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Writing Your Ethical Will
Share Your Experience
Writing your spiritual-ethical will is a way of leaving your values, beliefs, and family stories for future generations to enjoy. Your ethical will is a legacy filled wisdom and love that will live forever.
The purpose of the Spiritual Ethical Will blog is to create a forum so you can share your ethical will and the benefits you received from writing your personal legacy.
The ethical will is a document that is normally written by adults as a way to pass on their traditions, philosophies on life and their final wishes for the people that they will be leaving behind when they pass away. While this writing activity is normally done closer to the end of life, it can also be done earlier. Children, for example, can create their own ethical wills.
When children write their ethical wills they will most likely not be thinking about their deaths and who they will be leaving behind. This is okay, as ethical wills are also great tools for soul searching and for realizing what is important in your life. This is where they are a great project for kids, as they can be used to help kids understand what is important in their lives and what they treasure the most about the people that they love.
The first ethical will activity that kids can complete is called the “I am most thankful for…” project. This activity will have kids create a list of what they are most thankful for. In addition to listing the item, the person or the experience, they also need to explain why they are thankful for that item.
The next ethical will activity that is appropriate for kids is a memoir activity. In this activity kids will write about their life up to this point. For some kids the memoir will only cover 10 years, while others will cover 17. The goal of this exercise is to simply get kids to think about all of the lessons that they have learned so far and to identify the people and philosophies that have helped them the most.
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Most charitable contributions are given out during the last two months of the year. This is when holiday cheer seems to inspire charity. The charities that receive the most donations are those related to feeding families, providing toys to underprivileged children and to other religious charities.
Since your heart and mind are on charitable contributions this is the perfect time of year to write down what your charity traditions are. In this spiritual ethical will entry you can tell those that mean the most to you about the charities that mean the most to you. This section does not have to be long. A single paragraph will usually suffice.
When writing this section you will want to first detail what your charity traditions are. For example, you may donate a percentage of your annual income to a specific charity, or you may make it a habit to donate all of your change to charity collection buckets after each shopping trip. Make sure you identify how you determine how much you donate and how you determine which charities to donate to.
Next you will want to talk about your favorite charities. You can explain why certain charities hold a special place in your heart, and you can also explain why you avoid donating to certain charities. In addition to monetary donations you can also talk about donating your time. For example, you may want to talk about your tradition of volunteering to make cookies for local nursing homes, or volunteering to deliver meals to shut-ins.
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When you are in a long term relationship your philosophies on life, love and family are naturally going to evolve together. However, couples rarely share these precious insights into their soles with each other or with their families. This is truly unfortunate.
If you are married or in a serious long-term relationship and if you are interested in sharing the things about yourself that really matter then consider writing your ethical will as a couple. Couples that write an ethical will together have a couple of options.
The first option that you have is to write a single ethical will. This ethical will will reflect both of your philosophies on life and your hopes for your families.
The second option that you have is to write one ethical will, but to have a section dedicated to the philosophies and memoirs of each individual.
The third option is to write two separate ethical wills. Each person will write their own will. You can write the wills at the same time so you can help one another with encouragement and suggestions.
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Today you have nearly a 50-50 chance of getting a divorce. This really is a tragedy, as some couples can save their marriages if they put more effort into figuring out what they still loved about each other, or if they just got a little encouragement. I think that couples that are facing the decision of divorce need to sit down and write an ethical will as a couple.
This activity will help them to identify both areas of their spirituality and lives that compliment one another and those areas that clash. This will be particularly true when you are working on sections that detail your philosophies on life, love and family. This can be a really eye opening exercise.
The next section that will help the couple to determine if they have anything worth saving is the memories section. Here the couple can stroll down memory lane. This stroll will take them through the good times and the bad. Hopefully it will help to remind the couple why they fell in love in the first place.
While not all relationships will withstand the test of time writing an ethical will as a couple can help to define what was good and what was bad about the relationship. In the end, this exercise will at the very least help the couple to decide if they can move forward together or if it is best to go separate ways.
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Writing a spiritual ethical will is all about passing on the lessons that you have learned during your life. These lessons relate to important things like family relationships, love, charity and spirituality. These are the topics that you will want to focus on while writing your ethical will.
If you are having a hard time starting your ethical will then consider reading the memoirs of people that you admire. This will give you an idea about how to organize your thoughts and how to weave the lessons that you have learned into an entertaining story. Reading the memoirs or important people may also inspire your own writing career.
Another great resource to turn to is religious texts on ethical wills. These will be found in Jewish sections of the library, online and in ethical book stores. You may also be able to gain access to these documents through your Rabbi.
The final resource that you can turn to when writing an ethical will is your old journals and diaries. These documents are collections of thoughts, feelings and experiences. They will be invaluable to you when you write your ethical will.
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Since the beginning of the Spiritual Ethical Will Blog I have been talking about the steps for writing a personal ethical will. Today I’d like to discuss the other interesting ethical will topics that you can write on. These topics include business ethics, career development ethics and philanthropic ethics.
