«I am lucky to have taken a selfie in the precipice and be able to tell it in a book. But in that interval I discovered a different person in myself. She was unable to move her body or breathe alone. Strapped to a respirator and a … bed. Fed first by tube and then by people who loved me and cared about putting the spoon in my mouth. I felt what it was like to want to move a leg, a hand or your back and have your body not respond. And also, I knew what it was lose your voice, my work tool and my passion as a communicator. And from there, like the loser who gives up his shirt playing poker, there was only one way left: start from scratch. And in that beginning again, the first thing I did was become aware that I had the greatest victory: she was alive. The experience that Ami Bondía (@amibondia), writer, journalist, consultant and entrepreneur, shares in her book ‘Vitalist Energy’ is illuminating, especially if one takes into account that the infection she suffered, mediastinitis, has a mortality rate of 70%.
We are not talking about commonplaces nor is it an exaggeration to say that he was on the verge of death in the first stages of the post-pandemic and that his long experience in the hospital not only includes the time in the ICU, four operations and one continued by the health workers and his family, but he also took away a vital challenge and learning whose journey he has captured in his book ‘Vitalist Energy’. In it he tells, through his story of personal improvementhow to train the resilience and the individual determination.
Thus, he assures that the first thing he did, once he was aware that he had to focus on his recovery, was “placing one’s gaze on what one had instead of what one lacked.” And this change of attitude required, on the one hand, a certain “ecology on a mental level« that allowed him to surround himself with the “stack” people to give him wings and help him think about his recovery and, on the other hand, to turn a deaf ear to the pessimistic messages that insisted on the consequences that were going to remain. To do this, as he acknowledges, he had to accept his fragilitylet yourself be cared for and hold on to what you have already learned, which is what she calls “inner force». «I remembered my own story and how I managed to achieve what I longed for (he tells it in his book ‘A Coffee with Chan’) and that made me think that, to achieve what you want, you have to divide it into small short and medium-term goals. and celebrate every achievement. During the illness, celebrating each achievement was ‘I can now breathe alone’, ‘I move my fingers’, ‘as if without help’, ‘I manage to walk with a taca-taca’…. and thus little by little, recover each lost territory until reaching to which perhaps it could be more difficult than it was to speak again,” he confesses.
«To achieve what you want, you have to divide it into small short and medium-term goals and celebrate each achievement»
Ami Bondía
Writer and lecturer
And there, in that great challenge, is precisely what he focused on, according to him, because there were many health professionals who told him that it was going to be very difficult for him to recover his voice. «I searched and searched until I found the voice professional who managed to rescue Ainhoa Arteta’s voice and I began to work with him from a base of trust and after several months of work training eight hours a day I began to notice sensations in my throat. until I was able to recover my voice and today I am here talking to you,” he says.
But the truth is that behind Ami Bondía’s story of improvement there is something more than determination, desire to live and attitude. There is “vital energy”, that which is built with two essential ingredients: resilience and individual determination, which are also capabilities for which, as Bondía clarifies, it will be important to develop five keys: self-knowledge, BOOM mentality, strategy, optimization of resources and gratitude.
This is how the author describes each of them:
1. Self-knowledge. In an accelerated society in which constant hyperstimulation prevails, nothing seems to invite us to analyze or look at ourselves. But when you stop (with time for yourself, alone or in nature, without a cell phone or technology) it is advisable to ask yourself questions: what makes me happy, what makes me angry, where do I want to go… Because the answers are what They can help you make accurate decisions.
2. The BOOM mentality, winning mentality or “yes we can” mentality is born from confidence in one’s own abilities to overcome adversity and come out even stronger from it. And this ability to lead oneself implies an inner sovereignty resulting from qualities such as critical thinking, experience, absence of prejudice, creativity or good emotional management. It also appeals to four ideas: look for your passion, forget about comfort, ignore limits and make your difference by finding your essence.
3. The strategy It is the one that places you to develop the action plan. And here what the author proposes is to divide what we want to achieve into small short and medium-term goals that help us put things into perspective, make ourselves more productive and keep what brings us the most benefit.
4. The Resource Optimization It is one for which it is advisable to take into account something so basic and often so little cared for, which is following healthy habits. Proper nutrition, avoiding a sedentary lifestyle, exercising often, resting well and managing stress correctly allows for better dosage of energy.
4. The gratitude It is also part of that training of a resilient mentality and determination since valuing each achievement, as well as the people who influence our emotional well-being, and “stop taking so many things for granted.” “Today I work from the gratitude that I am alive and well,” she says.
