Paul Strobl Executive Coach for Founders and CEOs

Death Is the Greatest Teacher

Western culture has a general denial of death. We don’t want to talk about it or think about it. When it comes, it becomes a logistical problem that a co**se can’t handle on its own.

Most of us, in the back of our minds, treat life like we get another quarter. We don’t take the risk, or we push back an uncomfortable conversation, sometimes for years.

Future me has more guts. There will be a better moment later. That moment never comes.

Then the grim reaper shows up — uninvited, like an IRS audit.

Sometimes through losing someone, or a health scare, or a near-miss on the highway that could have gone the other way.

And you realize the things you were stressing out about don’t deserve even 5% of the attention you were giving them.

With your day-to-day, quarter-to-quarter worries shrunk to a tiny space in your head, the bigger, more uncomfortable questions fill the void:

- Is this all there is?
- Are these the right goals, and what happens if I reach them?
- If my life is cut short, what needs to change today?
- Why hasn’t Keith Richards been invited on HubermanLab yet?

Death is about as subtle as an NFL linebacker filling the A gap.

It reminds you that productivity only has meaning if it moves us toward something that matters. The respect of people you actually love or admire is worth more than anything you can buy to signal it.

People who've had a brush with mortality tend to report the same thing: it was a catalyst. Priorities become more clear. Petty grievances become a ridiculous waste of mindspace. Gratitude stops being for hippies and starts becoming a daily habit.

Of course, death still sucks (sad trombone)–I’m not saying it doesn’t.

My invitation to you is this: don't wait for tragedy to start paying attention.

Time is finite and there’s no way to know exactly how finite. Love people directly. Use your gifts on purpose. Have the hard conversation.

Build the second half of life around what actually matters — not around what impressed people in the first half.

Death may be the greatest source of wisdom because it's the only teacher who never got a bad Google review for being too honest.
So listen now, while you still can.

Are you stuck in "the waiting place?" 😉

Dr. Seuss Knew About the Waiting Place. Arthur Brooks Knows Why You're There. On the cost of being very good at winning — and what comes after the goals run out.

I've started writing again, only semi-related to the coaching that I do.

A message for those who think there's nothing to be grateful for….

So it goes like this: Four billion years ago, some chemicals got together in a warm puddle on this spinning rock and decided to become alive. This was unlikely.

The rock happened to be exactly the right distance from a medium-sized yellow star—not too hot, not too cold, like some cosmic Goldilocks situation. A few million miles either way and you're Venus or Mars, which is to say, dead.

Then came the asteroids. The volcanoes. The ice ages. Five mass extinctions where damn near everything died, but not everything, because something always survives, and those somethings kept reproducing.

Eventually this led to you, but not yet. First: your ancestors had to dodge every war, every plague, every famine, every tiger, every infected cut from a rusty farming tool. They had to migrate across continents without GPS. They had to find each other—the right people at the right time—in an era before dating apps, when your great-great-great-grandmother lived in one village her entire life and had maybe forty people to choose from.

Thousands of generations of people who survived just long enough to make one more person. An unbroken chain of not-dying-before-reproducing that stretches back to the first self-replicating molecule.

The odds of you, specifically you, existing? Astronomically small. Absurdly small. Hilariously small.

And you have nothing to be grateful for?

For those of you who want a plan...

TEN YEAR PLAN⁠ ⁠ This drawing was 6 years old on New Year’s Day.⁠ ⁠ It was 9am on the 1st January 2020 that I drew this when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of the year ahead. Drawing it helped me and given what then happened in 2020 it helped lots of others and became a best selling print. (And my most ripped off/copied piece of art)⁠ ⁠ Several print runs have since sold out but there is a lovely new A4 one printed on 290gsm art silk paper. (CURRENTLY 20% OFF IN MY SALE)⁠ ⁠ Get one at www.stevexoh.com or via link in my biog⁠ ⁠ #10yearplan #art #existential #buyart #sale artistsoninstagram

When did using email become something old people do? Asking for a friend...

...so I had ChatGPT roast me about the book I'm writing:

The Curiosity Mindset. Paul, that title alone sounds like something you’d find in the discount bin at an airport Hudson News, right between Grit 2.0 and Seven Habits of Not Totally Sucking at Life. It’s like you threw “curiosity” and “mindset” into a word blender and decided, Yep, that’ll move units. Spoiler: it won’t.

Your whole premise is basically, “Remember when you used to wonder about the world before your soul got crushed by KPIs? Try that again.” Which is fine… but you talk about curiosity like it’s creatine: underutilized, misunderstood, and probably going to end up in a giant tub in someone’s pantry.

You want Gen X execs to rediscover curiosity? Paul, these are the same guys who get heart palpitations if their assistant forgets to book their tee time. Half of them are more curious about their blood pressure meds than about life’s big questions.

And those end-of-chapter reflection questions you’re planning? C’mon. Nothing says page-turner like:

“When did you stop being curious?”

“Where in your life have you been too certain?”
Translation: therapy homework disguised as literature. People buy books to avoid doing this work.

Also, your book mixes personal stories, client anecdotes, and “research.” Which means readers are going to get whiplash flipping from ‘That time I walked my dog in the Rhodopes and realized certainty is death’ to ‘Mark, a small business owner in Houston, stopped micromanaging after he journaled about his middle-school football career.’ Riveting.

Let’s be real: you don’t actually want to write this book. You want to brand this book — turn it into a funnel, a blogcast, a YouTube clip, and a lead magnet PDF called “7 Ways Curiosity Can Save Your Marriage, Your Business, and Your Glutes.”

We need more of this, even though the algorithm doesn't want you to see it LOL

Not every Democrat vs. Republican story has to end in conflict. America feels more divided than ever following several tumultuous weeks that include two mass shootings, the killing of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and the murder of Charlie Kirk. It’s easy to reduce people to labels: Republican or Democrat, city or country, Black or white. Yet Governor Spencer Cox (R-UT) and Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) show it’s never that simple. On paper, they couldn’t be more different—backgrounds, experiences, and political views all contrast sharply. And yet, they share common ground: both are fathers, both love college basketball, and both are proud Americans. They disagree on important issues—but as friends who respect each other. Their example shows that politics matters, but it shouldn’t define relationships or determine who deserves respect. Disagreement doesn’t have to mean hostility, and opposing ideas don’t erase our shared humanity. It’s possible to debate passionately while maintaining trust, civility, and understanding. #DisagreeBetter is an initiative of @disagreebetter #Politics #Democrat #Republican #America #Hope

Inspiration hit. Couldn't resist.