What would you do if you thought you might not make it to next year?

Yes, you’d go through the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). But what would you actually do?

And given the opportunity to do something you had always wanted to, but never pursued, would you?

If you were later given a clean bill of health, would that shift in perspective finally get you to pull the trigger on that one thing?

That’s exactly what this waitress did.

I met her last year, when my wife and I took a trip to Kauai. We’d never been. The second night there, we ate dinner at a great restaurant with a beautiful, scenic view. (Which, I guess, you could say about any restaurant in Hawaii.)

The restaurant employees all had name tags with their hometowns written underneath their names. And I noticed the waitress’s nametag said New York, NY. I’m a talker and like to make casual conversation, so I asked how she ended up over 5,000 miles away on the island of Kauai.

She told me she was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. What kind and to what degree, I didn’t ask. She went through treatment and was declared cancer-free in late 2019. The experience left her with a completely new perspective on life, and she realized she wasn’t living the way she wanted to. Then, COVID-19.

Shutdowns and stay-at-home orders on a global scale left her not only with fear and uncertainty, but also with frustration, since now she couldn’t pursue the life she realized she was missing out on.

Eventually, orders were lifted, restrictions were eased, and travel opened back up as the world returned to a sense of normalcy.

She didn’t waste any time. The moment she could, she bought a one-way ticket to Kauai, applied for a job as a waitress, and never looked back. She said it was the best decision she’d ever made, and she’d make the same decision 1,000 times over.

When something is on the table and within reach, it’s easy to put it off. Sometimes, when an option disappears, we decide we want it more than ever before.

Therein lies the question:

How do you recognize those opportunities before they disappear?

Take a piece of paper and write down the one thing you want to do but haven’t done yet. Whether it be travel, a specific concert, or learning to ski.

Then crumple the paper, throw it away, and say to yourself, “That’s never going to happen.”

How do you feel? Saying it out loud makes the possibility of never taking that opportunity much more real.

Now, take the paper out of the trash. Flatten it and pin it on your wall or bulletin board as a reminder of what you almost closed the door on.

Go do the thing.