I Got COVID & It Changed My Life

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I recently got Covid and it really, really sucked. But it also changed my life, it changed my perspective on a lot of things. And I'm going to share with you some of what I took away today. Hopefully you won't have to get very, very sick in order to learn the same lessons that I learned from two weeks of misery. Actually, it's more than two weeks. If I knew what I know now, I would have acted differently because of the long term effects that I'm still dealing with on the other side of having Covid. 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 take vitamin D, I check my vitamin D levels. I took Ivermectin, which if you know what that is, a lot of people think that it was a miracle preventative for Covid. I take supplements, I work out regularly. I didn't get the vaccine because I'm in such a low risk category. Very healthy, still fairly young male who is on top of their health and has healthy vitamin D levels and does all these biohacks and things that I have access to because I have resources. And I still got Covid and I still got it really bad and I really.

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 outside and I had no temperature regulation. Sometimes I was too hot, sometimes I was too cold, and.

I barely had enough energy to grab a glass of water. I was very sick to the point where I started outlining my will in the event that something would happen to me. 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 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. I was doing all the things that you're supposed to do in order to prepare your body for a situation like this. 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. It 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, huh, 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 I've got to recenter. I usually simplify my businesses 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 a lot of times, if you're not careful, the founder, the person who's in the middle of that can self destruct. They have too much going on, they have too much pressure, they're carrying too much on their shoulders. And that has 100% been me probably for the last two years. And it hasn't necessarily been because of the amount of things I had going on, but simply because the amount of weight that I was carrying on my shoulders. This is all self induced. This is no one's fault. On my own, I've had opportunities 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. I had to disconnect. 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. I literally had to shut down. 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 I don't need to have my foot pressed to the metal all the time.

Maybe it's a good thing for me to rest. Maybe doing nothing sometimes is the most productive thing that I can do. Maybe allowing all the things that aren't that important to unwind in my brain is a very, very good use of my time. Maybe me 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. Just like any entrepreneur, I've fallen into the trap of thinking, well, as soon as I get to this point, as soon as I get to this result, then I will have the freedom for me to do what I actually want. I have bought into that lie more times than I can count. And it never works that way. 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 to. 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 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. In my first ever podcast, in the first podcast that I ever recorded back in, like, 2013 or 2012, I made the argument that there were five sequential steps to freedom. Decide, cut out, expand, invest, and give. I'm not gonna go through all of these. The one that I wanna point out is that the second step to me was to cut out, was not to add more to the plate, but actually cut things out of your Life was to reduce expenses, to reduce commitments, reduce the amount of focus, reduce the amount of time that you spend doing things that are wasteful, and then you have the room to be able to expand and invest and grow and give. 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. In fact, there was one point where I had a conversation with my future self while I was just on the couch waiting it out. And I thought to myself, hey, future self, that's always worried about money or status or followers or all these dumb things that you worry about. Do you have your health right now? Oh, you do? Okay, shut the fuck up. You're doing just fine. And I was very keenly reminded of this quote that is attributed to Confucius. I don't know if it's actually Confucius, but it's that the healthy man has many desires, but the sick man has just one. I became very familiar with that statement. I had just one desire when I was laid up, very sick. And it was to be well again. And I promised myself that once I felt well again, I would just appreciate feeling well. I would just appreciate being healthy. I would appreciate the things that were in my life. I would appreciate the things that I had rather than focus on the things that I don't have. And as an entrepreneur, we're constantly thinking about what doesn't exist yet. We're thinking about new technologies, we're thinking about new money, we're thinking about new growth, and that fuels us. But so many of us are operating with such an empty tank that we're pursuing those things out of fear rather than the pursuit of growth, the pursuit of abundance, the pursuit of service, the pursuit of creativity. And when we're operating from an empty tank, we burn out. And life has to give us some sort of lesson in order to force us to catch our breath. The next thing that I took away from this experience is that nothing is as overwhelming 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. But I was so overwhelmed and stressed about getting these things done that I was, I guess, making myself sick. I was burning myself out. And once I finally stopped freaking out about the fact that I couldn't get a bunch of things done, 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. It's creating this story about what not getting this thing means. It's this story in my mind about what might happen or could happen and the benefits or the negatives of all this. And me constantly playing this mental battle in my mind when all of that is made up by my own thoughts, it's completely made up in my own head. 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. So nothing is as overwhelming, nothing is as great, nothing is as negative as it seems in the moment. It's only my perspective and my thoughts about it that make it that way. The next thing that I learned from this experience was that the best opportunities for me right now are to go all in on the things that are already here. 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? And I'm constantly thinking about this idea of like, what if I'm on the wrong path? What if there's a better. What if there's a faster path? What if there's some way for me to get to where I wanna. Wherever that is faster? And I don't think about it right now. I don't see it right now. Maybe I'm completely off track. This mental game goes over in my head whenever I feel stressed or tired or overwhelmed or lost. 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. For me to appreciate the opportunities that I have right now, for me to serve the people that are already showing up. 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 podcast. All in on the opportunities that I already have right now. For me to be in relentless service of the customers that are showing up in the businesses that I have right now.

