I Got COVID & It Changed My Life - Here's What I Learned

I got Covid and it sucked. Oh, and I was in my bed for a long time and I was way sicker than I imagined. And it was way worse than I expected it to be. But there were also some really good things that happened through the experience, and some of them are going to surprise you. So in this video, I'm going to share a little bit about the experience and also my takeaways. Cause there were some business and life lessons that came out of me getting Covid and being really, really sick for a long time. In fact, I'm still not out of the weeds. So deal with my low energy, please, for this video. But today I'm gonna share with you what I took away from getting really, really sick. Now, one thing that I want to talk about right from the get go is I'm 33 years old. I'm in reasonable shape, or at least I was before I got Covid and was not moving for a few weeks. I didn't get the vaccine because I'm in such a low risk category. And the worst day of it was when I woke up in the middle of the night and I woke up my co parent in the other room, Pamela, and said, I need your help. And that's when we knew it was bad. Because a man asked for help when he was feeling sick. And I had uncontrollable shaking and I could not stop shaking. And I was pouring sweat, sweating to the point where my clothes were saturated as if I had been out in the rain. And so the first thing that I learned through this experience was this thing doesn't discriminate. And it actually made me a little bit more empathetic about the situation because this, in this last year has affected all of us in different ways. But I was never worried about getting sick. I was worried about the economy, I was worried about my business. I was worried about my kids and their school. And I was annoyed with the government and their response. But I was never worried about getting sick. But once I got sick, it made me much more empathetic about the situation. Especially because I was doing all of the right things. But getting sick is one thing. I've had several people write on the comments of my YouTube videos or comments of Instagram, snarky comments like, oh, so you got sick and you got better. Big deal. That happens all the time. Which is true. And it's also why I didn't get the vaccine for that exact reason. I was like, I could get sick, but then I will get better. But what I didn't know was that there are very common long term effects that made it much worse than just getting sick. For example, right now I've been better for several weeks, but I still only have about 50% of my energy levels. I would call it post Covid depression where I have a hard time getting moving. I have to be very careful about my diet and my thoughts because I can go into a dark rabbit hole very quickly because I just don't have the energy. And I'm again several weeks recovered, but I'm not really fully back to my normal self just yet. Had I known that that was a common thing among those who got Covid, I probably would have gotten the vaccine again. I chose not to because I thought that there were more risks associated with getting the vaccine than getting sick. But I'm now experiencing some of the long term effects of COVID and they're not fun. And I get a little bit better every day, but it's still a struggle. With all of that said, in some way, and this sounds a little bit morbid, so please forgive me, but in some way I'm glad this happened because what has happened as a result of getting Covid has been very.

At least has the potential to be very transformative. For me. I'm a hard driver. I go, go, go all the time. And as soon as I get a break I go, hang on, I must not have enough projects. I should add a new project to my list. I'm in constant go mode. And what tends to happen is about every five years I burn out. Something happens that kind of pricks the bubble and I just don't have it anymore. And that's when the best times happen. That's when new things happen, it's when new ideas happen, it's when new creativity starts to come back. Right at the other end of burnout. If you talk to most successful people, they will say that their greatest breakthroughs often happen on the other side of failure. Because on the other side of failure there is this recentering, there's this humility, there's this disattachment from the results. But when you're in the climb, when you are in the grind, there is this desire for seeing the results and projecting out how far you're gonna be. And then you start to add people and add bulk and add processes. And I've had opportun in the last couple of years to get control of this. When quarantine happened, I had for my own mental health. I had to turn my attention away from projects that weren't working and actually, what happened on the other side of that was I got new ideas, and our core business doubled, and we got new students and clients, and things picked up again, and I forgot that lesson. But then I feel like life gave me another lesson when I got Covid because I literally couldn't get out of bed for days. But nothing crumbled. The world kept moving. My business kept operating. None of our clients or my customers knew I was sick. My team did an amazing job. My team continued to make new sales. And I had this thought for the first time. Maybe I don't need to work so hard. Maybe doing nothing sometimes is the most productive thing that I can do. Maybe be being attached to all these results that I think are so important is keeping me stuck, rather than giving me the creative freedom for me to do what I actually want. The way that you get the life that you actually want is by creating more space for the life that you want, by creating more control over your time so that you can be intentional about the things that you say. Yes, too. But what many of us have done, including myself, is we've just added more to the plate. We've piled more on, and we've complained about not having enough freedom. I once heard Tony Robbins say that starting a business so that you can have more free time is like saying, I think I'll have another kid so that I can have more free time. But we still buy into this idea that we're into this free for freedom. And so we add more to our plate. We hustle even more. Rather than creating room first and then operating from that place. I needed that reminder, apparently, and I got it in the form of getting very, very sick. But hopefully this time, I'll actually get the lesson. The next thing that I took away from this experience is that nothing is as overwhelming as. As it seems in the moment. I had a long list of things that I wanted to get done over the last month. None of them happened. I got none of them done. And you know what happened? Nothing bad. I realized nothing is nearly as overwhelming as it seems in the moment. It's just my thoughts about it that make it that way. It's the thoughts of me beating myself up over it or attaching to a certain result or making up some story about what getting this thing means is creating this story about what not getting this thing means. And when I was sick and unable to move for a lot of that time, I realized that all of the overwhelm that I felt was simply because of the perspectives that I had previously And I can change those perspectives at any time. It might take thought, it might take intentional work to adjust those perspectives. But those perspectives can be changed. And if we don't change them, then life will give us some other opportunity to force us to change that perspective. I spend so much energy and so much thought thinking about, am I on the right path? Should I be going over here? Should I start a business that I've never thought of before? Should I reach out to this person that I have no connection to? But what I realized while I couldn't move was that my best opportunities are for me to work like crazy on the things that are right here. So instead of thinking about where I want to be, instead of thinking about where I'm not, the fastest route to get to where I think I want to go is for me to be totally focused on what is showing up for me right now. For me to be all in on the people who watch my videos or listen to my podcasts. All in on the opportunities that I already have right now. That's my best opportunity. Go to the opportunities that are already here right now and give it your all and make sure that you are in the place to be in constant service to those opportunities. That was a big lesson for me because.

