Below is the transcript of episode 13 of the One Last Thought podcast, titled "I Had A Near-Death Experience" and I wanted to share it as a blog post, as there is so much value to be gained by these powerful thoughts shared by Anna Jelen and DeVernie Winston. Enjoy.
Remember that you always have time.
The one thing that I would leave is the idea of family being first.
I had a near-death experience when I was 17 years old, and just before my body was shutting down, I received pictures. I saw them one after another every second. They were just flying through my mind. And it was like a storybook of my life with images, moments out of my life.
I've been very successful in life with my career, whether it was through basketball or through being an American Sign Language interpreter, all of the success that I've had means absolutely nothing when you don't have anyone to share it with.
And after this experience, I understood that time is filled with moments. It's not the 24 hours that count the moments count. Every morning when I get up, I choose to play, to care, to enjoy, and to create moments.
There's nothing else that matters in the world more than your family.
The first step is to see those moments again because they might be tiny and small, but they can still touch You and these moments are everywhere. There are loads of them in your daily life. You just need to have a rhythm where you can see them again.
Seeing your family, smile, seeing your family, be happy seeing your family achieve, whether you're successful and not making sure that no matter what happens when you walk out of that door, at the end of the day when you come back home, your family is there for you.
Because if you run all day, you will run past the moments and we could almost say you would run past your life. Don't wait for the end of work. Don't wait for the weekends or the holidays to come. Or even worse. Don't wait for your retirement like oh, when I'm retired, I'm going to do this. Get out of this waiting position and start to ask yourself how you want to fill your time.
And if you don't truly take care of home and create a successful work-life balance then everything that you go through is just going to not be in anything.
Create moments every day. Start with creating one moment for yourself and one moment for someone else. And at the end of your day, when you think about, you will also remember moments which touched you or were funny or sad or special. I believe we have to fill our time with them. And then you can get the feeling of stepping from one moment into another.
Family comes first and teaching your children how important it is to have that element of supporting family. Making sure that everyone's good, making sure that everyone is prepared, whether academically or athletically. Just making sure that home comes first.
Your time is here, and your time is now and that's when you realize that you're totally and fully living your time.
