Perfect days

There were a lot of empty days before. I would wake up, go to work, go to the gym, and go to bed, nothing special. If those days were erased I wouldn’t mind. I had a plan, and a day like that supported the plan, but the day itself was meaningless.

After my incident, being in the hospital for two weeks and with endless limitations during the first months, I missed a lot of simple things that were present everyday but I wouldn’t value. But after thinking that I almost die, and that I would have lost everything, simple things and moments became very valuable. A second pair of eyes opened in my head and enabled me to enjoy everyday sights.

A perfect day was a difficult to get before. A new business in my job, a great played baseball game, time well spent in a great place with my girlfriend or my friends, something unusual had to happen. With the new pair of eyes, simple days became perfect days. Being able to be healthy, be alive, share with my family and friends, being able to perform activities as good as possible it’s even a reason for satisfaction. 

Yesterday I had a walk with a pair of friends, it wasn’t only a way to get from one place to another, but the walk, the weather, the landscapes, and the time shared made my day a wonderful day. Besides what it is happening in my life and where it’s going, every moment counts, and makes me grateful for being alive.  There’s no way I would let one day escape from my memory now, everyone has joys to remember for a lifetime.

Million dollar baby

What would you do if someone give you a million dollars?
Buy a house? Travel around the world? Study? Give to the ones who need most? Learn about painting, music, or any other art you ever wonder about? Invest to get more for the future? Live on the rent? Party every day? Drink ? Bet? Pay debts? Buy a summer house in Bora Bora? Move to Paris? To Hong Kong? To London? To LA? Start your own business? Read? Built a hotel in a paradise beach? Buy Google shares? Buy more Google shares? Shopping? Shoes? Clothes? Donate it all?
Would you get stressed for the steps to receive the money? Which bank? Which account? A check? Today or tomorrow? Debit card?
Would it be a possibility to leave the money in an account and don’t do anything with it?
I think the answers to those questions are easy, but then why, If everyone of us, received something bigger, greater than just money, something with many more possibilities than currency, as it is to be alive, some of us keep our lives in stand by, letting things come and go and without getting the best use of it?
Many people know that are not satisfied with what they are doing or the way they are living, know what they want to do and how would they be happy, but just stay there waiting for something that is no coming? Would you need help with you million dollars? You need someone to say to you what to do with the money? How to spend it?
A life has millions of times the possibilities money has, but many people just stay with the money at the bank without living the dreams they know they have.
If you have the money, and want to travel to Bali, go buy the ticket!!! Nobody is going to do it for you.
And one prize condition, money it’s no cumulative. You don’t get two lives the next time.

