[E94] Can Embracing Mortality Empower You to Live with More Courage and Joy?

In this episode, Jennifer sits down with spiritual teacher Kate Manser to explore how embracing mortality can transform your life.
Kate shares how seeing death not as something to fear, but as a powerful motivator, can help you live with more presence, joy, and courage. Instead of chasing constant achievements, Kate encourages us to find fulfillment in the everyday moments. Learn how to shift your mindset, appreciate the now, and navigate life’s challenges with gratitude. Discover how living with purpose, embracing the journey, and honoring life’s fragility can awaken a deeper sense of vitality and peace.

Jennifer: Hey, hey, a brand-new episode of the Happy Productive Podcast is about to begin. It’s time to be inspired by simple and actionable solutions for you and your business. If you’re an established entrepreneur, or just laying down the first brick of your future empire, the mantra is the same. We will flip any failure into a positive and use it to our advantage. This show is all about turning coal into diamonds. With the right plan and mindset, anything is possible.

I’m Jennifer Dawn, your host, business coach and founder of Best Planner Ever. And I’m here to help you achieve all your ambitious goals. Success is closer than you think.

Let’s do this.

Jennifer: Hey, everybody, welcome to today’s episode of the Happy Productive Podcast. I am super excited to be talking with our guest today, Kate Mancer and I think you guys are going to love her. And this topic I think today is going to be like, say what? What are you guys talking about? But I think you’re really, really going to love it. So welcome, Kate, to the show.

Kate: Thank you. Happy today, y’all.

Jennifer: Yes, and Kate, just take a couple minutes and just introduce yourself and just tell everybody a little bit of your story of how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing today.

Kate: Absolutely. So, my name is Kate Manser. I’m super happy to be here. And I am a spiritual teacher and author and an artist. And my work is all about helping people feel more alive in our everyday life, whether that be at work, which we’ll talk a lot about today, or in your personal life, whether that be figuring out a way to blast through decision paralysis and procrastination, to most importantly, going after your dreams and even more importantly, just appreciating the beauty that we have and the privilege that we have to be alive every single day. So, our conversation, we’ll talk a lot about all of those things, productivity, decision paralysis, procrastination, but most importantly, I want you to walk away from today with a new sense of just feeling present and alive in your everyday life.

Jennifer: I love this so much. And you guys know why you’re already probably figuring out why I wanted to have Kate on the show today. So, let’s just say for an example that you are a business owner, and you are tired and you are overwhelmed, or you are stressed out or you are burned out. So, the even the idea of Oh, hey, I want to feel alive in my work today. For some of us who are listening, I know are going to be like, I’m not really getting that and so, Kate, I would love for you to speak to this, like, you know, how does a business owner who is, you know, been burning the midnight oil or working a little too much, or they’re feeling kind of burned out? How do they like, reignite that spark to feel really good about their life and being alive today?

Kate: Yes, beautifully said. And I’ll just start by saying that, you know, for anyone who’s listening, I’ve been on both sides of the career coin, I had a long career in corporate, I was in corporate marketing, I worked for some of the biggest brands for Carl’s Jr. I worked at Google for five years, I was a global marketing manager at Indeed and then I flipped that coin. And like many of you probably listening, I started my own business. So I understand the trials, the perks, the wonder and the challenges of working in a corporate career as well as an entrepreneur and the truth is, is that as many of you know, who may also identify with like me working on both sides of that coin is that there’s no sunshine and rainbows, right? Like it’s going to be hard no matter what we do. There’s going to be challenges and so part of igniting that spark to feel alive every single day, I think the first step to that is just realizing that and truly like internalizing that, you know, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, no mud, no Lotus, right? We have to go through the mud to get to those beautiful Lotus moments and then as soon as we’re that bright pink or bright white Lotus, we’re going to go back down into the mud in order to come. That’s just how life is. And so, the sooner we can accept that it’s just going to be this cycle of challenge and triumph and challenge and triumph in the space of a minute in the space of a decade, I think that has what has really helped me because I always thought that I was waiting for the next thing.