I put so much pressure on myself to get to where I want to go that I oftentimes overlook what is right here. My old biggest fear was that if I lost all of my money, I would end up working at Dunkin Donuts, which was, like, the only job I ever had was when I was in high school. I worked at Dunkin Donuts for a couple years. And then I realized one day that if that ever happened and I had to go back to making, you know, eight bucks an hour at Dunkin Donuts, I would become the world's best damn donut salesman in history. I would learn everybody's names, I would know exactly what their orders were, I would upsell them, I would find out where they went to church, and I would send them free donut holes. I would. I would become the world's greatest donut salesperson because there were already people coming into the Dunkin Donuts wanting to buy something. Those are the opportunities that can go all in on. And you know what would inevitably happen? Somebody would hire me away from Dunkin Donuts and give me a six figure job doing, being who I am at a different organization, being in relentless service to other people. The last thing that I took away from this experience was actually a business lesson, a business idea. And it Was interesting that I had to slow down enough in order to get the idea, to get the inspiration to see new ideas flow. Oftentimes we're so busy filling our heads with more knowledge, reading more books, listening to more podcasts, listen to more audiobooks, that we're not quiet enough to hear the ideas that are already in us come to the surface. And that's what happened for me, was I finally was forced to get quiet enough to let things come to the surface. And I was in this state quite often while I was sick, where I was not quite asleep and not quite awake. You probably experience that when you're about to fall asleep. I would have it for hours on end. It was very much like a psychedelic experience, although not a very pleasant one. And so I decided to try on this idea of can I just treat this as rest? Can I treat this as an opportunity to slow down? Can I treat this as an opportunity where I finally get to recharge? And it gave me the idea of where I really want to take my business moving forward. Up until now, capitalism.com has been a glorified personal brand for Ryan Daniel Moran. It's been my IP in our training programs. It's been me doing the coaching calls, and I've enjoyed a lot of that, and we've been fairly successful as well. But the idea came to me, or I kind of had the thought, you know, what if I'm. What if I wasn't around? Would this business continue to exist? And also, how would I really be in relentless service to my customers if I took my ego out of it? And I started to think, I really enjoy the idea of building capitalism.com into being more of a business board of advisors, of publishing other faces on capitalism.com, of having other investors and other strategic entrepreneurs provide value for our customers. And I really started to get a lot of energy around this idea of creating this board that wasn't Ryan Daniel Moran. Ryan Daniel Moran was just part of the board, and it was now this business that existed to incubate great entrepreneurial ideas that I can be liberated, to inspire entrepreneurs and mentor entrepreneurs and then bring them into a service that was more of a group of advisors where they could learn about building businesses, investing the profits, see new opportunities, building e commerce businesses, investing in the next wave of society, creating change. I really liked that idea. And within a week of being better, I was already making decisions with my team about going in that direction, rather than the direction of how do we add more to Ryan's plate. I started reaching out to mentors and other people that I think would like to contribute to a platform like this. And they were all excited about the idea. And so I'm going to be leading my company in a different direction as a result of this experience because I realized that I'm not bulletproof, I'm not superhuman, I'm only one man. And also showed me that that wasn't in full service to my customers. It wasn't in full service to my viewers and my listeners and my community. I'm actually doing a disservice. I'm holding myself back and them back by me building the entire company around myself. So once again, my big takeaway from this was that rest and recharging is not a passive activity. It's one of the biggest ROIs you can have. And because of that, I hope that I finally gotten the lesson that I need to cut things out and reduce my workload in order to create the change that I want to have, in order for me to have the impact I want to have, for me to build the businesses that want to have, for me to make the money that I want to have. I don't know if that's the case for everybody. I don't know if that's the case for Gary Vaynerchuk, I don't know if that's the case for Mark Cuban. But I think it's the case for me that I operate best with as little on my plate as possible so that I can show up to be in service for the people who are already showing up for me. I hope that you don't have to get Covid to get these same lessons as me. By the way, thank you for watching and listening and following my content. You allow me to do work that I find meaningful. You allow me to inspire a segment of your journey, and you allow me to do this in a way that I find fun and look forward to. That's not something that I take lightly. And I literally couldn't do it without you. So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening, thank you for building businesses, thank you for investing the profits, thank you for following me on my journey, and thank you for allowing me to be a part of yours. If I can be of service to you, please subscribe to the channel. And if you want to work with me a little bit more closely, there are programs and offerings that are in the comments of this video where we can actually work on your business closer together. So thank you for being a part of my journey. I'm proud to be part of yours. Thanks for watching. See you next time.