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Stop Making Yourself Miserable

Stop Making Yourself Miserable

Von: David Richman
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 Weekly short learnings, perspectives, thoughts, and ideas to consider and reflect upon. These are not meant to be teachings, but innovative ideas that you might want to consider to see where they lead. So, absorb the information, keep your eyes, mind, and heart open, and watch what happens. Persönliche Entwicklung Persönlicher Erfolg Spiritualität
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  • EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI

    EP 128 - The Friend at the End - Part VI
    Dec 9 2025
    As we ended the last episode, the doctor had told me to eat, and oh man, did I start eating. Looking back on it, I call it 'Healing in the Beehive," because they put me on a standard American diet loaded with carbohydrates and sugar. And I loved every bit of it. Cheeseburgers, tuna melt sandwiches, cookies, cake, pie a la mode. You name it. It was like going down a nostalgic memory lane of the favorite foods of my childhood. I stayed in the hospital for a total of ten days. They explained to me that I had suffered a massive stroke, but for some reason, call it grace, luck or both, the huge blood clot that had caused it found its resting place in my lower right cerebellum. Although that part of the brain is responsible for movement and balance, and the clot had destroyed a large portion of it, it landed in a place that did me no lasting harm, except for a very minor visual impairment. It wiped out a small portion of my left peripheral vision, which just happens to have been where I started seeing that light in the beginning that started the whole thing. During my stay in the hospital, it seemed like everyone who was taking care of me reminded me again and again of how lucky I had been. It was kind of funny because I really didn't have that much of a direct connection to my actual situation. I mean in my experience, I did have a day or two of being pretty out of it, but that's about it, I was pretty out of it. And then the next thing I knew, I felt fine. Of course, Sally knew what had really happened because she had lived through it. But in essence, I kind of slept through it. And if I hadn't been told how sick I'd been and how close to death I had actually come, I would never have known it. Anyway, during the hospital stay, it seemed like I was constantly presented with reminders of my situation . One night, for example, they brought me a piece of cherry pie ala mode, which was always one of my most favorite desserts, and I always get it with vanilla ice cream. Early on, that combination of cherry and vanilla had become a central part of my happy reward center. When I got to dessert and uncovered the plate, I saw that it had chocolate ice cream on the pie rather than vanilla. It was a bummer, but hey, I could handle it. "Oh," I said, somewhat disappointed as I looked at the plate. A doctor was in the room, just finishing up his quick exam of me. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Oh nothing," I replied. "It's just that they brought me the wrong ice cream. I like vanilla on my cherry pie and they brought me chocolate. It's no big deal." "Do you know where you are?" the doctor asked me, quizzically. "Sure," I replied, "I'm in the hospital." "You're in the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience. You've had a massive stroke and you're in the intensive care unit," he corrected me. "And you know what? Most people get carried out of here or they get wheeled out. And it looks like you're going to just stand up and walk away from all this." He wasn't confrontational at all. He was very nice, but he was clearly making his point. "If I were you," he added, "I wouldn't be thinking too much about chocolate and vanilla anymore." He smiled at me and left the room. I got the message and took it in. It never hurts to be reminded of how fortunate you really are. Finally, my blood levels got to the right point and they decided to let me go. At the end, when I was ready to leave, I was sitting in my room and the head nurse came in to do some final paper work and say good-bye. Her name was Anna. She was in her late-forties and had come over from Russia about 20 years earlier. She saw me several times every day and we had become quite close. "You know, David, we have a folder here that we call the Hand of God Folder and that's where your file's going," she said as she was filling out a form. "It's for cases where a horrible tragedy could have happened, but for some reason it didn't. And we can't explain it. We don't know how these remarkable things happen. If we did we would certainly try to do it ourselves. But we can't. So –we have the Hand of God Folder…" She kept writing and then she looked up at me. "OK, we're done," she concluded. "Now, don't take this the wrong way. You're a very nice person and I'm glad we got to know each other. But I hope I never see you again." She paused for a moment and looked me in the eye. I felt intuitively that she was about to say something deeply meaningful or me, and as soon as she began talking, I knew I was right. "Look, you were here for ten days. I've been here for twelve years, and believe me, I've seen everything. And you really have no idea what happened here and, let alone what you've been spared from. "Let's just put it this way," she continued, "For the rest of your life, if you woke up every morning and before you did anything, you got down on your knees and thanked God for the miracle that happened here, you'd still be understating it....
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    14 Min.
  • EP 127 - The Friend at the End - Part V