I was waiting for the, when I was in corporate, I was waiting for the promotion. I was waiting for the increase in pay. I was waiting for the new title and then as an entrepreneur, I’m waiting for my big moment. I’m waiting when I can get X number of employees or this dollar amount. But the reality is, is that as I wrote in the title of my book is called, you might die tomorrow. So, when we put it in the perspective of truly of life and death, we can’t be living for when we lose the weight. We can’t be living for when we get the certain amount of money. The truth is, is that we don’t know how long we have to run this business to be alive, to be with our children and our families and so the most important thing is to, you know, accept that challenge and even revere it as a beautiful part of being alive and also to really experience our lives in the now and experience our businesses and those challenges as opposed to living for the next hurdle, the next achievement.

Jennifer: Yeah. Oh, I love it. And Kate, you read my mind. Cause I was like, we got to talk about that book and you might die tomorrow. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, I love the title, love the title and it’s so true. It’s not like it’s made up to get people’s attention. I mean, it really is true. And everybody who’s (5:46) listening, like we might actually die tomorrow. And so just tell us a little bit about like why that title, you know, why did you write that book and what do you want people to take away from it?

Kate: Wow. Well, I think first and foremost, you know, it’s really polarizing, right? I know.
I knew many years ago when I came up with this phrase, you might die tomorrow. Um, and I created it into a movement and a brand and it eventually became a book. Trust me. I’ve been down the road. Any of y’all that have polarizing businesses, you know how I feel when you tell somebody what you do at a cocktail party and they’re like, Oh, cool. Right? Um, so it is, it is very polarizing, but there’s a method to that madness and there’s a reason and that is because to have that provocative message, that reminder that you might die tomorrow. To me, it’s been, it’s been the most motivating way and mindset to approach my life. It has created urgency in me to appreciate being alive, to go after my dreams, to have a greater sense of bravery and courage in our businesses, which we all need to have.

It’s also helped me to, um, make tough decisions. You might’ve heard the quote by Steve jobs. Uh, you know, when I came up with this idea and I’ll get to the story in a moment of how I came up with it, but when I came up with this phrase, you might die tomorrow and I felt that it was igniting my soul to just be alive. I started searching the internet, like, am I the first one that’s, why isn’t nobody, why isn’t everybody talking about this as the best way to approach life and work? And of course, I am far from the first person to come up with this. This is actually an ancient key, an ancient, um, mindset that people have been using since the beginning of time and one of the most inspiring quotes that I came across, and it ranges from, you know, song quotes by Bob Dylan to, you know, deep tenets of stoic philosophy to this quote by Steve jobs, which is that he said, remembering I’ll be dead soon is the best tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the tough decisions in life. He said, in the face of death, everything falls away. Embarrassment, pride, fear of and all that is left is what is just most important to us and I identify with that so much. And that’s what I hope that you can take away from this message because yes, thinking about the fact that we might die tomorrow, is it morbid? You can answer that for me, Jennifer. The answer is it can be looked at as morbid, but if you pull your, your mindset away from the morbid aspect of death and the scary aspect of death and look at our mortality as this profound source of motivation, truth, clarity, and presence, there’s so much wealth in there for you, for all of us.

Jennifer: There really, really is. And I just love that we get to have a conversation about this today because yeah, sure. It’s easy to say, Oh, that’s morbid. But it’s also a reality, guys, we’re not going to live forever. We are not. And our time here is limited and one thing that I’ve discovered as I’m getting a little bit older and over, so I’ve crossed over the 50 lines. And when you cross over to 50, you’re just like, Oh, wait a second, I’m actually not gonna live forever. And we kind of think that we will and then you know, we start seeing more and more people that are like, Yeah, so and so died and oh, so and so I’m like, oh, my goodness, like, this really isn’t going to last forever in this lifetime and so, I think it’s a great, great tool to really put in our tool chest and think about it in the sense of like your time here, it will not last forever and what are you going to do with that time? and it’s funny to me, because when you say, Hey, you might die tomorrow, there’s half of me that says, I should just like, you know, just go to that Caribbean island right now and just tell everybody, piss off, I’m gonna be on vacation. And then there’s the part of me that goes, Oh, you know what, I might not be here, I better like get busy, I better like go do some more stuff. And so it’s kind of interesting when I hear it, I kind of feel I could go both ways.

I could just say to everybody, I’m out of here. Or I could do more. I kind of feel like I get pulled in both directions when I think of that.

