Yesterday, my business partner just had a friend’s father suffer a heart attack. Yesterday I was at UCSF’s new Hospital Project at Mission Bay working on some process ideas. And this morning I saw this inspiring post by Om Malik on his life changing experience spurred by his serious heart attack.

Almost exactly six years ago, I survived a serious heart attack thanks to the team at UCSF Medical Center – specifically the cardiology division.

Because of their diligence, patience and care, I learned a lot about my health and how I wanted to live the rest of my life. Those three weeks spent in the hospital were as healing for my spirit as for my body.

At my doctor's suggestion, I adopted better lifestyle habits such as a mostly vegetarian diet, more exercise and no alcohol or smoking. But the bigger change came in my approach to life.

One of the two promises I made to myself when I was released from the hospital was that I was going to stop trying to control everything. As life’s unpredictability showed me, the best you can do is control the inputs (or your own efforts). We cannot control the outcome. The other promise I made was to stop evaluating life by the moment and instead live in the moment. Or, as Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Live as if you would die tomorrow, learn as if you would live forever.”

These past six years have added up to what could be the best years of my life – for now. And I will forever be grateful to the UCSF cardiology team. They saved me from near disaster and gave me a chance to rewrite my life story.

Now it's my turn to give back to the team that gave so much to me. My goal is to raise $25,000 to help fund various heart disease-related projects at UCSF, and I would really appreciate your support.

There are three things you can do to help:

Contribute any amount to the campaign before January 31.

Get more bang for your buck by contributing on Tuesday, December 3. To sweeten the pot, Indiegogo will kick in $1 for every $20 contributed to a #GivingTues campaign on December 3.

Tell your friends about this campaign and ask them to contribute.

UCSF is at the forefront of some of the most exciting research in cardiology. Private support is vital to their work. It allows UCSF to recruit outstanding faculty and trainees, launch cutting-edge research projects, and incubate them until they become competitive for government funding sources. All funds raised will go directly to the division of cardiology in the department of medicine.

Isn’t it sad that sometimes to change your life needs to be at risk?

How many things finally change habits in the data center after a critical outage?