A Stroke Survivor Journey – Bill Gasiamis

Bill Gasiamis became a stroke survivor in 2012 at the age of 37 after experiencing three brain bleeds in as many years. In November 2014 Bill underwent life-saving brain surgery and spent 1 month in rehabilitation learning how to walk again.

Website: recoveryafterstroke.com
Instagram: @recoveryafterstroke

Highlights:

06:19 About Bill
11:18 Bill’s diet before having a stroke
18:47 Sugar hit to boost your energy
24:30 Dealing with memory loss after stroke
29:31 Sugar damages collagen
32:14 Dramatic turnaround.
42:27 Being well and making money
49:50 How far I’ve come
1:00:20 What led to brain surgery

Transcript:

Matty 0:00
And all the things I was whinging about which were not possible, literally six months earlier had started to become possible and I’m like, how can I make such a dramatic turnaround in six months that I couldn’t make earlier? Like, I just couldn’t understand it.

Bill 0:16
And then what I realized was that all was turning up as a different version of myself and people were just tuning in and they were noticing and they wanted to do business with me and they wanted to be around me, and they wanted to pay me what I wanted to get paid. And

Intro 0:30
This is recovery after stroke with Bill Gasiamis helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.

Bill 0:38
Bill from recoveryafterstroke.com. In this special episode, I’m being interviewed by Matthias Turner from the chief life podcast. Matthias has appeared on the recovery after stroke podcast in the past with his wife, Stacey Turner, and in Episode 52, we discussed the reasons why stroke survivors should decrease sugar.

Bill 1:01
In Episode 61. We spoke about the reasons why caffeine should be avoided after stroke. In Episode 64, we discussed the reasons why gluten reduction after stroke is a good idea. In Episode 67, we spoke about the reasons stroke survivors should avoid dairy.

Bill 1:23
And in Episode 73, we spoke about the reasons why alcohol must be avoided after stroke. Now, just before we get started, are you a stroke survivor that wants to know how to heal your brain overcome fatigue and reduce anxiety.

Bill 1:38
By the time this episode goes to air, I will have been eight years into my stroke recovery journey through brain hemorrhages and then brain surgery created similar challenges for me. The thing is very few people understood what I was dealing with the only people that did understand what other stroke survivors one of the unexpected nice things to come out of my stroke experience.

Bill 2:00
Is that I have been asked to share my story a number of times in newspapers, in the national news and as a speaker at various corporate events in the hope of raising awareness to support other people that are going through stroke now.

Bill 2:13
Most recently, I was involved in the launch of a joint advertising campaign by the Cancer Council of Australia. Quit Victoria and the Stroke Foundation, which was called smokes lead to strokes. The aim was to encourage more people to quit smoking and decrease their risk of stroke.

Bill 2:30
Being involved in these campaigns made me realize that stroke prevention is important. However, what I needed when I experienced stroke was to help bridge the gap in that critical time after I went home, realizing that the amount of support drastically declined, once a stroke patients leave hospital motivated me to create a way to support stroke survivors so that no one has to do it as hard as my family did.

Bill 3:00
If you have fallen in the cracks between hospital and home care and desire to gain momentum in your recovery, but do not know where to start, this is where I can help. I’ll coach you and help you gain clarity on where you are currently in your recovery journey I will help you create a picture of where you would like to be in your recovery 12 months from now.

Bill 3:20
And I will coach you to overcome what’s stopping you from getting to your goal during coaching, I’ll also teach you the 10 steps to brain health for stroke survivors and guide you through each step with supporting interviews from experts and information that is based on the latest scientific research.

Bill 3:37
Some of those steps include training on the type of mindset required for an ongoing successful recovery and how to decrease the anxiety created by the thoughts of another stroke. There will be a module on emotional intelligence, which will help you manage out of control emotions, information about the gut, and how a healthy gut is the first step to a healthy brain.

Bill 4:00
We will cover nutrition and the kind of food required to reduce fatigue. And there will be a module on how to improve sleep, and much, much more. If you’re one of the first 10 people to join recovery after stroke coaching, you will get a one on one private coaching thread with me access to the course 10 steps to brain health for stroke survivors when released.

Bill 4:24
Access to member only monthly group training calls and access to the stroke survivors private forum. The first 10 people to join also get more than 70% off the full price of 599 and 12 months of access will only cost you $149 per year. be one of the first 10 people who apply for recovery after stroke coaching now and get the first seven days free.

Bill 4:49
After the seven day free trial, you’ll pay the annual amount of only $149. And the price of renewal will never increase for as many years that you stay a member once the first 10 Coaching packages are sold, the price will never be offered again. So take advantage of the seven day free trial now by clicking below if you are watching on YouTube or by going to recovery after stroke.com if you are listening online

Matty 5:15
Welcome to the chief life podcast where we deliver guests and knowledge from around the world right to your ears, focusing on nutrition, exercise, health and wellness.

Stacey 5:27
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Matty 5:35
Guys, welcome back to the chief life Podcast. I am Matthias Turner. And today I’m joined by Bill Gasiamis Bill. Welcome, sir.

Matty 5:45
Thanks for having me Matty. I really appreciate it.

Matty 5:48
So I mean for the listeners. It was so funny. You literally like froze just then and then sped up so you sound like a full robot. So you will come to us in a second. But that’s just the joys of doing podcasts so as he interwebs.

Matty 6:01
But I mean, your voice is probably going to be pretty familiar to our listeners as you have featured on our podcast previously as the interviewee. So we have launched two podcasts with Bill through his podcast, which is called recovery after stroke. And on that we actually dive deep into the first one was sugar.

Before Bill became a stroke survivor

Matty 6:19
The second one was caffeine. And something that I really wanted to get across was your actual message, your story and what kind of led you into creating a platform that helps people and it’s a very niche platform because you’re talking to people who are suffering from strokes or people whose family have someone in the in that space that is suffering from strokes.

Matty 6:40
And I mean, this obviously comes from a pain point from yourself where you’ve had two strokes yourself. And I really like to kind of dive into I guess everything from the start of the story based around what happened and where were you at with your life before the stroke even came on board.

Matty 6:57
Because something that we’ve been talking about with the interviews you’ve been you’ve been interviewing us on is actually about health and how your nutrition your lifestyle can actually fully change around your genetics, which is called epigenetics so you can switch bad genes off and turn good genes on based on the lifestyle that you’re living.

Matty 7:16
Something that we’ve come to talk about with you is based on the fact that you’ve got kids and you don’t want them to go through the same thing that you’ve gone through. So you’ve been talking to them about hey, these are some situations like these are some things that have happened to me.

Matty 7:29
And these are some things that you can potentially change that might stop you ever going through this hereditary or this genetic thing that can happen to you now. So let’s talk a little bit Bill firstly, about like, Where were you at before before your first stroke? Where were you at? What were you doing? What was your lifestyle looking like?

Matty 7:46
I was just a typical guy, man. I had a property maintenance business and my life was pretty much invested in that almost every minute of every hour of every day like was definitely invested in that I needed to do that because I wanted to pay the bills I needed to, you know, pay the mortgage, I needed to keep the kids at school, we needed to feed the family.

Bill 8:08
The usual stuff, you know, it’s no, no secret why people do what they do with their businesses. And what that had done, though, is the amount of focus that I was putting into that had taken the focus away from me noticing how my body was going to how i was feeling and what I was doing to myself.

Bill 8:28
So I might go to work at seven in the morning, leave there at 3:30 come home by 4:30, 5:30 because I was the one that was the home that earliest, I’ll prepare dinner. By the time I prepare dinner, and everyone comes home from school or work. We eat, we sit down, we clean up and do all that type of stuff.

Bill 8:48
And then I get stuck into paperwork. And I get stuck into quotes and all that type of thing. So by the time I got to rest, it might have been eight or nine in the evening, and I’ve just started to wind down and then In the next morning, I’m repeating that cycle and I’m finding myself lacking enjoyment, lacking fun lacking anything other than just the hard slog stuff.

Bill 9:10
And I thought that was the only way to go about doing things. And I remember really whinging to my wife about how terribly I was running my business even though I was spending so many hours on it. And I remember telling her that no one’s going to take me seriously because I was comparing myself to other people, and I was never going to be as good as them and all that type of thing.