The first topic that you can write on is business ethics. You will address business ethics in a business ethical will. In this document you will focus on how your successors need to run your business. You can focus on quality, service delivery and professional responsibilities in this type of ethical will.
The next topic that you can write on is career development ethics. This topic will be addressed in a classmate ethical will. You can talk about many different things in this ethical will document including how to climb the corporate ladder ethically, how to be an ethical leader in your field and how to be happy as a professional and as a person.
The final alternative topic that you can address in an ethical will is philanthropy ethics. In this type of ethical will you will want to talk about the value of being charitable, how to select a charity to work with and how much of your resources to donate to charities. You can also talk about the importance of donating time in lieu of money.
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Writing is a process that requires the ability to focus your energy on one task. However, it is also a process that requires you to be able to tap into multi-resources at the same time and to apply the information that you have to the telling of a story.
When you are writing an ethical will for an ethical will pendent of for a letter to give to your children when you pass away, you need to master these processes. The best way to start is to learn what is included in an ethical will and how it is normally formatted. You can acquire this information by reading sample ethical wills.
Once you are familiar with the basic concepts related to writing an ethical will your next step will be to practice writing entries or passages. These practice writing sessions can later be revised to create ethical letters, pendent sayings and full length ethical wills.
Are you writing an ethical will right now? If the answer is yes then share your process with the rest of the world. Post your comments, questions and suggestions below and I will respond with answers and help.
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What is an ethical will? This questions is asked over and over again. If this is a question that you don’t know the answer to then here is a brief recap:
An ethical will is a document which passes on truths, morals, values and philosophies from one generation to the next. They have a long history and are rooted in the Jewish faith. While they were traditionally a religious document, today they are mainly non-denominational in nature. In fact, many ethical wills today are written from a secular perspective.
Ethical wills can be formatted in a number of ways. The first format is an ethical will essay. The essay format tends to produce long documents that are full of rich details. The second format is the ethical letter. This format is shorter, usually about a page, it is addressed to a single person and imparts personal messages.
In addition to ethical will documents, the information contained in an ethical will can be transmitted in other projects. For example, you can create an ethical will pendant, an ethical will poem or an ethical will video diary. The project that you select needs to reflect your personality, skills and resources.
If you are interested in writing an ethical will you will want to do some research on format and style. You can use information found on the Internet or you can use an ethical will workbook. Workbooks can be found online and at bookstores.
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Memorial Day is a holiday that is dedicated to the memory of loved ones that have passed away. Since this is a day of reflection it makes a great point in time to create your ethical will or to create an entry for your ethical will. It can also be a great time to share with your family some of the traditions, morals and philosophies that you cherish in your life.
If you want to write or update your ethical will on Memorial Day the first step that you take will be to find a quiet place to reflect on your experiences. Your bedroom, your office or even a park bench at the cemetery can all make great places to think about what is important to you. You can take notes on your thought or complete a free writing exercise. When you write notes on your thought you will want to date the entry and note your writing location. Then you will write down phrases that will help you create a formal spiritual ethical will entry later on. If you are interested in a free writing exercise then you will want to open your notebook and first write down the time, day and location of your entry. Then you will give yourself 15 to 20 minutes to just write down your thoughts as they come to you. Each time you change your train of thought or change topics you will want to create a new paragraph or move on to the next page.
If you are interested in sharing your philosophies or the tradition of writing a spiritual ethical will with your family then find a time when you are all together to share these precious jewels with them. After dinner is a good time to talk about your experiences and to share the importance of family traditions like spiritual ethical wills. A good way to kick off the discussion is to simply launch into a story from your past. Select a story that tells about a time when you learned something important about life, love and family.
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Over the last year we have talked about writing pleasant and sentimental spiritual ethical wills. However, since a spiritual ethical will is your last remarks on life you do have the option to write an ethical letter that is, well, curt or less than flattering to the people that you address the letter to. While it is better to write an ethical essay that imparts uplifting messages, if this hope is not the message you want to send you can take another path.
An ethical will is the prefect place to clear the air. Writing an ethical letter that confronts people that have wronged you in your life, or that have taken advantage of you or others can be a very cleansing experience. When writing this type of letter you will want to identify the conflict that you want to discuss and then list all the points that support your side of the conflict. For example, you can identify a time when a specific person took advantage of your good will by borrowing money and not paying you back, by not being there for you when you needed a shoulder to cry on or by treating you badly after you treated them like royalty.
You have two options when it comes to writing a negative ethical will. Your first option is to make it personal. Create an ethical letter for each person you want to “yell” at or clear the air with. This letter will be read only by them. Your second option is to write a single multi-person ethical will that is to be read after you pass away in front of a group of people.
While writing these letters can be a good way to cleanse your own soul and get negatives thoughts out of your head, you may want to destroy these letters after they have been written. On the other hand, it may provide you with one last pleasure knowing that you were finally able to put someone in their place.
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