Learn how to manage your mind when the outer world is chaotic

My journey of surviving and growing from trauma has led me straight into a near-death experience and a spiritual awakening.

I want to share some of the wisdom I’ve learned after recovering from a near-fatal car wreck five years ago.

I’ve been writing my memoir for the last three years. You get to know yourself in a deep way and see your patterns by putting together the most difficult and meaningful experiences of your life.

Trauma is not the only way you can awaken.

Awakening means you’re more conscious, you have more awareness of what you think and feel.

That’s what the goal is to be self-realized in this lifetime on the planet. This is my philosophy — we’re here to learn and to evolve and to understand that once we find our gifts and talents that’s what we’re here to use because only we have them.

1:15: One of the most important things I want to talk to you about today is mindset. And mindset is my focus, my super tool.

I’m gonna use the accident as a good example, I was in a near-fatal car wreck five years ago in Baja, Mexico, and subsequently had two surgeries in Mexico and three back-to-back abdominal surgeries in San Diego at Sharp Memorial Hospital, which is a large trauma center.

The car wreck and hospitalization represent an outer experience that happened. Then I have an inner life with my thoughts and spiritual practice.

What I know to be true, what I believe is that faith gives me hope in times that are really difficult. I used my inner practice, my inner life to help me manage my situation.

I was on a ventilator and airlifted out of Baja, so I was unconscious for a good part of it. Then I had a near-death experience that shifted everything and gave me an awakening that lasted what feels like almost a year where my ego was offline.  There were no negative thoughts or fears that chatted with me incessantly.

My language center (ego) wasn’t spitting out that “I’m not good enough” or “I didn’t do that fast enough,” or “I need to do it better,” or whatever, all the negative stuff was gone, and I was in a higher awareness state.

2:47: My whole mind was blown by the fact that the voice I heard in the dark of unconsciousness said, “You get to choose how you go through this experience. What will you choose?”

“I’ll choose love and gratitude to help me heal.”

I would take the high road.  The high road means that I will not take the low road and become a victim.  I’ll take the high road using love and gratitude to heal because I don’t want to be a victim.

That’s precisely what I did when I woke up. I didn’t know what had happened to me, but I knew something had happened to me. I wondered if other people noticed because I felt such a deep peace and was so accepting of my situation.

3:44: Dr. Kill said to me, “You seem to be in acceptance about your situation. You even reeled John back in several times because John was worried about worst-case scenarios. He knew what the risks were. And unfortunately, for 10 days, I had many of them. I developed a pulmonary embolism from the trauma and developed acute respiratory distress syndrome.

All kinds of things happened, but what I want to leave you with is that I managed my mind. This is what I’m going to teach you.

I’m creating something powerful that I believe many people can find valuable because it’s a different way to think about your body and your healing. I’m thrilled to share it with you because that’s how I did it. My body is completely innocent. It didn’t do this — the result of the accident. My body saved my life time and time again.

I said to myself, “If I can do three surgeries, I do four. If I can do four, I can do five. I could do 13 surgeries if I had to.” That’s the point. Your body is your most powerful advocate.

I’m going to teach you that you live in two worlds. You have an inside world of your thoughts, beliefs, and cultural and social conditioning.

You have no control over your outer world.

5:12: Fix what’s not working. Stop arguing with reality and saying “It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened. It’s not based on reality.  Reality is this moment.

The past is gone, but I can control how I think about everything in this moment. I can decide my attitude so I choose loving kindness.  Love is my religion.

NOTE: This is a little impromptu message from me. I’m going to start making short videos so that I’ll eventually get better at making them. Thank you for cheering me on!

If you like this video, I sure would like to know about it, and I’d love it if you would share it with your friends. I’m building my Youtube channel so come on over and subscribe so that you never miss my free trainings.

If you like this video, please let your friends know about it and give me some feedback. Thank you.