You Can’t Change the Past: How Mike Kent Turned a Hemorrhagic Stroke into Growth

Recovery After Stroke

Acceptance: Hemorrhagic Stroke Journey and Path to Recovery

Life often takes unexpected turns, leaving us grappling with challenges we never anticipated. For those who have experienced a hemorrhagic stroke, the journey to recovery can feel overwhelming and uncertain. One of the most crucial yet challenging steps in this journey is acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up; it’s about acknowledging where you are, finding peace with what has happened, and embracing the possibilities that lie ahead.

The Reality of a Hemorrhagic Stroke

A hemorrhagic stroke, caused by bleeding in the brain, is a life-altering event that can bring physical, emotional, and psychological hurdles. Survivors often face paralysis, speech difficulties, memory challenges, and other long-term effects. But beyond the physical recovery, there’s a deeper, often less-discussed journey: learning to accept the “new normal” after stroke.

The sudden nature of a stroke can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you. You might wrestle with questions like, “Why did this happen to me?” or “Will life ever feel normal again?” While these thoughts are natural, the key to moving forward lies in reframing the narrative and shifting focus from what’s lost to what remains.

What Acceptance Truly Means

Acceptance is not about resigning yourself to a life of limitation. Instead, it’s about recognizing the present moment for what it is. It’s about letting go of regrets about the past and instead channeling your energy into what you can control now.

For many stroke survivors, the inability to undo past decisions—such as elective surgeries or lifestyle choices—can weigh heavily. But as difficult as it may seem, accepting that the past cannot be changed is the first step toward reclaiming your power. By focusing on what can be done today, survivors can begin to rebuild their lives.

Steps Toward Acceptance

1. Acknowledge Your Feelings
   It’s okay to feel anger, sadness, or frustration. Give yourself permission to process these emotions, but don’t let them define you. Journaling, therapy, or talking with a trusted friend can help release these feelings.
2. Focus on the Present
   The present is the only moment we truly have. Take small, actionable steps toward recovery, whether that’s attending therapy sessions, practicing mindfulness, or simply celebrating small victories like tying a shoelace or walking a few extra steps.
3. Redefine Your Identity
   A stroke may change what you can do physically, but it doesn’t change who you are at your core. Embrace the parts of yourself that remain strong and resilient, and allow this new chapter to help you grow.
4. Seek Support
   Connecting with others who understand your journey can be incredibly empowering. Whether it’s joining a support group, working with a recovery coach, or engaging with online communities, surrounding yourself with people who “get it” can make the road feel less lonely.

Finding Strength in the Journey

Every stroke survivor’s journey is unique, but one common thread is the incredible strength it takes to move forward. Acceptance doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a process that unfolds gradually. The key is to take it one day at a time, focusing on progress over perfection.

As Mike Kent, a hemorrhagic stroke survivor, shared in a recent episode of the Recovery After Stroke Podcast:

“I’ve learned to realize you don’t need to answer the question of ‘why.’ You just need to move on from it, resource yourself, and bounce forward.”

Motivational Takeaway

While the past cannot be changed, the future is still unwritten. Accepting your circumstances is not the end—it’s the beginning of a new chapter. It’s an opportunity to find strength you didn’t know you had, to rebuild, and to inspire others through your courage.

If you’re on this journey or supporting someone who is, remember that every small step forward counts. Your story is a testament to resilience and the power of the human spirit.

Resources for Your Recovery

• Explore my book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, available on Amazon or directly from recoveryafterstroke.com/book.
• Join the community: Connect with others and access resources by supporting the podcast on Patreon.

Acceptance is a journey, but it’s also a destination where hope, growth, and possibility await. Keep moving forward—you are not alone.

Acceptance: Mike Kent’s Hemorrhagic Stroke Journey and Path to Recovery

You can’t change the past, but Mike Kent’s hemorrhagic stroke recovery shows how to embrace growth and resilience to transform the future.

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Highlights:

00:00 Mike Kent’s Introduction and Initial Injury
03:59 Waking Up and Realizing the Impact
11:53 Dealing With Acceptance
18:17 The Beauty Of Enlightenment
28:17 Accepting Love In The Form Of Help
38:40 The Path Towards Post-Traumatic Growth
40:17 What Is Post-Traumatic Growth?
53:33 Being Your Own Critic
1:00:16 Becoming A Recovery Coach
1:06:02 The Hardest Thing About The Stroke
1:09:47 What I’ve Learnt From The Stroke
1:12:09 Advice From A Stroke Survivor

Transcript:

Mike Kent’s Introduction and Initial Injury

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello everyone. Today we have an incredible guest, Mike Kent joining us, whose story is nothing short of remarkable. He went from experiencing a life-altering hemorrhagic stroke caused by a routine medical procedure to transforming his life and becoming a source of inspiration for others. His journey is a testament to resilience, the power of acceptance and the incredible strength of the human spirit. You won’t want to miss the lessons Mike shares about embracing the present moment and turning adversity into a platform for growth.

Bill Gasiamis 0:39
Before we dive in. I want to remind you about my book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. It is available on Amazon or directly from my website, at recoveryafterstroke.com/book, if you’re looking for practical tips and inspirational stories to guide your recovery or support a loved one, this book is for you. Now, let’s jump into this incredible conversation with Mike Kent.

Bill Gasiamis 1:10
Mike Kent, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Kent 1:14
Thank you, Bill. Lovely to be here. Thank you very much.

Bill Gasiamis 1:17
Tell me a little bit about what happened to you.

Mike Kent 1:18
Well, what happened to me? Well, let’s go back five years to May or maybe April 2019 and I was coming back from Boston, I just managed to land my dream job working in customer success, which is a kind of a new field for technology companies. And I was coming back from interviews, and had successfully finished the interviews there and got off of the job, came back for a routine operation in France, which is where I live. And there I went into the hospital, and the number two neurosurgeon in France, as is the norm, gave the task to a stage which is a trainee.

Mike Kent 2:19
And that’s totally normal, and the trainee like they’re looking for cartilage to put in my nose, just at the top of thing. And it was a cosmetic operation. It wasn’t even necessary, and they drilled into put me in under, into sleep mode, and drilled into my head, got the cartilage and came out and sold it all up, unbeknownst to everyone, that trainee had actually drilled too far and had drilled into my brain and had caused a hemorrhagic bleed that no one was aware of in my head. And so I went into the what they call is the wake up room after the post operation, and I didn’t wake up.

Mike Kent 3:09
I just carried on sleeping, and the night duty doctor then decided to think it’s very odd that Mr. Kent’s not awake. He should be awake now, at least, should be moving, and he’s not moving at all. And so they put me into an artificial coma, and it checked into with a scan what was happening in my head, and they realized that I was bleeding, bleeding into my through my brain, and I had one and a half hours to go so that sorry, I just, it’s quite emotional to recount that kind of story. I didn’t realize that, and, yeah, it’s like I was one and a half hours from touching the other side.

