Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Life and Limb, a podcast from Thrive Magazine all about living well with limb loss and limb difference. I'm Jeff Thiessen, publisher of Thrive magazine and your podcast host.
My guest this episode is Erez Avramov, nicknamed the man who Refuses to Die. Eris is an internationally recognized resiliency expert who's been trained and shaped by life's most challenging adversities.
Three near death experiences and an elective amputation have given Ares a unique perspective on life.
Deeply driven to explore human potential, Erez has uncovered the inner workings of resiliency and is the founder of Life Rebuilder Academy. He shares methods with his clients and audiences that he developed to harness the power of adversity so others can transform their lives as well.
Aras changes the conversation from why did this happen? To how can I use it to transform my life? Eris, welcome. How are you?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Hey Jeff. I'm doing great. Good to be with you and your audience.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: I appreciate that. Thanks. Thanks for joining us. I know in your busy world and with events and training and all of that that we'll talk about. So nice we. We could find some time to. To chat. So let's start with your nickname, the man who Refuses to Die. You're no stranger to adversity and trauma. You were close to numerous blasts as a soldier, as I understand it, and then three near death experiences. A near fatal car accident, then a crash in a motorcycle race, and then what you say was your toughest challenge, a heart attack that brought you closer to mortality than any of the others. Hard to believe, but this is your story.
Can you tell us a little bit about those experiences?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Sure. Sometimes when somebody else describes it, it's almost a scene from a movie or a book or something. And because I'm on the other side of these particular events, I think I'm able today maybe to share more of my perspective in retrospect versus when I was in those traumatic events. And I think this is a very important point where people go through a traumatic event, be that with their health or their relationships or, you know, financial, it doesn't really matter. Something that really shakes up our life in a drastic manner.
While we're in it, there is a process we have to go through. So depending on your level of awareness, preparation, support and things like that will dictate the outcome. I think for myself, what has happened was that I was introduced to the, let's call it the muscle of resilience from a very young age. I grew up in a country that is very volatile by nature. I'M originally from Israel, left the country many, many years ago, 20, almost 28 years ago.
And growing up in an environment where you're always looking behind your shoulder, you and an enemy is almost normal in life. Whether it's justified or not, it doesn't even matter. And this is not a political conversation whatsoever.
This is a human based approach to how we interact in life.
So I think growing up introduced the unpredictability of life and understanding that sometimes plans or what we figure out to be our path or being safe or things of that nature are stories that we create and we try to fulfill on. But life usually has a very different plan.
And that is when I feel the subject of resilience comes into play. Because it is really when you're in the midst of a crisis where the real test begins.
And we can read books, we can watch movies and TEDx talks and do all the work that we want in order to develop a specific skill set.
But there is something so powerful in life that when a tragic event happens, my personal belief, and again, I'm biased probably just because I've looked into death's eyes too many times. I believe that these events are given to people who can actually handle them and they will grow from them. And they are given an opportunity to transform and grow into something bigger, stronger and more powerful than they were before.
But I also understand how difficult it is to see it when you're in the midst of it.
So sometimes when I speak about it, and maybe some of you know, your audience members are just now going through their own trauma, you know, be that early stage of losing a limb or after an accident or after a health crisis or something like that.
I think I start with the message of hope first.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Although when I went through my experiences many times, I didn't see the light when I was in them. It was a very dark, painful, devastating place to be in that only by understanding the process of what it takes to get out of it and grow with the process actually made it, I wouldn't say easier because they never are easy, but it made it more predictable in, in terms of identifying. Okay, here it is. I'm, you know, I went through this trauma and then this trauma and that trauma. There's a certain pattern that I've learned to identify.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was going to ask you, I mean, three times or, or maybe more as a soldier, does it compound or are there lessons learned in trauma one that helps with trauma two, which would be very different than, again, from trauma three when you had a heart attack or are you just thinking what again?
[00:06:27] Speaker B: That's a beautiful question. And I know for people that do go through several events, it becomes sometimes a question of just like what you said in the intro, why, why is this happening to me? Why am I again in this situation? Or I'm confronted with another challenge.
The compounding effect for me was stop asking that question.
Because the question of why I found would lead to nowhere. It's a dead end road.
