What You're Actually Afraid Of (It's Not Death)

Watch the video version here. It has a bit more context into what me and this project is about.

Listen here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

I’m dying on March 31st, 2026.

After starting my own Year to Live group, I realized there was no other way around it. I’m jumping back on this train.

I’ll admit—I was hesitant to commit to a death date….again. But what lit me up was the chance to document it. To use this podcast as a diary, a processing space, and a shared journey.

Throughout this podcast, you’ll hear:

• 1:1 conversations with my clients in the cohort as we process this experiment together (with their permission).

• Deep, healing conversations with my family.

• Intimate conversations with friends, fellow travelers, or maybe even my nutritionist (she’s curious lol).

• Now that I think about it…I am now actually considering asking my therapist if he would be willing to have a public conversation lol

This podcast is my living legacy.

If I were to indeed die next March, I want this archive to be my last gift to the world, a library of my heart and mission through heartfelt conversations. It would be proof that you have the capacity to have the hard conversations, that witnessing can be healing, and that you don’t have to fix what isn’t broken.

In fact, the only thing broken is the part of you refusing to accept your whole damn self.

What We're Actually Afraid Of (Spoiler: It's Not Death)

So here's the first insight I'm working through in real time that I want to share with you:

You are not afraid of death.

I am not afraid of death.

WE are not afraid of death—despite what most death workers shout at the top of the mountain (me especially).

Think about it.

IF we were truly afraid of death…

• Would we show up to funerals?

• Would we dare to view our loved ones in open caskets?

• Would we keep their pictures up and talk about them years later?

• Would we share the news on social media when notable figures die?

You are not afraid of death.

What you really fear is the mirror of mortality and what it reflects back to you—your humanity.

Think of the moment at a funeral of someone you love.

For the most part, you are very sad to have to say goodbye.

You get sad at seeing their loved ones take it so hard and you feel for them.

But there is a silent moment you have to yourself where you begin questioning what you're doing with your life, and whether or not you're wasting it away or living the way you truly desire.

You sit with it with that existential dread for a moment until its time for refreshments, or until you reach for your phone to be pacified by cheap dopamine.

Then you get into your car and drive those thoughts away and you're back to your regularly scheduled programming until the next funeral.

A Year to Live is an invitation to sit with that moment—every day. For one year.

Even just for a few seconds.

Or some days not at all. That's part of the process, too.

The Real Fear

More than anything else, we're afraid of our capacity to feel.

Our capacity for regret and profound joy.

Our capacity for betrayal, for hurting someone, for being the cause of someone else's pain.

Our capacity for forgiveness, for our commitment to never forgive, for acknowledging that we are capable of the very hate we spend our existence pointing fingers at.

We fear the enormity of what it means to be human.

And we've arrived at a place where our human nature very much goes against our ideologies of what humans should be.

When death does finally come, I think we know deep down that it won't let us look away anymore.

The Invitation

So the invitation for you is…why wait?

What waits for you then is what is waiting for you now.

Why let that dread hang out rent free until then and make your decisions smaller?

The anxiety, the existential dread, the need to avoid and look away, the inability to sit with something so scary.

None of that is actually death.

It is our fear of fear itself.

Once you realize that your relationship with everything you hate is more about the fear of what those things make you feel, everything becomes…clear.

Our mortality, and in turn, humanity, is the most powerful class we can ever take as a human.

Yet it's a class nobody is willing to take.

Welcome to the class.

Welcome to The Apprenticeship of the Unknown.

Much Love.

Thanks for reading and see you next time.