The Thing I Want To Do Most Before I Die

Lukas Schwekendiek
2 min readNov 29, 2022
Photo by Caleb Lumingkit on Unsplash

I am a Self-Improvement nut.

As long as I remember I have always enjoyed video games where you level up, get stronger, Role-playing of all kinds and the idea of being the hero of a story.

I loved the stories that had the hero overcome trials, where they were challenged, despaired, and eventually broke out anyway.

As I got older and went into Self-Improvement and Psychology, this side of me only grew stronger.

I knew I could become better even if I did not know what that meant at first.

Today, I think I know, at least in general what it means to me:

I want to become my own hero.

I have worked very hard on myself and on who I am as a person.

Confident, Courageous, Certain, Honorable, Honest, Masculine, Feminine, Emotional, Strong, Desirable, Creative, Successful, Fun, Loving, Caring, Respectful, and Respected.

The more I learned the more I crystallized this idea in my head as to what a Hero was supposed to be, and the more I saw who I used to be and how far I was away from that idea.

The one thing I want to do before I die is to be able to look in the mirror and feel truly proud, with nothing left to become, when I see my reflection.

I am very proud of how far I have come, and am very happy with who I am, but I am not quite everything I want to be just yet.

There are still things I want to improve upon, things I want to “level up”.

I don’t need to, but I chose to.

And I honestly do not care what that does for the world or for my life or even the people around me.

It is a very personal and selfish goal, but one that speaks to me and everything I do.

I do not care about achievements or success or money or love.

Yes, they are all nice to have and I cherish them when I get them or notice them, but what matters to me more is being proud of who I am.

Maybe this stems from missing words in my childhood, maybe it stems from ideas imprinted on me as I was growing up, or maybe it is just who I am and what I want.

Honestly: it makes no difference, for it is what I feel.

When I first started to change my life I looked into the mirror and imprinted the image of the scared, nervous, shy man looking back at me, into my mind forever.

I want to be able to tell that man to see how far we’ve come, and to feel proud of the journey for we have made it.

I want to become my own hero.

Lukas Schwekendiek

Life Coach, Speaker, Writer. Published on TIME, Inc & Huffington Post.