How Thinking About Death Can Improve Your Life | Alua Arthur

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Death isn't the most appetizing topic, but contemplating mortality can be a massive source of motivation, perspective, and even stress relief. In this episode, life lessons from a death doula, who helps people at the end.

Description:

There seems to be one clear bug in the human operating system — most of us do not like talking about death. Yet when we do talk about it, it can genuinely upgrade the quality of our lives.

Our guest today is Alua Arthur, a former attorney who is now what's called a death doula, which is someone who helps guide people through the end of their lives. Through this work, she has learned some extraordinary stuff about how to live life right now.

Alua is also the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her debut memoir, Briefly Perfectly Human: Making An Authentic Life By Getting Real About the End, will be released on April 16, 2024.

This conversation took place at the 2023 TED Conference in Vancouver, immediately after Alua delivered her triumphant talk, which is out now.

Special thanks to the TED Audio Collective. You can listen to Alua's talk and other TED talks on the TED Talks Daily podcast.

In this episode we talk about:

How death can be a powerful motivator
How consistently being aware that you're going to die can be a "stress reliever"
The utility of imagining your ideal death
Her view on reincarnation
How the concept of "healing" can sometimes be used as a weapon against ourselves
The importance of not leaving things unsaid
How "hope" at the end of life can sometimes be unhelpful
What surprises her about death
How her work helped her out of her depression
The five steps that you should take when confronting your own death
The harm that can sometimes result from too much medical intervention toward the end of life
The often fraught relationship that vulnerable and marginalized people can have with the medical community
The benefits of thinking about what version of yourself you want to meet on your deathbed
The death meditation that she uses when working with people
What to say and do when you are with somebody who is grieving
And a practice she calls, "The dying things exercise"

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/Alua-Arthur-archive

Where to find Alua Arthur online:

Website: goingwithgrace.com

Social Media:

Book Mentioned:

Briefly Perfectly Human: Making An Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End

Other Resources Mentioned:

Additional Resources:

Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:07.0	Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing? It seems to me that one clear bug in the human
0:24.0	operating system is that most of us do not like talking about death, and yet when we do do it,
0:30.0	it can make us feel good and genuinely upgrade our lives right now. We're going to try to
0:35.7	demonstrate that for you today with a genuinely extraordinary human
0:39.3	being. Alua Arthur is a former attorney who is now what's called a death dula, which, and you
0:44.9	will hear her describe this better than I can, is somebody who helps guide people through the
0:49.4	end of their lives. Through this work, she has learned some extraordinary stuff about how to live life
0:55.1	right now. In this conversation, we talk about how death can be a powerful motivator, how
1:00.0	consistently being aware that you're going to die can be a stress reliever, the utility of
1:04.5	imagining your ideal death, her view on reincarnation, how the concept of healing can sometimes
1:10.1	be used as a weapon, the importance of not leaving things unsation, how the concept of healing can sometimes be used as a weapon, the importance
1:12.5	of not leaving things unsaid, how hope at the end of life can sometimes, in her words,
1:17.6	be fucked up, what surprises her about death, how her work has helped her out of depression,
1:24.1	and the five steps that you should take when confronting your own death.
1:29.2	A little bit more about A. Lua before we dive in, she's the founder of Going with Grace,
1:34.3	a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her debut memoir called Briefly
1:40.3	Perfectly Human is out now. This conversation took place at the 2003 TED conference in Vancouver.
1:48.0	I actually interviewed Elua immediately after she stepped off stage after delivering a triumphant talk,
1:54.0	which you can watch by clicking the link in the show notes. Special thanks to the TED Audio Collective.
1:58.9	We love those people. You can listen to A. Louis
2:01.0	Talks and other TED Talks over on the TED Talks Daily podcast, wherever you're listening to
	...

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