Bill 9:30
And I had so many mindset issues that I was just stressing myself out. I was doing what I thought was the right thing. And then what happened was, I was so oblivious to my body. I got to the point where I was unwell and I started to notice numbness in my left foot and the numbness had spread in a week from my left foot all the way up to my left side.

Bill 9:40
And I was at that oblivious that I completely Ignore that and didn’t do anything about it until three or four days in where I went to a chiropractor instead of a doctor. And then I made a second appointment to see a chiropractor. And then when I saw the chiropractor the second time that, they said to me, You need to go to hospital.

Bill 10:16
I said to him, I’m not going to the hospital because I’ll go work tomorrow, and that’s how, you know, seriously entrenched I was in supposedly getting work done. I was just a mess mate and I finally went to the doctor to the hospital and the hospital guys did a scan and found that there was a bleed on the brain. And the numbness was as a direct result of the bleed on the brain. That noticed that my foot awake earlier.

Matty 10:42
And so I mean talking like obviously there’s a lot going on there. There’s stress. There’s a lot of mindset issues that you’re talking about. Now, I do want to come back to that I will circle back around but one thing I wanted to talk about was actually like the food you’re eating the drinks you’re having like you in such a routine such a cycle that every day would have very similar would have always been on the run.

Matty 11:02
So you like hell, I’m just going to grab this food because it’s convenient to me, it might be that you’re always eating out because of the nature of the beast, the nature of the job that you had. Or it might be that you’re packing your lunches. So let’s talk about like, what sort of style what sort of foods were you eating? What sort of drinks Were you drinking?

Bill’s diet before having a stroke

Matty 11:18
So, wake up in the morning, start with a coffee. Get me going, basically leave the house, drive to my local, pick up a coffee, and then head off. If I was hungry. I might have a toasted ham cheese tomato sandwich or whatever it was that was in the Bain-marie that was ready to go.

Bill 11:37
And then I get to work, we get cracking and then by the time lunchtime come around, I’d be hungry. So I might get a second coffee, or a can of coke or some kind of soft drink and then whatever food was available in that particular location.

Bill 11:51
And if there wasn’t anything that I considered, you know, something I want to eat I would go to your KFC or McDonald’s or anything that was gonna get me something in my gut really, really quickly because apparently I didn’t have enough time to sit down and rest and eat.

Matty 12:07
Yeah. And then what’s a typical dinner that you were cooking for the family?

Matty 12:10
So the typical dinner would have been healthier, but it definitely would have still you know, considered it still would have had in it. Heaps of processed food in that, you know, might have been pasta or bread. It would have been definitely soft drink on the table again.

Bill 12:26
And there might have been a bit of protein and a bit of vegetables, which was pretty standard. You know, we’re kind of the standard steak and three vege kind of people. Yeah. But the stuff supporting that wasn’t was just filler. You know, the way I would describe it was filler was anything to make me feel full.

Bill 12:45
And to get the and to get the kids fed quickly and just conveniently. So that was dinner. And then at the end of the night, there might be, you know, finishing off the night might have been something like a bit of chocolate some potato chips, cake.

Bill 13:03
And maybe a tea or a coffee or something else to sort of help wash that down. And in between that, of course, there’s water and a little bit of maybe alcohol depending on the day. So what I didn’t realize was that what it was was most of the stuff I was eating came out of a packet or out of a bottle.

Intro 13:24
If you’ve had a stroke, and during recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be. You’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. Like, how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid? In case I’m make matters worse.

Intro 13:42
Doctors will explain things, but obviously because you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask. If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery.

Intro 13:55
If you finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying and head to recoveryafterstroke.com, where you can download a guide that will help you. It’s called seven questions to ask your doctor about your stroke. These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke.

Intro 14:13
They’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. head to the website now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide it’s free.

Matty 14:36
Yeah, and that’s crazy because that’s convenient living that’s what we’ve been brought up in. And that’s a very typical diet like the people we talked to that’s not that far stray from I would say probably like 70% of people we talked to like we we do deal with a lot of people who have an understanding of health and nutrition that they’ve got some form of focus on health and wellness.

Matty 14:57
And they know that they should be eating a little healthy. So that doing a few extra things on top of what you had, like mean they’re reducing some of those packeted foods and eating maybe a few more salads or having, say, a few more wraps and bits and pieces.

Matty 15:11
But realistically, we’ve been brought up into a world that is now so convenient to go and buy food while we’re out and about the challenge comes within yourself with, I guess, really trying to put in a little bit of effort like, realistically anytime there’s a Mac is there’s also going to be a Woolworths or a call to an IGA reasonably close by.

Matty 15:30
And if you’re driving there, you can still drive in and make a quick meal at one of those places. When it comes to foods and drinks such a soft drink. They’re like that silent killer man like that stuff that kids are drinking consistently. Adults are drinking consistently.

Matty 15:44
I’m quite often shocked by the amount of soft drink we still see full grown adults drinking, let alone caffeinated beverages such as like your coffees, like some people having eight plus coffees a day which absolutely baffles me, dude. It’s just it’s just kind of one of those things.

Matty 15:59
But I mean, the reason why I stopped you to kind of talk there is because I want the listeners to kind of chime in and see how different their lifestyle is at the moment like ask yourself the questions how often are you having the the coffee?

Matty 16:11
How often are you having the food that’s bought out? That’s maybe just straight from the bain-marie like you’re saying? How often are you having packeted foods? Or how often are you feeding yourself soft drinks and feeding your family soft drinks, like these are all things that can and will affect your genetics and your makeup and how you respond is the biggest thing as a human like, if you’re thriving, or if you’re just simply surviving, like Bill was in this stage.

Matty 16:34
I definitely wasn’t thriving. I didn’t know that though. That’s the thing. That weird thing was I thought I was doing. I was being really efficient with my time and putting more time into my work because I was doing putting less time into my nutrition, but I didn’t know that I needed nutrition.

Bill 16:48
I know that now. I just thought that I needed to put stuff in my stomach to make the feeling of hunger go away. You know, and I didn’t realize how that was affecting my actual ability to be better at work. be better at my paperwork, you know, be more switched on when it came to my clients and their needs.

Bill 17:06
I didn’t realize that the stuff I was doing was impacting my performance. And what was interesting was that when I became unwell from a brain injury, it’s the first time I realized how my performance was being impacted by food because now my brain is kind of trying to stay up front stay alive, it’s staying, it’s trying to work for me, it’s trying to do all the things that I normally did.

Bill 17:30
But with less of it because it had switched off in parts because there was a blood clot in my head for a couple of years. So when I got to that point where I started to notice what was happening, it took a while for me to connect the dots.

Bill 17:47
That what I was doing, I was eating something and then I’d have a massive crash, maybe half an hour 45 minutes later or an hour later. And it took a while but then I started noticing that man, I just had a softdrink because I thought I needed energy because I was struggling and now I have even less energy.

Bill 18:04
And I’m even struggling even more. So I would have another soft drink, try to get myself up and running quick carbs and sugars and all that kind of stuff. My brain was shutting down. And sometimes I’ll get to that point where I’d be gone for half a day. I couldn’t do anything for half a day.

Bill 18:20
And it took me a really long time to connect the dots. Then once I connected the dots, like I thought back into how my life was previously and if that’s affecting me now I was thinking about like, well, how was it affecting me beforehand?

Bill 18:34
And it’s just when it my whole world changed and I started learning about how I was really creating a perfect storm of unwell health, and I needed to be responsible to make the changes. You know.

Sugar hit to boost the energy

Matty 18:47
There’s so many things coming up for me Tell me something that you were just talking about was obviously getting that sugar hit to boost your energy up. It makes me commonly like it makes me think of the common snacks people will buy when they’re on a long road trip.

Matty 19:00
Because I stopped at the service station, it’s like, well, Hell, I might as well just buy some snacks is going to give me some more energy. But just because you had a blood clot doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing that was causing that energy drop, like that’s actually how every single person responds is we we get a big sugar dump.

Matty 19:14
So we have a high level of blood sugar, like sorry, sugar with in our blood. So our body produces insulin, which goes over the top of the blood sugar and says, Hey, we need to store this. So it drops your blood sugar’s back below the state that should be in which then you say, Well, I’m crashing here, I need some more sugar.

