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100 mph: With My Hair on Fire!
At age 36, Bob Benson thought he was on the fast track to success. Instead, he was heading for a brick wall.
A young executive with a Fortune 500 company in Atlanta, Benson was on his way up the corporate ladder—"thinking I wanted to be president of the United States," he says only half jokingly. He had a beautiful wife and two young daughters—though he now admits that he didn't cherish them nearly as much as he should have. And, at 6 feet 2 inches tall, 190 pounds, he was in decent shape.
"I was running 100 mph with my hair on fire," he remembers. "I was blowing through life, baby, not even looking back. Even God wasn't getting in the way back then. Oops."
One day, after playing three rounds of tennis, Benson got a wake-up call: "I went home, put my arm in the mailbox, pulled out the mail and Bam! My chest tightened up."
At the hospital, Benson learned that he had suffered a minor heart attack. "He [God] just gave me a warning shot," explains Benson, author of 100 MPH with My Hair on Fire! (Xulon Press). "He said, 'Hey, you need to quit worrying about things that you worry about, quit stressing yourself out...and go enjoy life.'"
Benson immediately enrolled in a cardiac rehabilitation program and started a regimen that included a low-fat diet and regular exercise. He lost so much weight that his doctor actually told him to add fat to his diet. More importantly, Benson changed his perspective and started giving more time and attention to the things that really matter in life: namely faith, family and friends.
Benson says he carries more responsibilities at work than he did before. "I'm not saying you work less, I think you work smarter," he explains. "You have to understand what's important, and what's not important; things you can affect, and things you can't affect. Things you cannot affect, do not worry about them."
In his book, Benson warns others who, like him, are on the verge of a meltdown. "In a lot of cities across the country there are a lot of people just like me that just hustle and just go after it for probably the wrong reasons," Benson concludes.
"I thought a heart attack wouldn't happen to me until the twilight of a long life. I was wrong, but I was very lucky."
By Doug Trouten, who teaches journalism at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn., and is president of the Evangelical Press Association. |
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