Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me, what your life was like before you died.

Hal Elrod 0:08
I had given a speech that night at a Cutco sales conference, that was my career. I was in Cutco, and a year and a half, Cutco makes high-quality kitchen knives. They've been around for 5060 years now, probably. I think it was the 50th anniversary was the year that I started, and so I gave a speech at the conference, and then I was driving home, and my car was head on by a drunk driver at 70 miles an hour, and then I actually, the worst, you know, airbags exploded, the worst was actually I spun off the drunk driver, and the car behind me broadsided me, T-boned me at 70 miles an hour in my door, and the entire on my door, and so it crushed the left side of my body, and I broke 11 bones on my leg, my femur, the biggest bone in the mid body, broke in half, my pelvis broke in three places, it was crushed between the center console, my arm broke in half, this one, my humerus bone broke in two pieces, shattered my elbow, severed my radial nerve, shattered the three bones in my eye socket, my ear was almost completely severed, and the top of the ceiling buckled, and the metal came through the roof, and it sliced a big, like a V in the top of my head. So, and I was immediately.. I mean, I would imagine I was in a coma. So, when they found me, I was in a coma. I'd imagine it's like exactly.. I've done a little bit of research, like the body will shut itself down and put you in a coma if you can't withstand the amount of pain you know that you're experiencing. Yeah. Thank God, thank God I wasn't awake. I can't even imagine that. I don't remember. So, there's two weeks of my life that I don't remember. I don't remember, like, my last memory is getting on the freeway that night, and the accident happened. I don't remember the accident. Don't remember the headlights coming at me, none of that. And then my first memory, I was in a coma, for so my heart stopped for six minutes. I was clinically dead for six minutes, and I didn't die until they pulled me out of the car, like the car was keeping me alive, all the pressure, but I was losing blood, though, you know, through all these, I mean, just holes in my leg, my arm, and, and when I, when they pulled me out, it took them an hour to cut the roof off the car and pull the door back to get me out, the jaws of life they had to use, and when they finally did, I bled to death, and my heart was, they said, about six minutes that I didn't have a heartbeat, and they immediately were pumping blood. I was put on a helicopter, and they are using defibrillators and all the things to get me back to life. And thank God they didn't give up after five minutes, because six minutes later I, they got my heart beating again, and I spent six days in a coma, I flatlined twice more, so I was, I was, you know, nearly died multiple times. And when I came out of the coma, I faced this unimaginable reality, like, you know, wait, where am I? What's going on? And they're like, "Hal, you broke 11 bones, you're probably never going to walk again, you have permanent brain damage. And this was this unimaginable reality that nobody thinks, you know they're ever gonna have to face for me. I try to make it applicable for all of us. That's just how I, I think, at that time I started thinking, how does this experience, how is this going to serve me, and how is it going to serve other people? That was the question in my mind.

Hal Elrod 2:55
And I told my dad, I said, "Dad, because he actually, the doctors thought I was in denial, because I was so happy and positive, like I'm in the hospital being told I'm never gonna walk again, and I'm totally happy, totally positive, genuinely, and like, and I'm making jokes and making the doctors laugh, and they called my parents in one day and they said, we're concerned with your son, we believe Hal is not facing reality, and he's just delusional and in denial, and we need you to talk to him, and so this is one week after the crash that this conversation, my dad comes in, he goes, 'Hey, I just met with the doctors. They're a little bit concerned with how you're responding to the accident, and you know they said you should be sad, scared, angry, and depressed, but you're not showing any of that, and they think you're in denial. Yeah, and how are you really feeling? How, when the lights go out at night, when there's no friends visiting, and you guys are joking and laughing, and he said, "Are you sad, scared, angry, or depressed? And I really, you know, I'm looking at my dad, by the way, and he's like, "You know, eyes are red, he's holding.. he was probably just crying, or he's trying not to cry. I mean, yeah, and it had been.. it had been a week of just, right, of him, of them by my bedside, not knowing if I was gonna live or die, where.. oh, he flat, he's flat lining again, doctors come in, come in. He's flatlining again, right? So, yeah, my poor parents. Oh my god. And I was the second child that they would have lost. My sister died when my mom was.. when I was eight years old. My 18 month old baby sister, on a Saturday morning, I woke up to my mother screaming, "My baby, my baby, God, don't take my baby. And it was just me, my mom, and my baby sister at home. My other sister was gone. My dad was at work, and I ran across the hall, and my mom was my little 18 month old baby sister. My mom was pushing on her chest and breathing into her mouth and performing mouth to mouth, performing CPR on her, and she died that morning. And within six months, my mother was leading a support group for other parents who had lost children. So, like, at eight years old, that seed was planted, that oh, you take your adversity and you use it to help other people, you take your pain and you find purpose. So, when I came out of the coma, that was like immediately implanted in me, and when my dad came in that day, and he said, "The doctors are concerned, Hal, I said, "Dad, I'm not depressed, I'm not sad, I'm a little. I mean, a little scared of that. I don't walk again, but I've already decided, Dad, I've already literally imagined if I never walk again, I've decided I'll be the happiest, most grateful person that you've ever seen in a wheelchair, because that becomes my reality, and I will not let my unchangeable reality determine my mental and emotional well-being. Like, if I can't change it, I'm going to be at peace with it, I'm going to find the gratitude and the love and the joy and the experience, and my dad, and, oh, and the last thing I said, my dad is, I said, "Dad, Dad, I've ever since I started selling Cutco, I've been speaking at all of these Cutco events, I've had this dream of, you know, being like a motivational speaker, like a Tony Robbins or something. I said, "But I've had a relatively easy life, like a normal life. Yeah, I was bullied, and you know, but I've never had anything like remarkable happen that I had to overcome. I'm actually taking that as that's why I'm going through this. I'm supposed to get through this accident in the most positive, proactive way. I'm supposed to learn and grow from it, so I can go share it with other people and teach other people.

