In two months and 7 days I’ll reach 20 years of surviving my biggest risk. I also see that as 20 years of bonus time I have been gifted to live beyond that day.

My biggest risk/mistake was riding the waves to then foolishly choosing to duck a rogue wave and ride the next one in: BIG mistake. The rogue wave in coming back out undercut my wave and drove me head-first into the sea-floor. The result? Broken bones: 5 vertebrae, 1 rib, 1 collarbone, 1 shoulder, tons of torn ligaments and sea water in the lungs.

There was then a brief second of getting my head over water before getting sucked down into darkness, churn and incredible pain. That all gave way to a gentle white with not pain whatsoever and the most serene moment of my life, think how peaceful the end can be. So very thoughts of my life went through my head as I felt myself looking down at my lifeless body in the waves and seeing my parents on the beach not knowing they’d never see their youngest alive again.

The Moment of Choice

That moment seemed to offer me a decision point. I chose to enter once more into the fray, and darkness and pain and churn. I somehow managed to get my head and working arm out of the water. Both my friend and an off-duty EMT saw me. To this day, my friend says she’ll never forget the look in my eyes. She decided in an instant to hand he new born to a man that happened to be standing near her on the beach as she rushed into the waves alongside the EMT to find me and pull me out.

On the beach, the EMT helped clear my lungs and called his buddies at the Carmel Fire Department. They drove into the beach and gently slipped a board under me and strapped me down to take me to the Monterey hospital. Months later, when I’d learned how to walk again, I went to the fire station to thank the fire fighters who said they’d thought I’d never walk again.

How did it all turn out?

After nearly 20 years of varying levels of daily chronic, sometime severe pain, you’d think this would be the risk I regret taking most. However, the experience changed my life for the better in a very profound way. For most of these years, I’ve never told anyone about what I’d experienced, because I felt no one would ever believe me. The I started reading about others that had NDEs (Near Death Experiences) and OBEs (Out of Body Experiences) and found the similarities remarkable.

I found incredible peace with everything in life, and I have no fear of anything including death. It also brought remarkable clarity on my purpose in life without any doubt whatsoever.

Embracing Setbacks

I embrace every setback and failure as also being an opportunity to extract gift because there is always a lesson to be found if I look for it. Of course, you can only take advantage of that gift if you live to see another day. As a K-8 teacher, I gamified taking on challenges that resulted in apparent setbacks or failures. Even first-graders understood and enjoyed it.

I challenged my students to bring me any failure or setback where I wouldn’t be able to find some gift, some lesson, some insight from it. Already after a few weeks of playing that game, I could ask the class if any of them could find a positive to be drawn from any setback or “failure” another student raised. My students became eager to find the gifts of those lessons. I didn’t need to explain to them that taking in stretch challenges could be helpful but knowingly taking on risks could lead to “snaps” not stretches (as demonstrated with a rubber band).

I told a friend this who every day driving them home from school asks them: So, what went wrong today and what did you learn from that. He says they love playing the game.

It was remarkable to teach elementary school students about “Learned Helplessness” and help them appreciate that something I called “Learned Resilience” also existed.

PTSD vs PTG

The older ones could also grasp what PTSD (post Traumatic Stress Disorder) was. That it came from an experience that lead to a snap. They could appreciated something called PTG (Post Traumatic Growth) that could come from taking on a stretch goal or challenge.

In business, I’ve been through startup NDEs where disruptive tech is by nature about taking on risks selectively and methodically. I’ve been through 10 companies that experienced Company NDEs. Several came to the point of paying out the last paycheck. This happens in the Startup Valley of Death and yet everyone not only survived, some genuinely thrived Against All Odds.

To me, me taking on a risk especially a uniformed one can be reckless thrill-seeking. However, some risks and challenges can be a rite-of passage to learn how to Weather Storms and build Learned Resilience

A Second Real-Life NDE

My first NDE and business NDEs gave me both a healthy sense of the reality about risk taking. However, they also a bit of a sense of invincibility. Another NDE and OBE came just 5 years later. Note, I had previously been laying for many days in a hospital bed on morphine and 350MG of Oxycodone every four hours. I was pretty much capable nothing. My most complex thoughts came from gamifying my SpO2 meter that told me my heart rate and blood oxygen level. It provided a Direct feedback loop on my heart rate. So, the game became how easily I could bring my heart rate under 40 and my blood oxygen above 95. I got quite good at it.

A Risk Not Chosen But Inheritantly Ever-Present

5 years later when I struggled to breath and felt like I had a heart attack come on. I drove myself to urgent care and they took me to the ER. Next big mistake but also lifesaver. I decided I needed to lower my heart rate and stay calm. It was clear I needed to minimize me need for oxygen. The calmness led them to not take my case seriously.

The doctor finally came out to put up my Contrast CT scan results. Hearing his gasp brought me back from having drifted off and out of the ER. I opened my eyes to see his jaw dropped before he exclaimed – I can’t believe you are alive! He injected me with Lovenox to enable some oxygen holding blood to get past the clots present throughout both lungs.

Slowly, I was able to begin breathing a bit more normally. Clearly perturbed, he said I couldn’t have been getting much of any blood into my lungs. He explained that a “massive bi-lateral pulmonary embolism” leads to Hypoxia, similar to drowning. I told him that felt true. He asked “Why weren’t you totally panicking“? I told him I assumed that if I couldn’t breathe, raising my heart rate seemed counter productive. So, I employed my low heart rate process until I drifted off and out from hypoxia. They told me there were calcified blood clots in both lungs indicating this wasn’t my first PE Rodeo. This NDE and OBE was not as dramatic or clear in my memory as the one in the Pacific.

And Then The Second PE

One year later, I had another massive bilateral PE. But I was able to get myself to the ER faster and say, I think I’m having another Pulmonary Embolism. I think the word “another” got their attention. Statistically, if you’ve had any PE the odds that you have another are fairly high. This is especially if one has had two massive, bi-lateral ones. The odds that you die within the first 30-60 minutes of the first noticeable PE symptom are also relatively high. My first NDE may have left me feeling invincible. This one drove the message of Life’s fragility home loud and clear. Every morning I wake up grateful to be offered the opportunity of another day. The hope is to have made movement on my life purpose by day’s end.

I live each day knowing there is a real risk it might be my last. Oddly, that has only served to increase how at peace and connected I feel with people and nature.

TLDR?

What does taking a risk do? It can change your life profoundly but only if you live to fight another day.

To me, no fear = no brains -> Surfer’s adage: fear is healthy, panic is deadly.