Just an illusion

Why is it that unemployed people go as far as attempting suicide, and people working, dream at 10am about walking barefoot in a lost beach in Thailand?
Well, my perception about jobs changed radically after my death.
At first, my career was my life, I wanted to be CEO of the company I was working for, I dreamed about a business magazine cover with some highlight about my brightness in sales or innovation, I feared nothing, just to come short on those huge expectations I had set, loved business traveling, having breakfast in one country and dinner in other, wanted speed to satisfy client needs, strategic planning, thinking out of the box, surprising competitors with new blue oceans in the industry, and so on. An MBA was an obvious next step, then I would get a regional position and begin to climb the corporate ladder from a higher step. If my job was my life what happened If I quitted or was fired? Well, I would get another life in another company, where a new industry would have different challenges and the game would begin again.
After all the thinking in the hospital, wondering about all the things I could have lost, when I got back to my office, a lot seemed different. Although everything was in the same place, something just didn’t match.
A lot of people get sick after working 14 or 16 hours a day, not eating healthy, not getting enough sleep, and living in a continuous rush, even got divorced. It was a decision: career or family. That didn’t make sense anymore. It did when life was filled with a job, but when working is just one way to get money to use it in what you really want on your free time or on holidays, other forgotten things become a priority. Health, family, friends, knowledge, intellectual growth, resting, admiring, feeling, become priceless and win over any job issue. As my ex boss sister stated: “Work takes a lot of time”
I tried to imagine working without any pay. What kind of job would I accept for free? Not many that I know. So I realized that a career was not what I wanted in life, it’s just the means to get the money we need in this world to pay for what we really want. That’s why many think about beaches and sports while working, because the best scenario would be getting your paycheck while traveling or playing, while really living. A job it’s necessary not just for the money, but for self-esteem, for feeling useful to humanity, for making good use of what we know and what we are good at, for making the best use of our potential, but is just a mean.
Some people work in something that they would do for free, just for the emotion, or for the knowledge they get or create, that’s great, and I think it’s just for a minority, other people work in whatever they can just to pay the bills, it’s a must for the responsibilities they have with kids or debts, that must be a very hard situation, and some other people are able to choose their positions, or at least have options to choose, that’s very nice. But it would be great if everybody understand that there are a lot of priorities before their jobs. Work as hard as you can in your schedule, be as efficient as possible, be creative, supportive, give everything but keep in mind it’s your job, not your life.
There might be cycles too. Workers want to be entrepreneurs, handle their own time and skip bosses, and some entrepreneurs would like the security of a monthly check.
I know a lot of people running their own business, smaller than a previous job, but happier, or ex-workaholics with newborns changing dippers without sleep, but satisfied. There are many reasons or situations that make people understand the role of their jobs in life, but there’s a lot of people killing themselves for raising the stock price for shareholders. Is it worth sacrificing health and family for someone else to change It’s yacht? Is you decision.

Luck?

I don’t have an explanation for the feeling, but clearly people, animals, places, among others, generate energies or sensations that can be perceived in different levels. I think that even animals get that sense, as dogs bark to some people and act tenderly to strangers without any visual reason.
These energies not only are so powerful that can be perceived by others, but have impact on results, are transferred and shared, and might dominate how we think and feel. I even think that a group of those energies can modify physical things or actions.
We all feel good or uncomfortable around some people, and perceive worries and sadness in places like hospitals, but is this something we can get under control? How can we receive good energy and avoid getting contaminated with bad energies?
I might think that we can generate positive or negative energies by ourselves, but we get contaminated too by energies of people around us, and the charge we have influences our days and relations.
Recently I had one of the worst years professionally speaking. Although I didn’t get any warnings or lectures from my boss, everything that could go wrong with my clients went the worst way, and what had good chances went to the basket too. I tried and tried hard for things to generate results, but was frustrating. Even almost impossible things happened for bad, and several times. At first I thought it was just bad luck, but someone told me that I was charged with bad energy and that it showed. At first I didn’t gave it a lot of thought, but a “cleaning” method was proposed and having nothing to loose, I tried.
Well, everything began to change, results were better, and personally I was feeling better too. After this, I began to pay a lot of attention to energies of people and places, whenever I felt something I didn’t like, I rather leave. I began to protect the good vibe I was accumulating, and I kept this by myself.
We might confuse sometimes energy with mood, but there’s a lot of people depressed with kind of good energy, and happy people with horrendous vibes. Although our mood might influence our energy, I believe what we think, the reason for our actions, and how satisfied we are with ourselves have a lot more impact in the result.
Given the impact our energy has on the results of everything we do, although not tangible, might be one of our most important assets we could explode.
Do you ever have asked yourself why there’s many people that begins some project with all the effort, the resources, the capabilities, and at the end they fail? I may guess that energy could be that little help to succeed or fail, depending on what you radiate. Good vibe might be the reason to get in to a rising spiral, where good things lead to better things, to nice people, and so on. Or the other way too.
Almost everybody knows about energies, but what I would like to encourage is to cultivate it, grow it, protect it, depurate it, and clean it, this despised valuable it’s changing my concept of luck.

