Create Your Own Mulligan. Live Life to the Fullest

Over the years, I have become slightly obsessed (ok, let’s be honest…really obsessed) with motivational speakers, law of attraction, inspirational sayings etc. One that we often hear is “Live each day as if it is your last”.   Now, that sounds great in theory but the reality is that life gets in the way.   For me, work and travel for work got in the way. For others, it may be children or spouses or volunteer work , or fill in the blank here that gets in the way. It’s easy to tell ourselves the story that “I will embrace life tomorrow but today I have to get through my to do list”.   As I continue to learn, if I can’t figure out the lesson myself, the Universe will happily step in and teach me.

In March 12, 2016, my whole world was changed for good. It started out like any other day. I was getting ready to go on a business trip just like I did had done so many times before. I wasn’t feeling very well so, for the first time in my life, I cancelled the trip. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse. Later that day, I ended up being hospitalized. I fell asleep that night watching Apollo 13 and no joke, the last thing I remember hearing was “Houston we have a problem”. Talk about foreshadowing. The next thing I remember was being unable to breathe and the very last thing I remember was having nurses surrounding me trying to intubate me whilst I was awake.   Trust me when I tell you that is not something ANYONE wants to experience. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.   When I finally woke up, I found out that I had a Pulmonary Embolism (a massive blood clot in my lungs) and that after they intubated me, I went into cardiac arrest. Technically, I guess I was “dead” for a couple minutes. Anyway, to fix the blood clot, I needed to have a massive surgery to clear out the blood clot. Basically, open heart surgery. That all went well but a couple days later, I had blood clots in both legs, which meant two more surgeries. I will spare you the gory details but basically I spent 30 days in a hospital recovering from the blood clots and surgeries. It was a long road to recover but I had amazing people in my life, both friends and family, who stuck by me through every step of the way.

When you face a life-threatening situation, you really hope that you are in the best hands possible.   The Universe (who, by the way, was teaching me a massive lesson) brought me an amazing surgeon. He was absolutely phenomenal and was kind and caring and had a great sense of humour. One day when he came to check on me, he said something that has stuck with me since that day. He said “I am really excited to see what you do with your life. There were at least a couple times when you should have died but you didn’t. I truly believe you are destined to do great things and that is why you were saved.”   I knew my surgeon was a golfer and I said to him, thank you for my mulligan. I promise I will make good use of it. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “mulligan”, it’s a do over or a second chance.

So I was given a mulligan. I went from focusing on a business trip to almost dying to getting a new lease on life. When I was finally left the hospital, I knew that I needed to live each day to the fullest and not wait.

The beauty of living this way is that you start to have a child like approach to life. You start to see flowers and butterflies and feathers and beauty and enjoy everything.  As I mentioned previously, I walk the same path almost every day and now it looked completely different. I noticed 20 white butterflies one day. They were probably always there but now I actually saw them.   The choices I make now are around things that I enjoy. I no longer wait and I see beauty in everything around me. Now, I am no Pollyanna, I still get frustrated and upset but I bounce back more quickly and try not to dwell on things.

Here is the amazing part. Before I became ill. I was stressing about work. Where will the next job come from (I’m a contractor)? Will I be able to make enough money to continue what I’m doing? These were questions that ran through my head constantly. After my illness, work just started flowing in. It is work I love. When I started living and stopped stressing and worrying so much, everything clicked both personally and professionally.

The Universe knew I needed something dramatic to shake me into action. I look back and think, did it have to be so dramatic? I guess so because it changed my life. Every morning, I start by expressing my gratitude for waking up (because I now know that it’s not a given). I express gratitude for everything in my life. When I tell my story, people will often say things like that’s awful or you poor thing. What I tell them is that in a very odd way, that crisis was the best thing that ever happened for me

The biggest lesson I have learned is don’t wait until tomorrow. If you have a trip you want to take, plan it now. If you have always wanted to write a book, then start writing it today. Whatever it is you want to do, just start. Create your own mulligan and live the rest of your life as if each day is your last because you never know if it will be.