Hal Elrod 5:57
And he went back to the doctors, and I think they thought I was even more delusional when he reported back, like, oh man, your son's really out there, they said I'd be there for a year and I'd never walk again. I took my first step three weeks after the crash, so one week after the doctors told my called my parents in and said, we think Cal is delusional, he's all happy and positive, and he needs to face reality, you know, he's probably gonna be in a wheelchair the rest of his life, and I told my dad, you know, if that's the case, I'm at peace, but that's not where my energy is going. My energy is going into walking with unwavering faith. A week later, the doctors come in with a clipboard, and they've got.. they go, "We're looking at these routine X-rays that we took this morning. How you're ready to take your first step? And even for me, I was thinking that was a year off. Even my optimism and my unwavering faith was like, "The body can heal, you know? And they say, "I'm in the hospital for a year. By the end of that year I'm going to be walking again, and three weeks after I was found dead at the scene, broke 11 bones. Two weeks after I came out of the coma, yeah, and I've got, you know, metal rod in my arms, screws in my elbow, plates in my eye, rod in my leg. I mean, it is crazy how fast it happened, and they come in and they get in a wheelchair, and my therapist, Bob, my physical therapist, we walk into the, the, you know, the therapy room, and there's these parallel bars. Now, I couldn't even use my left hand because I had broken my left hand. I had severed the nerve, so this was the amount of motion I had for six months that they never knew if it would come back. So that's also the thing I'm thinking about that I'm dealing with, is like I don't even have a left hand to use, plus I might never walk, and that five minute rule was like that powerful, be like, well, if this is how my hand is the rest of my life, this is how my hand isn't, but thank God my dad took a picture, because we have a picture, I show it when I give speeches, you know, in my keynote, it's like there's the, he has a picture of the car, looks like half of a car, because that side impact, and then there's a picture of me with tubes coming out of everywhere, and oxygen in my arm, you know, with rods in it, all that, then he has a picture of me taking that first step, you know, and I, he, Bob rolled me up in the wheelchair, and I took my first step, and, and that was the first step, where I was like, okay, if I can do this, I can do anything, and then it just, it just, I was out of the hospital four weeks later, very soon after I got out of the hospital, I went to court to, they had the hearing for the drunk driver that hit me head on, and I was asked in the hospital, like, "Oh, you must want to kill that guy. I said, "No, and you know, I don't.. this, it's got to be a god thing. I don't know at 20 where this perspective came from, but.. but I said, I said no. I said he's a 31 year old guy that drank a few beers at a bar and then got in a car to go home. Why would I be angry at him for any of those things, raise your hand if you've never drank alcohol and gotten a car to drive. I had, you know, in my, in high school, I'd go to parties, have some beers, think, yeah, find a, you know, make bad decisions, but it's like I wasn't an evil person because I did that, I just was an immature, it's a bad decision. This guy was 31 years old, married, he had a young, like a three year old kid, and so I had zero anger toward him. I had zero anger toward him.