That'S the best opportunity I have right now. The best opportunity isn't for me to go chase something that's not on my plate, try and hunt it and kill it and drag it over to my plate. It is to look at what's already here and make sure that I am in the best place possible to serve the people who are already coming my way. All of us have that. I did a video on Instagram recently in which I was talking about how anybody can increase their salary or their take home money by $20,000 a year. And one of the things that I suggested was to go to your boss or to your manager or to your employer and simply ask the question, where does this company want to go and what's preventing it from getting there right now? And ask questions about how you can help the company that you're already working at get to where it wants to go. It's a very simple thing that literally anybody can do. And that's true for me too. If I ask my customers that, if I ask the businesses that I'm invested in, if I ask the entrepreneurs that I mentor, that exact same question, 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. And it required being humbled to the point of realizing that all of us are fragile. All of us could lose it at any point. We could lose our lives, we could lose our energy, we could lose our health at any moment. And we would just beg to have the opportunities that are in front of us right now. Regardless of what that is or what you think your situation is, we would beg to have those opportunities back if they ever went away. So our best shot is to go all in on what's in front of us right now. 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 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 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, being who I am at a different organization, being in relentless service to other people. So that was a big lesson for me, to ensure that I'm always in the place of showing up to be in service for the opportunities that are already here, rather than beating myself up over the opportunities that I can't see right now. The only way those come is for me to be all in on the things that are happening right now. 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 experienced 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. So I had very interesting thoughts, firing all of the time. And I became very aware of how my perspectives and my thoughts were driving my emotions and driving my behaviors. And so what that kind of allowed me to see was I was feeling bored, I was feeling frustrated, I was feeling really annoyed that I was sick, I was worried that I was sick. 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 I'm just being forced to do it? And as soon as I had that thought, new ideas and New inspiration and new creativity, new fun started to come to mind. 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 where 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. I really like the idea of publishing other really well known entrepreneurs and giving them a platform on capitalism.com and also helping them create programs or books or be contributors to the 1%. 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 of. 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 being sick can knock me out. And based on how my business is built, it could knock my business out. If I were to get sick for a long period of time, I don't want either of those things. It 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. And so now that I had the space and the rest to think differently, it allowed me to think bigger. 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've 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 I want to have, for me to make the money that I want to have, it doesn't require me to work harder. It actually requires me to have fewer things on my plate. 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, but I had to not just burn out, but to have my health taken away and have the fear of not fully recovering in order for me to take this seriously. I've had this realization several times before in the past. I hope this is the last time I have to get this lesson. My therapist tells me, no, you'll probably have to get it a few more times. So I'm open to that being the case, but I hope that I really got the lesson this time. By the way, thank you for watching and listening and following my content. I really do appreciate it. 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.

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