Matty 19:34
So you go and have that same thing all while insulin has not had a chance to drop back down. So it just stays high all day long. And that’s what causes unfortunately, like disease and issues within the body. One thing I did want to touch on was something you were talking about with your work before and how you were trying to put in all this effort into work.

Matty 19:52
And you didn’t have time to stop and eat and you didn’t have time to do the things that were probably more favorable for yourself because you’re so busy working you’re so busy being productive through work. Something that we’ve been doing a lot of recently is actually working in the corporate space.

Matty 20:06
And so we’ll go out and do like the health and wellness program for a whole corporate space, which is awesome. I really enjoy it because we do get so many insights out of these people. And we get to kind of really see them just transition as individuals, and then as a corporation, because they start to thrive as individuals and then all of a sudden, each, each person’s bringing themselves up and just through implementing some simple practices.

Matty 20:28
We see businesses all of a sudden start to thrive, like they really start to get like the income goes up, their production rate goes up and everything’s changing. I’ve recently had this document put together and what it shows is that per 10 employees, companies are spending about 12 and a half thousand dollars on sick pay each year, per 10 employees, which is pretty crazy.

Matty 20:48
The other side to that is that employees only on average work a productive three hours within a space of an eight hour day, which is also pretty crazy. Because if you’re and you’re spending 12 hours of the day trying to work and be very productive. Yet only three hours of that is actually productive, what the heck are you doing for the other nine hours, right?

Matty 21:10
And I mean, this is something that we’re commonly seeing within the Australian workforce. And I mean, this paper that I’ve had created is based off of a whole studies that have been done through Australian universities based on Australian workplaces.

Matty 21:22
And what we know is that taking breaks every 45 minutes is actually very important for your brain to reset, even if it’s a five minute break. But the food that you eat directly corresponds to how your brain is reacting, as you was talking about before, like your energy boost and energy drops were based on the food that you’re eating.

Matty 21:39
And how your brain was responding to that as well. So I mean, there’s there’s so many little insights that can come from just what you were saying about how you live pre stroke. And then I think the difference to now how you’re living and how it’s changed your whole life in transition.

Matty 21:54
So I mean, we’ve pretty much got to the state where you found out your numb through one side you had bleeding in your brain it was directly related to your numbness. And then you also found out you had a clott. So what happened? What was the deal from there?

Bill 22:09
Yeah, so the clot was inside my brain it wasn’t inside a blood vessel, one of the blood vessels burst. And the clot was inside the brain. So what it’s done is, as it’s touching on brain cells, it’s switching more and more of the brain off and the areas that it was switching off at the beginning, were related to my, my sensation, basically. And then six weeks later, back in hospital, because I had another episode. What happened that time was their blood clot got to about the size of a golf ball inside my brain.

Matty 22:43
What was the episode what happened?

Bill 22:45
So I noticed that I was going more numb on the left side, I started getting dizzy. I was actually at work when I wasn’t supposed to be I was asked not to go to work. I went to work anyway. And I started to find myself sort of slipping away to the left side and I couldn’t lift my body up and I couldn’t rouse myself.

Bill 23:05
And it was just a really scary space of being out of control on the left side of my body was just gone. And when we finally got to hospital, I was with, I got my guys I was working with to take me home, so that my wife could drive me to the hospital, which was a crazy decision. It was like, three hours before I got to hospital.

Bill 23:27
And when we finally got to hospital, I played it down again. And I said to her look, I’m just going to go and see the triage nurse and you go park the car, and it was only a 50 meter walk from the car to the triage nurse. When I got there, they asked me what my name was.

Bill 23:43
I couldn’t tell them they asked me what I was doing there, I didn’t know. And then I just remember going blank and waking up a little bit later. And there’s I mean, you know, there’s tubes all over the place. I’m in bed, in a ward somewhere and this lady comes up to me, she says to me, do you know who I am? And I said, No, I don’t and It was my wife.

Bill 24:06
So that created a whole crazy drama about trying to work out like how bad I had become. In literally a space of three and a half hours, but in that last few minutes, and that we’re getting really worried. So eventually, when I woke up, I had, I didn’t understand what had happened to me. I didn’t know how I got there.

Dealing with memory loss after stroke

Bill 24:30
And as, the days and months progressed, after that, the things that I had to get back, I had to get back my ability to start and end sentences. Remember things, I couldn’t type an email, I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t work I couldn’t do the simplest things.

Bill 24:48
And I would start something and I would just run out of ideas as to why I started that thing. And I could walk and I could do all of that type of thing, but I was cognitively kind of like on another planet, I was a little bit spaced out.

Bill 25:03
And my wife would say, we spoke about that, or that person did come and see you or, you know, she would have to finish a sentence for me kind of being like I would start and she’d say, Is that what you’re trying to say?

Bill 25:16
So it was just really terrible time and I really became desperate at that point in time thinking, Okay, I’m going to step up, I’m going to take responsibility for what I’ve done to myself because as well as eating badly, working too much, not going to the doctor or smoking.

Bill 25:35
And I was drinking but not excessively. And I create I was creating what I consider to be the perfect storm of me being unwell and I blamed nobody else for it. Even though this blood vessel was in my head, and it’s a congenital thing. I actually didn’t support it from bleeding.

Bill 25:53
I actually created the perfect you know, scenario for it to bleed and it was a big regret of mine and I thought, Man, if I end up in a, in a space where somebody else has to wipe my bum, like, that’s just all self inflicted, and I hated myself for that at the beginning, you know?

Matty 26:12
So I mean, there’s, there’s a lot I want to touch on there. But firstly, how long did it take you to remember your wife?

Matty 26:17
So I reckon it was either that day or the next day, I actually don’t remember when I woke up properly. And then. And then I sort of started to recognize all the people around me, my family and everybody in the doctor started asking me my name, and they started asking me what day it was and who the Prime Minister was and all that kind of stuff.

Bill 26:39
And I started to get a little bit of an idea of where and how, where I was and what was happening. So I reckon it was that day maybe a bit later, but I really don’t know. I haven’t asked her if I recognize her later on.

Matty 26:57
It’s pretty scary cuz I mean, the whole Prime Minister question there’s a lot of Australians that couldn’t answer that anyway, let alone after having a stroke which is, which is worrysome but Aussies are very chilled out about that stuff.

Matty 27:10
Anyway when it came to I mean, you pretty much hit rock bottom dude like he literally said just before you hated yourself for what you’ve done to yourself and that you blind yourself everything you done, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing because the only way you can go from rock bottom is up.

Matty 27:27
And so I mean, you have to stop clawing your way out of it. And unfortunately in life, that’s how a lot of people deal with like it takes rock bottom before we turn around ourselves before we actually have a look at life and say well hold up. I’m in control. Everything that I do affects me.

Matty 27:43
And I’m the one that affects everyone around me as well. So what can I do to get myself out of this? How can I thrive for my family? How can I thrive for myself? How can I thrive for future generations that are under me and leave my own legacy to some extent?

Matty 27:56
And so for you what did that look like? So you can hit rock bottom what comes next when you’re in the state where you hate yourself? What do you change? Like, where do you start?

Matty 28:06
So, so this is what I hated about myself is that I was grumpy. Of course, when I’m trading all of that amount of stress. I was grumpy. I was acting out. I wasn’t a good father. Now, I wasn’t a terrible father. I wasn’t one of those deadbeat dads, but like, I didn’t, when I compared myself to the person who I wanted to be, I was nowhere near that.

Bill 28:28
So I was short and not fully supportive of my wife. And, you know, I didn’t want to be that kind of guy. And then I was really terrible to me, right. And I was 37. So I almost contributed to ending my life at 37. And it was just like, how could you have done that so young? Like how could you be that oblivious.

Bill 28:52
So with work? I was working for people I didn’t like I was working for amount of money that I didn’t consider was enough. And then I didn’t value didn’t show that I was valued by the person that I was working for. And I just needed to start everywhere.

Bill 29:08
But the place that I instinctively started at was food. And I started there because I felt like that was the easiest thing for me to influence really, really quickly. And I just started to research. And I came across, you know, article here and an article there. And one of the first ones I came across was one about sugar in the brain.

Sugar damages collagen

Bill 29:31
And man, what I realized after I read into it, because I dove deep into sugar, I realized that sugar damages collagen, and blood vessels are made of collagen. Yeah. And my blood vessels were no longer flexible because I was smoking, consuming too much sugar. And when they’re not flexible, they’re more likely to rupture.