It's actually a path for. I found someone like myself with the personality of more of a highly driven person. Very, very self critical by nature.
When you start to venture into the why and you're looking for reasons, very quickly you start to point fingers at yourself. What did I do wrong? How did I end up here because of I did something or I didn't do something.
And I found this to be a very traumatizing cycle to get yourself into being because there's no way out of it anyways. You, you're not going to find an answer why because that answer doesn't really exist.
So it took me a while, but I understood that asking the right questions were the entry point into something different versus going in cycles all the time and end up in the same place.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really interesting answer.
Know, let's lean into life as an amputee and lots of years of recovery for you and, and I know multiple surgeries and I think you told me 38 different sockets before you got the one that, that you're comfortable with. And maybe we put comfortable in quotes there as amputees, but you came to a clear choice. You said that in order to live a life free of pain and prescriptions, you elected to have your leg amputated below your knee.
So how does someone, how did you make such a decision? That I would presume to be really, really difficult.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It's a very, very difficult decision. And just to put things in context a little bit, I'll share how I ended up even asking, should I amputate or not? So I was involved in a very, very traumatic car accident in 2011.
I was, I ended up in a full snow storm here in British Columbia and Canada on a very notorious highway called the Coquihalla highway that is in British Columbia leading from Vancouver. I was going up to the Kelowna area and I hit a patch of black ice.
And some people, especially Canadians, are well aware with black ice. But this is a layer of ice that is formed under fresh snow and it is extremely slippery.
Personally, I encountered black ice several times in my life. Yes, my car spun out of control, but it always ended up on the sideline or kind of somehow stopped in a safer way.
In this particular scenario, it was exactly the opposite.
I hit a patch of black ice. My car spun out of control, but it spun so fast that instead of spinning and maybe ending up on the side, it actually spun and went back into the side of the road where there was a concrete median that separated between the two highway lanes. And it hit it in such a fast velocity, it actually launched the car into the air. I flipped upside down, landed on the roof of the car, sliding into the opposite lane, straight into a fully loaded semi truck. And the crazy part was I was aware throughout this whole process. I probably lost consciousness on impact, but I was there all the time.
And there was one thing that was very clear to me throughout this, and maybe this is based on experiences I had before I knew I'm not going to die here.
There was a very strong knowing that this is not the end.
Although it looked like it. It felt as if this is completely like it's the end of the road.
But I also knew that to recover from whatever is going to happen in that friction of a second of impact will take everything I have to recover. And I knew at the time that the person that was involved in the accident cannot be the same person that will deal with it and come out the other way stronger.
And it sounds crazy, but that thought process, I didn't have the classic, you know, Hollywood near death experiences where everything slows down and you see memories of people in your children and stuff, which I guess some people do. For me, it wasn't. It was this dialogue going on in my head, right?
And when the impact happened and I was upside down, clenching the steering wheel, just preparing for impact, there was a deeper knowing. There was a.
You know, I'm not a religious person by nature, and I don't have any affiliation with any part of whatever religious aspects are. But at that point, I knew there was something else out there that had a different plan and understanding that gave me comfort to let go.
And that car accident represented a huge shift in my life because I was stuck in that vehicle for two and a half hours before the rescue team was able to come.
There was a snowstorm. A chopper couldn't be deployed because of the weather, and they struggled on that highway just to get to me and they had to cut me out of the car. I remember hearing the rescue team talking outside the car Saying, don't rush, there's probably nobody alive in here. Right. The car was crumpled in such a way that I was captured between the dashboard and the engine went straight in. And this is what crushed my leg. But multiple, multiple injuries. I broke all my ribs, but to my sternum was broken into exposing my heart, internal bleedings, dislocated my arm, broke my leg into 17. It was a horrific, horrific accident. I ended up actually in Kamloops Hospital under coma for eight days, really playing this 50, 50 chance of survival.
And the funny thing was, if you can look at it today as a funny thing, when I came out after several surgeries that I had to go through under coma at the time, I remember the orthopedic surgeon come to my bed and he said, listen, we did our best, but I'm not sure we did a great job with your leg. Cause the leg was crushed in such a way that they initially thought to amputate above the leg.
