There is an excellent article written on Dr. Oz in Best Life magazine, titled, The Health & Happiness Prescription. In it, he talks about death and life—things he has seen more than his share of over the 30 years he’s practiced heart medicine.

“There’s a line in there (a poem he references) where he says that most of us live our lives a coffee spoon at a time. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned watching people die. You watch them die emotionally as well as physically. You see them melt into the bed because no one came to visit. You see them look back and realise they blew it.”

Dr. Oz sees two kinds of death. One is physical death brought on by cardiovascular illness; the other is living death brought about by choices we make throughout our lives. Just how much has one contributed to the other?

Technology today allows the heart surgeon to work his magic and save a patient who a mere decade ago was a goner. We can fix that, but in many instances can’t fix the root problem—the thing that caused the disease to manifest in the first place.

The man in surgery undergoing a triple bypass knew his lifestyle could ultimately land him in the operating room. He doesn’t exercise, he’s forty pounds overweight, eats mostly crap—but somehow covered up this train-wreck behaviour with lies he repeatedly told himself to suppress the truth.

“Men know but they won’t listen. The problem with being smart is you’re better at lying to yourself. Lying to ourselves is one of the biggest mistakes we make.”

Dr. Oz Learns from the Dying

Dr. Oz has learned a lot from his patients about the difference between living and dying. He has seen countless patients with a pulse, but essentially dead. They’ve given up on life. They don’t care. Their relationships have tanked. They cope by numbing their senses with lies and medications, unable to face their reality.

“We all get that it’s not the destination, it’s the path. But we get it on a cerebral level. We have to get it on a visceral level. Deep in our hearts we have to understand that wisdom. When you feel stressed, it shouldn’t panic you. It should exhilarate you. ‘Hey, I’m stressed-out; that’s really cool. What’s going on here?’ Most of these events are external; only you can affect how things bother you internally. So it’s not stress… it’s your response to stress.”

Anyone who has seen Dr. Oz’s TV show knows he is a big believer in The MEANS to an End Lifestyle™. Avoiding toxins, good nutrition, and exercise are keys to longevity and anti-aging. But the ‘M’ in MEANS—the Mindset component—is the most overlooked and most difficult to master.

 “People don’t change behaviour based on what they know. They change based on how they feel. When you start to feel differently about your responsibility, then the knowledge comes into play.”

What he is really saying is you need to look deep into your heart—deeper than a heart surgeon can ever get — to change your thoughts, change your outlook on life, align them with something that makes the walk down the path of life totally worth it.