Kate: Oh, yes and the truth is, is that if we really knew that we were going to die tomorrow, we wouldn’t, you know, spend that very precious short amount of time on a flight to the Caribbean, right, we would be we would be with the people that we love, we would be out there looking at the trees in the sky, we would be looking at flowers would be we would be calling people that we care about, we would be spending time with, you know, whoever our God or higher power is, and with our own soul. And you bring up a great point and I’ll tell you; I’ve gone through the gamut of what does living like you might die tomorrow really mean. So, like I said, I spent 10 years in corporate and what contributed to this radical outlook, change and outlook in my life was, you know, when I was just under, I’m about to turn 40 in a couple years. So, about 10 years ago, when I was 28, in the span of one year, I had three friends who died just in unrelated, you know, unexpected events, as many of us, especially in the social media world, we find out about people who die. But these were friends that I had had one was a family member, one was my boss at Google, and one was a friend that I had had from college and I cannot say that that is what flowed me into this, like, you know, motivated, clear perspective on life, it was actually quite the opposite. After those three friends died, I actually went into one year of just deep death anxiety. It was like the safety of my life had been taken away and I was afraid to, okay, raise your hand if you’re listening in this and this resonates with you, if you have ever gone on Google and gone down the rabbit hole of diagnosing yourself with, you know, some terminal illness, right, raise your hand.

You know, if you have ever been on the been on an overpass driving, and you have that feeling like you’re just going to go flying off the edge, right? Yeah, yeah, you start thinking about someone in your life who, who you really care about, maybe it’s your dog, maybe it’s a family member, a parent, you start maybe when you’re falling asleep, you get that really uneasy, challenging movie in your head of what will happen when they die. So that’s what happened to me for a year. That was me like 24 seven, I was constantly afraid of dying and it was it was not fun. It was to the point that I was afraid to really even leave my house. So, it was a very, you know, relatively extreme case of not living, because I was so obsessed with the idea of dying. Now, counterintuitively, what popped me out of that was about one year after all of that, when I was while I was in this deep death anxiety, I had been watching a friend of mine, Dan, he was a friend and colleague of mine at Google, I was watching as he trained for Everest. And this was going to be his attempt. He was very passionate about climbing Mount Everest.

He was also just the super vibrant and fun guy who just played with life, just one of those people that exudes being alive, you know. Meanwhile, this is all happening while I’m, you know, like afraid to drive my car. So unfortunately, when he was attempting that summit of Everest, that was when the Nepal earthquake struck and struck in 2015 and he was killed instantly in an avalanche. And I see your face, right? But stick with me. That was this moment when I realized that he knew that he could die climbing that mountain and yet he knew that he had to do that. That was his version of truly living. Now contrast that with the way that I was dying, afraid to take chances afraid to live my life, you know, just so obsessed with the idea of not dying and I realized that we all have a limited quantity of time and energy in our lives and you can do like I did and put it all towards not dying and living in fear. Or we can do like Dan did and we can channel that limited quantity of time and energy towards living and from that day on, that was when I realized that every day I have to make the choice because every day fears pulling us every day, you know, worry every day, you know, all of the challenges that we have in life great and small, especially running businesses as entrepreneurs, I realized that I have to manually put my energy towards living, I have to force my energy towards that joie de vivre, I have to, you know, every morning that I wake up really feel grateful to be alive, because it’s a privilege that not everyone gets and so, I’ll just end the story by saying that, you know, at that time, my highest expression of living like I might die tomorrow was to quit my job at Google and I traveled around the world for two years.
That was my big dream at the time when I was about 30. And it was a grand adventure. But I’ll close the story with what happened when I came back, which was the biggest lesson of all. And that was that when I came back, I got another job in corporate, right, I needed to re refill the financial coffers. And it was really hard.

I did not gracefully flow into corporate life again, you know, my newly enlightened self, because we’re never fully through Lorraine, like none of us are Buddha. Okay, that’s all come to that agreement. But what I realized is, you know, I became really overwhelmed with life and, you know, stressed and traffic and bills and everything that we have to deal with. But what I realized, and that was the greatest lesson that I came back is that it’s really easy to feel alive when you’re on a mountaintop in Japan, or, you know, you know, on a beach in in Mexico, like you said, but the true, true challenge of life is to feel alive while we’re standing at the kitchen sink doing dishes and to really revel in that moment when we’re deep in conversation with someone that we care about, or to feel alive when we’re at work in dealing with all the many stresses and challenges that we have. And so that’s been in the in these eight years since I got back from that big trip.