Bill 29:54
And when I’ve got a weak one, I’m supporting it to rupture. So I cut sugar out Immediately cut the soft drinks out. And I remember one of the catalysts to cut the soft drinks out was I went and got some coaching some life coaching because my life was a mess.

Bill 30:10
And my coach, the checky bugger goes, “if you don’t quit sugar, I am not going to coach you”. I thought that was astounding that she would say that to me I thought that was pretty rude. But what she was doing, she was testing me to see whether I was committed that I needed to change so badly.

Bill 30:29
I was prepared to do almost anything. Of course, I stopped smoking immediately when I entered into the hospital for the first time, but then I cut out sugar and what I noticed when I cut out sugar was amazing. And I started to lose weight. I started to feel less bloated, my energy levels started to sort themselves out.

Bill 30:49
And it just got me thinking about like if I’m cutting out sugar, and I’m feeling better, and I’m not missing it like what else can I cut out and then I started to do more and more research at that time. Matty there was nobody like you and Stacey that I could contact and say, give me all the answers.

Bill 31:09
I had to go to a whole bunch of different places. And because I couldn’t work, drive do anything. When I had energy, I just sat at the computer and I researched and researched and found more and more stuff. So I started with sugar. And then I quit alcohol as well, because alcohol is not good for the brain. When it’s healing.

Bill 31:29
And then I continue to just go down that path and found out about gluten and found out about dairy and found out about caffeine. And I started to put together the perfect storm for healing the brain. So I changed my thinking and my mindset around that is I’m going to create the right environment to heal my brain.

Bill 31:50
You won’t believe what happened like I started to lose weight without exercising. Because I wasn’t allowed to exercise. I started to I feel more energetic and I was able to do more and more things and without being at work I increased the turnover of my business by double without being on site.

Dramatic turnaround

Bill 32:14
And it was just crazy. There’s new ideas of how to do things started entering my mind. I started looking for people to help me and support me in implementing these new processes and procedures. And all the things I was whinging about, which were not possible, literally six months earlier, had started to become possible.

Bill 32:32
And and I’m like, how can I make such a dramatic turnaround in six months that I couldn’t make earlier like, I just couldn’t understand it. And then what I realized was that all was turning up as a different version of myself and people were just tuning in and they were noticing.

Bill 32:32
And they wanted to do business with me and they wanted to be around me, and they wanted to pay me what I wanted to get paid. And, man, it was just it’s been life changing. And then from They’re, you know, things have progressed.

Matty 33:02
That’s insane. That’s that’s a really cool story and I mean there’s a few things I did want to touch on them really quickly we’ll go back to the food side of things. To what extent did you work on the sugar? So I mean, obviously you said I quit sugar. Were you surprised by the amount of things sugar was in?

Matty 33:21
Yeah, I started searching and I found I was looking at cans of conserved food like beetroot. I want to make a burger and put some beetroot in and I have a look at it and I looked at the back and it’s got sugar in it and I thought maybe that’s just like the sugars from the beetroot but now it’s added.

Bill 33:39
Then I would make some tacos. Go get some corn that was in a can look at that and I had sugar and I was like, freaking what the heck’s going on here then I’ll look at bread bread had sugar in it. Man then I would look at you name it our pasta sauce tomato sauce that we would add in our pastor which was just fresh sauce that was squeezed and put in a bottle.

Bill 34:00
Sugar. And it was kind of mind boggling as to how much sugar I was consuming. Even if I wasn’t consuming soft drinks, I was exceeding this apparent, you know, the Australian required the maximum level.

Bill 34:18
I was exceeding and I couldn’t believe it. And I started becoming a bit of a, you know, a bit of a sugar maniac and started telling my wife don’t bring that home don’t do this. And that’s a different conversation that didn’t really work that quickly. But it was just absolutely astounding. It was in everything that I consume that was in a packet. Absolutely.

Matty 34:42
And I mean, that’s very interesting because obviously, a lot of these companies are on to it and the fact that sugar is addictive, your brain commonly it really thrives off of sugar and fats. And so when it can, when it craves those foods is because it’s like, hey, I need energy.

Matty 34:58
Get me some sugar. Get me some fats. When they put that food, the sugar into those canned foods and into those different products, it makes the body crave it more. And so it’s really smart in a marketing play of things. It’s not great for our health at all.

Matty 35:12
But I mean, I think something that’s very important to show is that you set up some very clear guidelines for yourself. And the guidelines were not eating sugar. And so it took you to the extent where you would read the food labels and you would look at the ingredients list.

Matty 35:28
And if it had that, that product in it, you would remove it. Now I had the same conversation with many people about foods that cause inflammation. So sugar is one of them. Gluten is another dairy is another. caffeine and alcohol lead to more as well. And it becomes a really tough thing for people to do.

Matty 35:48
When it comes to the word gluten or dairy. They’re like oh, no, I couldn’t I couldn’t give that up. And it’s like, well, why the heck not like it’s doing the same thing. You’ll happily enough go and maybe give up sugar for a month, but you wouldn’t have go out and give, give up something like gluten, or dairy, even though they are causing inflammation within the body and still giving you a negative effect.

Matty 36:08
So for you, what was the mindset shift around like that guideline for you like, okay, sugar is no longer a thing for me. And I’m just never going to eat it. But I’m going to put it in a conscious effort to make sure that I’m not eating as well. What What was the shift around that? Was it just purely due to your circumstance?

Matty 36:27
It was, it was initially and then I noticed how well I felt not consuming it. So initially, it was what can I do to heal my brain? I’ll take sugar out. And then it was, well look, I actually feel good about it. And if I did go somewhere where there was a dessert, for example, and you know, we had a three course dinner and then dessert came and I ate sugar.

Bill 36:53
I would notice at the end of the meal, how much worse I would feel after that particular meal. And then I got to the point where I actually if I have some sugar, whether it’s in on honey, or in a tea or in a coffee or whatever, I actually can feel it running through my veins and entering into my brain like, I can actually feel it moving through my body.

Bill 37:15
And it’s the most weird and bizarre thing I can’t explain it other than it feels like I don’t know, man, like, I don’t know what it feels like. It’s just feels like stuff is entering into my body that shouldn’t be there. And I and I have this response.

Bill 37:29
So I was motivated initially by what it does to collagen, and how, if I take it out, it will stop doing that I started up in my collagen intake and then I was inspired by I was losing weight. And then I was inspired by how it made me feel when I consume it.

Bill 37:47
And it was just a no brainer was easy to get rid of. And then if I had a sweet need, you know, for something sweet, I’ll just have a piece of Apple, I’d have, you know, half an orange or you know Have a little bit of fruit, you know, but again, not the full, not the full apple or the full orange or whatever.

Matty 38:06
The crazy thing is that people when they give up sugar that we commonly find is that they will come and say, You know what, like apples taste amazing like now that I actually have a true understanding for what sweetness is and how this sweet food actually tastes because I’ve got rid of sugar that thing that makes everything taste like bland.

Matty 38:25
How incredible it actually tastes like the flavors all of a sudden you can you can taste it and it really is quite satisfying especially when you do have say for instance, the sweet craving you can get away with eating an apple and feel completely 100% satisfied.

Matty 38:39
Yeah, it was for me eating the apple became where at the beginning it was I’m having a crash. Let me grab the nearest thing that sweet to get me going and I didn’t realize I was doing that. Till it became. I’m gonna have an apple. Oh, I’m gonna have an orange or I’m gonna have some Mandarin. Is it Same thing I was consuming it, but the way and the reason I was consuming was completely different and I knew.

Matty 39:07
Yeah, that’s awesome. So something I said I’ll loop back to twice now I’m still having is based around mindset and the mindset that you had pre stroke and the mindset you had post stroke. Now, I’m a big believer in law of attraction and the things that we think about we commonly draw to us.

Matty 39:25
And I think, even though you weren’t necessarily thinking about stroke, you were thinking about stress and business and how am I going to provide and oh my god, what would what did my family do without me and all of these things, were almost compiling to your sickness happening.

Matty 39:45
Whether whether that’s true or not, and people can say yes or no. But then post you started, like he said, folks in your food, you start thinking about, well, how am I going to make this work? How do I survive when I’m not there? How do I double my business when I’m not there?