Waking Up and Realizing the Impact

Mike Kent 3:59
So that doctor was absolute is worth his weight in gold, because he immediately put me into that artificial coma. And when you’re in an artificial coma I’m told you’re not, kind of like, forced to wake up. You wake up when you can, which normally is like a few hours or one or two, three days later. I woke up eight weeks later. And when I woke up, I was looking around, and I saw very blurred, I remember seeing my twin brother, and I kinda said ‘What’s my twin brother doing in France? You know, he shouldn’t be. He lives in LA.

Mike Kent 4:42
And what’s my mother doing here? She lives in England, you know. So it’s all bizarre. So then I just rolled over, and I fell out of the bed because I couldn’t move the whole of my right side. And it was then that I realized that, the whole of my right side was hemiplegic, which is, it’s a stroke, it’s just able to move the right side. And I started bursting into tears. It’s a hugely emotive and soul destroying and then gradually, kind of, like, dawned on me that I had come from landing my dream job, like, literally two hours ago, right in my time, right, and now I was in a hospital.

Mike Kent 5:38
And I couldn’t get up off the floor. So what the hell is going on here? And I’m a marketeer, I’m somebody who has always been interested in making the best possible thing that I can for whatever product is, whatever product that I’m marketing, right, whether it’s drinks or whether it’s liquid soap or whatever. So we’re always aiming for perfection, we’re always aiming for that golden nugget, and we didn’t to be actually sitting or lying on the floor and crying and not understanding what the hell is going on.

Mike Kent 6:26
Is my whole world is just collapsing right in front of me, and from then, I got lifted up by the nurses on top. I won’t go into all that, but the rest of that story is that I actually was so depressed that I went into a depression, and I even tried to end my life. But the one thing that saved me was that I want to know what it would be like when I was not here, and I would never know if I was not here.

Mike Kent 7:03
So that was, I was kind of like going at it round of my head ‘Well, Mike, you do this, you know. So I decided not to go ahead with it. I got given a book called The Awakening by Jeff Thomas, and that was from my brother. And that’s where it all just started to resonate with me in that I live now in the present moment. Everything I do is in the present moment and that is what saved me, really, and that’s where I am now.

Bill Gasiamis 7:38
It’s quite a contrast, one minute you’re fully involved in your life and going about business, dream job, all of that kind of stuff. Next minute you wake up and you’re gone, everything that you thought was the way that things were is not like that anymore. And now people people struggle to, you know, kind of have this idea of old age for some people. And it’s just some people describe as like a steady decline, and then over a long period of time, and then you get to 80 or 90, and, you know, some people are fitting well and a little bit less capable, perhaps.

Bill Gasiamis 8:25
And you know that coordination has gone a little bit or things are different, they’ve changed, but there’s this time difference that you’ve had to be able to grapple with the slow change and the things that you don’t do anymore. You can’t do anymore have type been removed from your abilities, right? So you kind of have this big adjustment period and that you can have your conversations with people about it, you can joke about it.

Bill Gasiamis 8:56
Can laugh but it can get annoyed about it, you can get counseling for it. You can do all these things, then a stroke is not like that. It doesn’t give you the time to deal with anything that it leaves you with when you wake up. And it’s impossible for anyone to be able to just grapple with that immediately and be okay with it.

Mike Kent 9:20
Yep, absolutely. The difference, the thing is that a stroke it’s not something it’s not in a moment. A stroke is, It’s a journey. It’s a long road of whatever you want to make it right, and it’s how you actually deal with the hardship, trauma, the difficulty, whatever word you would like to use, it is really up to you and your ability to actually you. We only have one life, whatever you want to believe that we are conscious of one life. So I want to make the best. I’ve always have wanted to make the best of my life.

Mike Kent 10:11
And I think being a twin and 20 minutes makes a hell of a difference for me. I’m the older one, but we are naturally competitive, right, but not competitive, as in, you know, really fighting and stuff. We’re just really driven, and so when you’re presented with a situation that you cannot understand and you cannot even begin to fathom or realize what on earth is going on.

Mike Kent 10:42
You ask yourself questions over and over again, and there’ll come a time when you actually want to get those answers, and you’ll start making an answer because you are just continuing saying ‘I don’t accept this, I don’t accept what I am, this is not fair, okay, I am not a victim.

Bill Gasiamis 11:01
Just jumping in with a quick message. I hope you’re enjoying this conversation with Mike Kent as much as I am. If this podcast has been helpful to your recovery journey, I’d like to invite you to support the show on Patreon. Since the very beginning, I’ve been covering all the costs of producing this podcast myself and your support can help me continue to bring these valuable stories and resources to you and others in the stroke recovery community.

Bill Gasiamis 11:31
By becoming a Patreon supporter, you’ll be joining a community that’s passionate about stroke recovery and helping others feel less alone. Visit patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke to learn more. Every bit counts, and your support makes a real difference. Now let’s get back to Mike’s inspiring story.

Dealing With Acceptance

Mike Kent 11:53
I am Mike, right. I am unique, we are all unique. We’re given whatever cards we’re given and dealt with, and we deal with them as best as we possibly can, these cards I’ve been dealt. I have to accept that I am like this, I am this way, but I don’t want to be a victim. I will do something about it, and so I always say to people that I actually want to concentrate on is what I have and not what I don’t have, yeah, and that’s what has been, has inspired me all along. And I’ve got this kind of get up and go attitude.

Mike Kent 12:35
I think that I’ve always seen the glasses half full, and kind of been a positive kind of guy. Luckily, I think that, you know, the US has ordained all this for me, and that there is a reason why all of this happened, and I’m now actually a recovery coach to people who are in difficulties, whether they are differently abled different, or whether they are disabled, or whether even when they are able bodied, but they are suffering from depression or suffering from whatever disorder or illness that they have.

Mike Kent 13:19
I’m just so I’ve got so much confidence right to share and give and help people, that it’s a super wonderful journey that I’m on now, and that’s okay. It wasn’t okay five years ago, but it’s okay, because I’m meeting people that I’ve I would never have met in my life before, and, yeah, I’d actually even think that they’re on a different side of the street. I would actually walk on a different path to these people. Does that make sense?

Bill Gasiamis 13:59
Well, you were an asshole. Were you?

Mike Kent 14:01
Completely, completely, yeah. And I don’t know why I might say that, because it’s just a different lifestyle. I was arrogant. I was cocky and stuff, you know, now I’m just humble and just want to serve and just want to get I don’t give back because I don’t like the idea of back, that means going backwards. I don’t want to go backwards, I go forward, so I bounce forward and just doing it, do as whatever I can, as well as I can.