Jump

Living under our sense of security, is very uncommon to loose some of what we handle, even if is taking us apart from what we want in life. Acting the society rules we usually follow, we know deep inside if we are going our way or the people’s way, but the decision of letting go what we have, what we have achieved, to follow some odd idea that seems crazy to the people around us, it’s sentenced to death even before the first thought.
From other very known book, I read that the world conspires in favor of those who follow their dreams, meaning that although we can not guarantee from the beginning that everything it’s going to be as great as we would like, if we take those hard and crazy decisions following our hearts instead of our minds, things begin to happen, helping our dreams to be achieved. It’s like jumping into the darkness without knowing what’s down there, but hoping the best.
Well, for me, it was time to make one of those steps. After my life was on track again, I was happy, felt satisfied but needed a change. I wanted time for me outside the city routine, wanted to see everything as new, wanted to be curious about people, traditions, places, food, language, wanted to recover time lost and enjoy small but rewarding pleasures, I wanted to discover again all the things I knew. So I decided to move to another country. My choice? China.
To move to China would be like being born again. Everything new, I would have to learn everything, beginning with Chinese, traditions, food, religion and so on. I wanted a change and this would make it. So, instead of just planning as I did before, I made all the arrangements for the move. University, visa, explored job options, travel locations, everything was set. But suddenly the plan changed.
A great opportunity appeared, and my almost sure trip to China changed for Brazil. An incredible opportunity impossible to reject, if I had asked for that option, would have been very difficult to get it, but then I remembered what the book said, and I understood. I wanted a change, I took the decision, made the step, and the world conspired to help me achieve what I wanted. Maybe China wasn’t the best option, or maybe isn’t the best option right now, but instead of letting my life go to the drift, I jumped and as I’m falling, I’m realizing the dark place wasn’t so bad. Maybe there’s something I must learn in Brazil, maybe there’s someone I should meet, or maybe I have to live something there to prepare for the future. As far as I know, everything happens for a reason, and what happens is the best thing for me.

Releasing ballast

Before the heart attack, I read a lot of books that stated that people should live the present instead of past or future. I understood the concept but in our daily race is difficult to forget about everything that happened and might impact our future, the image people has from us, the consequences past acts might have, and our future too: meetings, tasks, challenges, and so on. In that time, the carpe diem motto sounded like a reason for laziness to me. As we live with the confidence of the average life of 70+ years, we are worried mainly about setting everything for a better future.
After realizing that most of our worries are about things we cannot anticipate or things we can plan but we cannot guarantee, and that those worries destroy any hint of tranquility we could enjoy, in my search for internal happiness I decided to apply all that theory and cliché phrases and live the day without worrying unnecessarily. This helped me to get a more relaxed perception of things. I finally understood that many of our torturing thoughts are out of our control and we should do everything in our hands to achieve the desired result, but loose the day and night worries.
The process surprised many friends and peers who knew me as someone who had everything planned, and the idea even seemed like lack of interest in people and things. When my girlfriend argues because in some months we’ll be separated and my answer is “don’t worry, we are together right now and that’s what matters” my love for her might be at stake from her point of view, but inside, I know many things can happen in that time, and that by worrying, I cannot change what happens or I cannot extend time. I just enjoy the day with her, and when the time comes I will confront the situation. But imagine being sad for months and at the end the visa isn’t approved. That’s too much free worries, and if you add work issues, family issues, money, even holiday destination becomes a problem; you might be charged full with no reason worries.
The road to happiness is long and full of obstacles, but a lot of our main reasons for bitterness and preoccupations, come from our minds. It’s easier and better to walk that road light, free of useless weight, and thinking a lot about the future doesn’t allow us to enjoy the things and moments we have in the present. This is one of the ballast we can liberate from, throw it away and enjoy what you have in front for a change.

