This is me, 8 years ago, lying in a hospital bed, waiting for the results of a biopsy. The doctors said it could be cancer or a bacterial infection, both life-threatening. I was 29 years old, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and my life felt like it was crumbling.

But how did I get here?

Let’s rewind.

Before this moment, I was living the dream, or so I thought. I quit my corporate job after helping a business exit and started my first venture. The business was simple: buy Facebook pages, build clickbait article websites, drive traffic, and monetize through AdSense. At its peak, I was making $50k net per month. It was life-changing money compared to my corporate salary.

Then life shifted.

I met the woman who would become my wife. In pursuit of love and building a family, I took a sabbatical from business. I thought I could pick up where I left off, but the market had changed. My once-successful strategies stopped working, and my Midas touch disappeared.

In my desperation to reclaim my footing, I over-leveraged myself, burned through savings, and left myself with just $2,000. Chronic sleep deprivation, relentless stress, and a weakened immune system started catching up with me.

With no options left, I made a decision.

I spent my last dime sending my wife back to her family, covering her living expenses, and buying a second-hand laptop and a flight to Koh Phangan, Thailand, a small island with a co-working space by the beach. My plan was simple: rebuild from the ground up.

While on the island, I got the news that changed everything. My wife was pregnant. I was going to be a dad. The excitement reignited a fire in me. I threw myself into launching a dropshipping business, testing products with just $200 left in my account. The very first product I tested became a massive winner, a story for another time.

By the time my two-month stay on the island ended, I went from broke to making $15k revenue a day. That money funded everything we needed during the pregnancy and gave me the perfect entry into crypto.

But life wasn’t done throwing curveballs.

Not long after returning home, I started experiencing unexplained health issues: fatigue, weakness, and more. Eventually, I found myself in that hospital bed, waiting for biopsy results. After what felt like an eternity, the doctors came back with the diagnosis. It was tuberculosis.

The lesson?

You can only control your mind, your choices, and your will. I couldn’t control the market crash, my diagnosis, or the money I had already lost. But I could control how I responded. And that’s what saved me.

You’ve got one thing to manage: your choices, your will, your mind. So mind it.