And then one of the surgeons said, listen, he's a young guy. We have enough bone fractures and whatever to put it together and let's see if it heals great. If it doesn't, we can always amputate later. And to this day, I don't know the name of that doctor, but I'm so grateful for him because they actually saved my leg above the knee.
And recovering from that accident took about three and a half months to get out of the danger zone in terms of life threatening injuries. And then all of a sudden, my ankle, which was crushed, became my nemesis. Like the Achilles heel analogy of, you know, Greek mythology.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: It just haunted me like crazy. I lost a major artery and a major nerve and the pain.
I was disabled basically at the time. I was in a wheelchair, crutches, and I didn't sleep for three months straight. I thought I was going out of my mind. The pain was unbearable on all fronts. And that's when I really had to start and contemplate, okay, what are my options? Because doctors, specifically surgeons, had ideas, we can try this and we can try that. And that's when I started to understand that advocacy for my own health is, is really important. I can't just rely on what a doctor recommends or what they think because, you know, it comes from their experience. I, I appreciate that, but I was in a different place. I wanted my life back. I was a very active guy before.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: And you did a lot of research and talked with others about their experiences with elective amputation before you made that decision. Right?
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Yeah. That was again, I was on that front, I was quite fortunate because I had to go through several surgeries even leading up to the amputation. So it was about a year and a half of preparation and I really, really took the work of understanding how the body works, how the mind works in a PhD level research almost. And in order to learn what it means to live with an amputation. When the idea came up, I actually interviewed a lot of amputees, active amputees, people that I looked up to and I said, wow, if I will have even 50% of their capabilities, I'll be a happy camper because where I was was so terrible. And that openness from the community, from prosthetists, from other amputees really allowed me to understand what does it mean? I was looking at an option to become an amputee and how do you live with it? What does day to day life look like, what complications can happen? And that was again a great introduction to making the decision.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: I don't know if I've ever heard anyone explain it that way, that interviewing amputees to, to join them in the, in the amputee community. I know, well researched and I take it, no regrets based on the pain and the medic that you were taking.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yes, I, to be honest, I couldn't live with my condition as it was. It was completely debilitating physically, emotionally, pain wise.
I couldn't father my kids, I couldn't work properly. I was just out of my mind. And I'm sure listeners here that have experienced or maybe still are experiencing a lot of pain, be that, you know, phantom limb pain or other types of pain. It takes every ounce of energy out of you. You can't really operate like a, have a normal life while struggling with acute pain.
So that was my main catalyst, just to figure out how can I do this.
And actually when I proposed elective amputation, my first orthopedic surgeon shouted at me. He was very angry, he was very un predictable in, in his response because he felt that this was like the biggest mistake I can make. Right. You should go through all these other surgeries first and then make a decision. And I refused because I spoke with other people that went through, you know, fusions and different types of reconstructive surgery and they became like lab rats. They were in and out of hospital all the time and struggling with complications and infections and I just had so much pain and suffering getting to that point, I said I'm not going to do it again.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you weren't sitting on a fence, you were Single, focused that this, this, this was a, a treatment option for sure. Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: And I just needed to find people that will support me, understand the process, learn what's coming ahead, how, you know, the rehab looks like, what are the issues that I make on front, really work with professional prosthesis, especially to understand how they approach rehab and working with the new amputee. And that gave me a lot of confidence in the direction I was about to go to. But I didn't know what would be the result of the operation.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: I want to talk about your expertise, resiliency, but first kind of, you know, leading down the road or the pathway from, from what you, you've just been talking about. And that's, that's your transformation. So you're 12 years an amputee, if I understand correctly. Right. And you've shared that after your amputation, you, you struggled with your identity a bit. Despite being very myopic or single, focused on this is what you want to do. And you've said because of ego and, and I kind of get that. You were a soldier, a father. You loved adventure and the risks that come with it.
So how did all of that impact your recovery and identity and that pathway forward for you now that you're an amputee?
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the question.
Again, in retrospect, it was an incredible journey because it really called a part of me to come out and be something different to what I was because I came into that accident as a commando soldier. It was all about survival, it was all about recovery. It was precision and single focused approach throughout my whole process.
From day one, I woke up in the hospital all the way leading up to the amputation. It was a military operation. Right. And I think it served me very well on that front because I knew the discipline needed, I knew the processes that needed to take place and taking care at the same time. My life, changing the business to adopt to my new reality, changing the way I show up as a father and a husband. And all those things had to take place in tandem.