Daily wealth

The value we give to time, depends on the situation or the deadline we have. There are times when we would give anything for just a few more minutes, hours or days. Ask someone dying and you´ll recognize the real value of time.
But most of the time we use it and waste it as if was endless. As Millôr Fernandes says: “who kills time isn’t an assassin, but it’s committing suicide”.
We usually fail to take advantage of the only wealth we all share. No one can buy, lend, advance or save time. The richest or smartest person has the same time any of us have, but the majority of us doesn’t give the value time deserves. We waste it and undervalue it until we get into a situation where time is what matters most. Only there we begin to value that treasure. Only when we understand that time could disappear without notice, we begin to take full advantage of every minute we own.
Time isn’t productivity either. Taking advantage of time isn’t necessarily to be working, learning, producing or earning. Is just using it for our needs, our plans, or our happiness. Relaxing, sleeping, thinking, contemplating or admiring might be a great way to invest our time, as it is traveling or reading if that’s what we really want.
Every day we wake up with the same 24 hours every body has, and it’s up to ourselves to determine what to do with it. Every day we wake up, open our eyes and get our new daily wealth, and we can invest it, spend it or throw it away. Some days might appear to have only 12 hours if you share it with someone you love, or 36 hours if you are sick in bed, time perception varies depending how good or bad you use it. I would like to live 12 hour days for the rest of my life, it might be something close to happiness, and I would love to die after a 5 hour day.
So, what are you going to do with your time today?

Play to win

Play to win is the name of a book I read some years ago. As many great things we read, we agree, and get exited about our own potential, but our minds and our false sense of security doesn’t allow us to act. As I had now clear that I wanted to take control of my life, and live it, I had to act accordingly. Not as I always did, protecting what I had achieved at the moment, but letting things go, in pursuit of bigger dreams I had.
When I was at school, and later at the University, I was a good student. My grades were one of the best, I did well in all classes, I excelled academically. This created a brand for me. A “smart” guy. And smart people do not make mistakes. So every time I had to make decisions, instead of going for the home run, I played it safe, to maintain my brand.
When there was any risk of loosing my smart image, I rather take the secure path. I decided with fear. This is why many smart people remain secure in jobs instead of creating the companies they dream about, this is why many live conservative lives, instead of running to other places or changing careers to follow their dreams, just because we play not to lose, instead of playing to win as it says the book. I don’t know the cause of it, but when there’s a 50/50 probability, we always think the worse option will prevail. It seems universally genetic. So, we avoid any risk. Some of the greatest achievements in the world have been made by people with not much to lose, or by people who took great risks, these are players, and most of us are spectators. We can watch the game of the world if we want, but we can not be spectators in our own life game. At the end, it’s very frustrating if you know you had everything to do what you wanted to do but you waste it.
This principle applies for beginning our projects, inviting somebody we like, buying something we want, investing. Not every time we’ll get the result expected, but we’ll get many of the results desired, and this will make us close o what we dream about.
Many times we feel trapped, with no possibilities to move ahead, without visible exits, but is our decision to chose moving towards what we want, to advance we need to take some risks, as long as some ventures are successful we’ll begin to advance. I finally forgot what people might think about me, and began to advance. It took me a life to make the first step, but the long walk began.

Ps: The name of the book is Play to win, by Larry Wilson

Memento

How easy is to forget. And the worse of it, is that we forget what we want in our life.
We tell ourselves lies that we force us to believe about being happy, but deep inside we know the truth. When something hard or impressive happens, we think about what we are doing, but the next morning we are in automatic mode again.
As hard as my heart attack impacted my life, in a moment, after everything went back to normality, I forgot and turned to the automatic pilot, not deciding where to go in life but letting the waves move me wherever the wind blew.
I was again in the comfort zone, but destiny wouldn’t surrender that easy. A 2 minute, 7,9 magnitude earthquake showed me death in the face again, and tattooed in my mind how fragile life is and how short it could be.
Weeks later, a friend told me crying, that one of her best friends died in a car accident. He always was one of the best students, had changed to a better job and was very happy with a new girlfriend, just planning to get married. Always behaved as correct as he could and did things right. But some drunk guy that ignored a red light thought it was enough time for him, game over.
For me, It was necessary something as strong as dying to make me change my life and take control of it. But the environment we live in, is so powerful and has such influence in our futures that we usually loose control. My incident made a lot of people think. That Monday night I was told many of my friends and family cried for hours. Many couldn’t sleep at all. And not only was because the health problem of a friend or co-worker, but because the fragility of life was demonstrated horrendously in their faces. Death could happen to moms, dads, sons, husbands, girlfriends or even themselves, and clearly nobody lived under that certainty. That night, many made plans, took decisions, began to take control of the wonder of their lives, but a few weeks after, almost all of those remained as plans and decisions, none became actions.

