“Live every day like it’s your last.”

Don’t do this. Seriously. It was my philosophy for about 6 months straight, and I have to tell you, it doesn’t work out well.

I’ve heard it time and again from the best self help “gurus”– love like you’ll never get another chance, tell the people around you that you love them, try all the things you want to try before your dead.

Seems like good enough advice, doesn’t it? After all, we never know when we?ll kick the bucket, and you don’t want to lie on your deathbed thinking how you wasted your chance at calling that ex-girlfriend and telling her you really didn’t mean it when you called her a c-nt.

Instead, why not treat EVERY day like it’s your last? See beauty, hug loved ones, stop working that dead-end job, and start LIVING YOUR DREAM! When you prepare for the worst, you live out the best. In this mind-frame, you live your life FULLY, isn’t that a good thing?

Short answer: No.

Chances are, you’ll be preparing for something that won’t be coming for another 30 or 40 years. Modern sciences is an annoying little bugger, and it’s great at keeping people from drawing their last breath. Living your life expecting death is an attempt to scare yourself into action, but ultimately, you’ll find that fear-driven responses is like that final shot of tequila before you’re at the point-of-no-return– it seems like a good idea in the short run until your senses catch up with you.

Your first week will be great. You’ll look at everything in a new light, you’ll feel more connected to your loved ones, you’ll appreciate your surroundings, you’ll go on picnics. Unfortunately, after your first week reality kicks in. You see, human beings are creatures of routine, 14 days is all it takes for us to get used to a new environment or mindset, regardless of the situation. It’s how survivors can handle long periods of being stranded on an island and how concentration camp inmates handle hard labor. We set up a routine and get used to it.

When you get used to death, that’s the honeymoon period ends– the jolt stops kicking in, your kids begin to get tired of you hugging them all the time (“It’s embarrassing, my friends are here!”), and worst of all, the previous routine that you worked so hard to set up dissipates evenly into your prepared last will and testament.

At the end of the day, do you really need death to remind yourself how to live? How about fulfilling your potential because, well, you can?