I Thought I Was Going to Die. Now I Do This Every Year.

You're a liar. I didn't understand most of what the man standing in front of me was yelling in Portuguese.

But this part I did. I'd been filming the street where I lived in a favela in Rio de Janeiro.

And the man, who was a drug trafficker, thought I was a police informant.

As he pointed his assault rifle at my chest, time fractured.

It seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time.

My life did indeed flash before my eyes, but it wasn't my past. It was my future.

It was the career that I hadn't started yet. It was the children that I'd never have.

It was the man that I'd never get the chance to become.

Since that day, there was one question that would not leave me alone.

What am I doing with the time I have left? I've been answering that question every year, once a year, for the past 18 years in a row.

Every December, I sit down. I bring my fears, my grief, my heartbreak, my confusion to the page.

And a few days later, I somehow walk away with such clarity and confidence and a sense of purpose about where my life is going.

Life in perspective is that practice, step by step. I call it the ARC method.

Appreciate the past, reflect on the present, and then create the future.

And the main difference with typical New Year's resolutions or year-end planning is that it doesn't start with what went wrong.

It starts with what worked. what was good and what you learned.

And the best part of all, you don't need a near-death experience to do it.

Just a few hours, a notebook, and the willingness to see yourself clearly.

A few weeks later, I watched the sunrise over a Brazilian beach on January 1st.

As I opened my journal, I had a list of reasons to be grateful on the left

and a list of seemingly impossible goals on the right.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had just completed my first annual life review.

That hour would change my life forever.

That moment of perspective shift was an accident for me.

This book is how you create it for yourself on purpose.

you