Bill Gasiamis 14:32
I love your truth, the truth. And I suppose we’re not all we, perhaps we act like ourselves, but we’re not all assholes. Deep down. It’s just that this circumstances make you kind of steer away from your true essence, and then something has to happen so that you can come back to your true essence. That’s how I feel, because I was not the coolest guy.

Mike Kent 15:01
Were you an asshole then?

Bill Gasiamis 15:02
I was, a little bit. Earlier on in my life, I was terrible at school, I was a pain in the ass to everybody. And then later on, I kind of took that into my adult life, and one on one, we’d have a good time. We’d get along, you know, but I used to have it. I used to, like, if somebody, I thought, if I felt somebody wronged me, that person just never heard the end of it. They were just, it was a vendetta that I had to make sure that I sit, I saw out to the end. And it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t stalking or illegal stuff.

Bill Gasiamis 15:45
It was just I would be rude and I would be blunt and I’d be short, and I wouldn’t give all the time a day I’m obnoxious, and I would just make their life difficult because I thought that they deserved it, which is actually completely, totally wrong, because I never spent one moment going. I wonder what’s happening in that person’s life today, for that person to behave the way that they did to me that I don’t know that I should give them a break about, and that was my turning point, right? And I share this story a lot.

Bill Gasiamis 16:19
When I saw people in a wheelchair, I just imagined they were sitting down. As bizarre as that sounds, I never connected it to trauma, illness, injury, any of that stuff. And then when I spent like, four or five weeks in a wheelchair because I couldn’t walk, I’m like ‘What an idiot you are, how could you have thought that this is an easy gig? Just sitting in a chair, pushing yourself around is an easy gig. Oh, my God, I’m dealing with all this stuff I can’t walk and all this stuff that the emotional storm, and it’s like ‘Well, you needed to be like this Bill.

Bill Gasiamis 16:59
So that you can become a more compassionate person because you acted compassionately, or you pretended you were you, you were compassionate, but you never acted compassionately when it mattered.

Mike Kent 17:14
I remember going to the rehab place, and I was in an ambulance, and there were these three guys who were all in wheelchairs just outside the front door, all smoking away. And I come in on a stretch, and I’m going, like, the first of all, I’m going, Why the hell are they smoking? But God’s sake, don’t smoke. You’re in a hospital thing, and you’re ruining your health, you’re doing all this stuff, it’s like God’s sake.

Mike Kent 17:47
And remember that even to this day. And that was their release. That was their only way that they could actually get to be with themselves without the have the trauma of the of realizing they actually were handicapped or disabled or in a difficult situation.

Bill Gasiamis 18:12
And they were doing that the day before they were in hospital, as if they’re going to stop today.

The Beauty Of Enlightenment

Mike Kent 18:17
Exactly, yeah. And you never think about that, you never think, you know, I think about my story when I was, you know, from Boston to the hospital, etc, you know, I never think about before. Anyway, what was that guy doing in the wheelchair the day before, right? He got in a wheelchair. What was his life like? Never occurred to me, just like you never, but I don’t think it does to many people actually. I think the the beauty of all this, is that our ability to actually reflect and take that on board makes us a bigger, better, stronger person.

Mike Kent 18:58
Right to be able to serve, to be able to to help others and and spread the word the people that where I live in Paris, has been recently the Olympics. And I went to see the Paralympics, and I went, I was in the swimming arena, and that was when the Brazilian guy who has no arms and very short legs. So basically quadriplegic and has nothing there. He won the gold medal. He beat a guy who had two arms and two legs into silver. I mean, it’s nuts, right? And he swims like it. And then turns on his back, and it’s like, it’s incredible.

Mike Kent 19:46
And then when he gets out of the pool, he is turning around and he’s clapping the eighth person, the eighth where he’s not clapping, but he’s going like this. He’s clapping the eighth person, encouraging, because they are all there to not to show off or to show how good they are, whatever. They’re just participants, that’s it. It’s incredible, and then the way, and they all go round and parading their medals, and it’s that three medalists all together. It’s not one, and then the next one, and then the next one, it’s a huge difference compared to the actual Olympics.

Mike Kent 19:49
Which is the epitome of individual pursuit. And then exactly the whole psychology is to outwit, outperform your competitor.

Mike Kent 20:44
Yes, yeah. And there it was and then the other. The other thing I noticed was that the crowd were so in tune with the athletes or with the swimmers, that there was such unity between the crowd and the and the swimmers and harmony. And that was just it, since she was just thinking about it, the beauty of it all, you know, and it makes it made a very, very incredible experience. And as really, it’s profoundly, taken me and helped me on my journey.

Bill Gasiamis 21:27
Yeah, sometimes you go to a marathon. And let me just qualify this, when I say, go to a marathon, you turn up, you don’t race, because I don’t do marathons. And I never, I never, would. And then there’s, you know, there’s the event which everyone starts off in, and then there’s the event that other people do five kilometers or 10 kilometers, and they might have a physical disability or a mental impairment or whatever, no matter what. And then you just, and then it’s just like the marathons, it’s not even about the marathon.

Bill Gasiamis 21:33
It’s about actually doing all the things that you had to do to get to the marathon.

Mike Kent 22:07
Yeah, exactly.

Bill Gasiamis 22:08
Overcome the injury, get out of hospital, rehabilitate yourself, perhaps train, learn to walk. You know, whatever it is, it’s all about that stuff. The marathon is just like, I feel like it’s just the icing on the cake. A friend of mine, friend of mine who’s able bodied, ran 100 kilometers about three weeks ago, two weeks ago, I was there with him. I was supporting him at every checkpoint, food, clothes, whatever he needed, a little bit of chat, little bit of motivation.

Bill Gasiamis 22:44
And we spoke about it yesterday, nearly two weeks later, and he just hasn’t, still been able to grasp the enormity of what he did. He hasn’t been able to comprehend it and for him, he’s able bodied, but the fact that he did 100 kilometers in 16 hours is still something that he had to find, you know, reach into places he’s never reached before, to be able to actually get over the line and do it. And I think he hasn’t been able to get his head around that it actually wasn’t the run, it was all the stuff that he’s done before the run in his 49 years, to get to the starting line and go.

Bill Gasiamis 23:33
I’m going and then to go, I’m going to go to the end. It’s a big achievement, but what got him there is the even bigger achievement in my mind, because I can’t even contemplate being at the start line of one of those events that I’m running. Yeah, I’ve got to get I’m not even there. I haven’t even done that journey yet, and I’m never going to do it. I’m not going to run 100 kilometers, because I don’t think I’ve got what it takes to do the work that gets you to the start line, because there’s a lot of work.

