All About Change - Bear-Crawling up Mt. Kilimanjaro: Extreme Athlete Kyle Maynard

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Born with all four of his limbs ending at the joints, Kyle Maynard nevertheless decided to become an athlete - and an extreme athlete at that. Kyle tells Jay his amazing personal story and the pitfalls and peaks along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Climbing up Mount Kilimanjaro is an accomplishment not many people in the world will ever accomplish. Now imagine you climb up the 20,000 foot peak by bear crawling up the whole way. All Inclusive, a podcast on inclusion, innovation, and social justice with Jay Ruderman. Hi, I'm Jay Ruderman, and this is All Inclusive. My guest today is the first person to bear crawl up Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Akunkagawa, Kyle Maynard. Kyle, welcome, and I'm sure this is going to be a really interesting discussion. Maybe I can start out by just asking you a little bit about what it was like to grow up with your family and your friends, and what was life like from the time you were a toddler to growing into, you know, an adult? Yeah, to give your audience a little bit more of a perspective on my disability. So it's

congenital amputation. And my arms end at the elbow and my legs end at the knee. Being born with it, you know, I've never really known any other way. So my family's attitude growing up was to try to make things as normal as possible. And, you know, do everything they could to try to just to help me adapt into a world that wasn't necessarily fit for me to be able to adapt. And as I'm sure many of your listeners can relate to whether they had the disability all throughout their life or something that they, you know, had from an incident or injury or illness. You know, I think that it just taught me that mentality, though, that every single person on the planet has a disability.

It's probably one of the one big things that unites us and just to not be limited by it. So what that looked like growing up, you know, was just learning how to, you know, pick up a spoon and drop it a thousand times until I figured out how to go in and feed myself. You know, now hold it just between the ends of my arms and swing it around to go and scoop up food to, you know, driving a fairly minimally adapted vehicle. Living on my own and out in, you know, West Coast for five years, you know, 3,000 miles away from home. And, you know, getting to wrestle, compete in jujitsu, football, and climb some of the highest mountains in the world. So, frankly, like none of those things I would have ever imagined

would have been possible in the, you know, in the beginning. And it's amazing, I think, what can become possible once we stay focused in the beginning. And it's amazing, I think, what can become possible once we stay focused on the possibilities. And your sisters, I guess you have three sisters who seem to have been really just accepting you as their brother and being really supportive of you growing up. I'm sure that was also, you know, that household that you grew up in was a very strong household to have your childhood. Yeah, they, to kind of illustrate like a ridiculousness of the point of how, you know, they didn't try to focus on the disability, basically. So there was, at home, at home it just you know wasn't really something

that we put a lot of attention or focus on you know we called it like the jedi mind trick right like they they just tried to focus the attention towards something else and it's almost like perception becomes reality in a certain way like perception is perception and reality is reality but like what we perceive is a great deal of like what you know what a reality becomes and so my sister one day she was like at school and there's a new kid that came to class that was a amputee and um and she was like mom mom this kid came to school he doesn't have it up he's missing an arm i wonder how he does this i wonder how it is that and my mom told her she's like you do realize like your brother doesn't have arms or legs. And she was like, whoa, I never even really thought about that. You know, and so it's kind of something that I learned that really changed my life.

When I learned it was the idea that the map is not the territory. You know, and what that means is like, when we're navigating through a specific territory, then our ability to be able to navigate through that territory is only going to be as useful as the map that we actually have. The map is never going to be the territory itself. The territory is infinitely complex, but yet the closer we can get the map to the territory itself, the better we're able to go and navigate. territory itself and the better we're able to go and navigate. So, you know, you are an athlete and in many ways an extreme athlete. And growing up, you really, you know, focused on sports in high school and decided to wrestle. In fact, you lost your first 36 matches in your senior year, but ended up becoming 12th in the nation. Where did that drive come from? Was that because of bullying or is that just something inside saying,