Matty 39:59
What What things do I start to think of? It’s like those things that you were thinking of what what you started, put your focus into words. So therefore, all of a sudden you start to work towards that you start to put the actions into place to make sure that those things are happening.

Matty 40:13
And then pull them all of a sudden it’s there and it’s ready. At the point, once you go on post operation, did you realize that you were doing that like your focus and your your, you were attracting almost those things in? Like, was there a realization at some point, you’re like, Oh, it’s worse because I’ve stopped. I’ve thought about it, and I’ll put the effort towards it.

Matty 40:34
You know, Matty came when I did probably my first tax return after I became sick. When my accountant goes, man, you’ve had a big year, compared to other years, and I said, Well, what do you mean like, what’s the difference?

Bill 40:49
And he showed me the difference and I was like, wow, like, I didn’t think that was possible for me beforehand. And I had never achieved those types of figures beforehand. I’m not sure how I did it now. But then I started to reflect on how much time I spent working on my business, rather than in my business.

Bill 41:10
I had outsource the quoting, I had outsourced the labor. All I had to do was actually turn up and meet the client. So always meeting the client at the quote with the other person who was actually compiling the quote, I was meeting the client during the delivery of the job.

Bill 41:33
And I was meeting him at the end, asking them if they’re happy, and to pay us. That was it. Which means I had so much more time to find all the little tools and all the little people and all the little things that I needed to continue to bring in leads of that caliber, those types of clients, those types of leads that type of work.

Bill 41:55
And then I just built a team of people who would do the tasks that I couldn’t physically They do anymore. And man, that was just eye opening. And when I started, when I started to reflect on that you’re 100%. Right.

Bill 42:09
I stopped attracting the shitty clients and I started attracting the right clients. Yeah, I stopped attracting illness and disease and I started attracting health and wellness. And I just eased into that it wasn’t initially very conscious of me on my part, it was just instinctual.

Being well and making money

Bill 42:27
I needed to get well and I needed to make money. How was I going to do both. And I was guided beautifully by my instincts and got to that point, but I did seek out help. I sought out help from the right people who have done it before and who guided me to get to that point.

Bill 42:46
The only people I didn’t get support from because I couldn’t find them were people like yourself and Stacey because it was seven years ago when I started the whole journey. There was just nobody working in this space.

Bill 42:59
Like you You guys are and if I had, I would have gone. Stacey and Matty, you know, what are the 10 steps I need to follow? Tell me what they are. I’m going to do them one at a time to get there, you know?

Matty 43:09
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s like we keep talking about like, You almost hit that rock bottom, you had to build your way back up. But what people need to realize is there’s never too late to start. Can you can start tomorrow and it’s still fine.

Matty 43:24
If you’ve built yourself into a corner, like that doesn’t matter, you can always get yourself out of it. And something that I think nutrition really comes down to is mindset because it’s easy enough to for us to say, hey, eat this food, but until you’re mentally ready, it’s going to be a hard, hard, hard road out of there.

Matty 43:41
So I mean, realistically, it comes down as two different things. It’s working on mindset. It’s also working on nutrition, because they really help you to move forward. And one thing I think that we can always control is the food that we’re putting in like no one else was the food in your mouth unless you are actually disabled.

Matty 43:59
And you can’t do that. That all you have to eat through a tube. And then the other thing we can control is how much we’re actually moving in a day. So I mean, yes, we’re all busy, and we all work and we all have our lives and things happen.

Matty 44:09
But it’s do you tell yourself the story that Bill had beforehand of I’m too busy, I can’t do anything? Or do you tell yourself the story that bill had afterwards of, I’m gonna make this work. And I’m going to look after myself first.

Matty 44:22
So I can make sure that I make it work for everything else. And I think it’s it is that once again, comes down to a mindset shift, like, Hey, I can move a bit more in the day, it might be that I stand up at work, rather than I sit down at work. It might be that I parked my car a block away instead of parking, the car park at work.

Matty 44:38
Like those small little things that start to compile. And when you do that consistently, so you did that one day, all of a sudden, you feel a little better because you made this one win when you do it consistently for a week, all of a sudden, you’ve won for a whole week and you start to believe in yourself that little bit more.

Matty 44:53
It’s like, Hey, I am starting to make the steps that are changing me as a person. How do I take the next steps and starts to compile, it starts to build bigger and bigger in that block then becomes a kilometer. And that kilometer, then comes five K’s, and then all of a sudden you’re joining a gym and then all of these things start to compile. It doesn’t just happen overnight.

Matty 45:12
It’s the same thing. You’re saying with your business. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s the same thing that happened with your health. It didn’t happen overnight. It’s always been a compartment of things. I think that’s where as a society, we have gotten lost.

Matty 45:24
Because going back to the convenient eating that we were talking about before, we’re used to pressing a button in the car rocking up, we’re used to pressing a button and all of a sudden the car delivers food to us. We’re used to being able to go to a shop and have a meal ready for us.

Matty 45:40
Something that would take us maybe half an hour to prepare at home all of a sudden takes us two minutes because we go in we get it we walk out and not in the brain seems like it’s an easier product or easier product is the easier way out of it.

Matty 45:53
So laziness is built and then we become lazy as individuals because it’s just the way that society is built up. It’s the way that that Life has been made for us because people have convenience, which is awesome. But I love to test people to go out and actually give a fuck about their life and start to work hard.

Matty 46:11
I like what things can you do? How can you test yourself day in and day out to make sure that you’re being a better person? And I think if you were to go back to the story about what you were saying about being the father that you wanted to be compared to the Father you have been it’s like, I don’t know. I think there are many people in that situation.

Matty 46:29
I think there are many parents that are in that boat and there’s many people in that boat and you had to turn up and be someone else and you had to pretend to be someone else until it until it happened, which I don’t think is a bad thing like using archetypes of other people and putting on a mask and putting on a different name or story for yourself is not a bad thing if that’s what gets you to that point.

Matty 46:51
Yeah, look, I am. I had this really great thing that happened to me. I nearly died. So I said to myself, like if I had died, what would everyone have said, so to speak at my funeral about me? And what would they have said if they were asked her about dad and about their husband?

Bill 47:12
So I didn’t like what may have come. I also had the opportunity to look back on my mindset and say, was that mindset serving me? Wasn’t even mine came from someone else. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t meant to be that guy. So it got implanted somewhere else. Like the diet advice, like the food that I was consuming got implanted, but it was may ultimately who decided to do those things.

Matty 47:42
Yeah. I mean, right down to the fact of this, like things that people say to us, we then take on, so things that might have been said to you when you’re younger, like things that I still hear from grandparents and, and parents. Things like well, I did it when I was younger.

Matty 48:00
That’s just the way it is we had to work like this, and different things like that, that really, they they scare a person without the person realizing. And it’s these stories and clouded visions from other people that they get pushed on to us. And so, I mean, you had to, like you said, you had to look at that whole thing and say, This isn’t me. What do I want to be? And how do I get there?

Matty 48:21
Yeah, absolutely. And when I realized it wasn’t me, because I didn’t really want to be the guy who was doing stuff to kill himself. But how did I become that guy? And then when I realized that I had become that guy, and that some of the things I was doing were not my things.

Bill 48:38
And the the stories I was telling about why it’s okay to smoke and why it’s okay to drink and why it’s okay to not eat in the morning and not have time to eat in the morning. What a load of crap. Like, how is it that we’ve become as humans we’ve become, to not have enough time to do the one thing that we need to do to stay alive which is eat.

Bill 49:00
But it’s like saying I don’t have time to breathe like, what is all that about? It’s such a ridiculous thing. And I hear my clients say that to me now. And I don’t judge people who say that I get why they say it, but I was one of those people. So it’s kind of like, Okay, let me just turn everything on its head.

Bill 49:17
And let me start again, and one thing at a time, and what I was really good at doing and because of my recovery, so you said I had two bleeds, but I actually had a third bleed over three years, and the third blade ended up with me in surgery right.

Bill 49:31
Now one of the great thing that rehabilitation did, because I had to learn how to walk again, I had to get my feeling back in my left side, I had to be able to learn how to use my left arm again. And when I was doing that, the doctors, sorry, the physios and the OTs would say, Wow, yesterday you only took three steps.

