Something morbid to chew on this sunny Saturday afternoon:
I was recently watching the movie IP Man 2.
And, the villain of the movie is a boxer named Twister, who has a near-perfect build, pure muscle, powerful athlete, low body fat, and looks to be the pinnacle of health. The actor was played by Darren Shahlavi, who had studied various martial arts his entire life (starting at age 7) and spent the rest of his short life doing action movies.
I say short life, because he died at the tender age of 41.
In his sleep.
From a heart attack caused by atherosclerosis.
If you don’t know what atherosclerosis is, according to WebMD (that site where, if you have a tooth ache, will tell you you’re going to croak) it’s a hardening and narrowing of the arteries — that silently and slowly blocks arteries, putting blood flow at risk. The result is often heart attacks, strokes, angina, and other lovely maladies.
It is also mostly symptom-less.
(Apparently, almost all of us over 40 have some stage of it. Yay.)
And, well, even a clean, exercise-laden, and healthy-eating lifestyle won’t always prevent it from sending your arse to the Choir Invisible in your sleep as Darren Shahlavi discovered.
Anyway, the point of all this?
My morbid fascination with such things has, I believe, given me an advantage.
How?
Because I live life knowing I could (as one of my great aunts did, apparently) drop dead at any minute from some kind of cardiovascular problem, or an aneurism, or some other life-threatening disease that may be lurking in my body, waiting to pounce on me out of the shadows, at any time, without reason, warning, or predjudice.
This has, for many years, given me not just a sense of urgency.
But, a sense of *emergency*.
Specifically, about getting a lot of things done.
One reason I became so gung-ho about my 10-minute workday lifestyle is not to be lazy and sit around in a hammock all day sipping on a lemonade. No, it’s to free up my time to accomplish various other goals and Missions while I am still topside.
And, I daresay, I have been doing just that.
(This year it’s finishing all my novels, next year, my next set of goals.)
Anyway, here’s the point of all this:
If you want to give yourself a shot-in-the-arm of motivation and urgency, ask yourself what you’d like to accomplish (beyond the day-to-day grind). Then ask, what if you knew you were going to drop dead by a certain date, or that there was something insidious inside your body ready to choke the life out of you at any time?
Because you know what?
It could very well be true…
(We all have an expiration date, regardless.)
Anyway, doing so should suffice to pry anyone from the couch or latest Flakebook political debate (where nobody’s mind will be changed) putting things off until “later” or when things “are just right” or whatever the excuse is for not doing things.
You can start by writing an email designed to sell something.
Then, loading it into your email broadcast service.
Then, pushing send.
If you want to learn my sales death-defying methodology for banging out emails that people look forward to reading and buying from (i.e. you’re not an imposition like all the other emails in their inbox, you’re a welcome guest), check out my “Email Players” newsletter.
The September issue goes to the printer in a few days.
And, the bonus I’m including is a doozy if you want to get deep into the psychology of persuasion and selling.
But time is short if you want it in time, my little droogling.
Here’s the link:
Ben Settle
P.S. I am hoping this email doesn’t end up being one of those cryptic flashes of precognition one sometimes hears or reads from someone shortly before dropping dead by accident, tragedy, homicide, whatever…
P.P. S. Shut up.
