In this weeks episode we talk with Nathanael Zurbuegg who has been pronounced dead on six occasions! He is also the founder and CEO of “Unlimit You“ and non-profit Organisation “Live Life to the Fullest“. He is a multiple award winning global inspirational speaker who is passionate about inspiring, empowering and to bring transformation to people from all walks of life!
From an incurable chronic illness and medical prognosis “He should be death six times by now” to an entrepreneur, global inspirational speaker and coach.
Some of the items discussed in this episode:
- Chronically ill for 30 years and been through 3 failed kidney transplants and over 4300 Dialysis treatments so far, plus 3 lung infections.
- As a coach, challenging the status quo but also remaining patient to help people to overcome their current situations.
- Speaking for non profits without a high budget
- Building programmes to help parents
- Moving to Sydney in Australia to study in a Leadership college
- The Stroke he had at 3 years old that led to 2 weeks in coma
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Transcript:
[00:00:00.900] – Tony Winyard
Exceeding expectations, episode 99. Welcome to Exceeded Expectations, the podcast where we give you ideas on how to give your customers a better experience. And in this week’s episode, we speak with a guy called Nathaniel Zebley, a quite remarkable life. And I say life. He’s actually been pronounced dead six times and he has gone through is quite astounding. And 99 percent of people on the planet, which simply wouldn’t have been able to get through it. And so he tells us about that and how he has used his experiences to inspire and motivate people all around the planet.
[00:00:44.510] – Tony Winyard
He’s spoken on stages in many different countries. So we’re going to hear from Nathaniel in just a few minutes. As I said, this is the podcast where we aim to give you ideas on how to give your customers a better experience and so you can enjoy your work more as well. If you do like this episode, please do share it with anyone who you feel could really benefit from some of the wisdom shared. And why not subscribe and leave a review for us as well.
[00:01:10.310] – Tony Winyard
Time for this week’s show, Exceeding Expectations.
[00:01:16.110] – Tony Winyard
And my guest today is Nathanael Zurbruegg
[00:01:21.030] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Hey, everybody, I’m so fine. Thank you so much for having me today, Tony.
[00:01:25.880] – Tony Winyard
That’s OK. I knew you’re in Zurich
[00:01:28.010] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yes absolutely beautiful promised land in Switzerland. I mean, and it is a really beautiful place.
[00:01:36.140] – Tony Winyard
And we were obviously speaking before we started recording. And you told me you grew up in the Alps.
[00:01:42.620] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yeah, it’s in the Alps town called Alpine. And the more popular town known by people is Interlaken, which is close by. I was growing up in the Audubon up to where was it, twenty three years old. And then I moved to Sydney, Australia for four and a half years. And then I returned in 2009 17. And since then I’m living in Zurich.
[00:02:19.580] – Tony Winyard
And why did you go to Sydney?
[00:02:23.240] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
I attended a leadership college. I wanted to learn more about leadership and business and organization and how to be a leader. And then so that’s what I did in Sydney. And then I did. Yeah. After finishing college for one 1/2 years, almost one year, I started to build up my organisation, started as a global inspirational speaker and Victoria is my mentor.
[00:02:57.750] – Tony Winyard
And so how did that come about? How did you begin what was the inspiration to help you start speaking and to do what you were doing with the mindset?
[00:03:07.430] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And so my idea was actually that I wanted to use my incredible life story, which is quite long and quite impressive, so to make sure that I shouldn’t be. Alive four times by now, according to the medical report, many times I shouldn’t be able to walk, talk and amount to anything. I had about four thousand five hundred life saving treatment for the operations. And despite that, yeah, I just realized that no matter what is going on or what is inside out or what’s going on around the so much power, when we lose the white mindset.
[00:04:00.050] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And when I finished college, I had a sense of helping people firstly to use that story to inspire people that basically, literally not impossible, but also helping them to transmit from from a possible Stockmann care limited mindset or limited health situation, body situation, business situation, whatever limit the situation could turn into a life of having victory over circumstances and the problems. And that’s basically why I do what I do today. And that will encourage me to always inspire people to globally traveling around, to speak to people right now, to my life online.
[00:05:03.540] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
But you have to inspire people and help them to through transshipped from one chapter, a victorious mindset.
[00:05:14.980] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Let’s explore. you were talking about when you came back from the dead six times. I remember reading about that, about how; let’s go back to the start. What happened, what was it that was going on.
