The host shares how he survived a severe car accident and coma, then teaches a breathing exercise for handling life's unexpected challenges. Inhale saying "I'm here," exhale releasing what you can't control, inhale again saying "I can handle this moment." Calm isn't the absence of stress but a skillful response to it.
Hi, welcome to day 4 of the Reclaim Your Calm Challenge. So just to review what we've already covered, day 1 was about what different kinds of stress are, what they are basically. So there is eustress and there's distress, right? We talked about that. Second day, we talked about meditation, how we can just kind of ground ourselves with meditation. And then the third day, we talked about how we take that a little further and find more calm in the everyday with other techniques. And today I want to talk about what do we do when life throws a curveball at us? How do we handle it? Because all of a sudden life could throw something that we don't expect at all, and what do we do? So in my experience, my life, I was working fine, going to work every day, and then all of a sudden I was in my horrible car accident. I was in a 10-day coma. Wow. I woke up and I didn't have much short-term memory. I didn't know why I was in a hospital bed. I didn't know why I couldn't move my legs. It was just a surprise. And I had to find the calm within myself. That was a big curveball. So to kind of talk about when life throws those curveballs, how do we handle it? Right. And what I want to say is calm really isn't the absence of stress. Stress is in life every day, and stress isn't a bad thing, right? As I talked about before, it is just stuff that happens and how we interpret it, right? There's eustress and distress is how we attribute to how we feel about it. And to talk about it further, one thing in life is we have to have a pause response. Just like taking a breath. We have like a way to interrupt what we're starting to think about, what we're starting to feel. And the fact is we don't have to control everything because life just happens. We can't— I couldn't control that I was gonna get in a car accident. It was just what it was. But how I responded after the fact, that is how I got back to being on my feet, getting back to— To being okay with life. And now I'm trying to kind of spread what I learned to others so they can recover as well and understand how amazing life can be and travel and see the world. Life is unpredictable, but your inner calm can be predictable. And that's what I want us to focus on. Like, what happens when this curveball is thrown in our face? How do we Deal with it. It's not always easy, but it's important for us to get through it to go to the next chapter of our life. I want to go through this one practical tool in case you do get kind of thrown a curveball. How do you handle it? The first thing is, as you breathe in, you say, I'm here. That just stops what's going on. You get back into the moment. I'm here. It's right now. I'm not thinking about the future. I'm not thinking about the past. It is what happened. I am here. And when you breathe out, you release what's outside of your control. This just happened. And when you breathe in again, right? I can handle this moment. Tell yourself, I can handle this moment. And you can do this as many times as you want. Because it puts you back in the present moment. You can handle whatever curveball life throws at you because life is full of curveballs. There's no denying that. My accident was a curveball. A meteor hitting would be a curveball. Anything is a curveball that you don't expect. We can say we're going to expect so many things, but we don't know what's coming because we're not Omnipotent godly beings, as far as I know. But life is what it is. So let's make the best of it. Let's go forward and be strong. So, so, so as a reflection, right, can you let me know what is one curveball that life is throwing at you right now? And how can you bring calm to it? Have you thought about it? Like the stuff that I've been teaching about, like breathing, different techniques, kind of meditation that I've shared with you. Have you used anything that has impacted you more than anything else? And what is this? Just to kind of wrap up, tomorrow will be the last day, and I'm going to wrap up everything that we've talked about. It's kind of bringing a closure to everything we've talked about and to kind of let you know how you can move forward knowing what you know to kind of live a happier, healthier life going forward, being strong and ready to Kind of handle anything that comes. All right, so have a great evening and I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