That’s what I really like to talk about living like you might die tomorrow might be opening a business or having a big challenge, or a big adventure. But to me living like you might die tomorrow is truly more just appreciating the wonder and beauty that we get to be alive on any ordinary day.

Jennifer: Oh, I love this so much and you said something that really struck a chord in me that when you saw your friend died when he was out climbing Everest, which was his dream, that that made you look and see, look at how you were dying every single day, you know, being in your house afraid to go out. That really struck a chord in me of like, you were able to see Wait a second. Yes, he died, but he died doing something that he loved and you were in the house, really having so much fear around the whole dying thing. And so that was really powerful.
I just really love that you said that and I just want to call some attention to it. So, if you guys are listening, I think that’s a great question to ask ourselves, you know, yes, people are dying out in the world, but they’re dying, the ones who are dying out there doing the things that they love versus how are we choosing how we’re going to live each day. And some of us might actually be choosing death right now in the choices that we’re making each day. That’s so powerful to me.

Kate:  Yes, that’s so well said. And I can resonate with that because I have done the thing where as an entrepreneur, I let work take over and creep into all the areas of my life. And I let myself just become so obsessed with, you know, the next thing and all of this, all the to do’s that I have on my, on my table that I have lost the beauty of life still, even now it happens, right? Like we get in that cycle and so, and so I’m not challenging people to, to be happy all the time. But what I am challenging you to do is to look at the way that you are approaching your day.
Look at the attitude that you’re approaching your day from the lens of the reality that we don’t know how long we have and if you can look at your life from the perspective of life and death, right, from the perspective of not knowing how long we have, and you feel like there’s some adjustments to my attitude that need to be made, I should be having more fun, I can be whistling while I work, even while I’m working. Is there a way that you can better enhance your coworkers or your employees lives by showing up for them for with a positive attitude? Is there a way that you can readjust the way that you’re spending your time so that it’s more in line with what’s truly meaningful for you in life? So, it’s really about taking stock and that’s something that you can do on a daily basis, quarterly basis, annual basis, but it’s really, we can’t do anything about the past right in the futures in the future. But how do you want to show up in your business today? And when you hear something that you can take, which is called the deathbed gut check. So, the deathbed gut check is something that you can do when you’re faced with a tough decision in life, or in your business, or when you’re trying to get a sense of whether or not you’re showing up in your business the way that you want to.

Now the deathbed gut check is this and we can do it right here, Jennifer, which is that, you know, think about a decision that you’re faced with that you’re stuck on, or think about whether you’re wanting to understand if you’re showing up in your business the way that you want to. Now get that question in your mind. Right? And now you can imagine yourself fast forward, you’re on your deathbed, and you’re looking back on the present moment, from the perspective of money doesn’t matter anymore.

Jennifer: Right

Kate: Achievement doesn’t matter anymore. Right? All that matters is, you know, the way that you whether you are showing up or the way that this decision is aligning for you from a meaningful, true perspective, no more societal expectations, you know, money, productivity and so, when you look at that decision, or when you look at the way you’re showing up in your business, from that perspective of your deathbed, how do you feel in your gut? Right? I’m pointing to my belly right now, do you feel like a sinking sensation, that maybe you’re a little bit off course right now, if you’re looking at a decision that you’re trying to make in your life, you can look at option A, and feel how you feel in your gut. And then look at option B, feel how you feel in your gut, you feel that tightness, that heaviness, we don’t dwell on the past, we just move forward and decide how you want to show up going forward. Maybe you feel lightness, positivity, then you know that you’re operating in that in that aligned way.

Jennifer: Oh, I love this so much. I know you guys listening are gonna love this too. Because even when I play around with a decision, like I’ll feel a tightness in my chest, when it’s like, okay, so if you go that way, that feels just like heavy and tight in your chest. And then if you go that way, it’s like, oh, it’s like everything opens up and you’re like, oh, that feels really, really nice. So, I love this as a tool for being able to just like, check in with yourself on really any decision. Obviously, not like maybe, maybe not all the decisions, you guys, but more of the major decisions of like, hey, what direction should I go in? Maybe when we talk about your productivity, your time management, because really your time of where you’re going to put your time.