Bill Gasiamis 24:07
He trained for months and months and months. And it’s like, that’s kind of how I see this whole these guys that get to the Paralympics or become gold medalists in a para-sport or whatever. And it’s like ‘Man, forget the knighthood, so to speak, the knighting. It’s everything else that we don’t see, that’s the amazing part.

Mike Kent 24:32
They interviewed one of the swimmers, because every night on French TV they brought in the the medalists and the people of the day, and it was so well done. And these people just were so proud of what they would what they’d achieved. And you get them and said ‘Okay, so that’s your that’s the highlight of your career, right? So, what to get there, you know, what other major highlights Have you had? And the guy says ‘Well, actually, you know, to get here was, there’s a lot of ups and downs actually.

Mike Kent 25:11
Well, mostly downs actually, in actual fact, it was all downs, you know, we, we don’t see any of that we don’t see that, that had to get up at four o’clock in the morning and goes do it every single day, and on top of that, they are bringing all of their baggage, should we say, of who they are and their disability with them, and then fighting that, and then on top of that, fighting to try and just get to a race and or to a performance level that they’re being been asked to get to, and that’s not even getting into the Olympics, that’s just qualifying for them.

Mike Kent 25:57
You know, it’s fundamental. It really and that’s, I think the people that I have met, and you probably met a lot more than I have, but there’s a lot of guts and driven and determination and grit In disability, and frankly, there’s a lot of positivity. A lot of people who have gone not just the extra mile, but the extra life, sort of 10 miles or whatever, and really, really just going for it. And when they look back, they realize what they have actually achieved is phenomenal.

Bill Gasiamis 26:39
Yeah, and that’s what I want to really emphasize here. The key point is that we’re talking about people reaching the Olympics, competing a massive achievement, winning massive achievement. But somebody else’s Olympics might be going back to work. Yes, and that’s the thing, right? It might be driving, it might be becoming going home, getting a job, exactly, yeah, just going home. It could be anything like that.

Bill Gasiamis 27:08
So what I’m trying to say is, like, Mike and I, we see you, we don’t expect you to be gold medalists or run 100 kilometers or go to an Olympics. What we’re talking about is what’s possible. But also, you know, somebody else’s Olympics might not look like attending France.

Mike Kent 27:28
Yeah and they’re all there. All their Olympics are their own personal journeys and their own personal endeavors within their own way of living, and that’s absolutely brilliant in itself, inspiring in itself. Totally get that.

Bill Gasiamis 27:50
I see a lot of people get a lot of satisfaction, and have been able to tie their shoelaces again, even with one arm, learning how to do that. Or I see a lot of people getting, you know, really moved by being able to comb the hair of their daughter, you know, stuff like that. That journey to be able to get there, to do that might have taken them years. And it’s like, never give up. Keep going.

Acceptance Of Love In The Form Of Help

Mike Kent 28:17
It’s a very interesting point that because my son and my daughter, have accepted how I am because I’m stubborn, so I like to do things myself only because I don’t want to have handouts kind of thing, right? But I’ve learned to actually accept help now, and that it’s important to match. And people, it’s not that they’re not doing it because they are what, because they are sorry for you. They’re doing it out of love, right? They want to help you, right? And that’s a big mindset change that I had to go through.

Mike Kent 28:17
And now, you know, you talk about the tying of the shoelaces. Yeah, I can’t tie my shoelaces, and so I get my son to tie them, and then I just slip the shoes. I just slip on and off, you know, each time. And that’s okay, that’s we call it a win, win. He doesn’t get to do it. He doesn’t need to do it all the time. I don’t need to do it all the time, but he’s done it. He’s helped me with what tiny shoelace, but I’m doing it every day because I can slip the shoes on and off. But it’s little things, and it is always little things.

Bill Gasiamis 29:36
That’s right, it’s a compromise that you had to make, that you had to be okay with receiving help, which is a massive journey in itself.

Mike Kent 29:46
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis 29:47
How could that be a thing that we can’t do? How can that even be a thing that we can’t accept? I don’t get that at all. It’s so weird.

Mike Kent 29:57
I wonder why it. Cultural or what it is, but for me, I have completely changed. I really, really have completely changed maybe that I’m a much better person for it, but that still doesn’t take away that the the first three years, I was stubborn, but now I think maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just I’m loving the world now in a different way, and loving the world. You know, I actually walk a little bit slower to get to wherever I want to get to, but I get to see the world, I get to see the leaves.

Mike Kent 30:45
I get to see the leaves and the color we’re in autumn or fall, and we get to see the different colors of the leaves. And I get to actually experience that because I’m walking slower, and therefore I’m not rushing to the next place. And then you start realizing ‘Okay, I love what I’m seeing, this is really good. So therefore I’m just walking around with a smile. You know, they call me Mr. Bonjour, which is Mr. Hello. I just keep saying hello to everyone.

Mike Kent 31:12
But that’s because I give everyone the time of day. And so if my son comes to me and says ‘Papa, you need to do your shoelace up. Okay, can you help me please, you know? Because it’s all part of the spirit of just enjoying the moment that that I’m in, which is the life I’m in.

Bill Gasiamis 31:32
Yeah, I find, I do that does make sense. A lot of people would resonate with that. I find the similar things where I could go, you know, and just spend time now, having been to Paris and and understanding of the cafe culture there, and what you do when you go to a cafe, you just sit and you just observe and you watch them. I bring that, I go there, and I bring that back to Australia and Melbourne, where I go. And there’s a beautiful place that I love in in our central business district, our city, and I’ll just sit there for sometimes three, four hours with my wife, other times on my own.

Bill Gasiamis 32:07
And I’ll just do that, I’ll just observe people, and then people will come and they’ll do their thing. And often people who are looking for some spare change, or for whatever is, will come up, and they’re really interesting conversations, which I never had before with people like that. And it’s like they’re going to get a few coins, because I always go into the central businesses with coins in my pocket, whatever’s lying around the house, just so that I can have something to hand out when they approach. And sometimes there’s a big bunch of them, sometimes there’s a small amount.

Bill Gasiamis 32:40
And these guys are struggling even more to get a little bit of money these days, because everyone taps their cards or their phone to pay for things, so they don’t carry as much cash as they used to. So we have converse, I have conversations with these people that I never would have had before that are just enlightening, and forget about the drama and the trauma that’s got them on the street, that’s making them ask for money like you have a conversation with somebody, you just get a completely different perspective and you get the sense of positivity.

