The Last Time

We have a human tendency to try and rush (or get) through certain moments in life, especially when they're inconvenient or not easy. But there's a simple reframe and perspective you can adopt that can dramatically shift how you experience these moments and live a life that's more appreciative, present, and joyful. Today's episode is inspired by the ancient Stoics and gives us a new way to look at our daily experiences so we don't miss moments we might later wish we still had.

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Transcript

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Maybe this is just part of getting older, but lately I've been thinking a lot more about how there will be a last time that you do a lot of things in your life. You just won't realize it when it happens. There will be a last time that you carry your child to bed. There's gonna be a last time that you step into the ocean. There will be a last time that you go on a date with your spouse. And it's an easy tendency to think of and treat these moments like they're guaranteed to happen again. We carry on with the rest of our lives not realizing that we might have just experienced something for the very last time. So what if you treated more moments, or maybe even this moment, as if it might be the last one? So today on the podcast, I want to explore how your life may change when you adopt this perspective and what we can learn from ancient stoics about embracing in permanence to show up more fully and present to life. Hey coaches and leaders, I got a quick question for you. You spend a lot of time building game plans for those you lead, but when was the last time you built one for yourself? If you're looking to sharpen your leadership skills, strengthen your team culture, or find better ways to support and challenge your athletes in the mental game, I'd love to help. I'm offering a free coaching call where we can talk through your current challenges and create a simple game plan for what might move the needle most for you, your players, and your program. Most coaches I know obsess over developing their team, but they neglect the person in the mirror. This call is a chance to invest in you because a better you is going to produce a better them. And if that sounds helpful, you can grab a time at Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon. That's Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon, or just check the link in the show notes. I'd love to connect and explore how I can best support you. So there's a concept in Stoic philosophy often referred to as the last time meditation, and it dates back to Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in Meditations, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. Now the premise for this perspective is the idea of deliberately approaching ordinary moments as if they might be the final time that you get to experience them. And this isn't intended to be morbid in in any way. It's it's more of a perspective that can help us experience life with more gratitude, more enjoyment. The Stoics didn't use this last time meditation to create fear, they used it to help them maintain a different level of presence. Now, more recently, Oliver Berkman captured this same idea in his book 4,000 Weeks. As a quick side note, if you haven't read 4,000 Weeks, I think it's an awesome book about kind of just changing your perspective of and relationship with time. There's a whole host of different books out there about time management, and his is more about the psychological perspective around time, and I think it's brilliantly written. Um, but there's a particular quote that I kind of highlighted when I first read it. Our lives, thanks to their finitude, are inevitably full of activities that we're doing for the very last time. Just as there will be a final occasion on which I pick up my son, there will be a last time that you visit your childhood home or swim in the ocean or make love or have a deep conversation with a certain close friend. Now, not everything is going to end all at once. It's going to end very subtly, moment by moment, in that kind of a way. And this has been a common underlying reminder, I think, for me a lot over the last year or so. There was a point last year where I had this strong sense that it was probably going to be my last season in a full-time role in Major League Baseball. And I think once that kind of started to settle in and feel a little bit more concrete, I noticed that it really, I think, actually gave me a different perspective on various aspects of the job. Now, don't get me wrong, being part of a major league baseball team is incredibly rewarding. And there's so many moments where you have to almost pinch yourself because you sit there and you think, like, man, this is this is my reality. This is what I get to do every single day. So there's obviously a lot of those moments. And like any other job, there's parts of it that aren't always your favorite. There's long road trips, there's long days spent at the ballpark, um, there's time away from family, there's living out of a suitcase and in a hotel. And over the course of time, like obviously there are going to be moments where those kind of stop losing some of their joy and that initial kind of excitement that we experience with them. But instead of thinking, I have to do this again, I started to think, well, this might be the last time that I ever get to do this. And it definitely kind of shifted how I experienced it. On a personal level, my wife and I, I think, have been thinking about this a lot more too, given the season of life that we're in with two young children. There's going to be a last time that I get to wake up our son and open his door to say good morning. There's going to be a last time that they need me in the middle of the night, a last time for them to reach for me instead of maybe walking on their own. And I don't know when those moments are going to occur, but I do know this is that I definitely want to do my best to try not to miss them, at least as many as I can. So the ancient Stoics recognize that impermanence is not something that we should avoid, but rather it's something that we should remind ourselves of. It's something we should use. It's an invitation to treat moments and experiences with a whole different level of presence. And when we fail to embrace the impermanence of life, it can actually create a lot more suffering. Seneca described it as this we don't suffer because life is short. We suffer because we treat it like it isn't. When you bring the last time lens into your life, it can help interrupt that illusion. It forces you to see what's actually happening and recognize that it's not going to be permanent. There's going to be a last time that you get to lead the current team that you're working with. There's going to be a last time that you get you get to compete in your sport. There's going to be a last time you get to sit in a locker room, have a conversation with a mentor, laugh with a specific group of friends or teammates, tuck your kids into bed, talk to a grandparent, or just simply be in the middle of the chapter of life that you're currently in. Now the challenge is you're not going to get a notification when this is the last time. It's going to be up to you to recognize and see if you can actually slow yourself down enough to appreciate it. But one thing I want to point out is that a lot of these examples, these are often the types of moments that we try to hold on to. We try to cling and they're meaningful to us. They're the kinds of experiences that we we hate to lose, at least in our own memories. Where I actually think the last time meditation can be incredibly valuable is also in the moments that we're quick to want to rush through. It's relevant in the moments where we catch ourselves thinking, I just need to get through this period. Think of a phase in life that's going to feel more demanding for you than maybe rewarding. Think of a tough stretch where you're putting in the work, but it feels like you can't catch a break and the results aren't appearing. Think of being up in the middle of the night when your uh infant or toddler just won't sleep and you feel helpless. And by the way, I very much am mindful, like this is a much easier thing uh to say in hindsight or after the fact in the moment. This is obviously not the easiest thing to to capture. But I think if you can, again, it slows you down and almost immediately it changes how it feels. These can be moments that we often want to disconnect from. We go on autopilot or we endure them a lot more than we actually engage fully, and we just fast forward. The last time meditation I think is powerful because you're not gonna just try to survive these moments anymore. And sometimes we just need to be reminded that even in difficult moments, the inconvenient ones, the uncomfortable ones, the ones that we wish were different, they're still part of our life. And one day those moments are gonna be gone too. So here's our invitation for the next week. Pick moments and treat them like they might be the last time. Before you walk into something, ask yourself, if this were the last time that I get to be experience this, how might I show up? How do I want to show up? What would I notice that maybe I often miss? And what would I appreciate instead of rush through? Because the paradox is when you start treating moments like they won't last, you're actually gonna get a lot more out of them while they're still here. Thanks for listening.