I Had a Seizure in Australia

“I always want you guys to benefit from experiences I go through, so you don’t need to repeat the same mistakes.”

THE SEIZURE

In the beginning of September, I landed in Australia after a 25-hour flight journey. I didn’t sleep during the flight, but I felt fine. When I landed I had a coaching call, one-on-one, with one of our Speak Without Limits clients, the client from Europe, an amazing guy. I always love speaking with him, and during that call, I started feeling a little ill. The way you feel when you start getting a cold.

I concluded the coaching call, we had an effective session. I went for a meeting with Michael who is traveling with me as he is also displaced by fires. We spoke about the business and plans. We spoke about different clients and strategized what are the best moves for them, the coaching clients we work with personally. We spoke about the Insider programs we are working on. We spoke about Legacy programs we are working on and other business initiatives. We spoke about our news business, we have a large news business with a huge list, focused on patriotic content for Americans, because in my heart I’m a huge patriot of America, and Michael is the same.

I went to sleep, and as the night progressed, I noticed that my temperature was shooting through the roof. I didn’t have a thermometer with me, with all the travels, you don’t really have things like that with you, unless you have a child. But I could feel it was around 41.

The next morning I had a meeting with Michael, which was fortunate, because during the meeting I collapsed and had a seizure. I woke up on the ground, on the floor, with a pillow under my head, and Michael was running between me and the speakerphone on the wall, connecting with reception to get an ambulance. I was asking Michael, “Why are you running? What is going on?” I was saying, “Please don’t worry. Whatever is happening, everything’s gonna be okay.” That was my first instinct. And he said, “You had a seizure. I thought you would die. You were not waking up.”

The ambulance came. I refused to go to the hospital, because I know that my body sometimes just shuts down and goes into seizure when it is too much, and going to the hospital would just be another huge bill, $5,000 out of pocket after insurance, maybe more. It’s a foreign country. In insurance, they actually have a saying, “the $1 million baby,” a situation where a pregnant woman goes on a trip and gives birth during the trip, and the insurance company has to pay $1 million for that hospital visit.

All of this is to say that no matter how young you are, how much care you take of yourself, things happen. I take great care of my health because my mission is very important to me. I’m here to fulfill my full potential and help our clients do the same.

I always push myself just to the edge, to learn about the world, to develop certain very powerful skills. Often, you guys find out about it many years later, when I finally feel my level of mastery is very high, and I can bring it to you after I achieve huge results for myself and then for selected clients.

Michael could not get me up, because I gained consciousness right when he was speaking to reception, he was not able to get me out of the seizure. He said it was the scariest moment of his life, because he wasn’t sure if I would wake up again.

This photo was taken by Michael, who was watching over me after the seizure to make sure I didn’t go into a second one. He even went with me to buy water because he didn’t feel it was safe for me to go alone.

It’s real, behind the scenes, no makeup, without any proper clothes. I decided to share this moment with you because I always want you guys to benefit from experiences I go through, so you don’t need to repeat the same mistakes, and you can learn from things and skip years and decades of what it took to gain certain knowledge and wisdom.

PROTECT YOUR HEALTH LIKE IT’S EVERYTHING

When I gained consciousness from the seizure, I felt so strange in my body that I felt I may die. And when things like that happen to you, it really highlights the big picture of your life.

Over the last one and a half years, I was displaced by fires. Michael was also displaced by fires, so we were like two nomads traveling around the world, and still doing so. We are in Australia right now. We just came back from Denmark. We were in Germany before that, in Spain before that, in various parts of Los Angeles before that, San Diego, Prague, Japan, England. It has been a wild ride, although any of those days, I would prefer to be at home.

My house is so contaminated that everything needs to be ripped out. All the floors are ripped out, everything from the house is discarded. Some walls are broken up. All the furniture, everything in the house, all the clothes, all the cabinets, all the memories, all the books, the HVAC system, the appliances, the cabinets, windows, doors need to be discarded. It’s a nightmare.

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In fact, houses that burned are further along than my house, because dealing with contamination is very tricky. I got a chemical test for the house only in February of this year, more than 13 months after the fires. This is how hard it is to deal with insurance. I was very fortunate to have Michael by my side going through this experience, because he’s brilliant at navigating things like that. That is why he also was able to help clients break out of orbit multiple times. He led people to get EB1A where they had no chance in hell without him. He is just brilliant, on another level as some of the clients said over the years. And I get to have him as my trusted advisor and as a soul of our company, which is something I am very grateful for.

But the key point of today’s email, things in life happen. They happen unexpectedly. You can’t plan for it. And one thing we need to protect is our health. If I didn’t protect my health that much, maybe, with my naturally weak physique, I wouldn’t have woken up from that seizure.

I spoke to that same wonderful client from Europe a few days ago again, part of the Speak Without Limits program. He mentioned that he was not getting enough sleep, and I was trying to remind him that health is the most important asset we have.

My father is going to do heart surgery today. As with any surgery, you don’t know if you’re going to wake up, especially at an older age, and when it is such a serious operation. I am 44. He had me when he was 24. He is getting up in years.

He also did not protect himself, often for no reason, such as watching football later into the night, not going to sleep, thinking, “I will sleep when I’m dead.” That is a very stupid thing to say. He was smoking a big part of his life. When I was a child I remember always asking only for 1 gift, whether it was my birthday or New Year’s (in Russia New Year is as big as Christmas in the US). That 1 gift was, “Dad, can you please stop smoking.” I remember years went by me asking. He would come home and go to park his car. The parking lot was about 2-3 bus stops from home. In deep winter I would always volunteer to come with him so I would get to spend time with him on the way home. He would smoke the entire time and say to me, “Don’t tell mother that I was smoking next to you.” I never did.