[00:05:28.190]
Well, one of the main reason or like basically the first time I was basically I was diagnosed as being dead was when I had a stroke with three years old. And after two weeks into being in coma, the doctors told my parents that they know they should not that we can do. We have done everything and them to imagine there was basically only the whole brain was basically just a patch. So it was basically functional at that time. Have to go through with of coma.
[00:06:16.280] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And my parents, their doctors called my parents into the ICU to terminate my life because there were no more surviving change and. They come and then the moment they turn off life support machines, I started to talk again. Wow. And that was incredible for all of us. I come back, come back to life, literally. But it didn’t happen. Like I wasn’t shipped back for one time. I come back to work and then go back into the coma.
[00:07:00.480] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And then I recovered after maybe two or three weeks. Yeah, I think two, three weeks until I was finally recovered and I was fully awake out from the coma. And then there was one time and I had two other similar situation. We don’t know what it was, OK, or a brain bleeding where all the shot and I worked like it was one time. It was like six years old and at a time to wait around 13 years old, that I suddenly had a flashing in my head, and once I was gone, I only awoke a couple hours later in the hospital to two time when that it was in the beginning, the first time, and the ordinary times were definitely there were three heavy lung infection where I shouldn’t have make it through the cook tonight, according to the doctors. And those were all six event. And so why so, for example, you talked about the lung infections and the doctors didn’t think you would make it through.
[00:08:21.340] – Tony Winyard
Why do you think that you were able to make it through?
[00:08:27.910] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Good question, I think. There were a lot of connections and consternation with my main chronic illness, which is actually I cannot tackle chronic illness that affected my kidneys with one year old and. The problem in my body with this connection is that my immune system hasn’t been properly built up when I got affected one year old. And so there were a lot of difficulties during my childhood up until 15 years old or actually the main the main event happened between one and 15 years old.
[00:09:22.630] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And so there are especially the ones with the three events with the strokes and came bleeding. We actually never found out why this really happened. And the lung infection could be from and from having a low immune system growing up in the winter, involvement in maybe. Yeah, there were so many things to come when a constellation that’s not really clear where the cancer happened. If can answer your questions.
[00:10:01.900] – Tony Winyard
And so how is your how are your lungs and your immune system now?
[00:10:07.290] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
So my lungs are actually pretty good by now. I mean, I don’t feel much except I have a little bit of asthma, but I do have of course, I’m not fully healthy as normal, healthy person, but I really am able to do a lot of exercises, which I do about three or four times a week. I have I will when it comes to conditional exercises, and I do feel it quite early than someone else, but I’m actually really on a have to living right now.
[00:10:55.190] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
The only thing that I don’t have right now is the kidney since back 2001 when I had my last kidney transplant. So that means since 2001, I’m back on dialysis treatment three times a week for about four hours each time we sat in it. So in a situation like now with the whole the pandemic around the world with this covid virus, so how does that affect you? Does that make you concerned or how do you feel about that? No, actually, absolutely not, because I by now, I somehow have a developed mindset that I can easily deal with it.
[00:11:44.330] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
So, I mean, I’m like, really, you know, like, of course. And patient care, I’m not I’m trying to minimize risk. But on the other side, I feel like it’s been. So, yeah, I think it’s makes a lot of a lot of mindset that is going on, especially in the idea of having a fear factor. But I think what’s going on in in in art where it’s quoted, it’s something new.
[00:12:22.670] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
It’s something we never experienced before. An automatic response is having fear. We don’t know what’s happening. We have a lot of uncertainty, too. But for me personally, I feel like I got I’m not worried about and I’m concerned about I know that it might seem really uncertain in the beginning, but like maybe in five, 10 years when we know more about it, we see it as a normal flu or whatever it might be. And so I think it’s always, for me, a matter of how we should demand to react the way we actually are feeling.
[00:13:13.480] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
We can feel it or do we actually are feeling toytown? OK, what can I do now to make it better or what can I do personally to to make it make a change? And what can I do right now to look at all the good things that are happening right now? I mean, in any event, good and bad things happening. It’s just a matter of perspective we have and that that to my own perfectly well. I wish I. Yeah. That I’m not absolutely not content.
[00:13:57.280] – Tony Winyard
And how do you think, how did you develop that mindset? I mean, can you remember a specific incident or did it happen gradually?
[00:14:07.370] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Absolutely. So the first the first time I actually started to develop a mindset like that. When I was about eight or nine years old, I had lost my second kidney transplant after having it for two years or two and a half years, two and a half years. I had the kidney transplant. So what that meant more to me, if between eight, one and seven, I was truly on dialysis three times a week. I was in hospitals a lot of times and then I had a kidney, which meant like I could remove dialysis treatment, I could live a healthy life, I could feed myself, I could learn about and crying out.
