A Heart Attack Taught Me to Start Living | Thomas Droge

About this episode

Thomas Droge shares how a heart attack led him to prioritize mindfulness and self-care in his life and work.

Thomas Droge had a heart attack at the exact age his father and grandfather died, and it shattered everything he thought he knew about himself. A healer for over 30 years, he'd built his identity around being the one who saves others. That heart attack forced him to confront the one person he'd never treated: himself. Now, as Chief Mindfulness Officer at Tiffin — a fintech incubator — Thomas embeds mindfulness directly into the operating rhythm of high-pressure teams. He opens Monday prioritization meetings with guided meditation, coaches leaders through a values-tracking practice six times a day, and helps executives move from hypervigilance to real presence. In this conversation, we go deep: why your best practices will eventually fail you, how to reframe stress so your blood vessels literally stay open, why boundaries should guide you forward instead of just protecting you, the neuroscience of fear and what it's silently doing to your body, how oxytocin repairs the heart when you let someone help you, and the one question Thomas started asking after his heart attack that changed his life — "Do I want to be doing this right now?" Whether you're a leader stuck in…

People in this episode

Guest: Thomas Droge

Topics covered

• mindfulness
• leadership
• stress management
• personal identity
• health
• self-care

Keywords

• heart attack
• mindfulness
• leadership
• stress
• self-improvement
• neuroscience
• oxytocin

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tiffin

Books & works: The Leader Within: 14 foundational practices for leading a meaningful life

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