Imagine hearing this from your cardiologist:

“There’s a small chance of sudden death.”

Especially when you’re someone who runs 6–10 miles every day, passes every stress test, and feels perfectly healthy.

In this episode, Ray shares the story of discovering he has Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM)—a genetic condition where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick. Despite scoring 14–15 METs on stress tests and having what doctors described as an extremely strong heart, the diagnosis came with a reality check: a condition that can cause serious rhythm issues and has landed him in the ER multiple times, including during a recent family trip.

But the biggest shift wasn’t medical—it was mental.

Instead of asking “Why is this happening to me?”, Ray made a deliberate shift to “Why is this happening for me?”—a reframing that changed how he thinks about health, work, leadership, and adversity.

This episode isn’t just about a heart condition. It’s about how reframing adversity can change how you experience it—and how the hardest moments in life often create the most important shifts.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. What Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) is and why it often goes undetected
2. Why someone who runs 6–10 miles daily and passes stress tests can still have a serious heart condition
3. How discovering a hereditary condition early can protect future generations
4. Why shifting from “Why me?” to “Why for me?” changes how you experience adversity
5. The mindset exercise that helps reframe setbacks in health, business, or life
6. Why slowing down intensity can actually maintain—or improve—productivity

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YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

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This podcast is where Ray thinks through hard decisions — especially when the usual playbooks stop working.

If that approach resonates, that’s what you’ll find more of here.

New to the show? The “Start Here” playlist outlines what the podcast is about and how to approach it:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/a7577a6f-15da-4521-b214-35e4e47f320b

Now, I do have to tell you, right?

There is a small chance of sudden death.

And that is actually what my cardiologist told me about a year and a half ago.

And honestly, like, I reacted kind of the way that you would.

You would expect.

Backstory here real quick is, you know, I went in for some tests with my primary care doctor.

He had actually gotten hearing aids or stethoscope with, like, a hearing aid or something built into it so he could hear that he hasn't heard, even though I've been going there for, you know, over 15.

And he's like, hey, has anyone ever told you you have a murmur?

I said, well, you would have been the person to tell me.

And, no, you haven't.

So, you know, we.

That kind of sets off, like, a number of different, like, tests, like, kind of standard stuff, and, you know, end up finding out along the way that I. I have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

My heart muscle is thicker than normal, which sounds good, and it actually is stronger than it should be.

And so when I.

When they said, well, your heart is too strong, my wife's like, can you please just not tell them like that?

But it is.

It's like, actually, it's.

It's thicker.

It's stronger than normal because of that.

It actually, you know, causes some issues with, like, blood flow and rhythm and, you know, flexibility and, you know, when it.

When it beats and all that.

So the ironic part here is every test that I do it, since finding out about this and in.

During the.

Even prior to that, shows like I'm healthy as fuck.

Like, my.

My heart is healthy.

It's like I. I walk slash, run six to ten miles a day, seven days a week.

I, like, they have me do stress tests, and I knock the COVID off the ball, you know, like, it's 14, 15.

Met something like that.

Like, it was.

They were like, all right, that's clearly not a problem.

But I've just got this genetic thing where my heart's just built a little bit differently, and there's not really a ton that I can do about it, right?

Other than be aware, because, like, most days, like, basically every day, I'm fine, you know, but, you know, a couple of times, it has landed me in the E.R.

actually, just, like, a couple weeks ago, my.

My family and I are coming back from Salt Lake City.

We get to the airport with the kids, and my heart rate just starts going all over the place.

I get lightheaded and kind of tingly and like that.

My wife gets the paramedics that take me to an ER and, you know, super, super fun vacation memory.

But all is.

All is fine, right?

They.

They get it.

They get it all settled and.

And you're good to go.

And when I first got this diagnosis for hcm, my immediate thought is, why is this happening to me, right?

Like, I. I do everything right.

I walk, I run, I eat good.

My heart is literally stronger than normal.

I have, like, athlete's heart.

Like, it's.

It's enlarged because of the amount of cardio that I do.

Like, how in the fuck do I end up with.

With a heart condition?

And then I caught myself.

I thought, why not me, right?

Because here's the thing, the flip for me, the reframe for me has been, this isn't happening to me.

This is happening for me.

I found out about it early, like, in my.

In my mid-40s.

Hey, that's great.

Like, now I know what to look for.

Like, this is.

I think this is the kind of thing that kills people when they don't know about it, right?

So I.

So I know about it.

That's awesome.

And it's forced me to slow down and pay a lot more attention to my body.

Like, there's a certain things from, you know, from an activity standpoint, priority standpoint, that I've elected to, you know, I'm.

I slow down, you know, as a result of all this.

And that's good, right?

I needed that, by the way.

It hasn't made me get any less productive.

Just don't carry as much intensity and urgency as I do.

