3 Lesson from my near death experience | Yoav Asa | TEDxBeitBerlCollege

Transcriber: Beatriz Gennari Pinese Reviewer: Kley Halisson Imagine that you are in a dream. You've been trying to get out of this maze for days. At first, you are just a false point, then a line, and then a three-dimensional being. A sponge. You are a sponge. You wake up, you're in a bed you don't know. Pain. Bright lights. Pain. It smells like a hospital. Pain again. Bombarded with pain. You try to move and realize that, right now, you can't move any limbs other than your left arm. Apparently, this nightmare with the sponge repeated itself every morning. I guess it has something to do with the fact that I was washed in bed every morning.

Every morning they removed layers and layers of bandages and burned skin. And suddenly my last memory seems so far away. How did I end up here? In the past 20 years, most of my life has been the physical and mental training of teenagers before military service. During one of those workouts I took off my sunglasses at the worst possible moment. That day we were training on an artificial sand dune built too close to a power line. Towards the end of the workout, I took off my sunglasses. My hand reached the distance of half a meter from the power line.

I still remember the last two thoughts that ran through my head. The first: Wow, this is close. And the second thing I thought was that I didn't have time to finish. It had something to do with birds perched on wires that were not affected by them. Apparently I'm not a bird and, unlike them, I do touch the ground. At that moment, electricity jumped like lightning. The electricity from the cable passed through my body to the ground. A flame erupted from my body and I rolled 12 meters down the sand dune. Fire came out of my clothes and now you can see that in the typical burn, the heat comes from outside.

In an electrical burn, the heat is produced by the body itself. Just seeing the clothes allows us to imagine the intensity of the heat coming from my body. At the bottom of the sand dune, the students I was training began performing CPR on me. They had to force my jaw open and clean out the bodily fluids coming out of my mouth and nose. After a few rounds of CPR, I apparently came back to life. During that time, some of them ran to ask for help. One of them has already started receiving instructions from the medical center.

For 35 minutes, those guys were there alone. We can only try to imagine what it felt like an eternity to them. When the medical service arrived, my throat was already swollen and the air was barely reaching my lungs. Even though they gave me three doses of painkillers, I continued to push the paramedics aside. Once again my students came to my aid to grab me by the open flesh and managed to immobilize me against the stretcher. That was the only way to evacuate me to the ambulance, which was waiting a few hundred meters away. At the last moment, after two failed attempts to open my airway, the Israeli Air Force rescue unit arrived on the scene.

This is the unit I served in. During my service in the unit, I participated in dozens of such rescue missions. I was the one who took care of the critically ill patients. In the back of your mind, there is always this thought: What if it were me? But you never really believe that it will be you on the other side. You're usually operating on a sort of autopilot, providing the best treatment possible. Together with the civilian doctors, they managed to intubate me and evacuate me to the Tel Hashomer hospital. Twelve days later, I wake up and my new journey begins.

At first everyone seemed surprised that I woke up and for some reason they called me a hero. For years, I have been coaching others on how to develop habits that will help them overcome difficulties and succeed at challenges, no matter how big. Habits like correcting or speaking, changing thoughts, changing focus, imagining, were a main part of the discipline I chose to pass on. And what is the best way to learn something? Teach others and lead them by example. Well, now I have the opportunity to prove to myself and others that the system works. At first, that's actually how it was.

Two weeks after waking up, I faced one of my biggest challenges yet. I came to this chair after being told that this morning after the treatment I will exercise. Exercise? I ask, not even realizing that right now I can't move both legs and can barely move two fingers on my right arm. They laid me on my side, put the sheet behind my back, hooked it up to a hoist, lifted me up, put me in this chair and told me I had to sit for 40 minutes. The pain increased, something I didn't even think was possible. Suddenly, after a month, my legs were down.

Blood began to flow and things began to swell and open. It's true that the pain was crazy. But more than the pain, what shook me was the realization that I am no longer me. I am a man who just three months ago competed in the first CrossFit competition held in Israel. And now I can barely sit up and no one agrees to promise me that I will ever stand up, much less walk or run. “You're lucky we didn't cut off your legs,” they said. Any focus on the gap between expectations and reality leads to frustration. But when it has something to do with self-perception, it affects us on a deeper level.

There are three forms of actions that we can use to relieve frustration. The first, lower your expectations and equate them with reality. Only after we accept the situation as it is, can we begin to move out of it, now out of frustration, into a new preferred reality. The second is to bring reality to the ideal level, by working hard and changing reality itself. The third is to complain and complain, to find good reasons why we can't change. When I was sitting there in that chair, to tell the truth, that was the path I chose. And what is the most addictive form of whining?