So that single minded, very, call it very soldier like approach was very good. Really, really served me well. But leading up to the amputation, I really understood that that soldier that was always, you know, a fighter. I fought for everything. Everything was a struggle, everything was difficult, everything was a fight against the odds. Everything was, oh my God, here it is again. I need to do something else from, you know, scratch and build it all up.
And I remember just before they put me down in the surgery room, that was the point where I just had to let go of that identity. I knew that I don't know what will happen when I wake up because there's a 50, 50 chance. Yes, it can get better and yes, it can get a lot worse.
And my surgeon said up front, he wasn't, you know, myopic or trying to create a scenario to scare me or something. But he said, listen, we don't really know how you will react and what will be the outcome of the surgery. We don't know. We're going to give it our best shot and we'll kind of see what happens.
And I remember when I woke up and looking at my no leg below the knee, that's when I broke. That's when I really understood that if I will keep fighting all the time, this will be a very difficult journey.
But I said it to myself, but I couldn't actually act on it.
What I did was exactly the opposite because I didn't know how to really let go.
I actually doubled down on my fighter identity.
That's when my ego really, really, oh, my man. It took front stage in a heroic way.
I.
After the surgery, I had some complications. It took about three months to get the prosthesis fitted. I had a lot of skin issues and some problems, but I suffered tremendously from phantom limb pain. And I was warned ahead of time and I knew and I researched and I learned it and everything else and. But, oh, boy, when it came, that was worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. Really. It was horrific. I thought prior to the amputation I was in terrible pain. This was a whole different category of what pain is.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Well, at that point, did you question your decision?
[00:23:57] Speaker B: At that point, I was.
I wouldn't say I questioned the decision as much as.
Because I knew it was an option. It didn't, you know, kind of hit me and, oh, my God, all of a sudden, this is. I don't know what it is.
But I also knew that there is a way to work with phantom limb pain.
Again, I'm very curious. I've studied with top researchers and doctors and experts in multiple areas of human performance, the mind in general. I'm a very strong advocate and a student of Eastern philosophies.
I've studied nutrition, I've studied pain. I've studied biology. I studied a lot of things to understand what it will take for someone in my situation to maximize my outcome output, because I knew I wanted to get the best out of it, of what I have control over. But some things we don't.
And that's I think when things went to the extreme, on the other end of things, we can talk about the phantom limb pain in a minute, but I will jump over that when I resolve the problem with phantom limb pain. I went straight into extreme sports right away. I didn't even blink.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: You, you've talked about the, the darkest night of the soul, which is almost poetic in, in some way. But you also talk about it, it having that, that darkest night, the potential to be our greatest gift. And it would take, I think, a lot of clarity for people to appreciate that when you're in those dark times. So and, and maybe this is when you develop those methods, rebuilding life, taking responsibility. As you talk about, and you talk about indispensable life tools. So in, in simple terms, what are those tools for you and where or how did you find them?
[00:26:06] Speaker B: I think for me there was a very powerful process of more self discovery on the inside versus the outside.
Because I think when I encountered the accident, everything was projecting from my body outside. It was pain, it was disability, it was, you know, adaptation to a new life, making those adjustments, working with pain, working with sleep. Everything was outwards facing.
And I realized very quickly that it doesn't matter how much I try and manage the outside, what's going on here actually dictates the ability to participate in a healthier way, moving through that process. It doesn't mean that it resolves it immediately.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: And when you say here, you mean in your mind, right?
[00:27:01] Speaker B: The mind, the way that you absorb input from the outside and how you actually interpret it.
Because I think that in trauma specifically, a lot of our old patterns, they rise to the surface and they start to manage our worldview, what's possible, what's not possible. You know, if we tend to be more of a victim oriented type of personality, my God, this is a feast for the mind, right? You go down that dark night of the soul and it's very difficult to come out of it.
So in order to step out of these dark places, and I was in horrible places, I mean, I admit I had, you know, suicidal ideations.
Not that I was planning to do anything, but it was so dark, so hopeless, that in those particular moments I just saw how dark my thoughts were.
And those thoughts became my belief systems, right? Like it, it, it starts to run your life.