In my world, that’s a really, really big one, because it really, really affects everything. But I love having that very simple tool of just being able to kind of check in without any judgment. You know, no, no judgment on whichever direction you decide to go, which is your direction in your life. But without judgment, being able to kind of check in with yourself with your own intuition and see where that falls out and how that feels. That’s such a powerful tool.

Kate: You know, as business as business owners and employees, you know, we’re faced with a lot of decisions every day and it can be really hard to pull ourselves out of the mire of like I said, the, the societal expectations, familial expectations, financial expectations, you know, all of those things and so, this is it’s a perspective tool for you to make decisions from that truly aligned, like, just like you said, Jennifer, that intuitive sense of what is going to feel what feels the best with your true self separate from all of those earthly, earthly challenges that we’re all that we’re all faced with, and we all get caught up in.
So, it’s really a clarity check. It’s a it’s an intuitive check. And it can be everything from Yeah, what brand of yogurt to purchase, like all the way up to the big decisions. Like you said, but yeah, I called the deathbed gut check and you can use it for whatever feels right for you.

Jennifer: Oh, I love it so much. And so, Kate, I would love to hear your thoughts on so as I’m a business coach, and I coach a lot of different people. And at times, I will have clients who are going through very, very difficult and traumatic things and we might even have somebody who’s listening today, who’s going through something really difficult. And I know that in my past in my life, when I’ve gone through really, really hard things, you know, I went through a terrible divorce, three children, single mom, I at the time I was in corporate and the corporate job was a we call it the corporate nightmare. Yes, you make great money, but it like sucks the soul life right out of you and you’re just like, ah, you know, how do I get out of this and so, for somebody who might be listening, who maybe is going through something really difficult, really traumatic. It’s easy to sit here and go, oh, yeah, I went through that, too. And it was really hard. But now here I am and things are pretty good but if you’re listening, and you’re going through something like that, that’s just, you know, every day, you’re just in a slog, and you just don’t know how you’re gonna keep going. What would you say to them? What are some maybe some quick little tips on just right now today in the present moment that people can use to kind of shift their state a little bit?  It isn’t necessarily going to fix whatever might be going on that is broken in your life that you’re working through. But are there some quick things that people can do just in the moment, even if you’re really, really struggling to get a little relief from that, or just start this process of feeling better in your day today, right now, however things are?

Kate: Yeah, I mean, first, I just want to hold a moment of space for everyone that is going through really challenging endeavors personally, professionally, those who maybe have just barely gotten out of the hole, those who are those of us who are in the hole, those of us who maybe can remember the not so far long ago, and you just felt completely overwhelmed and when you, I really look at it as losing the beauty of life. I look at it as, you know, forgetting the wonder of being alive, forgetting how beautiful life can be. And I place no blame in that whatsoever.

Because when we’re in that challenge state, when we feel like we have so much on our plate, and we’re just, we’re barely staying alive, right? Like we’re barely, but counterintuitively, I implore you to do everything you can to rediscover the beauty of life, the romance of life, the love of life, the art, the music, because we can get so trapped in that left brain of survival, right? Of, you know, where’s the money going to come from? How am I going to connect A to B to C? How am I going to get all these things done? And truly, most of us in our businesses, we’re never going to get everything done. Like, it’s just, it’s just always, there’s always gonna be the next thing. There’s always going to be and so, there’s never going to be that moment where it’s like, oh, now I can relax. Now I can go to the art museum. Now I can go outside and sip tea on my porch. Now I can paint. Now I can, you know, really spend time and roll around on the floor with my kids or my dog. And, and so I know how hard it can feel to open our minds and hearts and souls to the beauty of life when we’re in darkness, but that is what you have to do.

You have to look at a painting.  You have to get lost in some beautiful classical music or whatever music speaks to your soul. You have to go outside and touch a tree, take a walk to anything that, that activates that right, that right brain, because, you know, from a neuroplastic perspective, when we’re in that slog of life, like you said, Jennifer, a trail gets, gets trodden and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and so that’s where we have to claw our way out back into that right brain, the symphony of life, the joy of being alive and so, you know, you can start with in the morning when you wake up, just taking a second and taking a deep breath and just be like, I got the privilege of being alive. At least I’m not dead and sometimes we may be so overwhelmed where death might sound like a nice break, but we don’t know what’s, what’s on the other side. Right. And we have this gift of being alive with, I’m looking out the window.