Breaking the shell

So I decided to be happy. Not to pretend to be happy in front of others, or happy as the western society says you should, but really happy. How should I start then?
How to be happy? money? friends? love? family? god? Let´s see how I understand happiness now. Looks like a two step program: Make yourself happy inside and follow what you desire.

Happiness based on money, as most of us know it, seems temporary, false and only works as a comparative with others. We want things that others have, and when we get them, we are happy. But then, someone gets a newer, faster, more expensive things, so we are unhappy again until we get them. Besides with one exception, there will always be richer people than you, so you´ll never be completely happy if you compare, and surely you´ll always want more. An as I told in a previous post, we own nothing, so a fortune can disappear in seconds, and so would you happiness.
To support happiness in others is a risk too. Friends, a special person, family, they all have their own life and pretty sure you are not the center of it. If you base your life in others, you´ll depend on their time, resources, availability and mood. You can not manipulate people to make you happy. If we have the ability to get happy by ourselves, why beg someone to help us with our happiness? You should be happy, and then share it with others.
God? well, I don´t know the foundations of every religion, but I see a lot of believers not very happy with their lives. I suppose it helps, but there´s something missing.

Fortunately in a given moment, a great book got to my hands. If I had received the book before, maybe I wouldn´t have paid a lot of attention to it, but in that search It was the first sign I was looking for.
After reading it, I concluded that the best way to look for happiness is deciding to, as it does not depend on external factors but only from the inside. When something happens, only you decide how to take it, if it´s good or bad, and most of the time we decide for the latest.
A cliché I know, but I think everything happens for a reason. I understand this now, and I think it´s completely true. Just take as example my heart attack: on monday january 22nd, I would have thought that I didn´t deserve that, I lived fair and healthy, why me? Today I´m grateful for that health incident, as my life changed for good. That year has been the best of my life to date, my happier too.
Sometimes things happen, and appear to be bad, but we might find an explanation for those incidents later. But in the moment we react with anger or deception. If we understand that a flat tire, or heavy rain, or a lost business is for something better in the future, and we believe it, we live calmer. So if we can perceive as good everything that happens to us, nothing external will affect us. We can now only focus on living our lives, and no others lives.

Now, if you had all the money you want, or If your physician told you that you have 3 months left, what would you do? Ok, that´s the next step for happiness. Forget about accumulating and begin to live. Chose Life, as the movie said. I made myself that question and the answer was I wanted to travel to China. Why? I don´t know. It seemed like a different world, it´s eastern culture it´s more spiritual, and their values are different. It just catch my attention. So I made plans to travel and I did it. How satisfying is that?.
My life changed from a single life plan and goal, to smaller short term satisfactions.
Two years ago I had my life completely planned, today I´m just watching the next year but with concrete plans in the short term. I always have in mind that even life is lent, in 50 years or tomorrow might be gone, so I have to use it the best way I can. With this new way to see life I might say, that if I die today, I would die happy, only if I made the plans for what I wanted. It´s enough to fulfill my soul.

A light sparkle

Clues were revealed to me in each thought I had during my recovery. I had a lot of pieces of the puzzle but there was no structure, and I wasn´t sure all the pieces were complete.
One day, in the morning I had everything, and in the afternoon I had nothing. Things, objects, valuables, this might be the reason why every person that has a near death experience becomes more spiritual. Because you understand the hard way and without doubt that money isn´t happiness. A lot of debate about it, and I´ll write one post only with my perception of what money means now, but when I opened my eyes after my health issue, thousands of things went through my mind before money. This meant that I had to change my reason for leaving to date.
Work, save, work more, save more, travel, buy things, go out to places to have fun, buy a house, invest to get more money, to save more, to travel further, to be able to support a family, afford a faster car, maybe some studies, to get a better paid job, to save more, accumulate, accumulate to have. To have what? Nothing, we own nothing. We just own a false sense of confidence, and we live happy with that, as long as we keep our savings, as long as we have a secure number in a bank account. We aren´t aware that one day all of that might disappear, by crime, by health issues, by mistake, by accident, and If our life is just our belongings, life ends there.

