I Have 12,927 Days Left to Live : This is how i’m using them…

Last April, I went to a mastermind talk for business owners in Las Vegas that changed the way I think about Chiro1Source, probably forever. I still can’t get it out of my head. The mind melt started when one of the speakers told us to take out a piece of paper. The men in the room were supposed to write 78 at the top, while the women wrote 82. Then, he told us to subtract our current age from that number.

At this point, I could tell things were headed in a math-like direction, so I pulled out my smartphone calculator. The speaker had us multiply the number we’d gotten by 365.

“That’s the number of days you still have left on Earth,” he said. “But wait, there’s more.”

I stared at the number, feeling a little pleased (I’m young, after all!) and a little freaked out. Then, things got really interesting. The speaker told us to multiply our “days left on Earth” by .67, since we spend 33% of our time sleeping. My number dropped by a third. The figure I had left was the real number of waking days I had here on planet Earth.

My number was 12,927. In a weird way, I was holding the rest of my life in my hands.

While I tried to process my number, the speaker told us he keeps his number front and center in his life all the time. He has it pinned to a board in his office and written on a note stuck to his bathroom mirror. Every morning, he erases the old number and writes the new, smaller one in its place. He said watching his life tick down reminds him of what’s important. He needs that reminder after watching his uncle — a hardworking business owner — overwork himself all his life, only to be diagnosed with throat cancer and die at 62, right at the start of his retirement.

“Seeing this number reminds me that when I get to my last moment on this Earth, I’m not going to think, ‘Could I have made a little more money?’ I’m going to wish I had a little more time,” the speaker said.

Looking down at my number, I started to think about all of the things I wanted to accomplish in my life and with my business. The exercise lit a fire under me. I decided it was time to stop putting off things I’d been meaning to do and start living.

One thing I’d back-burnered was the idea of using Chiro1Source as a force for good. I’ve always wanted to give back more to the chiropractic community and other causes, but I hadn’t decided when, where, or how much. After that mastermind, I made it happen.

In April of 2021, Chiro1Source donated $5,000 to ChiroCongress, a group that’s strategically planning the future of chiropractic. I also implemented a new system at the office. Every time we meet a sales goal, one of the people on our team chooses a charity, and we make a donation. Within weeks, we’d given to a local food bank, an orphanage, and the American Heart Association. In 2022 we have made it our goal to donate 250,000 meals through Feeding America.  It has been awesome to see my team get so excited about making a difference!

That mastermind made me realize that when I’m on my deathbed, what will matter most to me is how many people I helped along the way. As Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” I’m looking forward to giving more!