What Will They Say About You When You're Gone?: Creating a Life of Legacy

by Daniel Cohen

"This book is a beacon of light and a touchstone for the timeless values of leading a purposeful life."
--From the Foreword by Senator Joseph Lieberman

There's not one person alive who hasn't confronted their own mortality. Each of us, at some point, wakes up to the reality that our time on Earth is limited. But how do we lead our lives with a sense of urgency every day? How do we develop the courage to make choices not based on pressure but on principle? How do we create the sacred space to reflect on who we are and who we want to be so we can realize our innermost goals and dreams?

What Will They Say About You When You're Gone? points the way. Esteemed Rabbi Daniel Cohen will help you rise above the distractions to tap into the best version of yourself. Through a unique blend of storytelling, practical exercises, and profound wisdom, he will teach you seven transformative principles to reverse engineer your life so that you are living with purpose and passion, so that the person you are today more closely aligns with the person you aspire to be.

Genres: Nonfiction

266 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Rabbi Daniel Cohen possesses a unique blend of authenticity, wisdom and spiritual insight for contemporary society. He has served in the rabbinate for over twenty years and currently serves as senior Rabbi at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, CT, the largest modern orthodox synagogue in New England. He is also co-host with Reverend Greg Doll of the nationally syndicated radio show "The Rabbi and the Reverend" Sunday at 11:00 AM and evenings at 9 PM. http://gabradionetwork.com/programs/t.... He speaks frequently on leading a life of legacy. Rabbi Cohen and his wife Diane are the grateful parents of six daughters. For more information, visit www.rabbidanielcohen.com

Reviews

[CT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few self-help books, not necessarily religious, that I enjoyed. The whole concept has to do with building up one’s spiritual ‘PR’ campaign (I define PR as positive reimaging), knowing that at the end of life, people will be sharing about us in our future eulogies. How do we want ourselves to be remembered by? Of course we wouldn’t want the sharing to be shallow or superficial, but rather substantial and with basis. Hopefully, by then, we would have made our impact and will leave this world a better place.

Even if the motivation sounds a little narcissistic, the book actually dealt with the heart of the matter. Life is what we make it - and if our lives are supposed to make a statement, we need to start defining it now. The book included some workshops to help navigate the process of reverse engineering our lives, regardless of one’s starting point.

This is a life long process, and at some future point, I may share with you some updates, as comments to this review. Hopefully it will be comments from other people, and not myself!

I was given a review copy by the publisher through NetGalley.

[christianchicklit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few books that has the power to change your life!

Rabbi Cohen is the real deal. He is a true inspiration for how to live a life that leaves a meaningful legacy. I have had the great fortune of meeting him twice and after hearing him speak both times I have felt greatly inspired to live a life of greater purpose.

The premise of this book is based on going to a funeral and hearing some nice words about the person who has passed away and thinking “I hope they say nice things like that about me at my funeral”. Rabbi Cohen challenges us “What will they say about you when you are gone?”. The purpose of this book is to help you reverse engineer your life so that this question will have rich answers when your time here on earth is over. Rabbi Cohen identifies seven transformative principles to help you live with more purpose, positivity and passion. It’s not just a great read, it is an action plan for your life that provides thought-provoking questions, strategies and challenges. By reflecting on the principles and putting them into action, it truly has the power to transform your life.

A key inspiration of the book is to look for your “Elijah moments” – opportunities to take a few minutes in order to help make someone’s day. If we spend time doing this every day, it has the power to transform the way that we look at the world and our interactions (and purpose) within it. If this is the only insight that gets implemented from the book it will truly give your life meaning and purpose each day. This is only one of many important teachings in this great book.

There are very few books that I will read twice, but I already know that I will plan to spend a lot of time with book and will read it over and over. It is well written with numerous anecdotes, quotes, interviews, insights about the Jewish faith and tradition (which I found fascinating since I am Christian) and jam-packed with real life examples to help bring the principles to life.

I received a complimentary e-copy of this book from netgalley.com in exchange for my fair and unbiased review. However, I have already purchased a hard copy for myself to keep (and scribble in) and four additional copies for family and friends. Highly recommended!

[Eric Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just terrific. I have the good fortune of having a personal relationship with the author and, of course, was excited to read his book. I’ve read my share of self-help tomes, though I’m not a huge fame of the genre. This book offers real, tangible and meaningful ways to think about our place and our responsibility in the world. If ‘changed my life’ means gave me something to think about regularly, then this book changed my life.

[Jean Brazil · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay non fiction self improvement book. parallels many of the concepts from the Seven Habits.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do you have a personal mission statement? Do you understand why this might be important? Read this book and find out. My husband read this one to me. Not his favorite, I enjoyed it.

[Naama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rabbi Cohen’s book was a sweet hodgepodge of well-known self-help advice. I didn’t feel like he had too many surprising new insights. Rather, he created a compilation of the type of advice and sayings we can easily find in memes or on the internet.

That doesn’t mean that his book doesn’t have value. I think that it’s important to set aside time to think about living meaningfully, and his book can be a helpful tool as well as a repository of ideas toward this end.

For example, there are a million people out there who highly recommend keeping a daily gratitude journal, but if you haven’t done it yet , then perhaps reading about it in this book will do the job: if you even come out just with that one little practice after this quick read of a book, then it would make it worthwhile.

On the other hand, I felt that in his attempt to create universal appeal to his book, Rabbi Cohen really missed the opportunity of drawing from Jewish wisdom. There is so much more he could’ve said about the way Jewish practices and rituals can help achieve exactly the goals that his books set out to tackle. I found that a bit strange, considering he’s a rabbi.

[Louis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I was raised Catholic, married into the Lutheran church, and later returned to Catholicism. This book, written by a rabbi, left me wishing I had been raised with a foundation in Judaism. Of course there are inspirational writers in all faiths. It just happens that on finishing this book, I feel moved by Rabbi Cohen's stories/lessons.

Basically, this book is about re-engineering your life. While it is titled, and speaks to, what folks will say about you after you die, that will be a natural side-effect of a well purposes life rather than the goal.

Good stuff the ponder. Oy vey!