How Dying Transformed My Life
By Richard Brown
Every day when I wake up, the first thing I do is thank God for another day of life. I count my blessings more than ever, and I especially appreciate what matters most: my family, my faith, and literally living each day as if it were my last.
I love my wife more. My kids are prettier. The grass is greener. The sky is bluer. And I feel like the most blessed man on the face of the earth.
The simplest things mean so much. Just yesterday when my daughter Kara came home from school, I reached out my arms and hugged her and held on to her for what must have been five minutes. All the while telling her how beautiful she is and how much I love her and how much I care about her.
That is me now. I literally see and feel everything in a new light as a result of my transformation. Life has never been better; in fact, for me, it has never been even nearly this good.
How would I have ever known that my heart would have to stop in order for the best part of my life to begin. But that's what happened. At the age of 38, on an ordinary spring evening at home with my family, I began to feel very odd and very ill.
It all happened so fast. I remember breaking out in a cold sweat, and my heart began pounding so fast and so hard. I literally thought it was going to come out of my chest. My wife called 911, and I was just sitting there trying not to move, trying not to panic, trying to relax, thinking about the ocean, thinking about my wife, focusing on my kids. I began praying. Just anything I could do to calm down and try to keep my heart from going completely out of control.
I remember the paramedics arriving and the clear intuitive knowing that my life was literally slipping away.
As they hooked me up to the EKG and began to read the results, I could just see the look on their faces and heard one of them say, "This guy's in serious trouble."
I was pale, cold, and sweating very badly. I looked at my wife--she was standing right there in the living room shaking and crying, and I said, in an unusually calm and confidant voice, "Gina, this is it." And I spoke the words from the deepest part of my soul that I'd ever experienced: "I love you. Tell the kids that I love them and hug them for me."
And then it happened. All these years of not being in touch with my body, of not being aware of the illness in my heart, but then this… I knew exactly what was going on inside of me. I turned to the paramedic and I said, "Sir, my heart is getting ready to stop." And as soon as I said that, it was lights out.
It's an extraordinary experience to hear people talking about you in the third person, as if you weren't there. I could see my beautiful daughter, Kara, on her knees, leaning her head toward me and screaming, "Daddy, please don't die. Please don't die." I don't know how, but I was above her looking down, and I wanted more than anything to hold her in my arms like I did when she was a baby and tell her that Daddy was going to make everything okay. But whatever state I was in, words were not an option. Nothing I wanted to say could come out. Kara continued crying hysterically, "Please, God, please don't take him away." I saw the paramedics rush back in the door and up the stairs. A jolt of electricity snapped me back into my body, back to life. I remember not being able to move, lying on my back, with paramedics working with intense focus and then the pain became unbearable throughout my shoulders and back, down my left arm. I can't even describe how horrific these moments were.
I was abruptly lifted onto a stretcher and raced through the front door of my house and into an ambulance.
Then it happened again. As the ambulance sped toward the hospital my heart stopped again. I drifted into what seemed like a space between this life and the next, and my thoughts drifted to my 5-year-old boy, Jax, who somehow I was able to see asleep back at the house, unaware that anything had happened. I then heard his voice and what he used to tell me, "Daddy, please don't smoke. Because you're gonna die, and I'm not gonna have a Daddy." And I saw a vision of the future where the only memories he had of me were the memories that someone told him about. And it bothered me so much that the unhealthy decisions I made in my life were going to orphan him, and it would have been entirely my fault. Again, I was jolted back into my body with what felt like lightning.
Now I was in the Critical Care Center at the hospital, and I wasn't sure if I was alive or dead. And I heard a doctor say, "Mr. Brown, we almost lost you there a couple of times. We've got you stabilized and safe for now."
The next day I was able to gain enough awareness that I could begin to understand what had happened. I had literally come within seconds of dying; I was literally a heartbeat away from never being able to hold my children again or kiss my wife goodnight.
That morning, with my wife by my side, the chief cardiologist and doctor who brought me back to life the night before issued a dire warning--a crystal-clear message: "Change today or never see tomorrow." And that clicked in my mind right there, right then, that I had been given a second chance, and I made an absolute conscious decision that when tomorrow came, things were going to be different. And I was going to be there for Gina, and my kids, Kara, Justin, Anthony, Kendra, and Jax. At the time I didn't know how I was going to regain my health and overhaul my life. I just knew in my heart that I was going to do it, and I had no doubt about it.
I was fortunate that I didn't have to have open-heart surgery; the doctors were able to perform a less traumatic form of surgery to install an arterial stint and open the blocked arteries to the heart. While I was lying there in the hospital recovering from the heart attack and treatment, I began to do some serious soul searching. I realized that, like most everyone else who ends up with heart disease, you don't ever think it's going to happen to you. I thought maybe around age 55 or 60 I would have to start taking care of my heart health. But never, in a million years, did I even remotely consider that I would die from a heart attack at age 38.
Why did this happen to me?
I asked that question over and over again, and my initial reaction was that I didn't deserve it and it wasn't fair. But those rationalizations, that denial, didn't seem to have much strength. The truth was coming to the surface and was giving me the opportunity to see what was really going on. The fact was, self-honesty and humility were coming through loud and clear. I had a near-fatal heart attack not because of how I'd been living the last week, but because of how I'd been living for the last 20 years.