I'm going to put my focus into being the best athlete I can? It was a lot of factors. I can't think that it relates back to any one thing but i think that um you know bullying is an interesting thing too right because i mean it's it's something that if i can't say that it didn't play a factor or role right that like the idea you know the sports that i specifically got into were very like you know sort of masculine you know or like the combat sports, right? Like, like, or like very challenging things like climbing mountains, things, things of that nature. So I think that idea of like trying to express myself physically was for sure, like a big, a big factor. And not, you know, wanting to be bullied, you know, and I think the wrestling gave me that ability. When I first got

into it, though, I hated the sport. Because in wrestling, like, you're out there all alone, as you and your opponent on the mat, right? And so it's very different than in football, like a football game. If your teammate drops the ball, and you know, you lose the winning touchdown, but like, you, you lose the winning touchdown, but like you, you played a good game yourself, then like you can walk away and be like, okay, you know, I did my best. And that, you know, it was out of my control. Wrestling was very different in the sense that like,

it was just me and my opponent out there and I was all alone. And so there was no ability to be able to go and blame it on anybody else other than myself as to whatever happened. And also, you know, just the losses like wore on me. Like, I don't want to give anybody the impression that like, you know, that that was, you know, an easier time. Like I was like begging my mom and dad to let me quit and hated the sport at the time. I did not, was not having a good time. And people at the time were basically saying that it was not having a good time. And people at the time were basically saying that it was borderline child abuse that my mom and dad were making me do it.

So, you know, that's, that's the crazy part. And then you fast forward to my senior year of high school, there was a different discussion. And it, I had a piece that was on HBO Real Sports. And part of the, part of the piece that centered on that was, you know was whether or not I had an unfair advantage over the athletes I was competing against. It was just quite a juxtaposition from where I started, where it was 0-35 when I first started out and absolutely hating the sport. Then all of a sudden, my senior year of high school, winning the 36 varsity matches and getting to go and beat state champions and state placers and compete at a high level. So let's talk about that. First of all, tell me about your coaches, because usually coaches play a pivotal role in either encouraging athletes to move forward or deterring them. So my guess is that you were blessed with some really special coaches.

For sure. I was very blessed with the coaches that I had in my life. My football coach, because I started out, football was the first organized team sport that I played. And there was even a bit more discussion as to whether or not I should be allowed to play in football. In fact, there was a seven member board and that was deciding whether or not I was allowed to play. There was three votes for me, three votes against me. And my football coach, Tom Shy,

had to go and lobby and fight for the seventh vote for me to be able to play. Had he not done that, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. And, you know, the idea was that it was going to be too dangerous to be, you know, hurt and liabilities, all of those things. And I completely understand that, you know, literally, like the way that I was would tackle people was I would take my helmet, and I would smash it into my opponent's shins as hard as I could. on its shins as hard as I could. Sounds painful. Yeah, it probably was more for them than for me.

But, you know, I think, you know, in the world of, like, the head injury stuff that we have today in conversation, like, I don't think that I would be allowed to play, which then begs the question of, like, is that the right thing for us, for the world, for society? Like, you know, because if i hadn't been allowed to play and been allowed to do that then it would have turned out it's a very different path and my wrestling coach he would get down um with my dad in the first early goings he would stay after practices and like he was the head high school varsity coach and would stay after in the youth

program and spend a significant amount of time working with me where he would tuck his arms into his sleeves and try to roll wrestle from my perspective to go and give me an idea of you know how to how to move and um you know try to come up with moves from my perspective. Well, I recently watched a talk by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said that those people who are successful in life have a goal, and that goal drives them. So you obviously had a goal. And that goal, you know, despite all the losses to start off with, that goal pushed you to stay with the sport and not to leave. But let's talk about all, like, I mean, did you have opponents who said, listen, I'm not, I don't want to fight him?