[00:15:04.320] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Hobbie’s get, you know, friends enjoying the freedom, which I never knew before. Actually, every time that kids learn from age one three seven, I learn. From Charanam Little Shade, and so it was absolutely amazing lives and life that I always dreamed. And so what happened to the chronic illness? Straight back. Straight back. And I lost my kidney again. And at that time, I fell into a huge depression for two weeks. I didn’t talk anything.
[00:15:48.700] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
I didn’t eat anything. I just moved around only with my age. Where were you then? Yeah, I was about nine years old again. Yeah. You’re nine years old. And I had Fash. Yeah. All of the two weeks. All I wanted to do was to take my own life. And my parents realized at the time that something is absolutely wrong. They didn’t know that I wanted to take my life back. I didn’t talk to them.
[00:16:26.230] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And they only found out years later on then. Yeah. So I realized that from that time that when I got home, by that time it was a professional pastoral care. I started to develop an attitude of seeing the good in this negative situation, seeing the things that I still can do, even though I lost my kidney. Even I have to go back three times a week to the lifesaving treatment that was costing me about twenty hours of three times a week and seeing the good times, being grateful that even though I can still walk, I can still talk, I can still do Churton to other people might not be able to do or the kid might not be able to do.
[00:17:31.030] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And so being positive that could change. And being grateful was actually those three things that I started to develop with when I was nine years old. And so what it would take, what kind of person? If the more you do it, the more you. You basically built up an expectation of the future, which in turn, in turn gives you hope, a hope of looking beyond the kid, constantly looking beyond the situation, the struggles that are going on right now.
[00:18:21.960] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And for me, I developed a philosophy of that all things will work together for good, even though I might not see it right now. But. If I don’t see it right now, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And so my one of my one of the most favorite statement that I have is from Napoleon Hill, which said there are no limitations to the mine except that one. We acknowledge it. So what I mean by that, in terms of my point, that we we can acknowledge that the change that still could happen or just acknowledge the current situation and feel like, OK, it it’s never going to change.
[00:19:20.520] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
It’s never going to be different. And it’s amazing how we can develop that with the change of setting the mindset into the right direction.
[00:19:34.720] – Tony Winyard
And so when you said that you began speaking about that in your early 20s, that you began speaking?
[00:19:45.870] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
They were expecting to return to came about about twenty six years old,
[00:19:52.530] – Tony Winyard
and how was that, were you were still in Sydney or was that somewhere else?
[00:19:57.700] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yeah, so I was actually starting out as a global inspirational speaker.
[00:20:07.080] – Tony Winyard
What kind of audiences were you speaking to then? And what has changed? Who are you speaking to now?
[00:20:14.740] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Some the most I didn’t have the time more to have faith based people and most organization, non-profit churches.
[00:20:24.660] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And for me, that was just the beginning. Now I do want to talk to business people generally. Right now I’m focusing on. On Stark. Have that have children or even one child would have limitation to help them transition from. A hopeless romantic to a victorious mindset, and I do one of business and yeah. Live in this nation and health,
[00:21:05.460] – Tony Winyard
And is that just within Switzerland or in other countries as well?
[00:21:09.220] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
It’s worldwide.I’ve been speaking around six countries, four continents, and that’s been happening before the Carona I have been travelling quite a lot. And right now it’s yeah, I do all kind of podcast around the globe, from the US to Australia to the U.K. and yeah that’s global.
[00:21:41.550] – Tony Winyard
I’m presuming and when you speak, it’s usually either in English or in German.
[00:21:46.760] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yeah, sure, when I leave here, I speak Swiss German and otherwise, English.
[00:21:54.540] – Tony Winyard
And so apart from speaking, you’re also a mentor as well, how do people approach you to to ask you to be the mentor, how does it work?
[00:22:08.070] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
So what I do is have. As I previously mentioned before a little bit, I do like to maintain mentoring, which I basically help people to transition from, like maybe somebody has a hopeless mindset or in a difficult situation that way or doesn’t know how to continue with reimagined vision, help those people to transition to have a future mindset. What that means, I have a system or a strategy that I call for step to you alive that hugs people to on going from getting to know themselves in a way, people with me finding out about their passion and values and friendships and to the next question that help them to to figure out what I’m here for and why I do that is because I realized that in today’s world, there are so many people out there that are having a hard time to to be themselves, to live a lifestyle or to live their unique leadership or unique passion, unique strengths and unique values that they have.