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We have to treat our bodies like business athletes. Business athletes go to sleep on time. They wake up early, well rested, because they went to sleep early, or if they have to go to sleep late, they get the proper sleep. They eat healthy food. They do not put poison in their body. The most disciplined ones do not drink alcohol. They do not take medicine unless it’s necessary, unless it really gives significant benefits, because a lot of medicine is just dealing with symptoms, not fixing the underlying problems, so you’re just poisoning yourself for no long term benefit. They try to avoid people who bring drama. In fact, they make it their mission to avoid those people, or if they cannot avoid it, they block the drama at the source as soon as it arises: “Go bring it to someone else, not to me.”

“Your health is what matters more than anything else. Please remember that. Please never forget it.”

Protect your body, protect your health, like the most important asset in your life, because it is significantly more important than your house, than your bank account, than your savings account, than your retirement account, than your business, than your career.

You are not going to regret taking too much care of your health in old age. You are not going to regret doing posture exercises so you have great posture 10 years from now, 20 years from now. You’re not going to regret doing eye exercises and seeing better later on because you took care of your eyes. You’re not going to regret doing cognitive exercises for your brain, keeping your brain sharp, keeping it healthy, building new neural pathways. I have an entire playlist where you can do a challenge, with a new video every day. You are not going to regret doing lymphatic drainage exercises.

Do you think I do those things because I have nothing else to do? I do those things because they work. I test a lot of things, and only what works is what is shared with you, and that includes things we develop internally, and different disciplines I learn and master over time. Cognitive exercise is also really good for your nervous system.

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BECOME A BUSINESS ATHLETE

It regulates the nervous system, which is critically important. If you have an issue of a dysregulated nervous system that shows up, for example, as shaking hands, where you overreact to things another person would not react to as harshly you need to invest time in regulating your nervous system. One of the most powerful things you can do is cognitive brain exercises. Don’t expect your health to just deteriorate because you’re old. You can have a different story.

Imagine someone who is 75 years old. Tell me, who did you imagine? Tell yourself right now, who did you imagine? What do you see? Describe this person, please, before reading any further.

Do you see an old man or old woman, walking with hinged shoulders and a little hump on their back, a little sad, low energy, struggling?

The hip hurts, even though they replaced it. The knee hurts. Is this what you see?

Or do you see a strong man or woman, someone that an 18-year-old would look at and think, “Wow, that person looks so good. I cannot believe they are actually more fit than I am”?

That is possible. If you believe that at 45 you will have deteriorated health and low energy, you are dramatically increasing the chances that this will be your future, your reality.

Start seeing yourself as a business athlete. Whether you believe you can, or you don’t, you are right, as Henry Ford smartly said many years ago.

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SENDING YOUR COURAGE, DETERMINATION, AND BRAVERY TO GO AFTER YOUR DREAMS

Even if you are 40 years old. Even if you are 45. Even if you are 30. Even if you are 60. Decide that you are a business athlete, and you’re going to treat yourself that way. You’re going to have discipline.

I have another incredible client, near Paris. He works in Paris, lives near Paris. Unbelievable person. He’s such an incredible athlete, in addition to being a brilliant management consultant. He shows up at the gym and everyone’s head turns because of how disciplined he is, and his body shows it. His body shows it not because he’s taking illegal substances to puff himself up. His body shows it because of discipline, because he is a business athlete.

When he drives to Paris, for an hour and a half, he listens to Legacy and Insider programs. When I refer to a program, he mentions he’s listened to it a few times, he can now explain it to anyone else, because he truly mastered what I was trying to share, or what Michael tried to share. He’s an example for everyone around him of what is possible, and people repeatedly tell him that. People he knows, like family members and friends, and people he just met. And you are the same, because you are part of this community.

Don’t sell yourself short. And don’t settle. Take care of yourself and make your dreams a reality, because you deserve it.

For most people, what you dream about is impossible, because they’re just not willing to pay the price that comes with it. But for you, it’s possible.

I believe in you, and I want to see you get to those dreams, get to the realization of those dreams, and enjoy the process. Because that very process will make you the person you can become, and that is worth even more than realizing your dream.

That belief, in your dream, in the person you’re becoming, is exactly why Michael and I built what we built. Discipline gets you moving. But even business athletes need the right training, the right people pushing them, and the right systems behind them to actually close the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

Becoming a business athlete requires preparation, rigor, and clarity if we want to move from solving mid-level problems to influencing the direction of entire departments or even organizations. And as Peter Drucker said in “Effective Executive,” this is what makes you an executive, your ability to impact organization, not your title.

That’s why we built Insider, Legacy, and Strategy Control Room Advanced.

Each membership is designed to give you the discipline, frameworks, and judgment to lead at the very top of your profession.

Insider gives you the structured thinking and advanced tools to consistently win bigger mandates.

Legacy builds on that with direct access to our thinking on some of the more advanced topics and the chance to stress-test your decisions with us via a 2x a month opportunity to submit questions and get guaranteed input.

Strategy Control Room Advanced lets you see how partners actually shape and run entire firms, with case files, board-level analyses, full study decks, centers of excellence, private books, and war rooms you simply can’t access anywhere else.

If you’ve been learning from these emails, imagine how much more you’ll achieve with the full systems behind them.

Explore memberships on StrategyTraining.com.

Kris Safarova

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