Shownotes
"There is a small chance of sudden death."
That’s a hell of a thing to hear from your cardiologist when you’re a guy who runs ten miles a day and feels healthy as fuck. One minute I’m "knocking the cover off the ball" on my stress tests, and the next, I’m being told I have Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy—a condition where my heart is literally too strong for its own good. It’s a diagnosis that could have sent me into a spiral of anxiety, especially after a recent trip to the ER during a family vacation, but it actually led me to the most important mental shift I’ve ever made.
In this episode, I’m sharing the raw details of my heart journey and the specific reframe that changed everything: the moment I stopped asking "Why is this happening to me?" and started asking "Why is this happening for me?" I dive into how this diagnosis actually protected my sons, empowered my team to crush it while I was out of pocket, and forced me to trade frantic intensity for sustainable productivity. I’m also walking you through a powerful exercise to help you take your own current "low point"—whether it’s in your health, your business, or your relationships—and rewrite the story in real-time. You don’t have to wait ten years to be grateful for a challenge; you can choose to see the benefit of the obstacle today.
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Welcome to The Ray J. Green Show, your destination for tips on sales, strategy, and self-mastery from an operator, not a guru.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcripts
Now, I do have to tell you, Ray, 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, I reacted kind of the way that you would expect. Backstory here real quick is I went in for some tests with my primary care doctor. He had actually gotten hearing aids or a stethoscope with like a hearing aid or something built into it, so he could hear shit that he hasn't heard even though I've been going there for over 15 years. 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, that kind of set off a number of different tests like kind of standard stuff and end up finding out along the way that I have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. My heart muscle is thicker than normal, which sounds good and actually is stronger than it should be. And so, when they said, "Well, your heart is too strong," my wife was like, "Can you please just not tell him shit like that?" But it is. It's actually thicker and stronger than normal, and because of that, it actually causes some issues with blood flow and rhythm and flexibility when it beats and all that shit.
So, the ironic part here is every test that I do, since finding out about this and during the period even prior to that, shows I'm healthy as fuck. Like, my heart is healthy. I walk/run 6 to 10 miles a day, seven days a week. They have me do stress tests and I knock the cover off the ball. It was 14, 15 METs, something like that. They were like, "Alright, 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 other than be aware, because most days, I'm fine. But a couple of times it has landed me in the ER.
Actually, just like a couple weeks ago, 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 shit like that. My wife gets the paramedics. They take me to an ER and super fun vacation memory, but all is fine. They get it all settled 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 do everything right. I walk, I run, I eat good. My heart is literally stronger than normal. I have an athlete's heart; it's enlarged because of the amount of cardio that I do. Like, how in the fuck do I end up with a heart condition? And then I caught myself. And I thought, "Why not me?" 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 mid-40s. Hey, that's great! Now I know what to look for. This is actually the kind of thing that kills people when they don't know about it. So, I know about it, that's awesome. It's forced me to slow down and pay a lot more attention to my body. Like, there are certain things from an activity standpoint, priority standpoint, that I've elected to slow down as a result of all this. And that's good; I needed that. By the way, it hasn't made me any less productive; I just don't carry as much intensity and urgency as I did, and interestingly, same output.
And it's hereditary, so me finding out about it means we can now look at my sons. Like, is there something here to be aware of? And HCM is one of the leading factors in kids who die of cardiac arrest because they're unaware of shit. So, that's also good. Like, so there are good things that have happened as a result of this. And every time I've gone to the ER, 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, 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 tighten up the muscles, give me anxiety, give me stress, into something that's like, "Hey, this is great." 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 circumstance or something. Maybe 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 really mattered, you just kind of like scan your life history, most of them you end up being grateful for.
Right? You have a relationship with somebody that you really shouldn't have been with that falls apart and it leads you to finding the person 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 is terrible, what am I going to do?" You end up starting your own business and 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 your life around. And 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 after that initial breakup with that person that without knowing that 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 going to get out of this." 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 literally just make the choice to see it differently now.
And one of the best ways that this 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, reflect on your life, and rewrite that story with all of the good things that happened as a result of it." Right? And his advice was to actually physically write it down, take the time, take a couple hours, take an event 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 help you? Were there benefits? So like, not just think about it differently, but like 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." 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 do is just kind of 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 saying, "Yeah, but you know what, I'm really glad that it happened." 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 5 years from now.
Instead of waiting 5 years to do that, just do it now. Right? So, 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. Take a minute, reframe: 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 make the decision to say, "This isn't happening to me, this is happening for me." And it's because it's there, right? Like, and it is a conscious choice, and sometimes it's easier said than done. But I can tell you this, like just using my heart thing 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 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. Alright, adios.