Or did you have people in the crowds who were just, you know, heaping abuse on you? And how'd you deal with that? Not so much in wrestling. In wrestling, it didn't seem to be that that much of an issue there there was some debate you know i think mostly among the parents of the kids that i'd be that they were trying to come up with things where they're like absurd ridiculous things where they're like kyle can't put his hands above the starting line, you know, and like a very like legalistic interpretation of the rules to try to like

deter me from actually doing it. And so I think my coach went to a rules meeting, had conversations with the referees and they were able to, to move past that. Um, in MMA, it's a bit of a different scenario. I did have a number of opponents who backed out until I actually got my opponent that I fought, Brian Fry, in the fight. And I give him a tremendous amount of credit for taking that fight because it was just, I think, you know, at the time I had been on Oprah and Larry King and had received a lot of this, you know, bigger media attention. And when we did that fight, I think like six times more people had Googled my name than even when I was on Oprah. There was a lot of attention on it. We had camera crews from ESPN,

all the major MMA networks and all that stuff were covering it. It was just a very big spectacle. Frankly, he was an amateur fighter as well. I think he'd had four or five amateur fights at that point. This all of a sudden turned into not quite the level of a Conor McGregor title fight, but approaching that as far as the amateur scale goes. And, but he did it anyway and stepped in and fought, you know, without him, you know, I wouldn't have had that chance to be able to do it. So what, I mean, it sounds a little crazy, like, like what, what possessed you to want to do to enter an MMA match? I mean, MMA, I'm not an aficionado, but I understand that it's a caged match,

and there's a lot more that goes into it than a regular wrestling match. So why does Kyle decide, you know, I want to try to be an MMA fighter? Good question. I think I've always loved like the tests and the challenges for sure. And there is a purity inside of, especially in martial arts, right? That in artistry that exists, that is, you know, hard to experience outside of it. Um, Andrew and I were talking about this yesterday, you know, it's, it's when you hold someone down or someone's holding you down or, you know, it, like, there's a different level of fight that

comes out of you that like, you can't experience otherwise you know it's like i've i've pushed myself really really hard and crossfit workouts and mountain climbing and all that kind of stuff and it's not the same thing as when you're in there and so you know if you're locked in a cage with somebody else it does sound like a crazy thing and i think to 99.9 of people that that might be the case but you know for me me, it's something I was a huge fan of the sport. And getting to, to be in there and to experience it, it was, it was absolutely wild, you know, I mean, wrestling matches to are like, really, you know, jujitsu, they're, they're, like your adrenaline is going, you know, it's a really heightened experience. But at the same time,

it's, it's different when I remember when I was when i was hit for the first time i thought whoa i'm not in a wrestling match anymore you know i don't know it was it was a different kind of feeling came out i still was not able to execute my game plan mike tyson says he's like everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face right that was the truth and i was like, wow, you know, I felt that. And all of the fight to to go into to get to that point as well. There was a tremendous fight with the Athletic Commission in Georgia. And, you know, the head commissioner himself is in a wheelchair, he was an off duty police officer that was shot in the spine. So he told me face to face, you know, looked me in the eye and said, like, I'll be there cage side when you do this.

I think it's a really inspiring thing that you're helping people with disabilities, you know, and changing the perception. And then all of a sudden, like, due to the public pressure, and the sort of outcry that it was ridiculous that I was doing it, then his attitude changed completely. And it was a unanimous decision to deny me. So that's why we ended up going to Alabama to do the fight there because there was significantly less government regulation. And I have joked, you know, half jokingly, half serious, that if I wanted to fight like a pack of hyenas in Alabama,

they probably would have let me. And, you know, but that in truth, though, it like allowed me to have that opportunity to do it. And, you know, again, I don't know if that's something that would even be possible today. So, Kyle, you do a tremendous amount of public speaking. And on the story on ESPN, you said that you were happy for the 45 minutes while you were doing the public speaking, but then for the 23 hours and 15 minutes afterwards, you were depressed. Can you talk a little bit about mental health and how that's impacted you? I mean, we're going through a time now when there's a tremendous amount of people dealing with mental health on all different levels. But maybe you can, if you share about your own mental health and how you've dealt with it.

