Ask anyone who has gotten sick from contaminated water or tried to avoid falling out of a canoe while going down the Amazon River teeming with deadly piranhas. They will tell you that water can be deadly.

But what about a person dying of thirst in the desert or someone who goes into the hospital because they’re dehydrated? Water can bring life.

There’s a wonderful scene near the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana passes three deadly tests to get the holy grail, fills it with water, then pours it on his father’s gunshot wound so he does not die.

It’s a beautiful analogy for the power of your words. Your words can cut people down to the bone with sarcasm and criticism. Or they can bring life through wonderful storytelling, personal experiences, or inspiring content. The choice is yours.

Daily Question: As you use your words today, will they bring life or death?

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The way some of us writers shrink back from a challenge, you’d think we live forever.

We hesitate to write that book because we fear what others will think. We don’t set up that website because it feels too hard. We don’t meet with that person who is five years ahead of us because we’re intimidated. We don’t make that social media post because we question whether we’re a good enough writer.

It might feel scary in the moment, but what about a hundred years from now? We will all be gone. That’s a hard truth to hear, but it’s still the truth. Our lives are but a blink of an eye compared to the endless expanse of eternity.

Steve Jobs gave a helpful perspective when he said, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”

When you die, you can’t take anything with you. All those words and ideas and stories you have been storing up to write “someday” will vanish. You can’t take that material with you. If you don’t write it, it won’t get written and we will all be the worse off for it… simply because you were too scared.

When you’re gone, everything goes back into the box. All your goals, hopes, dreams, plans, stories, ideas, and vision. So, you might as well go for it now while you still have time. What have you got to lose?

Daily Question: Does knowing that you will die someday help motivate you to say what you want to say in your writing?

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