A stroke gave my friend back his life.
That should terrify you.
Last week, a friend and former teammate reached out.
Can we call?
He never reaches out first.
Every few months I check in on him, remind him he’s always welcome in Andorra.
He’s always enthusiastic.
He never comes.
So when his message landed,
I knew something was up.
He’d had a stroke.
Small, they said.
Could have been worse.
But he was out for a while.
And now the doctors are trying to figure out what caused it.
He has a wife and two sons.
And until that moment, really all he ever did was work.
The stroke scared the hell out of him.
But it also did something else.
It made him think.
About his actual priorities.
Not the ones on his calendar.
The real ones:
– his family
– his health
– the life he kept meaning to get to
I see this all the time with coaching clients.
Either something happens to them directly or they watch it happen to someone close to them.
And suddenly, they’re ready to change everything.
Most people act like they have everything to lose and all the time in the world.
It takes a stroke or a diagnosis, or a funeral, to remind them that neither is true.
We only move when one of two things is true:
We want the change badly enough.
Or life forces our hand.
My friend needed the second one.
But here’s what I want you to know..
You don’t.
You can sit down right now, today, not after the next project, not after the next quarter and ask yourself what you actually want your life to look like.
You have permission to change before the breaking point.
No event required.
So do it.
Grab a pen.
Write down what your life looks like now.
Write down what you want it to look like.
If those two lists don’t match, you already have your answer.
What would you change today, if you stopped waiting for a reason?
PS: Enjoy this?
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