When I was already home, recovering physically, one morning I woke up in bed with a stranger aside. Who is she? What are we doing together? Nothing made sense. As I was a complete different person from the guy that went to work that monday january 22nd, we were complete strangers. Nothing in common, no common objectives for the future, no common interests, a lot of problems for the health restrictions, each one worried for it´s own sake, a complete nightmare for her and for me. She had been through the complete incident with me, her family was a great support, but being together was hurting both of us.

I remember that as soon as I was stable and conscious I wrote something to all the people that was worried about me. I wrote "thank you all, because I feel the good energy you are generating towards me, and I think that this energy is the cause for me to be alive". This was true. I never thought I was going to die. Being as fragile as I was I felt supported and loved, I thought It was a dream, and I was near to wake up. I never imagined I had so many friends, real friends, and so many people who loved me. When some one said to me I hope you get well soon, It wasn´t for good manners, I knew they meant it and I´m sure that love and good energy had to do something with my recovery. I never have heard so many I love you´s as I heard that month. And weren´t only from my girlfriend, but from family, friends, peers, people from the current and past jobs, and they all meant it. I remember blurredly a friend from the office saying to me: "I never told you how much I love you, I love you Juanito". Why wait until the people dies? Say "I love you" to the people you love, if you mean it, why not?

The last big clue, was the review of my life. As I wrote before, I wasn´t happy with what I had lived to date. Why? Because I didn´t do what I wanted. Simple. I had plans and I didn´t followed them. I wanted to know places and I never went, I wanted to say things and I never did, I had dreams for the future that I could fulfill but I didn´t. I was the only responsible for not having a better life, nobody else. I was living somebody else´s life, or the american dream´s life, but not mine. As I told one friend, my life was like a plan to built a house. And when I get old, and the house was finally finished I would live happy in the house I had planed and built during my life. What if I died before finishing the house?

With all those clues I decided I wasn´t going to make the same mistakes. It was time to act.
I didn´t see the light at the end of the tunnel that monday, or at least I can´t remember, but some light was illuminating the road to follow.
With the pieces I had I began to make decisions. I had to leave my girlfriend, I became close with family and friends, I began to enjoy every room of the house I built although the complete house wasn´t finished, and valuables became secondary to me. It was time to live for me, It was time to be happy now, It was time to differentiate among all things what were really important and fulfilling. It was time to take control of the life that was to the drift before. I decided to be happy.

Messy baby steps

Have you ever imagined beginning from cero again? With your age, in the moment of your life where you are right now, to lose everything and enter the run of life again with some kind of disadvantage?
I used to think about that when I read stories about people bankrupted, or recoveries after accidents, and I thought it should be very tough. Months learning to do something you didn´t even think about, because was so easy and common. We use to take for granted many things we currently don´t value as we should: health, family, friends, hands, fingers, eyes, senses, rest, free time, and many more. Society has changed the rules, and what we value are the less important things: clothes, makeup, cars, watches, cell phones, just objects. How would your life be without a car? and how would it be with out sight? For which one are you worried for insurance?
After I recovered my life, there were two things I had to start all over again: exercise, as I lost almost 20 pounds in two weeks and got dead tired after walking 20 or 30 steps, and my idea of life. This last issue was hard, harder that I ever thought.
As any baby learning to walk, I fell, I crawled and took clumsy decisions learning to live again.
I woke up with a life that was perfect before, but a life I didn´t recognized as valuable or mine anymore.
I went through a lot of stages in the process, from immortality (If I didn´t die after two heart attacks, why would I die driving at 160Km/h?), to self compassion (If I had a heart attack at 29 living healthy, I won´t live after 40).
For sometime, after analyzing the facts, I decided I would not live after 40, so I wasn´t going to have any kids. Why? If they are going to die early as I did, why be so evil? If you know the time you have left, your life changes radically, I guarantee it. And as I took temporarily that decision, life got messy. This attitude frightened everyone around me, specially my girlfriend. I was losing everything: my mind, my family, my motivations, my happiness, my time.
A certainty in life came as a truth to me after the whole situation: everything in life is lent, so we own nothing.