And that's when I understood that this cannot continue if I will let that process run on autopilot, which kind of has a tendency to be that. And I don't interfere. Oh boy, I'm into some serious problems. So that's when learning more about how we operate as human beings, under stress, under trauma, understand how we are wired, how the brain and the mind interact in day to day life, became really my life's work. I am in great debt of gratitude, you know, to neuroscience and to spirituality and eastern methodologies of working with mindfulness, with awareness, with the capacity of understanding that we all create a story in our mind and then we create a life to represent that story. I'm not saying, you know, it's the metrics out there and reality doesn't exist. I don't go to those depths of philosophical debates. I'm way more grounded in my approach to life. But I do find that that conversation has to come in very early when we deal with trauma. Otherwise it becomes very difficult.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: So my question, that use the word tools, maybe that's oversimplified. It sounds more like roadmaps, you know, guideposts. Is that more accurate, would you say?
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I would say that over time I did create a, almost a system, a methodology.
A lot of it come comes back to my military experience where everything that you do, you know, has a plan attached to it, has a plan B attached to it, has a checklist, has a very systemized approach in order to make sure that when you go through that mission or through that process, you give yourself the best chance of success.
And that is what I found. I think the right after the accident, I was learning more than understanding what that system looks like because I experimented with so many different things to understand what works and what doesn't. But I think that leading up to the amputation, I was so prepared, you know, I understood so well what is needed to recover properly in terms of health related things. You know, lifestyle habits, nutrition, sleep, stress management, relaxation, methodologies, what I expose myself to. One of the biggest lessons I've learned was what we expose ourselves, you know, through our eyes, our ears, our touch. Everything that we do, the environment we create around us will dictate how well we deal with the situation. So I chose to be very, very precise on those fronts.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: If we call that a journey, have you come to the destination or are you still a work in progress?
[00:31:23] Speaker B: I doubt there is a destination. Okay.
You know, one thing that I've learned through these repetitive near death experiences and I have been in very, very dark places. When I say I stared death in the eye three times, I mean that I was in a place where a choice was requested to come back, fight and become something different or let go. I totally understand people more than I've ever in my life that choose to just let go and I'm out. I'm just, I, I can't even think about what is needed in order to come back and face what has just happened to me. And I've talked to a lot of people also a lot of people that had near death experiences. And the theme is quite established in terms of that place. It has different versions. Probably I wouldn't try and kind of put it in a, in a specific way of how it is.
But that choice requires that transformation and that is something that I accepted as a challenge. It wasn't, oh, I shouldn't do this. Why is it happening to me? It was, wow, you know, in this mess of tragedy and broken bones and distorted health and everything else else, there is magic on the other side. And that hope and that mindset really propelled me all the time to dig deeper and to fight through the challenges because I always found the magic on the other side through it. Oh, no, there was none of it.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: That's very honest for a man that, who's staged today, whose platform, whose life works, life's work is resiliency. And I'm, you know, absolutely hearing that in everything you're talking about. But, but when you and I have talked about resiliency, you've kind of flipped the term a little bit.
There's a sort of traditional understanding of it, you know, the dictionary definition, you might say, and it, and I think you've, you've modified that significantly. So I want to ask, you know, what is resiliency? Resiliency to you, what does it mean to you? And maybe that kind of leads back to what I talked about when I introduced you in changing the conversation from why did this happen to how can I use this to transform my life? Would you say that they, that goes together, that, that that's hand in glove?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would say they, they complement each other. Because I find again, the traditional definition of resilience is to bounce back, is to go back to the state that you were in before.
And if you think about a big challenge someone is going through again, and it does go across all areas of life. It could be health, it could be relationships, it could be wealth, it could be anything.
If your thought pattern is to go back to where you were prior to that crisis, you're going nowhere. Right. And I found it for myself because initially when I confronted, you know, the car accident, I knew that if I was to just try and go back to the areas that was before the accident, it's going to be a disaster. Because that guy, as much as I thought that, you know, he knew a few things about life and, you know, was strong in certain areas, that guy wouldn't have survived the accident and wouldn't have survived the amputation, and definitely that guy wouldn't survive the heart attack.
When I started to dive deeper into the academic world of resilience, because I'm a student of life and I'm very curious about the subject, I just couldn't agree with academic research.
