. For two years he has blocked his co-founder's redesign, because the original product carries his name and his vision. One evening he asks what he would want from this company if he had five years left. The answer isn't his name on the logo. He wants customers who were helped and a team he likes working with. The next morning he approves the redesign and stops arguing about credit.
How to use it
- 1Name your immortality project. Write down what you're trying to make last, such as a title, a reputation or always being right. Notice where defending it makes you tense or defensive.
- 2Ask the death question: "If I had only a few years left, would this still matter?" Keep what passes and loosen your grip on what doesn't.
- 3Give one hour this week to something that passed the test. It can be a person, a value or a piece of work.