Bill Gasiamis 33:19
And even in that person’s situation, they still are looking to connect with people, to say thank you, to say ‘Yep, all I’ve got to do is get another 10, 15, $20 and I’ll be able to get a room tonight. And there, they have a goal, they have an outcome. They have something they need to achieve., they’re grateful when they achieve it. They share the same experiences and feelings as us. And there were people that I would have just walked past before. Sure, in a lot of European cities, and even in Australia, there are people who are scamming the system and are doing that.

Bill Gasiamis 33:57
Because they know that people will give, and then that they get to take people’s money, and they’re not in that situation, but some people just are in that situation, you can tell, right? And that’s the thing for me, being able to just sit still in one place and just have observed people, and have people come to me and people walk past me, is it just a completely different thing that I never did before. It’s kind of under the banner of people watching, but it’s more. There’s more depth to it than just people watching.

Mike Kent 34:31
Yeah, I can agree more, and I take that one step further. It’s like I go swimming every day, and on Tuesdays, there is the disabled people come and swim. And we can only swim from 12 to 2pm, adults, right? And then the disabled people are there from 12:30 to 1:30 and only on in one lane. And I just happen to be in that lane, yeah. And I’m swimming with like, you know, one arm and one half leg, something and, I can swim quite, I can do a kilometer quite easily.

Mike Kent 34:57
And then they are all these disabled people there, and I’m encouraging them when I’m there on the end, come on, you go. Got like five strokes to go. You know, one and don’t give up. Don’t go up and like and the smiles of joy and happiness. These guys are actual these men and women are actually experiencing that somebody else is actually encouraging them, other than the meta Nagel, which is the the life card person from the top.

Mike Kent 35:44
Who’s actually in the pool and there, and he’s got a problem as well, but we don’t know what it is, but he’s got nice smile, and he just helping and encouraging us is it’s a wonderful kind of unity and ambience and atmosphere to be in.

Bill Gasiamis 36:03
Such difference in life, such a small thing, massive positive things.

Mike Kent 36:08
And I happened, and I’m going to meet them on next Monday, actually, in talk with a guy. And, you know, little things happen after them, and just be an inspiration, talk to them, and, you know, hang with them and I think that’s so rewarding, and that’s certainly something I would never do before the accident, but now there’s so much pleasure to be got from seeing their smiles.

Mike Kent 36:36
And I would say it’s smiling from the inside out, yeah, where they can actually just resonate with you and have that kind of like sunshine that’s just emanating out of them, just by being with you or hearing you, and just them actually understanding that somebody else is in a similar situation and gets it, and that’s so important.

Bill Gasiamis 37:08
Isn’t it ridiculous how much life we were missing before?

Mike Kent 37:12
Unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. I am here for a reason, I didn’t go to the side because it wasn’t my time. And all of what has happened to me has happened to me for a reason, and so that I can now, I’ve found my passion now and that’s great, but I had to go through all of this to get there, and that’s still hard to stomach. I still hard to to swallow, to be honest. But because I live in the present moment, because of the the accident, and my memory is not quite as good as it was, I’m almost like stuck in Groundhog Day, right? Every day.

Mike Kent 38:06
But that’s okay, because that means I’m just living so much in the present. I can’t change the past is what it is, and the future is going to be based on what I’m going to be doing now. And that’s okay with me, and if I need to know it, I will. I’m serendipity happens to me quite a lot, and so I work out where I need to be and what I need to do, just because that’s what happens and that’s that’s okay.

The Path Towards Acceptance And Post-Traumatic Growth

Bill Gasiamis 38:40
It was traumatic what you went through? Yeah? I mean, definitely traumatic. and see, you’re describing the steps towards post traumatic growth like it’s this concept completely people talk about that was given a term or was given the name post traumatic growth in the late 90s by two researchers. I forget their first names, but Tedeschi and Calhoun, they’re American researchers, and probably not American surnames, but they lived and grew in America, and they came up with the steps, and I was experiencing post traumatic growth through my journey.

Bill Gasiamis 39:22
You know, I’m 12 years out now, but through my journey, and not having a word for it, a label for I couldn’t describe to people all the things that we’re discussing now that I had done, achieved, learnt as a result of this stroke, the windows of opportunity, the doors that opened, the podcast, the book, and I didn’t know, I didn’t have this term, right? And then I wrote my book.

Bill Gasiamis 39:24
My books all about post-traumatic growth, but I didn’t talk about post-traumatic growth in the book because I hadn’t discovered the work by Tedeschi and Calhoun yet to say ‘Yeah, exactly what I’m talking about guys, because these are the steps, and that’s what I wrote about. And I’ve got the steps on the screen here. Now I’m going to read them to you. Tell me if these resonate right? So you’ve had the trauma, the adversity, and then there’s been an emotional struggle and distress.

What Is Post-Traumatic Growth?

Bill Gasiamis 40:17
You’ve had the cognitive processing and the reflection time you’ve seemed to have gained acceptance and integration of the whole situation. You definitely have new meaning and perspective in this space. You’ve you’ve seen growth and transformation, and within that growth, there is appreciation for life. There’s a deeper relating to others. There’s realization of more personal inner strength. There’s discovery of new paths and opportunities, new possibilities. And there’s spiritual change, a deeper connection to spiritual spirituality, or a shift in religious beliefs?

Mike Kent 41:04
Absolutely, 100% Yeah, it’s and it’s funny, because we’re not adhering to a script. We’re not adhering to a kind of a dogma. This is natural, it’s just happening as you just said, you know.

Bill Gasiamis 41:25
But you’ve taken some positive steps right to that it leads to. So there’s some things that you do that other people do that lead to this.

Mike Kent 41:38
Yeah, I mean, I have a Facebook group that started with one person, and it’s called impairing disability, but I had such a hard time accepting that I help disabled people right, because I didn’t consider myself disabled. I used to call them disadvantaged or uncertain people, something like that. I can’t remember what it was, I couldn’t use the word this disability till someone said ‘Mike, it’s not about you, it’s about them. What language do they use about themselves? Bingo, of course, it’s disabled because, you know, with and then I change it to disabled than it do differently abled.

Mike Kent 42:43
Right? And I thought, then it just be, it’s okay. They say we, I actually help disabled and able bodied people. Now it’s everybody. Isn’t that because, it’s people, exactly just people, right? Because we’re all individuals. We’re all we’re all unique, we’re all different in one way or another, and yet, we all have we’ve got strengths and weaknesses, because that’s part of the human kind of a being that we actually are. We can’t have just good parts without the bad parts, although we would never call them good parts, you know.

Bill Gasiamis 43:25
People are injured human being and people are all traumatized. They’re all got some injuries., they’re all got some wounds. Some of them are not visible, right? There’s a lot of invisible disabilities. Mine are all invisible, all the stuff that I live with nobody sees. It’s the pain and the muscles, it’s the left side numbness and all that kind of stuff. And there’s the assumption that you’re, you’re all good now, you know, and it’s like, I’m all good, but I’m still physically, I’m feeling these things, you know.