[00:23:48.580] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And I think more and more difficult in a world of where, especially in the information age that we live in, that there are so many things that we can to that we take and set boundaries and tell us or we’ll look at ourselves to see who am I and what I’m actually here for. To do that fulfills my soul. But I to fulfill all the people, because their problem is that when we always when we are out there and we want to fulfill other people’s expectation, but we never fulfill our self expectation, we we all know where that’s leading to and where where that way, I think is equally important to know, too, to exceed expectations for people is to know, well, what expectation do they have? Which means like, who am I? What am I here for? How can I give to the people? What do I need to give it to the people to actually say you cannot give what you don’t have? And it always stuck with me. And I have over the course of my life, I have always realized that if I don’t look properly to my neck, what my conscience would basically be different, maybe different to yours. I was struggling with a connection I had to take to my lungs, to my kidney, to my heart. And if I didn’t do that. I wasn’t really doing my part in this world and, you know, and what I realized that there is still much more in a person by such a unit trying to make passionate inequalities. And this is I think it’s so important to to to learn and to to help people and as well to really function to a victorious mindset. We can only have victory about the circumstance or the situation or helping or giving victory to people to give people. Unless we have victory, with ourselves.
[00:26:32.540] – Tony Winyard
This reminds me, maybe before we started recording, you were telling me about a story where with your victorious mindset mentoring you were helping a client go the extra mile. Would you like to tell us about that story?
[00:26:44.010] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
I want to share the story from my clients that I currently have. And then he and during Victorious mindset mentoring with him. And so we have about on a monthly basis mentoring and on we weekend we can combine while not going with him to commit to to meet with team and going into the mountains to do maybe a truly hard work and just find out more about him, about his personal life. Of course, I know him in terms of. Mentoring and friendship ways, but there’s always more to know about a person than just, you know, men in a one hour mentoring session.
[00:27:35.990] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And so I could help him so much in terms of financial breakthrough. I realized that he had a lot of disabilities in terms of finances, which is absolutely OK. But over to the house, I could help him to to release and to to give him a different perspective about reducing the fear of a financial market or a new financial manager. And he was able to structure writing day because not only was it rewarding in terms to give him more Retiro, of course, charging him anything but as well and just learning about that person and his unique passion train can really hurt world of courage and change the beautiful mountains we can to walk down.
[00:28:44.170] – Tony Winyard
And there was another story you were talking about, you are helping a company, a non-profit company who had a very small budget.
[00:28:53.080] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yeah, I do. Usually when I go for speaking as an inspirational speaker, I usually for a nonprofit organization or. An organization that might be low and blue chip and I couldn’t reach it, I do always get curt praise or third of the plate and I usually charge share. I as the keynote speaker and on and on and on other companies and what I realized actually not this is I have Gamaliel off of. Being generous to people, and I know that any time, no matter you charge that much or we charge for anything or yeah, anything comes back any time, where do we charge or not?
[00:29:56.210] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
And it’s a rewarding thing to do because you don’t hold on to to a certain. You don’t give because you want something, but you give because it adds value to the people and we naturally try to work it out while empowered by practical examples given by experiences to share of sharing of experiences. I always see whether I charge a lot or a third of how people are so grateful in challenge. By living so fulfilled, we don’t need a burst of inspiration.
[00:30:41.300] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
We burst the excitement of life and it just gives me, value and I often, almost every time I have people coming up to me and hey, individuals saying like how they have just being protected by a harmful situation that they wanted to do, or even people should want to give up and go down new and the brushed off of momentum to not give up and to keep going. And all this experience, there’s no. How we shall know, it’s invaluable, so it’s not not payable and I love that, that we are not somehow. Confined to something we have to to. If you want to exceed expectations, it’s not in terms of it or it’s almost invaluable, you know what I mean? Like, you can’t pay it, you can’t invaluable and you almost can’t pay somebody for that. And I love that because it it gives so much liberation and so much freedom to to be to speak and to mentor people.
[00:32:16.480] – Tony Winyard
What do you think of when you hear the phrase exceeding expectations, what does it mean to you?
[00:32:23.840] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Absolutely going the extra mile to do more than than the person requires or even do more than the person might think of. One can expect him, we figure out who’s challenge in this world, but I think we all know are a few companies that do that who who really yet touch the people’s needs and expectations before the person even noted. And I think that that’s a really great thing to do and, of course, a challenge you can go from.
