Ep. 17: The Wake-Up Call After the Wake-Up Call

After my first widowmaker heart attack, I truly believed I had my wake-up call. I changed my diet. I committed to exercise. I followed my doctors’ guidance and told myself things would be different moving forward. For a while, they were. But over time, life quietly pulled me back to normal. The stress returned. Old habits crept in. The environment that nearly broke me didn’t really change — and eventually, eight years later, I had a second heart attack. In this deeply personal solo episode, I share the real story of what happened in the space between my two wake-up calls. The part nobody talks about. The slow drift back to the life that caused the crisis in the first place. This conversation is about why major wake-up calls don’t always lead to lasting change, how environment shapes our behavior more than motivation, and why the real wake-up call isn’t the crisis itself — it’s the moment you realize you’re returning to the life that hurt you. In this episode, I explore: • Why most people don’t maintain lifestyle changes after major health events • How stress and environment quietly pull us back into old patterns • The reality of regression to the mean in real life • Why survival alone doesn’t create alignment • The three questions I now ask myself — and invite you to ask too As I close the episode, I leave you with three questions: What are you calling manageable right now? What signal are you explaining away because everything still works? If nothing forced you to stop, what would you keep tolerating? If you’ve ever told yourself “I’ve got it under control” while quietly ignoring the signals, this episode is for you.