For years, I lived as though time was guaranteed.
I wasn’t lazy. Quite the opposite. I was obsessed with building. By my early thirties I’d opened multiple hospitality businesses, worked ridiculous hours, and measured almost every week by how much I could achieve. A typical day started before most people were awake and often finished long after everyone else had gone home.
I kept telling myself that one day I’d slow down.
One day I’d spend more weekends with family.
One day I’d travel more.
One day I’d stop checking my phone every five minutes.
One day I’d enjoy everything I’d worked so hard to build.
The problem with “one day” is that it quietly becomes “not today.”
I don’t think I’m unique. Most of us live with the comforting assumption that tomorrow is waiting for us. We postpone conversations, holidays, hobbies and even our own health because we’re convinced there will always be another opportunity.
I believed that too.
Until there wasn’t.
When Life Changes in a Matter of Seconds
On 11th October 2024, I was involved in a road traffic accident while riding my e-scooter. Everything changed in seconds.
I spent weeks in a coma. Later I learned that doctors had told my friends and family I had less than a one percent chance of surviving. They were preparing the people I loved for the possibility that I wouldn’t come home.
The strange thing is that I don’t remember any dramatic moment of realisation.
What I do remember are the small victories.
Learning to walk again.
Learning to speak clearly.
Holding a knife and fork.
The first time I managed fifty metres without stopping felt bigger than opening another business ever had.
When you’ve lost the ability to do the simplest things, you realise how extraordinary ordinary life actually is.
Finding out how close I came to dying didn’t make me afraid.
It made me grateful that I still had the opportunity to live.
The Greatest Lesson Wasn’t About Survival
People often ask whether the accident completely changed me. My answer usually surprises them. I don’t think it changed my values. It tested them.
Long before the accident I’d already experienced failure, bankruptcy, losing my mum at a young age, financial hardship and having to rebuild more than once. Through all of that I’d learned to believe that resilience isn’t something you suddenly discover when life falls apart. It’s something you build every day, long before you need it.
The accident simply became the biggest test I’d ever faced. It confirmed that hope is a decision. That consistency matters. That the small habits you repeat every day become the foundation you stand on when everything else disappears.
It also reminded me that nobody gets through life’s hardest moments alone. My wife, family, friends, medical teams and complete strangers carried me through days when I couldn’t carry myself.
Recovery may be personal, but it is never truly individual.
Redefining Success After Almost Losing Everything
Did my definition of success then change?
In many ways, it hasn’t. I still love building businesses. I still enjoy ambitious goals. I still believe in working hard.
What has changed is my relationship with success. I no longer believe success is worth chasing if it costs your health, your relationships, or your ability to enjoy the life you’re creating.
For years I acted as though life existed somewhere beyond the next milestone. Now I understand that the milestone isn’t the destination. Life is happening while you’re building it.
If you’re sacrificing everything that matters for a future you’re assuming will arrive, it’s worth asking yourself a difficult question.
What if that future never comes?
Success should improve your life. Not postpone it.
Don’t Wait for a Wake-Up Call
If there’s one lesson I hope readers take away from my story, it’s this:
Why not me?
We ask ourselves that question when something bad happens.
Why me?
But why don’t we ask it when we dream about building a business, changing careers, getting healthy, travelling the world or becoming the person we’ve always wanted to be?
Why not me?
That’s the question I hope stays with people long after they’ve finished reading my book.
You don’t need a near-death experience to start living differently. You can start today.
Every evening, I believe we should ask ourselves three simple questions:
1. Am I truly happy?
2. Did I do everything I had to do, and wanted to do, today?
3. Was I better today than I was yesterday?
Don’t chase perfection. Chase three honest “yes” answers.
If you can end more days answering yes to those questions, you’ll keep moving closer to wherever you want to go and whoever you want to become. Success isn’t built in one defining moment. It’s built in the ordinary decisions we make every single day.
The Next Chapter
What excites me most about this next chapter isn’t opening another business or chasing another milestone. It’s helping as many people as possible get as much out of life as possible.
Everybody dies. But not everybody lives.
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. We can’t control how long we have or what challenges may come our way. But we can choose how we spend today. So stop waiting for the perfect moment.
Ask yourself, why not me? And then go build a life that, at the end of each day, allows you to answer those three questions with a smile.
Because the life you’re waiting to start… is already here.
By Vincent Van den Broeck, author of Everything Feels Impossible Until It’s Done, October 11 2026, @vincentinthekitchen