[00:33:13.600] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Of finding out what people really need, and it came and it comes back to really getting to know people and to know ourself as a person, what what someone or. Someone in a tense situation will need.
[00:33:36.870] – Tony Winyard
I think you you mentioned before that you have an e-book?
[00:33:44.370] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
I do have an e-book. Yeah. And we should we should call it “First step to animate your life”. That is on my website, of course, free to download. And you can go to it if you want to. It’s a simple 4 steps that will help you to get to know yourself in a way to pretend to up to creating a team and basically. Yeah, living out that dream, too, to practically developing a victorious mind, to fully help people in terms of what you can give them, not in terms of what you.
[00:34:30.690] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
No can give them, but more like why you do it, why you do it, and it’s a great book which you can download on www.unlimityou.co
[00:34:45.740] – Tony Winyard
If people want to find out more information about you, what is a social media or just to go to your website or what’s the best way for people to contact you?
[00:34:56.450] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
The best way to do is like going on the business website, www.unlimityou.co or my personal website www.nathanaelzurbruegg.com
[00:35:08.390] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
If you want to know more about my person and there’s also my ebook available that you can download and that will be the best way to connect it with me.
[00:35:22.570] – Tony Winyard
And is there is there a book apart from the book that you’ve written? Is there a book that you often recommend to people that you think would help people.
[00:35:34.370] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
The book Think and Grow Rich from Napoleon Hill How it has helped me so many ways to, even after all my life situations and improve my mind, developing my mind to even more, focusing on the mind you what what it looks like and what it really how important it is to to live a victorious mind mindset.
[00:36:05.960] – Tony Winyard
It’s such a great book. And I think in some ways for people who haven’t read the book, the title is is a bit misleading because people would probably presume, oh, it’s about getting rich. But that’s not what the book is about at all.
[00:36:19.670] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Not necessarily. I mean, yeah, I when I first heard of the book I was thinking it’s all about finances, but Think and grow rich, actually, we had so many ideas in our life that we never think about to grow rich one that we have to focus on to grow rich. It can be where the relationship, whether business wise or relationship wise or financial, the way so many areas in our lives we can develop by the mindset and the book all about it while he can grow rich that can be applied in anybody else’s life.
[00:37:14.440] – Tony Winyard
Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes the title puts some people off and which is a shame because it’s a book that most people would get so much value from. Absolutely. And before we finished Nathanaeil is there a quotation that you quite like?
[00:37:33.530] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Yes. from Napoleon Hill which is “There are no limitations to the mind except those ones we acknowledge” and it’s just a beautiful quote, powerful quote to to apply in everyday life, to acknowledge only that unlimited times in our life.
[00:38:06.110] – Tony Winyard
Nethanael thank you for your time. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you and best of luck for the future and everything that you do.
[00:38:13.490] – Nathanael Zurbruegg
Thank you so much for having me. Love to hear from anyone in the future. I thank you.
[00:38:23.270] – Tony Winyard
Next week is episode 100 of Exceeding Expectations and we are going to welcome back John di Julius. He was on episode 16 or somewhere around that and it was the most downloaded episode ever of this show by far, there was so much wisdom and great stories and some really useful ideas of what you could do in your business and which is the reason why it was downloaded so many times.
[00:38:56.900] – Tony Winyard
So I invited John back to be the special guest on the one hundredth and last show of Exceeding expectations, because in two weeks time I will be starting a brand new show and it is called Happy vs. Flourishing. And we’re going to explore more about happiness and contentment and enjoying life. Many people put off their happiness until they get that promotion. Until they buy that car. Until the mortgage is paid off until until, until.
[00:39:33.260] – Tony Winyard
And rather than being happy right now, they’re always putting it off. We’re going to explore different areas around business and life and relationships about how other people have gone, about trying to have a happy life right now as opposed to putting it off like so many people do. So that’s in couple of weeks time, but next week, as I mentioned, will be Episode 100, the last episode with John di Julius. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s show.
[00:40:07.050] – Tony Winyard
Pleased do share this episode with anyone who you feel could get some benefit from Nathaniel’s amazing stories. And why not leave a review for us? The if you are a subscriber you’ll get the new show as soon as it comes out. It will still be on the same RSS feed. So you don’t have to worry about resubscribing. It will just carry on, coming into your podcast player as normal. I hope you have a fantastic week and see you next week with John.
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