Chris Jankulovski, author of Near Death Lessons says “Once you understand the mistakes you are making that are keeping you stuck, and learn how to move beyond them you can begin to create the life of your dreams.”
At 19 years old Chris was diagnosed with Von Hippel Lindau (VHL) Syndrome and for a time allowed this diagnosis to get the better of him. However, a series of near-death experiences triggered a profound positive personal transformation which eventually led Chris to live the life of his dreams.
The lessons from those transformations are shared and passed on to others so they can also use the worst adversities as a catalyst for profound change.
You are in charge of your own destiny. It’s your choice to create the reality you want to shape your own world. Many of us dare not do such things.
Near Death Lessons provides clear, tactical guidance for those who are ready to shift focus away from the past and focus on what you can control today.
It’s about being aware of what we accept in our life
I had a chance to interview Chris to learn more.
What is opportunity cost and why do people need to be aware of this concept?
The concept of opportunity cost seems like a romantic notion to me because none of us knows the future. To understand the concept of opportunity cost is to be aware that at any time you have two alternative choices with every decision you make in your life. Simply put, what are you giving up in your unknown future by the choices you're making right now. I can demonstrate this concept with one of my business losses.
4 years after I founded a remote staffing business, I fired all my founding crew and hired a whole new office base team. I went from a fantastic team culture, to having a new office based team with horrible team culture, lots of internal political power struggles, underlining department tensions, systems failures and dysfunction everywhere in the business.
I was overwhelmed with all the problems, I had no idea how to get myself out of the mess. Instead of me persevering to solve the problems, I backed off completely, leaving the business to keep it self-going while I only focused on maintaining critical numbers. 90% of my time went towards a new real estate portal business I started.
2.5 years later and a few million dollars invested, I had to kill the real estate portal business due to a brain operation. The opportunity cost was that during that 2.5 years building the real estate portal business the staffing industry was booming and if I had continued to work on my staffing business and re-invested all that money instead of starting the real estate portal business, I could have significantly grown the staffing business. All my competition grew, my business didn’t grow. I ended up paying for this mistake in many ways.
How can people learn to not take things personally?
Develop resilience, it’s not just a buzzword.
After 8 near death experiences, I am at a point that nothing deters me. For example, I just got the news recently that I am going to have to pay USD $27,900 every month to access a drug that has the potential to pause my hereditary tumors and cancers. This drug will let me live longer on my original half remaining kidney.
The first day I paid for this drug it felt defeating, I was shocked at the price I have to pay to live a normal life. Now, if I had taken what has happened to me personally, my emotions would cloud my thinking and my reasoning would get messy. I might say things like, how in the world am I going to afford these drugs over the long term? Why me God, this isn’t fair. I could find myself overthinking this problem for months.
Instead, on the 2nd payment, I reflected on the price I now have to pay and the more I started to think about relativity. This drug is now my new motivation to build even more wealth in my life. If I can generate $100 million dollars, what’s difference would $335,000 make, it would be an irrelevant cost. Can you see how differently I am thinking compared to taking this situation personally? I am able to think more clearly, I am focused on solutions and possibilities. I can feed creativity, unlike taking it personally, all I end up doing is feeding my doubts.
How does acceptance of a situation help us to actually make positive change?
After my brain operation in 2016, when a tumour burst in my head and almost killed me, I was left with 8 months of rehabilitation to learn how to walk and talk and was bed-bound for 3 months. It was only after 2 months that I realised that my situation could not be changed and I had to accept that now, I am living with disabilities. It wasn’t easy, the moment I accepted my new reality was the moment I stopped obsessing about all my problems.
Not accepting a situation only takes up a lot of unnecessary energy. It keeps you stuck in the past. It also brings a lot more negativity in your life. Instead of feeling in control with your life, not accepting your reality will see you running away from other problems that come up in your life. Not accepting your reality is a disempowering and victimized type of living. I should know, I lived that kind of life for 13 years. I never knew what I wanted in this situation.
On the other hand, acceptance of your reality is a huge part of the healing and moving on from past pain process. Accepting any situation you’re in will allow you to make an important shift of focus towards doing things within your control. It will prevent you from wasting energy on the past and it will help you invest more time and energy in making progress in the present moment, one small baby step at a time.
About Chris Jankulovski
Chris Jankulovski is the Founder and CEO of Remote Staff, a recruiting company specializing in remote working placements. Remarkably, he was able to build and grow this thriving business while battling cancer, failing kidneys and several brain operations.
Throughout these challenges and more, Chris was able to find a way to transform his life from one of fear, struggle and self-doubt, to one of empowerment, success, health and happiness. Chris is the author of the soon to be released “Near Death Lessons.”
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