And interesting.

Same output.

And it's hereditary.

So me finding out about it means we can now look at, you know, my son's like, hey, is there.

Is there something here to be aware of?

And, you know, HCM is one of the leading factors in kids who die of, like, cardiac arrest because they're unaware of shit.

So that.

That's also good.

Like, so there.

There are good things that have happened as a result of this.

And every time I've gone to the ER that, like, something has happened, my team has just stepped up.

They've crushed it.

Like, every single time that something has happened.

And I've been out of pocket for a couple days, for a few days, I come back and I'm like, dude, I don't know if I even have a job here, because my team kicks ass, right?

Which is exactly what I need to build the kind of business that I want to build anyway, so when I reframe this from this is happening to me to this is happening for me.

It completely shifts, not just how I think about it, but how I feel about it.

I actually embrace that.

And I take it from something that's going to like, tighten up the muscles, give me anxiety, give me stress, into something that's like, hey, this is great.

Like, I'm actually relaxed as a result of it.

And the reason I'm sharing this is because we all have things like this.

Like, it's like we all have some unfavorable type of like, circumstance or something.

Maybe it's a, it's a health thing, maybe it's a relationship deal, maybe it's a setback in your business.

Whatever it is, when they happen, there's like an immediate knee jerk reaction that I had at first, which is like, why is this happening to me?

And the thing is, like on all of these things we can reframe them to, it's happening for me because if you actually think about the biggest problems, the biggest challenges, the biggest obstacles that you've had in life, right, like the ones that, that really mattered, you just kind of like scan your, your life history.

Most of them you end up being grateful for, right?

Like you have, you know, a relationship, you know, somebody, you know that, that you really shouldn't have been with kind of falls apart and it leads you to getting, you know, finding the person that you're, that you're with now, like the partner of your dreams or you get fired from a job you didn't really want to be at, but at the time you're like, oh my God, this, this is terrible.

What am I going to do?

You end up starting your own business and now you're, now you're grateful that that thing happened or, you know, maybe you got in trouble, got arrested, like something when you were younger or you hit some kind of rock bottom, something like that.

And that ends up being the thing that you leverage and turn in.

Like you, you turn your life around.

And I, like, if I look back on most of the things like that in my life, I say the biggest challenges actually end up being good if you just zoom out far enough at that time though.

Like, if I said, like, if, you know, after that initial breakup with that person that, you know, without knowing that your, your, your true love was right around the corner, you'd be like, no, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I don't know how I'm gonna get on.

Like, but it, but it, but it's good, right?

The thing is, you don't have to wait 5 years, 10 years, 15 years to actually see it that way, because you can, you can literally just make the choice to see it differently now.

And one of the best ways that this, like, this was, was kind of imprinted on me was a while back, I had a friend had me do this exercise, and he said, take something that was like a low point in your life, like, reflect on, you know, on your life and rewrite that story with all of the good things that happened as a result of it.

Right?

And his advice, like, actually physically write it down, like, take the time, take a couple hours, take an event that was, that was a challenge, that was an obstacle, something that wasn't good, and simply rewrite the story and think about what transpired as a result of that, that was positive.

In what ways did it contribute to some growth?

What ways did it actually, did it help you?

Were there, were there benefits?

So, like, not just to think about it differently, but I actually sit down and write it out.

And once you do this, once it actually, it reframes that entire experience.

But you actually go through that process and you go, hmm, like it's.

You.

Once you see that event differently, having thought about it differently, and you actually rewrite that story, you do it once.

You can do it almost anytime you want, right?

Because what you're, what you do is just kind of re.

Retrain your brain to think this bad event, but these things came from it.

And instead of having to wait 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, just like fast forward, just pretend it's 10 years from now and you're looking back on this thing and, and saying, yeah, but you know what?

I'm really glad that it happens.

Even if you don't know all of the good that's going to happen as a result of it, I can almost promise you that in some way, shape or form, you're going to look back and there's going to be, you're going to look at it differently five years from now.

Instead of waiting five years to do that, just do it now, right?

So if you're, if you're dealing with something like really tough right now, something that you feel is happening to you, health, business, relationship, whatever it is, just try that exercise.

Like, you know, take, take a minute, reframe.

What are all, what are the benefits that are coming from this?

What are the possibilities that could happen?

What are the doors that this could potentially open and, you know, make the decision to say, this isn't happening to me, like, this is happening for me, and it's because it's there right.

Like it is.

It is a conscious choice and sometimes it's easier said than done.

But I can tell you this, like just using my, you know, this heart thing as, as an example, it wasn't something that came naturally.

My knee jerk reaction was this sucks.

But I'm already seeing the benefits as as a result of it.

And I, in a lot of ways, I think I'm making the experience of that thing more positive simply by reframing it from the get go.

So I hope that helps.

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