Complaining to management, which is basically blaming. In those moments I blame whoever built this sand dune so close to a power line, and the frustration subsides, but then increases. So I go back to blaming and promising they will pay for this, and the frustration drops, but then rises. So I blame more and more people, and so the cycle continues. And then I realize that I am slowly fading away. My energy is running out. I'm stuck in a loop. Luckily for me, for years I have been teaching others not to complain, not to complain. Then I recognize these voices in my head.

I wake up from this loop and start focusing on responsibility. I assign responsibility for the lawsuit and the rest of the nonsense to my father. I tell myself “from now on, you will focus only on healing.” So if the doctors tell me to do 30 minutes on the knee bending machine, I do 90 on each leg. If they were gently tearing the melted skin under my armpit, after leaving the room, together with my aunt, we tore the skin and tied my hand behind my head. And that's why today I have full range of motion. I determine how I feel and when I focus on what I can do, on my responsibility, on my ability to respond, then and only then can I determine how I feel.

The formula works. Day by day, the feeling of influence grows and, consequently, so does the pace of the healing process. All the time, accompanied by a great medical team, caring for me with sensitivity and care. With them, a strong community of support made up of family, friends and many students who continue to come to the bedside to support. This attitude created a rapid healing process. And two weeks later, Professor Hyeok came to my bed informing me that I only have 3% of my flesh open. Only 3% of the initial 70. He goes on to say that in the 19 years that he has been in the burn unit he has not seen anyone with a 70% burn that doesn't get infected.

And that I am about to go to the rehab center where I will learn to walk and function again. Excitement! Euphoria. And what comes with euphoria. That night I felt like something was eating me, and the next morning the doctors informed me that I had an infection and that now 25% of my flesh had reopened. Frustration, depression, I'm in this loop again. Day by day, the situation gets worse, and no matter what you try to do: change your thinking, change your focus, imagine... nothing helps. I'm stuck in this loop. I'm losing faith in myself. I keep telling myself it's all a lie.

I'm no hero. I am an imposter. I'm a liar. Nine days later, weighing just over 50 kilos and having more than 35% of my flesh reopened, this morning comes when I don't want to live anymore. I can't wear this hero mask anymore. And when I ask one of the students I love not to come into the room, I realize that that's it. It's over. And then this guy comes to visit. This is my Uncle Sam. You can see it here getting his... It's actually the first Medal of Honor that was awarded in Israel by David Ben-Gurion. He is my personal model and a living legend.

But when I was there, he was 86 years old and had heart problems, so the whole family knew not to tell Uncle Sammy that Yoav is in the hospital. I was afraid Sammy would get too excited and have a heart attack. Suddenly I get this phone call telling me that Sammy found out. "He is coming. “We can’t stop it.” "Well. How much time do I have? "He's in the elevator." Damn. I wipe my tears so Sammy doesn't see me cry. And the moment he walks into the room, I grab the sides of the bed and start to do bottoms like nothing happened. "How's it going, Uncle Sammy?" Yoav? "Don't worry about that". “What happened to you, Yoav?” “Don't worry about it, Sammy. “It’s all cosmetics.” I keep talking and talking, and in the end, Sammy believes me and leaves the room.

I feel relieved. I tell myself I can take off this mask and cry again. But... I don't need to cry anymore. Because? Why the sudden change? What's the difference between a few minutes before, when I couldn't let people into the room, and now I feel restored again? Because? A few minutes before, I tried to get myself out of the suffering. I tried to look strong. Feel strong. Maybe even to prove to everyone that my method works. But when Sammy walks into the room, I need to be strong. I have to be strong to save Uncle Sammy.

Our greatest power lies not in our will to succeed, nor even in our need to preserve the integrity of our self-perception. Our greatest power comes when we have to save or serve something greater than ourselves. When we are worried about ourselves, we lead to suffering. Caring for others leads us to freedom. After this visit, I was healed again. And a few weeks later, I am already at the rehabilitation center where I begin to organize and plan this crazy 90 kilometer relay race for teenagers, dedicated to fallen soldiers. It starts near my house and ends at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

I return to this part of me that I had forgotten, and that is what completes the picture. The search for meaning, serving something bigger than myself, that's important to me. This journey continued to this day and thanks to it I find myself in countless moments of extreme gratification, doing things I couldn't even imagine in bed, in the burn center. Today I am the father of this charming and special boy, married to a wife whom I love deeply. I am part of... (Applause) I am part of two wonderful families, one that I was born into and the second that I had the opportunity to create from a place of loyalty, truth and true power. that arises from the impulse to serve something greater than oneself.

So what do I take away from this trip? First: the best way to learn something is to teach it to others and lead a life of example. Second: an attitude of focusing on responsibility, on our ability to respond, perhaps even developing a little allergy to blame. And third: when we worry about ourselves, we lead to suffering. Caring for others leads us to freedom. Thank you. (Applause)