How far I’ve come

Bill 49:50
Look how far you came today. And what they taught me was compared myself to where I was yesterday, to where I am today on my journey. Walking 100 steps or 1000 steps and getting out of there. Yeah. At that comparison of, well look how far my businesses come in those three years. What do I need to do now to take it to the next level?

Bill 50:13
And then I also do the well like, look how far I’ve come in quitting sugar. Now have not only quit sugar, quit caffeine, also quit gluten, and quit alcohol. And guess what? I’m still Bill, I still exist in the same world where these things were impossible to do with that previously, but now they’re not I can still go to my dad’s greek feast and not a pasta and three kilos of bread.

Bill 50:37
You know, with all sorts of different sources and amazing things on him. I can still do that. And somehow, I’ve been able to coexist as of the only version that I wanted to be the one that was controlled by me and created by me, not the one that was influenced by external sources.

Bill 50:55
And when I go to a bar and drink with my friends, they might have a beer or a gin and tonic or whatever. I’m having I’m having like a bubbly water with an orange in it or a piece of lemon in it or piece of lime in it. And I’m still doing the drinking thing. I’m still being merry with everybody. I’m just not drinking an alcohol. It could be vodka. It could be gin. Nobody would know.

Matty 51:16
No, exactly. And we commonly find that in those situations, it’s it’s occasionally that you make other people feel uncomfortable when you’re not drinking at all. So it’s easy enough to get yourself a bubbly water and and so sorry, like a soda and lime or a soda and orange, like you’re saying, and also in people that you’re having a drink and they just don’t care.

Matty 51:35
It’s just a normal conversation. Oh, he’s having a drink with me. It makes them feel really comfortable too. So it’s almost like the workaround to not even have that worry. until until everyone’s buying rounds. You don’t want to buy an $8 drink when you’re buying $2 drinks. Maybe i don’t know.

Matty 51:51
I think you’d buy one round just to shut them up. And it keep them off your back because my friends they did struggle and it was they felt like I was missing out on something, I felt like I wasn’t able to be involved in the right kind of way, you know, and I appreciate it that they thought I was missing out but really wasn’t missing out.

Bill 52:13
I was if I have a drink now I feel like I’m having a stroke. So there’s a point in even having one. Yeah, it’s that dramatic, like my left side will go to sleep, almost, you know, after one drink, and it’s my right sides feeling great. And why would I want to do that my balance goes off, I risk falling over.

Bill 52:30
I run into doorways. Does that point you did it take a powerful conversation before they kind of eased off on you with that? It does. I’ve told people you know, quite bluntly, sometimes when they when they don’t understand that, dude, like, remember how sick I was like, that’s how it makes me feel and I don’t want to feel like that.

Bill 52:50
I just want to be okay, I want to drive and I don’t want to have to worry about not being able to feel the steering wheel and not being able to you know, press the clutch, you know, like, I need to be able to be comfortable with my body because it feels like there’s two different people attached down the middle.

Bill 53:08
And what I’m talking about down the middle, like, exactly down the middle, that causes so much weird, you know, tension and tightness on the left side that I don’t need that man. I just want to be, you know, okay with myself. So if it took me kind of almost repetitive education of them to leave me alone about it.

Bill 53:33
And that was the hardest part. I used to get frustrated. And at some point, I would say, look, stop it. I’m not going out. Because I can’t have this conversation every time I go somewhere people think that it’s not normal to drink. And if you are one of those people who thinks that then you’re going to drink yourself to oblivion and you won’t notice it.

Matty 53:52
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think there’s a few things that really stand out there and something is that realistically, everyone’s got the same two choices that you’re making, whether you just give it and have a drink with them, or you stick to your guns and you you hold fire and you make sure that you don’t get convinced.

Matty 54:08
And it’s about having that conversation and no one likes confrontation to start with. But you know, what makes confrontation easier is when you do it more and more, and the hardest time is probably going to be the first time and then when you can maybe almost like develop the things that you are going to say to the people.

Matty 54:23
Hey, this, this this this because of that confrontation, you tell me you know you’re going to come up against and something that I really love is the fact that you said that you still go to your dad’s greek party and not eat the junk food that he’s put on front of you.

Matty 54:34
Because for you, you know, you’re better off without that. So many people would say ah but I’m greek. And so that means that we have to have these foods like dude, food is everything when it comes to a great family.

Matty 54:47
So I have to go and I have to please my grandma, I have to please my mom, I have to please my dad by having this. This This and this when it came to and I mean obviously you’ve almost got a story that makes it people would say makes it easier because you can say I had a stroke and this food makes me feel like I’m gonna have a stroke again. Was this still the if somebody from the family though when it came to that situation?

Matty 55:09
Yeah, because what you call junk food and what I call junk food, they don’t call junk food. Okay, they just call it part of life. That’s what we grew up with. You know, we put a little bit of stuff on the bread, we ate a meal, I didn’t realize that we’re eating it because it was filler.

Bill 55:23
So I would go to these, these events and still do and mum has got this emotional connection to food. And if we’re eating, she has fulfilled her life duties as a mum, her child is fed, everything is okay. There’s all this warm and fuzzy stuff that’s going on. And my mom would take offense to the fact that I wasn’t eating her food.

Bill 55:47
Personally, she would say like, why don’t you want to eat anymore? Like I can’t cook you anything anymore? And I’d say mom, it’s not that you can’t cook for me. It’s just that that food, specifically the bread and the pasta makes me feel unwell. And I had to, I had to do the really emotional thing on her and say.

Bill 56:04
Do you want me to feel unwell do you want me to be sick still? She will say, No, of course not. And I said, Look, Mom, well, then what you got to understand is, I love you and I love your food. But that food is not for me. I’ve just changed my body’s different now.

Bill 56:20
And now, that doesn’t work for me anymore. And now I have to not eat it so I can feel better all the time. And that’s kind of how the conversation went. So she now cooks everything. And it’s okay with me just not eating certain parts of it. Yeah. And she’ll say to me, have you had you fill? And I’ll say, look, I have had my fill.

Bill 56:42
I’ve had it on your amazing chicken, or your amazing veggies. Or you know, you’re amazing. Whatever. Yeah, I’m not eating pasta and I’m not in this and I’m not eating that. And if and if you don’t make it for me, You don’t have to worry about it. Like I’m not going to get offended. I’ll just eat what you make I don’t care what it is.

Matty 57:03
Yeah, it’s, uh, I mean, once again does come down to those really powerful conversations. And it’s usually with the people that are closest to the ones that you love the most that you have to have the hardest conversations with.

Matty 57:13
Because like you said, you offended her start with and for some people that would be enough to be like, I can’t disappoint mom, like, Oh, fuck it, I’ll just every time I go see mom, that’s what I’ll do, then I’ll just have that that little bit. Enjoy. That might be my undoing for that week.

Matty 57:27
But that if that’s the worst thing, then that’s the worst thing. Whereas it’s like, No, you can have that conversation. So you never have to have that undoing that you can thrive from the start. It’s easy enough. It does involve a conversation that you might not want to have that you have to have because it’s going to benefit you as a person.

Matty 57:45
And something that I think is a really good point as to all of this stuff that you’re talking about is every time that you’ve put focus into you as a human being as you as a person and you’ve put you first that you’ve started to thrive and all these good things around you started to happen.

Matty 58:00
And this is something that we typically find across the board that when people care about themselves and putting a lot of effort to themselves as an individual, that they can give so much more to everyone and everything around them.

Bill 58:12
Yeah, you know, what was really cool about that shift that I made. I found people like you and Stacey, in all walks of life, in places that I never thought they would be, which then encouraged me, which then meant that, oh my god, I’m not the only person who thinks like that, because, therefore, I’m no longer the black sheep in the family.

Bill 58:35
And then I started to interact with those people. I started to learn from those people, they put those people learn from me that inspired me more. And then I created a circle of people outside of my original circle of friends who I still have, I didn’t cast them aside.

Bill 58:52
You know, I created another circle of people that I could confide with and friends that also supported this version of me this part of me and were just as willing to accept me as I was as the other people initially were willing to accept who I was.

Bill 59:12
And and that is what kind of got me got me sort of really taking it to the next level and really making me feel good about putting focus into those areas. And then the more I did that, the more I got out of it and so on. And now I don’t do it consciously it just happens now I just, you know, I go to an event and I meet you, Matty.

