The richest place on earth isn’t a bank vault.

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1142 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Todd Henry.

Here’s the upgrade:

You may tell yourself you’ll get to it someday, but upgraded thinking knows the grave is full of people who were still getting ready.

Here’s the story:

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Many people die with their music still in them.” And then he told us why. “Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.”

The richest place on earth isn’t a bank vault. The cemetery is the wealthiest ground on the planet. Not because of what’s in the caskets — because of what’s in the people. Potential never used. Books that were never written. Songs that were never sung. Businesses never started. Cures never discovered. The apology never spoken. The “I love you” never said. All of it buried.

A career coach named Dan Miller told about a pharmacist who came up to him after a talk. Seventeen years in the profession. Miller asked him about his dreams, and the man went quiet. He couldn’t name a single one. One responsibility had led to another for so long that his dreams had been buried alive somewhere back down the road. And standing there, Dan recounted, a grown man within a three minute conversation began to weep in front of him — because he realized he’d carried his music around for seventeen years and never played a note.

That doesn’t have to be your story. Todd Henry wrote a whole book about this, and he gave it a blunt title: Die Empty. His point wasn’t morbid. It was urgent. The death rate is hovering right around one hundred percent. So the goal isn’t to die comfortable or die impressive. The goal is to die empty — to pour out every bit of what you were given while your heart is still beating.

You are walking around right now with music still in you. The question is not whether you have it. You do. The question is whether the cemetery gets it, or the world gets it.

So write the page. Make the call. Start the thing. Take the imperfect first step today, because “someday” is just the address where dreams go to be buried. The better story to tell yourself is, “I’m going to die empty.”

Tell me a story of someone you believed died empty to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and tell them, “The world needs what you’ve got.” You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.