Bill Gasiamis 43:55
At the moment, I’m having a few months of, like, really difficulty with my left hand and my left leg and the way that it all feels, but the level of annoyance that it’s causing, and the suffering and the pain has increased a little bit, but it doesn’t look that way to anybody else. Nobody else can see that. So I can’t describe it, I can’t bring people on board to understand, I can’t do any of that. And that’s people, most of us are going through something that they can’t describe or, you know, know how to explain, or bring you on board with.

Bill Gasiamis 44:38
So in the end, it’s like, okay. When I coach people for stroke recovery, there’s some clients that I help on a monthly basis, their caregivers, the people who care for them, are just as traumatized and injured and wounded as the person that they care for.

Mike Kent 45:00
Actually caring for, thank you.

Bill Gasiamis 44:38
And sometimes they’re both on that call, and other times it’s just a caregiver, and other times it’s just strokes survival. I mean, it’s just about people. In the end, that’s all it is.

Bill Gasiamis 45:14
I use the word stroke to resonate with certain group of people because I get them and they get me. So that’s the only reason why I’ve narrowed it to stroke survivors, you know, really.

Mike Kent 45:27
It’s the label that I wrote a post about this, but label that the society gives us, because I actually don’t believe that we are all disabled. It’s a society that gives us that label, why? Because they don’t make the handrail on the left hand side going up the stairs, if I can’t hold on to it, they don’t make, they don’t make lifts wide enough to feel will best to fit wheelchairs in because and so ‘Oh, it’s a disabled access or disabled entry? No, I totally disagree with that. So it’s now just about understanding that you mentioned invisible disabilities 80 there was an article that came out in France.

Mike Kent 46:16
I think 80% of all disabilities are invisible. And that’s amazing. 80% that means, and you if you actually put that out to the world, you know, that means, like 8 out of 10 people are carrying something, stuff, right, that nobody can actually see. And even if it’s not that number, it just makes you think of the enormity, right? And as you said earlier, that everybody, everyone is carrying their own set of ailments or difficulties and but we don’t get to see them.

Bill Gasiamis 46:59
Was ignorance bliss.

Mike Kent 47:02
It’s a good question, really good. What is naivety? Is naivety bliss, right? I don’t know which one it, but I think we are better, knowing this, I’m certainly better. I’m not doing I don’t I do on do question it if I would have this level of interest if I hadn’t have had the accident. I have to assume that might not be the case. But I can be just as much as you can be a voice in my little little circle, and that can then emanate, and if we can just have people be able to understand 1% 5% more than they did yesterday, that’s a result, right?

Mike Kent 48:02
Because then that would then cascade across everywhere, and then the world we’re better place we’ve got. We’re never going to go from 0 to 100 in a day. We it doesn’t work like that, we put one foot forward each time, and it’s the best foot forward at that particular time, and we can only do the best we can so and I believe, really, that it’s about progress, not perfectionism. That’s what I’ve thought about now.

Bill Gasiamis 48:33
Fair enough, you’re never perfect anyway. There’s no such thing as perfect.

Mike Kent 48:39
There isn’t.

Bill Gasiamis 48:40
Yeah, but there could always be an improvement in anything, and people who try to accomplish perfection really suffer.

Mike Kent 48:52
Don’t they? Are you thinking of anyone or people in particular?

Bill Gasiamis 49:00
Yeah, I do. I do think of somebody. I mentioned the person, but I’m thinking of somebody in some areas that perfectionism has in later life has become apparent to be an issue for that person, and they’ve been able to understand what, how it gets in the way of, and it’s usually in the space of in academia, like in an academic space.

Mike Kent 49:29
That’s interesting, you said in later life.

Bill Gasiamis 49:31
So younger, they had the same tendencies. And it was always when trying to deliver something that was going to be reviewed by somebody else critically. And perhaps the reason for the perfection was that they wanted to avoid the discomfort of being told that. That’s not good enough, or you haven’t done enough work, and the confrontation that that might create, and that person is not somebody who particularly enjoys confrontation, so avoids confrontation, not that I enjoy it, but I don’t mind a little bit of confrontation in that.

Bill Gasiamis 49:33
So that’s just to give you a bit of an idea of the difference what I mean by that. So then in later life, as that person sort of just matured more and more and done more study and realized that sometimes in academia, the perfectionism like for the last sentence on a document or an article or whatever that could take three hours, and that much effort in that last line was not going to be the outcome wasn’t going to be a better last line, and it wasn’t going to make the difference to the entire document and that at some stage you have to just write the line and hand it in.

Mike Kent 51:10
It’s so true, but you can I was in marketing, like fast moving consumer goods or consumer product marketing, whatever, but grocery brands and the amount of time that we would spend on refining a sentence, it’s like, what? Just get it out there, put messy action out there. You know, just no one’s going to notice it. It’s like, they’ll just take the whole message, right? They won’t pick each and every word out, and they all that’s not you shouldn’t put ‘a, you should put ‘an instead of a ‘the, you know, whatever.

Bill Gasiamis 51:53
Yeah, the posts that I’ve seen, the most commented on, like in social media, are ones where there is an error in the spelling, and it might be completely and totally obvious, and I think that’s the point of it. So in so people might miss the actual idea of whatever the post is on about on that particular but they pick up on the error, and then they they feel the need to comment about you made a spelling mistake, and then that post has way more traction than necessary. But because of that spelling mistake, people get caught up and worked up over it, and it’s just interesting.

Bill Gasiamis 52:38
And it’s your, I imagine your team would have developed the campaign to have a goal, you would have structured. It would have had all of those things already embedded. So it’s like robust. It’s a really good campaign. The last line is not going to make or break it, and “A” or “The” probably does the same thing anyway, and no one reads, whether it’s an “A” or “The”, or swaps them around, or does any of that work.

Mike Kent 52:38
Because you only need to be you need to have 70% comprehension of what you are actually reading or viewing to actually get an A gist of the message. And then at that time, you’re forming the idea in your head anyway of what it is which is actually different to what is actually being said anyway. So never going to get it, you know, it’s a it just doesn’t make it’s a waste of time.

Being Your Own Critic

Bill Gasiamis 53:34
I have a painting company, and we’ve been painting people’s homes and buildings and commercial property and all that kind of stuff for many years, for about 20 years, and at the beginning there was, it was me, and I needed to make sure that everything was done perfectly, so that there was no no complaints by the customer. So I would spot thing is that nobody would notice or spot that weren’t even errors or imperfections that I would then ‘Okay, I’ll touch that up. I’ll go touch that up. I’ll do that, and then I would hand it over. And in fact, it would be a great outcome.