That’s on the other side of the camera right now. And maybe you you’re driving down the road and you can see the sky from where you are. You can see a tree, but to rediscover that feeling alive every single day, if even for one moment, right? Like, I’m not asking you to go out and act like, you know, you’re on drugs all day and dance through it. It’s just not real. You can like, that’s that, but it’s probably not realistic. And if you’re in darkness right now, you have to claw your way out of that, that neuroplastic trench that we’re digging then in that darkness and that negativity and we have to reactivate that right brain and a wonderful book to read is two books that I’ll recommend. Number one, man’s search for meaning by Victor Frenkel, one of the most beautiful books written of all time, absolutely gives perspective on how Victor Frenkel in the most challenging circumstances of his life was able to find beauty and joy in a concentration camp in the Holocaust and then after you read my man’s search for meaning by Victor Frenkel, another beautiful book to read is my stroke of insight by Dr. Jill Taylor, who writes a beautiful book about as a neuroanatomist being awake while she was having a stroke and how in the many years after that her brain was really living only in the right brain and how beautiful that was when she was a scientist. She was so in that right brain and business and work and, and this is what we do. And then she got the unexpected gift of having a stroke where she was able to experience what it was like to live in that symphony of life and that right brain as her, her left brain went down and she was living in that right brain. And so, it’s a beautiful writing that she has shared with the importance of taking time to stay awake to the beauty of life and live in that right brain.

Otherwise, otherwise the slog will take over if we let it, if we don’t stay awake to the beauty of life, it will be dark. And so, a lot of us think of like feeling alive and the beauty of life is this like sprinkle of fairy dust, right? When, especially as business owners, when a lot of times there’s not a clock in clock out time, it takes over. We actually have to be intentional about creating that magic. So, pick up a leaf, examine it, put your feet in the grass, look in your partner’s eyes. Like really, I’m getting close to the camera right now. It’s probably creepy, but look in the eyes, right? Like whatever for you wakes up that right brain symphony, that feeling alive, that’s what we have to do. Make time for every single day.

Jennifer: Oh, I love this so much. And guys, when you’re listening like that, the darkness, I see this with clients and I’ve experienced this myself as well that the darkness can still even be there if everything’s going fine. If like, you know, your business is really successful or you making a lot of money and you have a lot of money in the bank, it can come at any time. So don’t think that just because, oh, you’re going through a death or a divorce or something very, very traumatic that that darkness can’t kind of creep in there. It can absolutely creep in even when there’s nothing like major going on like that. But it might simply just be that, you know, having a successful business takes a lot of hours and maybe you’re working a little too much. Maybe you’re feeling a little too burned out. Maybe there’s nothing major like that going on. But I think this is all and Kate, my time with you has been so wonderful, it’s really inspired me to really look back and make sure that we’re not sacrificing that spark of life for our business or our family or something like that, because really, we can’t serve them if we don’t ourselves embrace that spark of life and that gratitude for life.

How are we going to go out and really serve? Well, all the people that we serve as business owners and with our families and things like that. So, this has been, for me, a great reminder of that. And one of the things I really want to share. So, I just came back from a vacation at Virginia Beach. I live in upstate New York and we went to Virginia Beach for a week and even though I was still working while I was down there, there was one morning where I went out and I can’t remember what, where my husband, my daughter was sleeping in. I don’t know where my husband was, but I went out and I sat on a bench on the boardwalk right in front of the ocean because I just, what a gift. I don’t live by the ocean normally and so to start my day, to get to go out and just sit on the ocean and just wake up that way was just like magic and then I saw a dolphin and I was just like, oh, and you’re just like, oh, the birds are flying and there’s a dolphin and so, as I’m sitting there and it’s in the morning, you guys, I’ve not had a shower. My hair’s a disaster.

There’s no makeup on. I’m like in half of my pajamas still because I walked across the street to sit on the ocean. And as I’m sitting there, this gentleman walks down the boardwalk and he gets past me and he smiles and I smile and he was like, good morning and I said, good morning back. And these days in our society where I feel like so many people are just pissed off and angry about everything. Black, white, male, female, old, young, skinny, fat, you name it.