Hal Elrod 8:44
And when I went to the trial, what before the trial, my parents, because I had my brain damage, I was slurring my speech. It was hard for me to even talk, you know, and formulate thoughts. My memory was bad, and so my parents said, "Hey, we'll speak for you, you know. Do you want to speak? I said, "No, I don't. I'm not ready to get up in front of a bunch of people and talk right now, and they said, 'We'll speak for you. What, what do you want? And I guess the attorney had sat down with them and say, 'Hey, like, and so, and there was like a civil, and a, you know, and so, but so my spirits po, they said, 'We've talked to hell, and he is asking that the, that, because they wanted him to spend three years in prison, and my thought is he's gonna be the like his kids without a dad for three years, that sucks, you know. And again, he just made a mistake, he didn't try to hurt me. So my request, I talked, and I'm parents kind of helped, like, what do you think, Hal, and you know, here's some ideas, and what we requested is that he get six months in prison, because I thought he definitely should have that time to ponder, think, reflect, right, but not three years, like six months is plenty of time. And then I asked that the rest of the sentence, that they, the court was proposing, three years, that he had to spend two and a half years speaking at schools, sharing what happened to him, to try to actually make a positive impact, because he's not making a positive impact, sitting in court in prison. So that's what my pay. Earns requested on my behalf, and the judge just was, I don't know, lazy. He's like, I'm not gonna do this creative sentence. We don't like three year, and he just gave him the full sentence. But that was my request, was that, you know, and I never followed it, like I, again, no ill will, and I never followed up to, I don't know if he served three years, I don't know if he served, I don't know that point. I read, you know, it's like, hey, I, you know, I'm at peace. I forgive. There's no hard feelings until I went through cancer and faced losing my kid, or you know, losing my life and not being around for my kids. And then through chemo, and you know, just sleepless nights, and being close to death again, and being awake for all of it. And that wasn't until I really went through the dark night of the soul, that was in 2020 for me started at the end of 2019 Being of 2020 was a six month period of depression and wanting to die and not sleeping for more than two to four hours a night, every single night. So my one night I woke up struggling to breathe. I went to the ER and they drained almost two liters of fluid from my lung. No, I mean it was, it was wild. They stuck a needle in the back of my, through my, you know, spine and drunk. I go home, and they said, "Hey, we think you have pneumonia. What I forgot, what they said, that was, they said, "If it doesn't get better, you know, come back. They give me antibiotics, and then, like, a day and a half, two days later, I can't breathe again. Go in, this went on for, like, I think it was 11 days, and they couldn't figure out what was wrong, and they're sending me to different hospitals, and this and that, and finally they diagnosed me this rare, aggressive form of cancer, and my wife was terrified and distraught. I remember, though, when I got diagnosed, the doctor was, he goes, 'Hal, I want you to come in and get the results, and he goes, 'Well, there's definitely something here, we're seeing some, and he's like beating around the bush, like he can't get himself to tell me, and I lean over, I lean over, I have my hand, he was a new doctor, I just moved to Texas, like two months before, and my hand on his arm, I go, 'Hey, Doc, I get..

Hal Elrod 11:43
I go, I can tell you're wrestling with whatever you're gonna tell me. I don't know what it is. I said, 'But I live by this thing called.. I'm not kidding, the five minute rule. I accept life before it even happens. Whatever you're gonna tell me, I'm already at peace with it. He goes, and he kind of breathed this. He goes, 'Okay. He goes, 'How? It looks like you have cancer. And yeah, I go, 'Oh, I didn't expect, you know, like, like, I'm like, what? No, because I thought I was healthy, and you know, and so I'm like, what, and I'm like, okay, dog, what are we gonna do? I am at peace with it. So it was instantaneous peace, and there were definitely moments in prayer, like, God, what am I supposed to learn from this? I thought I've learned all the lessons from the car accident, what else could I learn? Yeah, and it was like a lot, I just kept getting a lot, like a lot to learn, and the biggest thing, lesson I learned is that I thought I valued family first, because if you would have said what's most important in your life, I would have said my wife and kids, no questions asked. And so that's the shift, and now it's waking my kids up in the morning with a puppet show. I did that for so many years until they started, we're done with a puppet show, putting them to bed, reading stories, like when I went through my cancer journey, I immediately shifted my behavior, taking them to school, picking them up from school, like to spend time with my family. Give yourself permission to take a break from all of the painful, detrimental, difficult emotions that maybe you're experiencing that aren't serving you. Put them in a book, put them in writing, close the book, and let those emotions lie there, and just be free, you are free. That's last thing I would say is to realize you're free. You're free to think, feel, and experience whatever you choose to experience. So, accept what you can't change, be at peace with reality, journal the things that you are feeling, let them go, put them in writing, and then choose freedom. Choose to be free to experience love, joy, peace, gratitude, forgiveness, whatever you need to to heal in this moment, and you'll eventually keep doing that every day, and life will be different in the future than it is now, in a good way.