Bill Gasiamis 54:14
The client would say ‘That’s fantastic. But then I met somebody who said to me, like ‘Only you, only you would notice that nobody else would notice that. That’s like a perfect wall, only you’re noticing that. But it’s not something that somebody else pick. And it’s like ‘Oh, okay, so how do we handle how do I handle the end of the job then? So the idea was, tell the customer to go around and critique your work a day or two before you finish, so you’ve done the majority of the work, and a day or two before you finish.

Bill Gasiamis 54:46
You give them the permission to go and totally critique it, even the obvious things that we haven’t finished yet, put them on the list. They very rarely come back with a list, because our work is really good anyway, and the things that I know, that I see, they don’t see, or they don’t care if they see it, right? So they didn’t even come up with a list. They barely come up with a list. They might have two or three things, the obvious things are always on there, yep. And then there’ll be other little bits and pieces that are on there that I knew were there that I was going to touch up or do.

Bill Gasiamis 55:29
But they pick those things. And then the things that I don’t know about, that sorry, that they don’t know about, that I know is not in their expectation to be done or is not necessary, or is not part of the job, or whatever. So it changed my mind completely. Is when I give the other person the opportunity to look at my work and criticize it or not, they don’t really feel the need to, and it’s, it’s a it’s a really good pass.

Bill Gasiamis 55:59
So we kind of apply this principle about 90%, achieving 90% sort of doing it to 90% of our ability instead of 100% is good enough because it’s beyond what most customers expect. Anyway, it’s such a strange thing when we’ve got and then if customers said ‘Oh, by the way, I did pick up on this or that, well then it’s cool. ‘Oh, great, now I can do it and actually meet your expectation further.

Mike Kent 56:33
It’s like, I don’t know if it is Google’s tagline or was Google’s tagline, but good enough is good enough. Totally abide by that.

Bill Gasiamis 56:46
So important for people to like grasp that concept personally that you know now that you’ve got energy to conserve, and you don’t want to be using up your energy on things that are not supporting your recovery and helping you have a really great day, or getting to your exercise or to your gym session, or to your counseling session, or whatever like, yeah, it’s really important to not waste time and effort and energy into things that are only going to make you go backwards.

Mike Kent 57:18
I agree, I was just having a conversation with somebody just yesterday, and they were saying to me, I’m having a really bad day. And I said, but you’re not, are you really? It’s never, ever a bad day. It’s a bad moment in a day, right? I have 17 different emotions every day, and on the of those 17, one or two are not very good, right? But they’re never, it’s never the whole day, right? So we need to stop, like, actually saying those things, because we’re convincing ourselves that we actually are having a really bad day, and then you’re just, like, layering on the different elements.

Mike Kent 57:54
And they all and, no, just stop, you know, just understand it’s bad moment and you come out of that moment. It’s like, I say that you can always you have a down. I never say ups and downs. I say downs and ups, you know, I want to end on and up. I don’t want to end up on a down. But it’s silly little things like that, you know, that make the difference, and it resonates with people. They actually understand that ‘Oh, okay, I haven’t thought about now. They’re just thinking that, ‘Okay I don’t have a bad day, or I want to end on an up.

Mike Kent 58:27
And I do want to, actually, whenever there is a darkness, there’s always a light follows that. I don’t know how long it’ll be, or my three day, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days, whatever, but it will be light, yeah, and it’s about trying to have people to understand that there is beauty all around us and to actually perceive it, live it, breathe it, and recognize it.

Mike Kent 58:59
I think that’s is important, and I can do this, or we can do this because we’ve changed ourselves, you know, and we’ve seen that the difference between where we were and where we are and how we got to where we were, how we are. So, that’s motivational, that’s inspiring for me to be able to actually recognize that and help other people to to recognize that.

Bill Gasiamis 59:32
I like what you’re saying, because what you’re talking is your new default setting, that’s where you go most of the time.

Mike Kent 59:39
Exactly, exactly.

Bill Gasiamis 59:40
It’s not where you always are, but it’s where you default to all the time. And that’s a really good thing, like to be able to default to that version of yourself instead of the angry, depressed, emotional, whatever, which is, you know, we’re there we go there, we deal with that. We go through that, we get through that down, we go to the up, and we get through that darkness and we go to the light like the whole thing.

Mike Kent 1:00:08
Yeah, totally agree with that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:12
Have you in the last five years been able to get back to work?

Becoming A Recovery Coach

Mike Kent 1:00:15
No. Now I’m a recovery coach to help these people overcome anxiety and reclaim their lives so and I joined the I got trained in the Jay Shetty school, and then I’m now on another program, and it’s high impact coaching, and it’s phenomenal, really is phenomenal. And it’s all about being present or honest or being there for the other person, 100% for the other person. Yeah, it’s not about me. It never was, never will be. You were always there for the other person, what? However they are showing up, whatever they say, and it’s like you.

Mike Kent 1:01:11
I was a consultant beforehand, and before I was always, whatever is your problem ‘Okay, I’ll go away and I write it up, and here is the document, here is the CD, whatever. Here is the drive, and they put it in the third draw, if they don’t implement it, and it’s forgotten about, so this isn’t coaching. Is not all about giving people solutions. People already have the solutions in them, right? It’s about actually drawing it out and having them in their own time, understand where they are and and how they’re doing.

Mike Kent 1:01:50
And all of that came from I used to work in Chile, right, which is I lived a long, long Mohammed time ago, and I flew across halfway across the world. I didn’t actually know where Chile was, and from England, and got to San Diego, and I was in a company truck going to the factory with one of the other senior brand guys, and he goes ‘You know, we don’t want you here, Mike. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. ‘No, don’t take it the wrong way, but we don’t want you here.

Mike Kent 1:01:49
I’m gonna, well, I’m sorry, but I think I might be taking the wrong way, you know, as a really horrible thing to say, Oh no, no. I’m not saying you, you personally, and you what you represent, and the term of the phrase, and it was all about, they want to do things and learn how to do things in their own time. They don’t want to be given the book and told how to do it, because they don’t actually learn.

Mike Kent 1:02:54
And so I learned that from a very young age, and that stayed with me, and I right now, as a coach, exactly what just you ask questions and know that the other person has the wherewithal to actually find their answers when they are ready to find them.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:11
You might have the tools, but they’ll be needing them at different stages. They’re not necessarily going to be needing them when you turn up with a tool book and go here, do this.