    EP 127 - The Friend at the End - Part V
    Dec 2 2025
    Now I was back on my own, just me, myself, and I. But my attention stayed with my breath as it continued to flow in and out of me. "As long as I'm breathing, I'll know that I'm still alive," I thought. Now, I had been meditating for many, many years, and part of that practice is to focus on your breath, but this was completely different. Before, the breath was a calming presence. Now, it was literally my lifeline. Breathing no longer felt like an automatic process and I made no assumptions about it. As each breath went out, it was clear that the next one might not be coming in. Instead of just feeling an automatic, mechanical motion, it felt more and more like each breath coming into me was like I was receiving some kind of a consciously given gift. After some time, I started feeling a little better. My eyesight problem was still the same, but my system seemed to have stabilized a little. I got up and walked around the pool for a bit. I kept feeling better and better, but I still could barely see. I could make out the time on my watch and was surprised to see that the whole episode had happened in about 30 minutes. My wife, Sally, hadn't even come down to the pool yet. I decided to relax and see if I kept feeling better. Maybe my eyesight would clear up and it would all just pass. Sally came down about ten minutes later and she was pretty alarmed when she saw me. I felt a lot better, but she was very concerned. After a little while, she convinced me to go back up to our apartment with her and get into bed. I must have dozed off for a while because the next thing I knew, our family doctor walked into our bedroom. He was actually a member of our pool and when he got there for the day, some friends told him what was happening with me. He called Sally and she asked him to come up and give me a quick exam. I was surprised to see him. I asked him if he was planning on playing any golf over the weekend. He didn't answer. He just took one look at me and said, "You're going to the hospital right now. " He took my pulse and said to Sally, "Go get an ambulance and tell them it's urgent." When I heard the word "ambulance" I said to Sally, "Make sure they're taking me to Lankenau and not Roxborough," Our condo is on the border between two hospitals. Lankenau is much more of a suburban hospital and Roxborough is located within the city limits. They always tell you to pick Lankenau if you get your choice. She came back in the room in a matter of moments. "OK," she said to me, "They're on their way over and they're taking you to Lankenau." "Is that for certain?" I asked. "Absolutely," she answered. "They understood completely. There's no question about it at all." At that point, a whole different momentum started and I realized that my responsibilities in the world had just come to an end. I was about to become a patient, and the only thing I had to do was cooperate with the people who were about to take care of me. Whatever they told me to do, I would do. It was all out of my hands now. Was I going to live? Or was I about to die? Who could say? I thought I had been feeling better, but from the look on my doctor's face, it was obvious that I was clearly in serious trouble. All that I had left now was my breath. It was the only thing that I could rely upon. "As long as I can feel my breath, I'll know I still have a body," I thought. "If I'm still conscious, but I can't feel my breath anymore, then I'll know the change has happened and I'll just have to take it from there. But as long as I'm still breathing, I'm still here." The ambulance came within a few minutes and I was on my way. The next 36 hours were pretty much of a blur. Sally told me later that I wasn't given any drugs or sedatives at all, but I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. They took me to Lankenau, which is one of the top hospitals in our area. But after a CAT Scan, they immediately decided that my condition was critical and rushed me downtown to the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of Neuroscience in the middle of the night. They determined that I was long past the point where they could have given me a "clot buster" to take care of the stroke. There was absolutely nothing they could do now but put me in intensive care and monitor me closely. While they hoped for the best, they gravely told Sally to prepare for the worst. "Stay with him. Hold his hand. Talk to him," they said. "We might lose him tonight. Just…just don't let him slip away…" The next thing I became aware of, I was lying in a hospital bed and Sally was holding my hand. When I opened my eyes and looked at her, she looked like she had really been through hell. She told me that I had been out of it for about 36 hours. "You've had a stroke," she said. "But you're going to be alright," she assured me calmly and kept holding my hand. I looked around. I was obviously in an intensive care ...
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    15 Min.
  • EP 126 - The Friend at the End (Reprise) - Part IV