A sand storm

Two weeks after the incident I returned home. Physically I was weak and at high risk but stable, but mentally the situation was worse, I was completely clueless. Imagine waking up in a strange place, knowing nothing about time or space, with a blurred vision, and feeling dizzy, that´s how I felt all the time for the following weeks.
I didn´t knew exactly what, but something had changed. What was the message?
Something was true: science didn´t have an explanation. Not my cardiologist, blood tests, reasoning, nope. As lost as I felt I went to consult another sources I´ve never considered before. I went to a lady that read the astral map, to another lady that talked with angels, and to an energy lady. Although none gave me the answer I got nice clues.
I took a wrong path in my life, and something had to happen to be able to change roads and get into my correct road, like destiny itself took care of matters.
Not that I had a bad life, but as If I had a lot of life potential and for 29 years I ´had wasted it.
It was time to live fully, to really live.
To live it´s not to breath and eat, it´s not to survive. Living it´s being able to use all the resources you have in order to achieve something you are passionate about, it´s to deploy all your tools to go up, high, higher, aim to the impossible and beyond, because it´s possible.
When you are born, you get your living toys. We all are born with our toys. You get dreams, illusions, hobbies, and you get the tools to fulfill them: intelligence, boldness, heart, imagination, creativity an so on.
If we all begin with lives and toys what happens in between?
Well, some of us live the lives of others, some live the lives we are told to live, some other waste their lives, very few live their own lives.
The sad thing is that this is a known truth. Many people live a life they don´t like, they know it, but they continue living it. I knew it before my heart attack. But I lied to myself.
The majority live for the "american dream": born poor, die rich and you made it.
Well now I think that´s completely wrong. Many rich die unhappy, many poor live great lives, our society created the story of money and we all believe it.
After the sand storm passed by I saw it all clear: I had to live my life, a life for myself, a life that filled me, not my ego. I had to live a life that as long or short as It was, had to answer right the question I did to myself at the hospital: If I die today, am I satisfied with my life?

The after battle

Making decisions and analyzing situations gets rather complicated when there are many variables involved, even if the decision it´s superficial, but when the situation it´s your life, or the life of a loved one, all the unimportant factors disappear and there´s only one thing to care about. Then you get back to the less important issues. The problem is that when you decide with all the variables surrounding you, usually you are not able to differentiate or identify the important from the superficial and the conclusion goes wrong.

For a whole week I lost memory. From monday 9am, the day of the heart attacks to the next saturday 3pm when I almost had a new heart attack I didn´t remembered anything. Nothing about that terrible pain they talked that made me shout and move tremendously, not any compassionate crying face of family or friends, not about any blood transfusion, nor the priest that went to let me go to heaven in peace, nothing.
But when on saturday I felt that same dizziness of the previous monday, and the doctors began the second surgery to open the closed arteries, everything began to work again. All the engines began to move again: memory, thoughts, assumptions, imagination, my mind just woke up.
While I was at surgery, I was awake looking at the screen of my heart´s arteries being moved by the stent installation, but my mind after a holiday week, was busy trying to answer very difficult questions. Why this? why me? why now? what now? what changes? The only thing clear was that nothing was clear, all the rules changed, everything in my mind was a mess.