There seems to be somebody’s pissed off about something and so here I am and I’m just over, just turned 50, white, female, sitting on the bench and he was probably, I’m going to guess he was in his mid to late twenties, a young black guy and he’s walking along and he smiles at me and there’s so many things that could go wrong in any kind of an interaction like this and so, he smiles. He says, good morning. I say, good morning back and he says, I can’t decide which is more beautiful and he points at me and he points at the ocean and he points at me and he points at the ocean. And I was just like, thank you. Like, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. You know, he wasn’t coming on to me. He wasn’t being weird. He was just being genuine and very, very lovely. And I said, thank you so much.
You know, I really appreciate that. You know, have a wonderful day and so, he kept on walking down the boardwalk and I watched him walk and he’s be bopping along and now here comes a jogger and he high fives the jogger and I’m like, he doesn’t know this jogger. He just high fives the jogger. So, I’m sitting there and probably another, I don’t know, half hour, 45 minutes has passed. And here he comes again, walking in the other direction and I was like, oh, I’m really curious to see what’s he going to say this time and so he smiles, I smile back. He’s like, you’re just really enjoying your beautiful morning out here. I said, you know what? I really, really am and he’s like, you should extend it another hour and I’m like, you know what? I probably should. I had to get on a call. So I couldn’t, but I was like, that is a great idea. I should totally do that and he smiles and says, you know, have a wonderful day.

I said, you too. He walks a little further. I see an older elderly woman coming up from the beach and I see him, you know, say hello to her. And I was just like, what a beautiful, beautiful way to be going through life. This just happy, amazing person. And it just filled my heart with so much love and sure enough, about a minute after he walked by a woman walks up and she says to me, he’s just spreading that love to everybody today. And I was like, yes, he is. And people notice, like you notice when he’s just walking down this boardwalk, just literally spreading his love to everybody and it didn’t matter, you know, like I said, it didn’t matter, male, female, black, white, any color, old, young, like it didn’t matter at all. He was just so genuine and loving and it just filled my heart with so much love to have this interaction with a perfect stranger on the boardwalk and I went back and told my husband, he was just like, wow, that was so amazing and it really was and that kind of person makes me wonder, like, you know, are they doing something that says, hey, I might die tomorrow.

Let me spread my love and my light to the world today. And just imagine if our world if people interacted like that with everybody on a daily basis, it would be a very, very different world that we live in. Sorry, I know that was a long story, but it just really got me thinking about all this.

Kate: So beautiful. And you know, that just makes me think that we can ask ourselves, am I being the thermostat or am I being a thermometer? He’s a thermostat, right? Like, he’s a thermostat.

He knows that he’s setting the mood for everybody around him. You know, you set the thermostat and then everything else rises up to meet it. The thermometer is just gauging the energy of the room and then meeting it. Right and so, a lot of us go through our lives as thermometers, not knowing that we all have the potential and all actually are thermostats. Right and so and so dovetailing these two concepts that we’re bringing together, which is living like you might die tomorrow, living for the joy of being alive today, finding everyday beauty, right, like choosing our, our attitude, and then dovetailing that with just like that beautiful story that you shared that guy, right, like being the thermostat, right? Like, so the motivation is from living like you might die tomorrow. And then the action of the we move in the world is knowing that our attitude affects everybody around us, the way that we show up in the world and if we want to live a good life, and I know everyone listening pretty much, I’m sure we all to whatever that means personally to you, we want to live a good life, a meaningful life. We want to do good. We want to be remembered. We want to leave a positive mark.

How we show up every day is the most impactful way that we will change the world, more so than perhaps like a Nobel Prize or a best-selling book and it’s the one that we have the most control over and so people say, well, how can I have, you know, meaning at work when you know, I work for the man or, you know, I do whatever, well, you’ve all probably heard that old adage where there was a news crew or a documentary crew, rather, who went into the hospital, they were doing a documentary, and they were talking to the janitor, and they were asking, you know, the janitor about his job and he said, you know, I have the most meaningful job at this hospital. I keep everything clean and sanitary for every single patient and doctor and nurse and staff in this hospital and so he was able to find meaning in his work through that action.