Yeah. I've always said, you know, some of the most challenging disabilities are ones that you can't necessarily see on the outside. I think we can be close to people that were around, but we can never really truly know what somebody else is enduring and going through. And for me, especially in that period, it was, you know, I went from being a full time high school student, freshman in college at UGA, where I got to go and release my book. And so I went from, you know, literally literally just high school wrestler, early college wrestler, athlete, hanging out with friends, to now all of a sudden New York Times bestselling book, traveling the world, all this crazy stuff. It's just a whirlwind transition. And that was really challenging.

I was alone for a significant amount of it, and my friends were back at home, you know, having fun, continuing to go to school, and I was off traveling. I was speaking for, you know, different groups, and I wasn't eating my own dog food. I was not practicing the message that I was talking to other people about, of the, like, no excuses message right and i got very discouraged and um was was ready to quit and um had a chance meeting with a couple of service members um armed service members who had

been through some really really hard times and themselves, who told me that my story had helped them like get back on their feet. And that made a, it just an enormous difference to me and made me realize that like the, the, you know, the work that I was doing was, was important. And I remember after that happened, I came home and I went to my hotel room and I just cried. You know, I had a dream to want to be in the military growing up. And my dad was in the army and, you know, the tribe, you know, would have done anything.

They told me I could be a chaplain. I was like, oh, that's cool. Does he get a gun? And wanted to be out there on the front lines. And, you know, there was a different plan in place, but at the same time, I, I don't know. I, it just woke me up to realize that like, okay, this, you know, this is what matters. And, you know, like, um, being able to like make a difference in the lives of other people,

instead of just, you know, going out there and like collecting a check from the speaking engagements that I was doing. And, um, that was a, a tough period tough period. And not just that, you know, maybe that that's one point in time, you know, at a younger age, I was at a point in time with my life and disability where I was, you know, ready to give up on my life. Like it was just like too much at 10 years old, I tried to end my life. You know, there was a lot of, a lot of pain in different points in time throughout. And even more recently in the past, like six to eight months, you know, it's been a time to kind of like really like stop and reflect and to stop and to slow down and just

to, to just be grateful for the little things and, you know, for family, for, you know, just waking up another day. I think that, you know, none of us know who we're touching. And sometimes it can be a small act or a small interaction. And you can have a huge impact on someone's life. But I think also, I mean, talking about like the small steps and you're now having an appreciation for taking the time and looking at the small steps. I mean, you've done some really challenging things. I mean, you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa

and Aconcagua in Argentina. And I mean, I remember watching the video of you saying, listen, at some point, I'm just looking three feet ahead. And that's my goal. You know, I just want to get three feet ahead. And that's what's motivating me. First of all, what led you? And, and I saw, I saw that, you know, in the videos, I mean, you had to have special fittings on, on your limbs in order to walk over, you know,

rocks and dirt and snow and ice. And you're doing a bear crawl, which, you know, for those of us that work out, a bear crawl across a room is excruciating. But to do it, you know, for miles up a mountain, why'd you do it? What possessed you to do those climbs? I'd say the initial possession occurred because I wanted to go places that my wheelchair couldn't take me. You know, there, there are no handicap ramps on Kilimanjaro, you know, there's not, there's not going to be a, you know,

a tram line that gets you to the top. And frankly, even if there was, it's a very different experience. Like there's a, there's a mountain in Atlanta called stone mountain that, you know, it's, I think it's, it's the technically the largest continuous hunk of granite in the world. Right. I know it well. Very controversial in, in, in today's day. Yeah, it is. And they, it's also, you know, been a really special place for me to where I started my climbing. I literally, when I started climbing,

had bath towels wrapped around my arms and my feet. And my friends had helped duct tape on to hike it. So it's about 900 feet above ground. And I had been to Stone Mountain with my family a bunch of times growing up whenever somebody would come into town and we'd go and we'd take pictures. And it's a cool experience when i hiked it for the first time i literally like tore all the skin off my arms i was brutalized from the experience it was a crossfit competition