Before the event, everything was easy, there was a defined path to achieve all the goals I had set, but now, It was like someone has entered and sabotaged those plans inside. Everything upside down, things flying, spilled, broken, just like a battle field after the fiercest battle.
As I understood I was alive and was going to keep that way for sometime, I began to think about other aspects in my life: hey!!! what happened with my job? my girl? family? the money in the bank? well, my opinion about those matters changed completely.

Rules, conditions, goals, we make a living based on rules nobody stated but we all follow, at least the majority. I lived 29 years following those rules: what should we aim for, what is success, how should you live, what things you value most, we secretly share values and live by them. After coming back to life, from 24 minutes in the other side, I realized those rules I followed were not the ones I would like to follow now, why? I just made myself one question. If I had died, would I be satisfied with the 29 years of life that I had? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I didn´t know why at the specific moment, I just knew I would be very disappointed if I had to review my life at that exact time. I had many plans but achieved none to date, I lived a fair and good life but an empty one, I lived for a better future, but taking for granted life as if I was god.
I didn´t knew exactly what, but something had to change. It´s sad to accept you wasted 29 years, but at least I had a new chance, and now it was time to take advantage of it.

The big slap in the face

When I opened my eyes, I was in a strange bed, and aside, my girlfriend and my mom were staring at me. I didn´t recognize the place, I felt weak, sleepy and I didn´t remembered anything recent. How did i get there? Where am I? What happened? Its just as I had appeared in that place without any past. For someone that usually had everything under control, and hated surprises I was lost in time and space.
What happened? I asked.
You had a heart attack, my girlfriend said.
No, tell me what happened to me please
You had a heart attack, she repeated.
I was so sleepy I don´t remember how many times I asked the same question. But the process inside was the same: a heart attack? me? Impossible. I´m in the best shape, no one eats as healthy as I do, love exercise, no alcohol, sleep well, no drugs, no nothing. Here it goes again, what happened?
Well, after two days of the same stupid question I realized that I didn´t had a heart attack. I had two heart attacks on that beautiful monday january 22nd.
While I was unconscious, I had two heart attacks, one in an ambulance and the other one at the hospital, my lungs got filled with water, my heart stopped for 24 minutes the second time, all the emergency team in that hospital focused only on saving me with an effort outside medical procedures, all my family and friends were informed that I had only 1% chance of surviving, tears, sadness, why him questions, phone calls, friends amazed, a day to forget.
For me, to be here writing one and a half year later, that day, many many things had to be perfect. The possibilities to live were so slim, that times, decisions, movements, orders, procedures, everything had to be perfect. If the case happened again, pretty sure the guy would die. But in my case everything was done right. If some old man driving a taxi hadn´t moved just like he did when my ambulance passed right by him, I would be dead. Not only the doctors, and the people at the hospital, but everything aligned for me to live.
What was all this? What really happened?
After months of tests and evaluations my doctor concluded that I have nothing. There was no reason for me to have a hearth attack that day or any other day.
So? what happened?
For me there´s a clear explanation right now: just a big, huge slap in the face.
WAKE UP!!!!!!

Just a little background

It was monday january 22nd 2007, second working week of the year.
After one of the best years of my beloved life, I had everything I wanted.
After almost seven years working, I had been for two years with this great new company and I had a fantastic year in sales, overtook many social obstacles I´ve had for many years, achieved the financial goals I had for the time, enhanced the relationship with my family and my peers, was in the best shape I´ve ever been, read more than 20 books in 3 different languages, traveled a lot to different gorgeous places and had just moved with the girl I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I felt full internally and externally. Great job, money, love, friends, culture, what else could I ask for?
It was a beautiful january sunny day, after a good morning kiss to my love, I took a shower, had a healthy fiber rich breakfast and went out to my office, to finish the outline of the great strategy I had planned for the year with my clients, before the real heavy work that would begin the next week.
After a small vacation with my girl, I loved her more than ever. We had a great relationship and we were planning to get married during the year.
I couldn´t wait to the night, to have dinner with her, share a glass of wine and discuss all the plans we had for the near future and the coming years. Only that I never returned home.