They presented a very research based approach to the term resilience. And when you think about resilience in life, how we develop it, and it is a skill set that is being developed in the trenches, not by watching YouTube or reading books.
There's a methodology and a process to develop it in a very powerful way that allows you to transform. And that became my passion, that became my guiding light. First of all, for myself, I want to be completely transparent. This was completely selfish, egocentric work to begin with. All I wanted was my life back. All I wanted was to participate in life in a way that has meaning and contribution the way that I felt it should be. So the whole process became started with me first and then as I started to recover and share a little bit about the journey and things that I do that are helpful and I found them to be substantial in terms of how they move the needle. That's when more and more people started to come back and ask, hey, how do you do it? Can you recommend certain things? And that's when I really started to build the coaching side of things. But also redefining what resilience is, because I find that resilience. And you know, in the psychology world, there's the term of bouncing forward, not bouncing back, there's the idea of post traumatic growth.
All these concepts that happen due to a very difficult situation a person handles.
And I found those to be, again, academically correct, probably. But as a person going through that process, oh my God, they make no sense while you're in it. And that's when I felt that redefining resilience is something that I wanted to share more. Just to give a chance to someone who's going through this and maybe they're exposed to the macho idea and you have to fight it through. And it's all about willpower and grit and do whatever it takes and all those things. Yes, there is a part of resilience that has that value in it.
But I have to tell you, when I went through my heart attack, which was my most Difficult, difficult, devastating, life changing experience, because that was an invisible enemy.
It wasn't a car accident. I didn't deal with broken bones. I mean, give me broken bones all day compared to a heart attack.
And really understanding that the next phase required a very different state of mind and approach. And that's when redefining resilience became real for me.
And this is what I'm sharing today. There's a way more heart connection and understanding, self love and passion and compassion and empathy than anything else. And I was the soldier guy who kind of. What are you talking about? This is bs, right? Like, just become strong and just go through it and fight your way through it and all that.
Oh my God. The harder I fought, the worse it became.
So that transition into really going into a central place for me, that's, that was the gift. And I, I'm just being called today to share it with more people and hopefully that lands somewhere that they can work with it as well in their lives.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: So it sounds like stages a process and probably not a straight line either. Right?
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, Yeah.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: I do want you to share a little bit about what you're doing professionally now and we'll wrap up with that. But just before that, I, I'd like to end each podcast with, with advice from you, our guests on, on a subject that's, you know, in your lane, your area of expertise or experience even. And, and for you, I, I want to ask you to tie it to aging with amputation. And that aging with amputation, it comes with some reality realities that others may not know, others that aren't amputees and, you know, or even sympathize with, and that's okay. How can they, right?
Can the resilient mindset that you're talking about be applied to challenges associated with aging with limb loss, like energy expenditure to stay mobile or independent, or wear and tear on our sound limbs or less durability in our residual limbs.
What's your take on that? What's your advice in terms of resiliency and aging with amputation?
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Yeah, again, another, another great, great question. You know, I remember when I did my research prior to the amputation, I met with a relatively good number of athletes because I really wanted to understand what's possible as an amputee. And I will never forget.
I, unfortunately, I don't remember her name, but she was an Olympic level skier here in Canada in B.C. british Columbia. And I met her at a prosthesis office. She was 55 at the time.
And she told me, you know, I Abused my body so much, I can hardly climb stairs today with no pain. And I'm only 55.
And she looked at me and she said, be careful.
And I said, be careful about what you're talking about.
And I completely forgot everything she told me. And I went on a journey of full abuse because I saw my amputation as a disability that I need to overcome. So I really went into extreme sports and bettered my body and overused my joints and created more problems with my hips, with my back, with my shoulder, all the horrible things that we know. So to your advice of aging as an amputee, be gentle with yourself. It's not about proving what you can do because you're an amputee. And if you're trying to prove that all the time, you may create damage that you will regret. You know, I'm now 52. I have a beautiful wife, beautiful life. I want to play and enjoy my life.