Bill 59:33
And we talked for what what seemed like you like 10 or 15 minutes and from 10 or 15 minutes has come such amazing conversations that I’ve got to meet Stacey, I’ve got to learn about what you do. I love promoting what you do, because now like I know that you guys exist.

Bill 59:50
But before I was just looking for people to confirm that what I needed to do was work too much smoke, a shitload, you know, drink this and don’t do that and whatever and I found them in abundance. And now I’m looking for the other people and I’m finding them in abundance. And it’s easy. I don’t even have to make an effort.

Matty 1:00:09
Yeah, dude, that’s that’s incredible man. And I think there’s, there’s definitely so much that we’ve touched on already. But I do want to hear a little bit more about your story of what happened when you went in for surgery.

What lead to brain surgery

Matty 1:00:20
So yeah, so what happened was they finally said we’ve had enough of you avoiding surgery and trying not to go under the knife. And you can understand I don’t want anyone open my head up, you know if we can avoid it.

Bill 1:00:34
So eventually, my surgeon came in and said, we’ve got to go in. Are you up for it? Because this thing is the resolve itself. We don’t want it to continue and get to the point where it puts you or somebody else at risk. You might be driving, have an episode and kill someone or die.

Bill 1:00:52
So we decided to do that. And when we did do that I was in the best physical condition. I had ever been in. And I was so prepared for surgery and I said to her, yep, let’s just go for it. Let’s do this. And I remember going into surgery and not knowing what to expect afterwards.

Bill 1:01:12
But I was telling my doctors, all the people around me all the anesthesia and anesthesiologists, and all those people telling them that I’m going to be the best patient you’ve ever had. I’m gonna be I’m gonna take care of myself to turn up so that you guys can do a great job in there and we can have a great outcome, you know.

Bill 1:01:31
And that’s what we got. We’ve got a really good outcome. But during the surgery, to get to the faulty blood vessel, they had to go in four centimeters from the ear. And on the way through something has been interfered with that created this numbness on the left side.

Bill 1:01:51
And that is permanent now. It doesn’t go away. It’s been there since November 2014. And because I can still feel a little bit through that side, we were able to retrain the brain to learn when my foot was on the ground.

Bill 1:02:06
And when my hand is holding something, it took about a month in rehab before I got home. But prior to that what I was doing, and this is the really powerful part was I was imagining myself walking, and I was imagining myself use me hand through meditation.

Bill 1:02:22
Because when you do that, visualization, you’re firing off the same new pathways that you want to create when you’re actually working. So I was doing that for about two or three days, I was convinced that I was going to walk no matter what. And, and I was probably going to walk, whether I was convinced about it or not.

Bill 1:02:41
But I still put that much effort into every moment of my day. So when I learned how powerful visualization was, I use that now in all aspects of my life. I visualized myself being somebody who coaches, other stroke survivors and supports them I visualized myself as someone who’s a mentor, as somebody, you know, who helps people heal themselves and give support and empathy and all that kind of stuff.

Bill 1:03:04
And that’s starting to occur now. And it’s not foreign to me this visualization made it so that it’s not foreign. When I got out of hospital I went home just before Christmas in the in December 2014. And then I continued outpatient rehab, and it took me a good it took me a bit a good five or six months to get back to work.

Bill 1:03:28
Fully actively, and to continue growing, growing myself and my business and then start sharing all the stuff that I’ve learned so that other people going through what I had been through doing it, not as hard so they’re doing it a little bit easier than I had to do it.

Matty 1:03:48
Yeah, that’s absolutely incredible. And visualization is an absolutely incredible pace and you said something, I was probably going to walk anyway, but I feel like he would have brought it Forward leaps and bounds, bye bye. if not weeks, months, like realistically, by putting that thought pattern into work every single day, and now utilizing it to do and wishing the things that you’re wanting to do, it’s absolutely incredible.

Matty 1:04:15
And I mean, I want to touch back on that, because it’s something that both days and I do, like we do daily visualization practices, I start my day off with visualizing how my day is going to go, I also visualize where I want to be in three years time, like I’ve got this very, very clear picture of what I’m doing, and where I’m at.

Matty 1:04:34
And then I also have like, it’s almost like a dreamless visualization that I do is like, Hey, I’m going to be driving this car or I’m going to be flying this plane, I’m going to be doing this thing. It’s like, these are the things that I want to achieve.

Matty 1:04:47
Not because this is like the the thing that I need in life, but it’s because if I can dream really, really big, then I know that I’m gonna I’m somewhere close to that and achieve somewhere close to that. And it’s like you said, you you Visualize doing the things that you really want to be doing.

Matty 1:05:03
And all of a sudden you’re now doing them. And it’s like just crazy what it can actually do for you as an individual and how far it can take you. And I think one of the big things around visualization and around law of attraction is the fact that you start to care about those things, you start to think about them more and more often. And you start to act the way that you need to act to be that person that’s in that visualization instead.

Bill 1:05:25
Yeah, and you start to find the things come into your awareness that you weren’t seeing before that were there that help you achieve those goals and do those things that you want to do. The other thing about what you said about I brought forward my walking and all that type of stuff. But in fact, I was booked into rehab for two months. And at a month, they said, Man, you’re good to go.

Matty 1:05:49
There you go. The proof is in the pudding.

Matty 1:05:52
Yeah, It was just, it was amazing. And then I felt really powerful after that, because I had never done those things before. I never put so much effort into me and my well being and all that type of thing. And I had always put the effort into doing things for other people, so that I could get paid for other people so that I could get the next job for other people.

Bill 1:06:16
So I could make them happy, but I wasn’t making myself happy, you know, and now I don’t work for you if, if you’re not going to pay me what I want. I’m not working for you. Simple as that. And I don’t want an excessive amount of money, but I need enough to feel like I’m being valued in the transaction that’s occurring.

Matty 1:06:33
Yeah, there’s value in yourself Firstly, but I mean, the other thing is that you’re you know exactly what you’re offering and you know that what you offer is going to add so much value to that person that anything under that amount is not worthwhile.

Matty 1:06:46
So it’s not there’s not going to be like you said, it’s not appreciated. So why would you go out and put your money and sorry, your time into that that person, when they’re probably going to be the people that turn around and say, Hey, what about this? What about that and complain anyway, they’re not going to see this was the value in the service.

Matty 1:07:01
So, I mean, something that I really liked and appreciated. What you just said is that you’re adding. Sorry that you added that you were working for money. You weren’t working for the people beforehand, whereas now you’re working for the people and the money is coming, which is really important. Yeah,

Matty 1:07:17
That’s it. So I’m serving first, and I’m getting rewarded. So I just shifted the people that I’m serving, and they’re rewarding me appropriately. And it’s never a conversation of that’s too much, or can you discount this or can you do that? And I’m like, so thankful because that reduces the stress.

Bill 1:07:39
And that reduces the distrust and the dislike of being at that job. And then that makes it a whole lot easier for me to go to work and have a better day, and then come home and not be cranky, and cook a meal and talk to my wife and my children. And they the one the guy that I want to turn up as instead of the guy who was turning up cranky because I didn’t realize how other people were influencing my level of happiness and satisfaction.

Matty 1:08:08
Do you find that sometimes you just want to revert back. Sometimes you get home and it would be easier to just go and sit in the couch or just be easy to go and get this food because it’s just the easy way out. But then all of a sudden, you have to switch yourself on.

Matty 1:08:22
No, not anymore. I did it initially, but not anymore. And the reason I don’t anymore is because I’m not addicted to sugar anymore, so I don’t have dumb cravings. I relatively high fat diet and good fats, right. So I’m satiated for longer periods of time. So I’m not being controlled by my food.

Bill 1:08:42
And I really appreciate the taste of a good meal. Like if I come home, and I eat something, even if it’s just something my go to lazy meal is bacon and eggs. I don’t care whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner because I know they’re really super healthy if they are really good eggs and if it’s really good bacon, a chuck in some avocado and i chuck in some Greek white feta cheese you know a little bit to make the avocado a bit salty.

Bill 1:09:11
And like it’s it’s a complete meal a few tomatoes or whatever mushrooms and it’s a complete meal and I don’t care. I don’t care for going to something that’s just going to feel my guts anymore because my guts say to me like, you’ve done wrong by us that’s not good.

