Want to do a super fun visualization exercise with me? Oh good; I love how you’re always game. Pour a stiff drink and pull up a chair.

Shut your eyes.

Damn it. Fine—squint your eyes so you can read this.

Imagine you’re comfortably reclined, enveloped in a pillowy, cream-colored satin. Who knew the ruched lining of your casket would feel so soft?

So you’re dead, and I’ve gotta tell you: you look so peaceful! Those stress lines on your face, Babe—they’ve all but melted away. You haven’t looked this relaxed in years.

With you being dead, people are now free to whisper the shit they’ve been saying about you behind your back all these years. They’re still being respectful by whispering, but oof, are they ever being candid.

Despite being totally dead, let’s imagine you can hear the people at your memorial service. Every murmur, every quip, every snide remark—you’re catching it all. I told you this would be a fun game and I’m delivering!

What would horrify you to hear?

Here is the fill in the blank portion of the game:

“Ugh, [insert your name here] was so [insert the horrifying word(s) here].”

Because I know this is an incredibly complicated game, I will give you a personal example to explain how it works:

Martha: “Ugh, Jodi was so selfish.”
Ali: “I know, right?! So thoughtless.”
Esmerelda: “Yeah, she was an inconsiderate bitch.”
Bartholomew: “And her brownies were the worst.”

I went all in with that character assassination example.

What is the point of this horrifying exercise?

Research has found that people can be more concerned with avoiding a negative legacy than with leaving a positive one. I do workshops with groups and teams and while I love the exercise of asking people how they want to be described, it tends to be more powerful to ask people how they don’t want to be described.

If I had given examples of how I wanted to be described while in my casket (okay I’d be in an urn because I plan on getting cremated, but now I’m just getting into the weeds), I’d have said that I’d love to be described as giving and thoughtful and considerate… with a tray of the best brownies ever. That feels warm and fuzzy! But there’s something about the emotional charge attached to the horrifying words; naming the traits of being selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate, with dry brownies in tow… that snaps me to attention. That motivates me to figure out how to not be described that way from my urn.

And that’s how you win the game. You figure out how to never be described in a horrifying way.

So if it terrifies you to be described as overbearing, your task is to let up a bit. Or maybe a lot.

If you’re afraid of being described as boring, your task is to go do something interesting. Learn to tango badly.

If it horrifies you to be described as gossipy, your task is to stop talking shit about people at their memorial services.

You get the idea here.

Here is a list of 123 different potentially horrifying descriptors:

Earn the right to be described the way you want to when you’re gone and start doing the opposite of how it would horrify you to be described.

And now? Go make my brownie recipe. That’s very considerate of me to share that with you, isn’t it?