I sold my bicycles a few years back, understanding that if I will continue, I will need hip replacement and knee replacement, and maybe my back is going to be problematic. And I saw the wear and tear already happening. So sometimes the decisions come as you think about aging, maybe with more empathy, more compassion, more understanding that, hey, if I want to have a normal, active life as I age, I need to be a little bit more gentler with myself, Admittedly, the early stages. I didn't take this advice personally. I can share it today in retrospect, but I find a lot of amputees that I mentored throughout my time find it very difficult to be gentle with themselves. There's a process I think sometimes you go through to prove yourself that you can still do it. And sometimes the price could just be a little bit too high.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: So respect our bodies. Less abuse. It's a health journey, too. That's what I'm hearing. Huge. Huge.
Thank you for the advice. Well done.
Before we go, tell us a little bit about your resources, your services, amputee, strong resiliency edge course.
And then we're going to give a website at the end for people to find you.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Sure. So. So, you know, my career has changed several times since my accident and amputation and everything else. And I really moved more into what I do today is more public speaking and training and coaching for corporate and for individuals and for your listeners. I would love to share, actually, a resource that I think would be very helpful for them. It's called the resilience assessment.
It's complementary. If they want to do this, they can. I mean, we can share A link with them. And this really gives you an overall picture of where you are right now in four areas of life. In your health, in your relationships, in your business, and in your career and leadership style.
For me, connecting these dots together were very powerful because all of a sudden you have a big picture of how you operate in life.
And by understanding where you are now gives you a bit of a benchmark to say, okay, these are areas that maybe I thought I was strong or weak or whatever, but now I can focus and do some more work on. And that's really what I do today. I help people identify where they are. Right. Right now. You know, on that scale of. I call it the resilience score in terms of their personal and professional life, and then create their own roadmap using systems and tools that I have developed where they can experiment with, find which ones work for them, and then develop a process that can actually accelerate the end result thereafter.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Well, that's terrific.
So for someone that wants to take you up on that generous offer, how do they do that?
[00:44:53] Speaker B: So easiest is, first of all to go to my website, eraseavramov.com the assessment is there as well. You can also watch my TED talk that I did earlier in 2025, and it's all about phantom pain and how to rewire the brain.
And based on that, I actually also created an online course for a Do it Yourself mirror therapy course that I'm sharing my personal experience. And again, there are no guarantees. It works for everyone. It's not the magic pill. But mirror therapy has been proven to be a very powerful process that can at least alleviate phantom limb pain. In my situation, it completely eliminated phantom limb pain from a scale of 9 to 10 all the time to almost zero. That was a remarkable experience that I've learned that therapists, some of them struggle a little bit with teaching it because they haven't experienced it. So the whole course on mirror therapy comes from my perspective. Again, it's not medical advice or anything like that. It's me personally sharing how to do it. I worked with a doctor and a physiotherapist to develop that course, and I just made it available for people who are interested.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: And that's on an educational learning platform online, right?
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Yes, it's called Udemy. And if you just go on Udemy and you search Mirror Therapy, you'll find that course. We can add a link if it's useful and share that as well.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: We will, yeah. UD Me. That's U D M. Yes, probably. Dot com. I. I would think and then to connect with Erez as he said. Eres avramov.com and just to spell that out, E R E Z A V as in Victor R A M as in Mary O v is@victor again.com arz this has been terrific. Thank you for sharing a remarkable and incredible journey, transformation, transparency, a lot to learn from your learnings in life and glad you were resiliently challenged.
Those those near death experiences here.
A valuable asset, asset to our community. Thanks so much.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a, it's a joy to share. And thank you Jeff, for creating a platform and a publication that just allows us to learn more and learn from each other and support each other. I found that that was probably one of the biggest factors of success was the support and reaching out and asking for help when you need it. That's something. Took me a while, but today I don't hesitate. I always if I need help, I just ask for it immediately.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Great advice. Yeah. Just a quick story. I had some surgery on my one of my stumps, as I call it residual limbs. So I was in one arm instead of two for the last four or five months. And I've asked for a lot of help from my family and they're about sick of it. So get that arm back, get the.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Second one on and stop it.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
Anyway, thank you again.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: So thank you.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: So appreciate it.
And with that, this has been life and limb. Thank you for listening. And again, you can read about others who are thriving with limb loss or limb difference and plenty more at Thrive Mag ca and you'll find our previous podcast episodes there too. Until next time, Live well.
