Now picture that same half hour a few weeks before you move across the country, on your own. Who do you call?
Two versions of one question
Two psychologists at Stanford University in California, Barbara Fredrickson and Laura Carstensen, had that question put to 380 people in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, aged 11 to 92. Each person was reached by telephone and answered both versions, first the free half hour, then the move. The study came out in 1990.
What changed when people pictured the move?
For the free half hour, 26 of the 75 young people, aged 11 to 29, chose the family member. That is about what you would expect if they had picked at random. Picturing the move, 60 of the same 75 chose family. Among people aged 65 to 92, two out of three already chose family with no move at all.
What does that say about what truly matters?
With a goodbye in sight, the young people chose much as the oldest already did. The interesting newcomer and the admired author lost out to someone they knew well. I read that as a method you can use at your own kitchen table: give yourself an ending, then notice who you would call.
Who would be first on your list?
Inside a coffin in Seoul
Years ago I flew to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, for a six-hour seminar that ended in a coffin. It was my last flight before my career as a pilot ended, and I made it as a passenger. My hands and feet were bound, as part of a Korean death ritual. A cloth went over my eyes. Then the lid closed.
When I wrote about it afterward, I named the people first. Then the mistakes, the missed chances, and the victories.
People first. The young people in the Stanford study made the same choice with a much gentler ending: a move across the country.
Wiser about someone else's life
Igor Grossmann, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, asked people in long-term relationships to imagine, as vividly as they could, that their partner had cheated on them. Others imagined the same thing happening to their best friend. Then everyone answered about a dozen questions on how the relationship might go from there.
The people thinking about a friend reasoned more wisely. They more often admitted what they could not know, looked for a compromise, and considered how the other person saw things.
Whose life do you see more clearly than your own?
How do I get that clear view of my own life?
In a follow-up with new volunteers, Grossmann and Kross had some of them picture the betrayal in the third person. They thought about themselves as he or she: why does he feel this way? The gap disappeared. People reasoned about their own relationship as wisely as about a friend's. The study appeared in 2014 in Psychological Science, a research journal.
I know a version of that distance from my old job. For ten years I flew passengers for Transavia and KLM, two Dutch airlines. From the cockpit I saw the tundra of Canada and the ice of Greenland, and I flew over whole cities. Up there I learned that stepping away from familiar ground makes your own life easier to see clearly.
Three steps for one evening
How do I figure out what truly matters to me without therapy?
Take one evening and three steps. Picture moving far away, on your own, in a few weeks, and write down who you would want to see first. Describe your past week using your own name, and read it the way a friend would. Then give one person on your list half an hour this week.
You need paper, a pen and about an hour.
The ending. Imagine you leave for another country three weeks from now, alone. You have a handful of free evenings left. Write down who gets them, in the order you think of them.
The distance. Write a short paragraph about your past week, with your own name where you would normally write I. It might begin: Sarah canceled on her sister twice this month. Read it back as if a friend had written it. What would you tell her?
The step. Pick one name from your list and give that person half an hour this week. A walk, a call, dinner. Put it in your calendar tonight.
When is it time to talk to a professional?
If you are still carrying what came up weeks later, if it is hurting your sleep or your work, or if you face a loss that is too heavy to carry alone, see your doctor or a therapist, because then these questions belong with someone trained to sit across from you.
An ending you can reach from home
In Seoul it took me a coffin, six hours and a language I did not speak. With the Last Hour Experience, the guided audio journey I made, you can do it at home in about an hour. You put on headphones and live through your own final hour, starting with the news that you have one hour left and ending in the silence once that hour is over. Then you look back at your life from there. Who you name first is yours to find out.
Questions people ask. One of them is me.
Can I find out what matters to me by writing down my values?
You can start there, though a word like honesty or freedom rarely tells you what to do with a Tuesday evening. Names say more. Ask who you would want to see before a long goodbye, and look at what those people have in common. You can read your values from there.
What if someone on my list is a person I have lost touch with?
Then that is part of your answer. You do not have to make up for years in one evening. A short message saying you thought of them is a start. Whether it turns into more is something the two of you can find out together.
Does thinking about myself in the third person really help?
In the study by Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross, people who thought of themselves as he or she reasoned about their own relationship as wisely as about a friend's. It can feel odd at first. On paper, nobody hears it.
How often should I ask myself what truly matters in life?
Whenever something in your life ends or changes: a move, a new job, a birthday, a loss. In the Stanford study, older people chose family far more often than the young did, so expect your answer to change as you do.
Sources
Choosing social partners, the 1990 study by Barbara Fredrickson and Laura Carstensen, psychologists at Stanford University, in Psychology and Aging, a research journal. The free half hour and the move across the country are in their second study, with 380 people reached by telephone.
The 2014 study by Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross, psychologists at the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan, in the research journal Psychological Science. It covers the imagined betrayal, by your own partner or a friend's, and the third-person step.
The University of Waterloo's announcement of that study, from June 2014, which describes in plain words how talking about yourself in the third person helped.
From Pilot to Purpose, my own account of the seminar in Seoul and the coffin.
About the founder, about my ten years as a pilot and the view from the cockpit.