Many people, myself included, have no idea that we even have heart disease until we literally have a heart attack. This is a chronic disease that starts very early on in life and, like a ticking time bomb, can go off at any given moment. For me it was at age 38. For many others it's in their 40s or 50s. Although I was very athletic and physically fit up until I reached my 20s and started working 70 hours a week, and supporting a family of five children, over the years, I had just simply let my body fall by the wayside. Instead, I worked long hours and experienced an increasing level of stress practically every month. And so I was overweight. Forty pounds overweight. I would just eat whatever I wanted, when I wanted. I was this kind of guy, wasn't much for breakfast unless it was something like pizza for breakfast. I would drink six to eight Mountain Dews a day, at a minimum, at work. I would smoke three packs of Marlboros a day. I'm an Operations Supervisor, a lot of responsibility, work a lot of hours. And you slowly just get into that rut of "I don't have time to eat right. I don't have time to exercise anymore." I used to love to work out.
I've got one guy who's 400 pounds who works for me right now. They're big guys, so as you progress and go along, and you get bigger, you really don't see where you're at because you're around everybody else who's big.
The day I was released from the hospital I went home and began researching how to regain my health. And that's when I came across the information from Bill Phillips. I knew immediately that what he was teaching people about consistent exercise and eating right was true. My doctor confirmed that this was a vitally important part of renewing my health. And also, I connected very strongly with Bill Phillips' insight about the Universal Law of Reciprocation--of practicing the Golden Rule. I had gone to church almost every Sunday for most of my life but never really understood how important that really was to my physical health and my emotional well being. I began to see the connection that although there was illness in my physical body, that that was a reflection of something not being right in my mindset, my emotions, and even in my "non-physical" heart--my soul.
So I decided to change everything. I just knew, don't ask me how, that my life depended on transforming.
And the instant I became aware that the path for me is transformation, I felt healthier already.
If you've never had a heart attack, let me tell you this much: It opens you up, especially emotionally. And it allowed me to see that over the years, not only had I become physically unhealthy, but I had not been taking good care of the mental, emotional or spiritual aspects of me. Quite candidly, I was being careless and neglectful. It didn't even occur to me that being healthy was a blessing and a gift not to be taken for granted. It didn't even occur to me that I was not going to live forever. It didn't even occur to me that working 75 hours a week was too stressful on me in every way and also inconsiderate of the needs of my family and friends.
The bottom line is, the day I had my heart attack--the day that I died twice--was the best day of my life, because it allowed me to snap out of it and wake up while I still had time, while I still had a second chance, to begin again, and this time, I had to do it right.
I started with physical exercise. Walking for 20 minutes at the hospital's Cardiac Rehabilitation Center was something new and challenging for me.
I also stopped smoking. The last cigarette I had was the last cigarette I had before my heart attack.
Right about that time, Bill Phillips published a new book called Eating for Life, which showed me just what I needed to know about how to feed my body so I could be healthy and energetic, without depleting it and running the risk of further weakening my health. I took a nutrition class and learned how to cook. And our whole family decided to join in--we threw out all the junk food from our kitchen and stocked up on healthy food, and we started having nutritious meals at home every night.
Beyond that--beyond the physical fitness and improved eating habits, I began to make deeper and even more meaningful changes. I was so stressed and overworked for so many years that I realized, looking back, I had become a very negative person. And reading some of the things that Bill Phillips wrote really struck home--I needed to shift my focus and begin to see the positive and good things that were going on within and around me. And I needed to become more involved in what Bill calls practicing the Universal Law of Reciprocation, which is being compassionate and concerned with the well being and needs of others, and not just myself. One of the ways I put this insight into regular practice is I now participate in a support group for other people whose lives are traumatically altered by heart disease and heart attacks. Helping them helps me.
Since I began transforming following my heart attack and two death experiences, my life has been getting better in every way you can imagine. First, I lost 40 pounds of bodyfat and can now honestly say that I'm enjoying the best physical fitness that I have since I was 20 years old; I have broken my addiction to nicotine and cigarettes; I no longer eat any junk food, and I don't miss it at all. I actually enjoy the natural tastes of healthy, whole foods. And most important of all, the change of heart that I have experienced is something I can hardly begin to express with words. Somehow, over the years, not only the blood supply and arteries to my heart had closed but the spiritual essence of my heart had begun to lock up as well. And through this adversity, and the changes which have followed, I have created a new life. I can honestly say that I'm a healthy person. My doctors even confirm it. I hold no secrets, no lies--I have deeply honest rapport with friends where we can discuss and review any and everything. And I realize that there's no such thing as perfection, and I remind myself every day of something Bill Phillips taught me, which is to forget about perfection and focus on progress--to focus on doing the best that you can and realizing and accepting that that's more than good enough.
And, finally, what it all comes down to for me now is living with a healthy heart; not just "unclogged arteries," but living from the heart and soul--that place in the very center of me that gives me faith, that provides me with positive energy, that allows me to love my family literally more each and every day, and which also provides me with so much care, compassion, and kindness that I can not only provide those essential attributes to myself, that I can have enough--an abundance--to give and share with others.
You don't have to wait until you have a heart attack or life-threatening disease or serious accident to begin transforming. It's a decision that was available to me every day of my life, and it's a decision that's available to you right here, right now. My hope is that you'll make the decision before it's too late. By the grace of God I am alive and well today… perhaps the reason I was given a second chance was to share this message from my heart to yours.
I truly believe that is now my purpose in life.