    EP 126 - The Friend at the End (Reprise) - Part IV
    Nov 25 2025
    This is the fourth episode in a series based on my upcoming book, The Friend at the End, which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011, which very nearly killed me. In the last episode, I had continued my inner conversation with an unseen presence who had begun to introduce me to the idea that I might be dying. He suggested that I make the effort to get ready, but as I started to consider the idea, I had some trouble with it and felt like I was failing. Then the presence said to me, "Here, let me help you with this. Did 'ja learn anything? Now, the story continues… "Did I learn anything?" My God, what a simple little question! And asked in the most casual, way. Like from his tone, he could've just as well asked me if I had eaten a lot of pizza in my life, that's about how important it seemed. My initial reaction was no reaction at all, and I drew a complete blank. But then, something unexpected happened. Suddenly, a series of pictures began appearing in my mind's eye. The pictures were all of me, in different stages of my life. They went through linear time, beginning on the day I was born. There were so many of them, it almost seemed like there was one for every day of my life. It was weird because they seemed to be moving very fast and very slow at the same time. Although I clearly recognized each one of them and remembered the experiences they showed, rather than stirring up memories, I was just extracting the essence of the feelings that I'd had during them - happy, sad, amazed, confused, and on and on. Finally, after every age of my life and every role that I had played had been presented, the last picture I saw was of me at this very second, sitting in my bathing suit at the swimming pool, looking at all these pictures. Then my mind went back to normal and the episode, or whatever it was, ended. I guess you could call it a life review of some kind. But before I could give it any thought, another image came into my mind's eye. This time, it wasn't a still picture, it was more like a movie, and I was in it and watching it at the same time. I was in a small boat on a river and the boat kept changing forms. For a little while, it was a standard row boat and I was rowing it. Then it changed to a canoe and I was paddling it. Then it became a small motor boat and I was in the back, steering it by moving the motor. Then it went back to being a row boat again, and it just kept switching forms. All of a sudden, I was teleported up to the inside of an airplane that was flying high above the river. I kept switching viewpoints, from being on the boat to being on the plane. Then, in the next instant, I was rowing the boat down the river and flying in the plane above it, both at the same time. I was in two places at once, and fully conscious of each. The river had a lot of twists and turns to it, and from the viewpoint of being in the boat, you could only see what was in front of you. You couldn't see beyond the next bend. But the vantage point from the plane was totally different. I could see the whole river, all at once. I could look back to where it had begun, I could see all the way forward to the point where it finally merged into the ocean. Then, at one point, all of the pictures of my life that I had reviewed earlier, flashed in front of me once again. But this time, the scenes went by in what seemed like just a few seconds. Then it all vanished from my mind and I was back in normal life, sitting on my chair near the pool. The whole thing had taken me by surprise and it left me with a lot to absorb. Slowly, a series of realizations and understandings began to dawn on me. The first one was that even though I knew that I might be dying and I had just seen pictures from every stage of my life, I felt no real attachment to any of it. It may seem odd, but it's pretty simple. My father had died from a massive heart attack when I was sixteen, and his sudden death forced me to accept the harsh reality of the impermanence of all life on earth. I had no other choice. We all have to go one day, and I had been living with that understanding for almost fifty years, knowing that you just have to surrender to it, come what may. After reviewing all the pictures I had seen, although I felt a lot of happiness and appreciation for the days gone by, they clearly belonged to the past. Looking at them had been like revisiting fond memories of a place that didn't exist anymore, and from experience I knew that there is no real power in memories. The power is in the intelligence that is doing the remembering. So, from the perspective of looking back on my life, if my time had actually come, I had no regrets about it. There was nothing left undone and what will be, will be. I moved from thinking about the pictures to reflecting on the whole sequence with the boat on the river and the plane flying above it, and some profound realizations came to me. While riding in the ...
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    15 Min.
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