Bill 1:09:28
Or how about, you know, we have a diarrhea episode or, you know, whatever. And I get instant feedback now and what I used to say about diarrhea previously because I used to have it a lot. I used to think that it was just my body are well my body is a bit weird and sensitive, and it does this from time to time.

Bill 1:09:46
Sugar used to do that to me dramatically and so did gluten and so did dairy, those three things if you combine sugar in a coffee and you had a sandwich, like I was always creating This opportunity for my stomach to just freak out and go we don’t want that stuff in there get it out.

Bill 1:10:04
And I always thought that it was an issue with my gut I didn’t realize that it was an issue with these inflammatory foods and my body being smart going let’s just get this out of the body quickly because we don’t want this you know, so I have lazy days and my lazy days like I said, My they are just bacon and eggs. So man, how could you go wrong with bacon and eggs on a lazy day, it’s just that ideal perfect meal.

Matty 1:10:30
You know, the biggest disappointment I got about getting healthy and cooking my own food was I really used to love going out for breakfast. And now when I got for breakfast, it takes a lot to really impress me. Whereas I used to be impressed by any meal that bring out because it was food I wasn’t eating commonly.

Matty 1:10:45
Whereas now it’s like it really takes a really delicious breakfast for me to be like okay, that was well worthwhile. Like that was that was everything it should have been due to eating out of the cafe and then just serving up something like bacon and eggs like you’re saying which is what you have on lazy day

Matty 1:11:07
Yeah, absolutely. Like I very rarely go out and enjoy a meal out now. And when when I do go and have breakfast out there is definitely the bread left to the side and all that kind of stuff. I’ll ask them not to bring it out. And I do. I do try to minimize the types of meal so I’m very predictable steak and veggies or steak and whatever.

Bill 1:11:36
And I know that if I go for those things that can be really get them wrong. Or it might be going to go all out. I’m going to fish and chips you know, so I try not to do all the dramatic, you know, weird and fabulous like Master chef kind of food. I’m not into that stuff.

Bill 1:11:52
Just real basic flavors, you know, real back to, you know, what we would have done when we were You know, just foraging and hunting and gathering, like, that’s all I need. And I just, I just need just real simple salt and pepper and that kind of stuff like it.

Bill 1:12:11
It just completely satisfies me and my body says, Thank you, you know, my brain switches on and it says thank you, you know, and the next day I feel sluggish and I don’t have a gut ache I don’t have a heart palpitation and like everything just settles and it’s just beautiful. You know, it’s just nourishing.

Matty 1:12:28
That’s incredible. So, I mean, I think there’s been so many different insights in this one. I mean, obviously, how much you put into your lifestyle really gives back to you as an individual and the things that you do can highly affect you as a person and if you are sick individual that it can and more than likely is a direct response to the food that you’re eating, the stress that you’ve got in your life, the sleep that you’re not getting.

Matty 1:12:52
The the different pieces that you’re putting into your life style like it is a puzzle and the different pieces that you’re putting in that just aren’t fitting. It just is not a healthy way for you to get longevity out of your life is pretty much the most backwards way you can go. So, I mean, Bill, you do run a podcast, which is called recovery after stroke.

Matty 1:13:10
And I think it’s incredible because like I said, the style podcast, you’re helping people who are going through the situation that you went through and you’re fast tracking them. Or you’re helping people who have been in a situation where their dad or their mom or their cousin or their son has had a stroke, and you can then help them as a support network, which is absolutely crazy.

Matty 1:13:30
And I think the things that you’re doing is just above and beyond, because realistically, like you said, if you had these things back in the day, it would have absolutely just helped you out and you probably you potentially wouldn’t have had the second bleed or the third bleed, who’s to know really, but you’ve turned this pain point into such a successful thing.

Matty 1:13:50
Because it’s helping others it’s it’s giving purpose to individuals and it’s really helping to move them forward and progress them forward. So what I would like to do is get any of your socials or anything that you want to pass on to the members and the listeners? What do you Where? Where should they go to follow along? And where should they go to, to listen in.

Matty 1:14:09
At the website is recoveryafterstroke.com, the podcast is available on Apple. And wherever else you can get a podcast from as well.

Matty 1:14:19
As well as through the website right?

Bill 1:14:21
As well straight through the website. You can get me on Instagram, Instagram, it’s @recoveryafterstroke. And on there, I share little tips and little videos about what I’m doing what I’m up to what I’m thinking is where I share the previous to my podcasts where we have a really amazing conversation with the people that interact.

Bill 1:14:43
And my the stuff that I do is, you know, targeted to stroke survivors, but it’s actually stuff that you do pretty much that’s targeted to your audience, but well the stuff we’re talking about is not just for your audience of mine, it’s for a general audience, and anyone can get to it, why I love to share my stories because I nearly died.

Bill 1:15:03
So people who have been through that and nearly died can relate to me because they come out of it and or they or they got away with it. But what I want to do is I want to end the podcast by saying that I lost two mates of mine in the last three months, both of them in their 40s way too early to die.

Bill 1:15:24
And I know that they were basically the spitting image of me and they didn’t get away with it. They died for other reasons, but they didn’t get away with it. I had a second chance. And if you have gone through some serious disease or being not well, and you got away with it, start impacting your life in a positive way so you can get a better outcome than my two mates got.

Bill 1:15:48
There’s no point not being here for your family and friends. And it’s easy to do. It’s the same amount of energy that you used to be unwell is the same energy that we’re just you know, switching over to us to be well. And that’s all it is. And what I hope to teach people through my podcast is the stuff they didn’t know they needed to know Matty.

Matty 1:16:09
Yeah, definitely.

Bill 1:16:10
That’s where the gold is. You just don’t know what you need to know until Matty and Stacey says, Hey, what about this, and then all of a sudden, you go, Well, I didn’t even know that was a thing. So that’s kind of where I’m at.

Bill 1:16:26
Now, if anyone wants to reach out, they can send me an email via the website, like I said, which is recoveryafterstroke.com, or they can go to Instagram and send me a direct message Follow me, and I’ll be glad to you know, to interact and talk with them and whatever, you know, whatever they need I’m there.

Matty 1:16:44
Dude that’s really powerful man and sorry for your loss. But I mean, like you said, you use it as a powerful note and something to move forward with and empower others and realistically, something maybe sometimes people need a slap in the face and maybe this is the podcast, the thing that might change some people so I think if If you’re in a situation where you do need help.

Matty 1:17:02
Please do feel free to reach out to bill or likewise from us. Like, we’re always happy to help you as an individual. We’re happy to hear your story. But I’m also happy to help you change. And I think if you can come to us with a willingness to change, then I’m going to be 100% on your side, as I’m sure Bill would be as well, if you were to go to him.

Matty 1:17:19
So like, realistically, the thing that we’re trying to say is that there’s plenty of help out there, you just have to be willing to make that first step. And you don’t have to do it by yourself. It’s never a thing that you have to go through by yourself.

Matty 1:17:31
Because there’s people like Bill and people like ourselves who did go through it by ourselves, and that’s why we’ve created out of a pain point position that we can help you from now. So I mean, realistically, this has been this has been really cool podcast. I knew it was going to be good going into it.

Matty 1:17:44
But I’ve really, really enjoyed it, Bill. So thank you so much for the chat, dude. I think it’s been very insightful. And I feel that the listeners have got a lot out of it. And so listeners If you did, please share it around passing on to your friends, if you know someone who’s had a stroke.

Matty 1:17:57
I don’t care if you don’t share this podcast, but share Bill’s podcasts because the things that he is doing is really, really helping people in that situation would be that had a stroke, all the family members of the people who are having the strokes.

Matty 1:18:09
This is something that is super insightful. And I just I want to thank you, Bill for doing the work you do. And it’s really, really cool to see that you’ve taken that pain point. And you use it to help other people. And I just don’t want people to get to the state where they hit rock bottom. Never like always know that you can start now you can start doesn’t have to be tomorrow doesn’t be Monday, it can be now.

Matty 1:18:31
Yeah, the good thing about rock bottom. It’s a perfect place to start from.

Matty 1:18:35
Exactly right. Awesome. Thank you so much, Bill. Appreciate it.

Intro 1:18:39
Discover how to support your recovery after stroke. Go to recoveryafterstroke.com