'How to Die With a Smile on Your Face' Teaches Perseverance
Author Steve Michaels talks about fear, death, success and happiness
Published author and businessman Steve Michaels has a strong opinion about the fear of dying. His latest book, How to Die with a Smile on Your Face, is a timely publication and reveals some interesting secrets about peace of mind in a troubled world.
Michaels, who lives in the mountains of Trout Creek, Mont., is a spiritual man and a self-proclaimed futurist who discovered that writing his own obituary was actually a life changing experience.
“At the time I was addicted to alcohol and drugs and knew it,” Michaels told The Christian Post.
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“My life was going nowhere fast and it was time for a decision. Do I abandon my life as it was and start anew or continue on the path, which would soon lead to my destruction? My choice was to quit. I did so in July of 2004.”
Michaels said he emptied his refrigerator in the barn of all alcohol and then flushed his supply of pot down the toilet.
He slowly walked up to his beloved dog’s grave and sobbed.
“This was my turning point. Alone and in pain with my faithful companion who seemed to listen to me even though she was silent.”
He started over by sitting at his computer and asked God for help.
“In that instant I started to write and strange as this may seem ... I found myself writing my obituary as if I had died that day,” Michaels said.
“I wrote it with the final words stating that my death was alcohol related. After feeling how good that felt, I then wrote my obituary again but changed the ending to one of a more positive nature.”
Within the pages of his new book, Michaels outlines what the reader should know about how to handle life’s many trials and tribulations while maintaining a spiritual life. He argues that making it through to the other side of victory is worth the walk.
“You can die unprepared and in fear or prepared and in peace,” Michaels says in the book.
“The choice is yours.”
Michaels says he wrote the book because he wants readers to turn their daily existence around to one of success and happiness.
He believes "what happens to you – you choose ... either on a conscious or sub-conscious level."
“Anyone who is not satisfied with their current life needs to read my book for in it I explain that in order to die with a smile, you need to live with a smile and that is the whole crux of the material,” Michaels said.
“To learn the laws of life, get rid of the non-essential and incorporate the essential in your life so that joy and peace-of-mind are in the forefront of your experience. I changed my life and in the book I tell and show others how they can change theirs as well.”
The driven author maintains that happiness and success in life are a "derivative of personal growth, of discovering who we are, and embracing the uniqueness that is individual to each of us."
“Preparing for such an event doesn’t come overnight,” he said in a statement.
“It comes with years of study, learning and plenty of practice.”
How to Die with a Smile on Your Face also addresses the important issues for baby boomers who may be contemplating the rest of their lives and want to live in joy, contentment and peace of mind, "living with a smile on our face so eventually we may also die with a smile."
In addition to the book, Michaels and Whitepine Publishing offer a CD format entitled the "Top 10 Secrets" of how to live life successfully.
The CD set shares stories from a busy life in the form of metaphors so that the lessons of life are easy to understand.
His package also includes a “Life Assessment” program he calls "Reflections." The reader starts the program being told that “you only have three months to live.”
“In the course, you are given the opportunity and tools to change your life for the better before your actual time comes,” Michaels said.
Michaels has his own "bucket list" in life, which include the building of a Hobbit House as an enchanted private lodging facility on his property in Montana.
He lives with his wife, Christine, where he writes and conducts his businesses.
“There is one simple fact that we all must eventually face,” he said. “That is that we are all going to die someday. But the unmistakable fact is we don’t know when. Everybody dies, yet not everybody lives.”