Right? And, and we also can have meaning because we are the thermometer for the people around us, especially whether we’re an employee or a business owner. But we set the tone and we can raise people up more than you can ever imagine, just like that guy, right? He’s just a normal guy, bebopping his way down the road. But he raised up every single person around him. And sometimes we can, we can fake it till we make it on our bad days. And before you know it, by the end of the day, you’re going to be bebopping down the road when you started that day in the toilet. Right? And so that’s right.

Yeah. That intentionality and digging ourselves out, even when it’s hard. That’s what, that’s what I want you to take away.

Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. I love this so much. You might die tomorrow. So, you might as well be the thermostat and not the thermometer. It’s very interesting because even that morning, I described it and it was an absolutely beautiful morning. If you were to flip the scene, and I looked when I was looking around at all of this. So, while I was there in Virginia beach, they were doing construction on the beach. They were like moving a lot of sand to kind of reinforce the sand. So, there’s the huge construction trucks going back and forth down further on the boardwalk.

They were doing construction there. So, the guy had the jackhammer going. So, it would have been very easy on a morning like that to go, oh, you know, the construction trucks are out. The guy down there is jackhammering. It’s so noisy, blah, blah, blah. But we always get to choose what we’re going to pull away and what I chose to pull away that day was the sun was shining. The ocean is fantastic. What a gift to just get to sit and like, start your day on the ocean. Um, this guy walked by just filled my heart with so much love. Um, and just, it was just really profound to me. Like you always get a choice.

You guys, everybody who’s listening, you always get a choice in what you’re going to see and what you’re going to pull away. And you can pull away so much beauty and love. Even if there’s jackhammers just down the road, the jackhammers are going, you can kind of hear them, but it’s just like, you still get a choice of what you’re going to pull away and whether or not you’re going to really align with that spark of life. Or if you’re going to go through it being the thermostat, you know, wait, wait, it was the thermostat, right?

Kate: No thermometer. Right. Just soaking up the energy around us.

Jennifer: Right. Right. Or we get to be the thermostat. So, I love that analogy, by the way, um, that we always get to choose who we want to be and who we are going to be that guy. He, I don’t even know his name. I’ll probably never see him again, but he just so inspired me with those simple little things. It wasn’t about his money or his success or his business. If he even has a business, I have no idea. It wasn’t about any of those things. It was just about him making a choice to share his love. As he walked down a boardwalk with all the people that he came across. And that was so inspiring to me to then raise my right, raise myself up and go, wait a second. How could I do better when I go through this life? And how could I share more of my love with other people? Just from his example.

Kate: Exactly. And from a neuro neuroplastic perspective, we were training our brains to find more and more and more of that positivity and yeah. Wow. Beautifully said.

Jennifer: I love it. All right, Kate, this has been such a wonderful show. I’m so happy that I got to talk with you today. Would you mind just take a minute and tell everybody? Cause I know they’re probably like, oh, we got to find out more about who this Kate person is. So, tell everybody where they can find you.

Kate: Yes, absolutely. So, uh, my book is called you might die tomorrow. So, live today and, uh, and it’s, it’s inspiring and beautiful. And it has more about my personal story and ways that you can live alive in our everyday life. Just like you had your alive moment on the beach, Jennifer, which is so beautiful. Um, I also do, um, to coaching for professionals to find, um, balance between work life and everything in between how to live alive and get meaning in our work, no matter, uh, no matter what we’re doing, whether we’re, you know, doing brain surgery for, uh, for babies, or we are the ones cleaning up the blood as the janitor and everything in between. And I would love to connect with you. So, um, you can visit my website, katemancer.com. I also have youmightdietomorrow.com. Please reach out. I love hearing from people and I love hearing about what this message invokes or inspires in, in you. And if you take nothing else away from this, just please remember that it is a privilege to wake up in the morning and I’m so glad I got to share your me, my morning with you, Jennifer, and with you, everyone listening. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day to be alive.

Jennider: Oh, thank you so much, Kate. Um, you guys wonderful episode. I think one of my favorites to date, this has been wonderful. Kate, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Yes. All right, everybody, you’ve got the message, you know what to do. So, get out there and have a happy, productive day.

Links:

Connect with Kate: www.katemanser.com

Join our Academy: www.jenniferdawnacademy.com

Connect with Jennifer: www.jenniferdawncoaching.com

Retreats: www.jenniferdawncoaching.com/our-retreats