Mike Kent 1:03:23
No, no, no, great. And you don’t say that you can do whatever you want, but you just can’t do it all at the same time.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:35
It’s no different to a book. Is it really like my book? I wrote a book. It’s has a weird title, the unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. Well, it’s it’s full of 10 steps, or 10 tools, or whatever you want to call them, and if you do all of those, that’s what people did. And all those people achieve post-traumatic growth and are doing amazing things to change their life. I’ve had these types of conversations with them as well. There’s really deep, meaningful conversations, but nobody did it in the order that I wrote the chapters in.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:10
And nobody did it in the timeline that I did it. And nobody, you know, everyone did it in their own way, and they did it in their own time, and they came to terms with the different steps. It took longer for some steps, it took a shorter amount of time for other steps. But they all, they all found their new default way of being in the light in their life, and we just happened to all come together at the same time. So they had already been on their journeys. We found each other at the same time, and then we were able to unpack that and talk about that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:47
But I’m sure that if I bumped into one of those people, which I had done a couple of times, and said ‘Do this, they would have thought, get lost. I don’t do that, don’t tell me what to do, and I was the same. And coaching, what you’re talking about is really about holding the space for the other person. It’s just about facilitating whatever is about to unfold or needs to be discussed, or whatever’s going to happen. It’s just about literally facilitating them. And it’s not even holding the hand.

Mike Kent 1:04:47
I say it’s a catalyst, you are we’re a catalyst. So we just, you know, it’s the washing machine, so you put the powder in, and you spins, and now comes a close kind of thing, though, and we’re just helping them spin faster or better or cleaner.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:47
Yeah, I love it as we come to the end of the interview, because I know it’s late where you are now, tell me about the what’s been the hardest thing about stroke for you?

The Hardest Thing About The Stroke

Mike Kent 1:06:02
I don’t think the question is asked in the past, is what it is, because I live with it every single day, the first point when I wake up, I have three seconds, two seconds or whatever of reality that ‘Oh well, I wake up, or new day, and then it’s that and then I get out of it five seconds later. But that is still there, it is a reminder that now I’ve managed I’ve managed it to become my mantra, to spur me on, to actually help and serve other people. But there is no denying that. You know, I say 17 emotions in a day.

Mike Kent 1:07:01
You know, I still cry and I get upset in personal moments pretty much daily. But that’s okay, because I actually believe now that tears are coming out of my body. So I’m actually getting rid of the poison out of the body, and then I can actually put something better in it. Problem is I’m still in Groundhog Day, so the next day I’m still crying, but there is so much richness. But I would be, I will be, it would not be me to say that this is a perfect life. We got the perfection, if there isn’t, it’s progress. And I accept that is what I am doing and how I’m doing it.

Mike Kent 1:07:55
I love what I’m doing and I love how I’m doing it. Would I like to do, be doing something else? It doesn’t matter, because that’s not what I am doing, but it doesn’t it does cross my mind, but I don’t give it the time and day or time and space to actually fester. But so I think that the worst part of it was the very beginning, when I came out of the coma, and the first two months, three months, when I was in a wheelchair and I just I didn’t, I couldn’t find myself. I didn’t know where I was, what I was doing, who was meant to be.

Mike Kent 1:08:39
This was not what was supposed to happen, you know, it wasn’t even my question of fault, but I couldn’t even blame myself, you know, because it it had been done to me. Yeah, and I thought ‘Why? So many times I ask that question, or I have asked myself that question, but I’ve learned to realize you don’t need to answer it. You just need to be able to move on from it and resource yourself from it, to move forward and bounce forward and do whatever you want to do, and how you want to do it in the best possible way you can, and that, for me, it’s service.

Mike Kent 1:09:26
So it gives service to others. I think that also has been difficult, because I think 10 years ago, I don’t think I would have said that, certainly not 20 years ago, but yeah, it is funny how life changes. Funny how you roll with the punches and that you actually you embrace what you what what you’re given and what you have, and deal with and do the best with it that you possibly can. And I don’t think anyone can ask any more of you than that.

What I’ve Learned From The Stroke

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:01
Yeah, very comprehensive answer. Thank you. What is something that stroke has taught you?

Mike Kent 1:10:09
I think the first word that comes into mind is patience, and I am not a I was never patient before. I mean, you asked my mom or whatever, like my twin brother, we are always like, but now I’m less, much less, but I’m still a little bit of silver, a bit of gun COVID kind of thing. But no, I think walking slower, being patient, reflecting, being doing meditation, doing mindfulness, you know, having my morning routine, realizing that I am not able to do as much as I could do or was doing before in my life.

Mike Kent 1:10:58
But I get to do what I want to do, and that’s a real difference, like the got to do and get to do. I really love that nuance, because I suddenly think, okay, I get to do, you know, this podcast, right? I was so looking forward to this, because I never been on a podcast before other one, and it’s like, it’s really exciting. And and that’s that that’s great for me, right? But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be upset that I’m not doing 85 other things during my day. I’ve accepted that, you know, I do the best I possibly can. So I hope that answers the question.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:42
Yeah, patience. I mean, yeah, that’s a great answer, even if without the explanation. I mean, it’s a great answer, and common, very common answer that people get. What would you like to say to the people watching and listening, who are all stroke survivors and paying attention to you at the moment.

Advice From A Stroke Survivor

Mike Kent 1:12:09
That we are all in this together, we are a unified group of people. There is not one person in my eyes that is better or bigger, or what, bolder than anyone else. We all have our stories, and all our stories resonate with someone out there in the world, and that’s what’s important, is to get the stories out there to show others who are less abled or are not for whatever reason, or are not as far ahead in their journey as we are, that it is possible everything is figure outable, right?

Mike Kent 1:12:52
It really, really is. It’s never, ever the end, I think that’s that’s so important is to have. It’s not about having hope. It’s about believing that what you have is makes you unique and makes you very, very special, right to the people who love you. And that’s enormous, I love that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:16
I love that too. On that note, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Mike Kent 1:13:21
I know. Thank you. It’s been my pleasure, really has been you’re you’re a fabulous host and very insightful and very brilliant. Thank you very much, really enjoyed it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:33
Well. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. Mike’s story reminds us that while we can’t change the decisions or events of the past, we can find purpose and strength by focusing on the present and embracing growth. His insights about resilience, the power of mindset and helping others, are lessons we can all learn from if you found this episode helpful, I’d love for you to leave a comment, like and subscribe on YouTube. It really helps get these stories out to more people who need them.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:12
And if you’re listening on Spotify or iTunes, a five-star review would mean the world to me. It helps others discover the podcast and connect with our community. Remember, check out my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, available on Amazon or recoveryafterstroke.com/book, and if you’d like to join our Patreon community, you can find all the details at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:42
Thanks again for being here and remember, no matter where you are on your recovery journey, you’re not alone until next time. Take care and thanks for listening.

The post You Can’t Change the Past: How Mike Kent Turned a Hemorrhagic Stroke into Growth appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.