Finding Your Tombstone Statement

“If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” -Henry Kissinger

Kobe Bryant associated everything in the world with math. He said that everything was compounding. He knew on a long enough timeline of practicing basketball every day -sometimes 2-3 times- he would have the advantage over every single other person in the league. Charlie Munger shared with us the first rule of compounding to never break compounding unnecessarily, and with his knowledge in investing was able to become one of the wealthiest people in the entire world.

The problem with how we go through life is that day to day we do not really put too much thought into what we are going to look like 40 years from now. Our human brain has a challenging time thinking long term even in the forms of a few months or years. It would never occur to us that something we did on a regular basis today may or may not affect the overall outcome of my 40-year older self. This is the very reason Henry Kissinger’s quote is on my top ten list. I do not want to wait 40 years to see how the world shapes me as if I am a cork floating with the Ocean’s current going in any direction it wants to drift me to.

My priority for all my clients is to have them produce their own Tombstone Statement. This is a four-paragraph macro-oriented writing piece of character traits that they would desire to identify with after they leave this earth. David Brooks writes in The Road to Character and identifies the accumulation of these traits as an “eulogy resume.” He differentiates it from a “professional resume” in the fact that when you pass away no one is talking about how much money you made or the degrees you earned when you pass. People talk about what kind of person you were.

The Tombstone Statement acts as a North Star. With the use of this tool, you now have something that you can reverse engineer as far back as this current moment and create an action plan to make this dream a reality. Getting to this destination will take consistent identifiable habits executed daily. Only accepting 100% would cause anyone to become depressed. The goal is not to outshine everyone else in the world. The goal is to make improvements every day on yourself and to shine brighter. The only way to keep improving is to do as the Late Charlie Munger said and maintain that chain of compounding and never break it.

What makes you extraordinary isn’t what you are willing to do, but how long you are willing to do it for. -Alex Hermozi