Reset Your Priorities on Purpose
The one part of near-death experience research nobody seriously disputes: survivors' priorities shift afterward, away from status and fear, toward purpose and the people around them — and the shift deepens over years rather than fading. This is that audit, done on your own schedule.
What you end up holding
“Write your own life review, see where your time and money actually go against what you say matters, and put one real action behind the gap.”
The workflow — 3 steps
- 1Open Write Your Life Review →
Write your own life review before a crisis forces the question.
Five direct prompts, honestly answered — not the résumé version of your life, the real one.
- 2Open Turn My Chaos into a Plan →
Check your last 30 days of time and money against what the review just said mattered.
Most people are surprised by the gap between stated priorities and where the hours actually went.
- 3Open The Weekly Reset →
Pick one concrete action from the gap and do it this week.
One real conversation or one changed habit beats a whole page of intentions that stay on paper.
Documented Aftereffects of Near-Death Experience
“At the 2- and 8-year follow-up, the positive change in life attitude and reduced fear of death was more pronounced in survivors who had had an NDE than in those who had not — and the difference grew, not shrank, over time.”
— Pim van Lommel et al., prospective NDE study, The Lancet (2001)
Longitudinal data on 344 resuscitated cardiac arrest patients is the strongest evidence that this class of shift — less status-chasing, more purpose, more compassion — is real and durable, not a temporary high. Nothing in the research says a person has to nearly die to choose the same shift on purpose.
Memento Mori as a Decision Filter
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 2 (2nd century CE, tr. Gregory Hays)
Stoic practice used the fact of mortality as a working filter for daily choices, not a morbid preoccupation — the same reprioritizing NDE research documents happening involuntarily, rehearsed on purpose instead of waited for.
Go deeper on this
A playbook ends in a document. These journeys change what you can do — same subject, more of it.
www.actiontoolkit.com/playbooks/reset-your-priorities-on-purpose