the first workout was a thousand meter row and then a sprint up stone mountain. I did it in leather welding sleeves and it was just, you know, a really painful thing. I literally, I took an hour and 40 something minutes, I think an hour and 46 minutes, maybe. Most people finish that workout in 25 minutes and I got to the top and it's like, wow, this is like, like totally different. Like it's actually like really beautiful. And so I'd been to the top before. And then all of a sudden,

when I got to the top, you know, after climbing it in my own steam, then it was just a totally different experience. So you're climbing Kilimanjaro and you reach a point. I don't know how far up, but miles up. And it's just excruciating. And you're telling yourself and your fellow climbers, I just don't know if I can do this. And a decision is made to climb a much more difficult route called the Western Breach, which is very rocky. And, you know, in the video, you're like, let's do it. I'm going to do it. Can you talk about that decision? Like, you know, you're all the way up there and you put yourself in an even more dangerous situation.

Yeah. I knew that going the Western Breach route would shave off five days of the total trip time. And so I was looking at like a longer, slow death. Basically, like I had like a pebble inside of it. It wasn't like a pebble inside of it wasn't like a pebble it was sort of like a there was a part of my right arm socket that was like a princess and the e kind of like thing that was just grinding into my arm it was creating some of the most intense pain i've ever felt and i i was at like a breaking point and knew that like five more days of that was just

not gonna work but i knew that i could get through one that was just not going to work. But I knew that I could get through one day of anything. I was like, you know, one day can get through anything. And I knew as long as my guide, you know, determined that it was safe, you know, and that we could go, we ultimately had a team meeting and presented the option to everybody and said you know that we can split into two groups one group can continue to go on the original path you know if people choose to do that and the other group can can go up and everybody decided to just dang which you know i'm almost gonna get like emotional thinking about it um because we and everybody decided to just stay, which, you know, I'm almost going to get, like,

emotional thinking about it, because we ended up, you know, relying on each other a lot there to do it, and really that one day was a brutal day. There was, you know, it was a steeper path, rock fall, there was you know it was steeper path rockfall um and it was you know that was a it was a really just special day because that was the first day that i recall touching ice and once we were in like hit the ice and we're sitting in the tundra and it could look back and i could see the rainforest that we had started out in it was just just one of the, you know, that night was probably, we've slept inside of the crater rim in the tundra, you know,

and it was one of the coldest, one of the coldest nights of my life. My guide who's, who's been on the top of, you know, most major mountains around the world, you know, he echoed the same thing too and said it was one of the coldest nights of his life. And it was one of the coldest nights of his life. And it was just another, that next morning we got up and had another 900 feet to go to hit the summit after the Western Breach. And I thought that was kind of symbolic because it's almost the exact distance of a single stone mountain. You're listening to All Inclusive with jay ruderman you can learn more

view the show notes and transcripts at rudermanfoundation.org slash all inclusive please remember to subscribe rate and review us wherever you are listening and and you were carrying the remains of a fallen service member and and is it someone that you knew or you know because it seemed to be a very symbolic you know to get to the top to be able to disperse the ashes on the top uh was something very important to you can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I met Corey's mom. Corey Johnson was the name of the soldier. I met his mom in a gym in Arizona before we left. And she had lost him, I think, five months prior. And he had a wife, had two little girls. I believe his wife was pregnant with their third daughter when he left on his final deployment. And, um, and the fourth

night of the climb, um, when I was ready to quit the thought that ran through my head that, um, it was almost like, um, I don't know, even know how to describe it. Like the word is almost like indignation. You know, it was like the fact that like I knew that, you know, he wouldn't have that opportunity to go and be on that climb with his girls. And that I was there and that I was choosing to be there. And, you know, like I still had that like choice to be alive and continue to push to the top. And I felt like a presence there with me. I felt, you know, I felt like I had him as like our 10th, you know, teammate. In addition to all of the, we had nine Americans on the team.

You know, Corey is sort of our honorary 10th teammate. And that moment of getting to leave Corey's ashes there in the summit on Kilimanjaro was, you know, was, was absolutely, you know, I've described it as the biggest honor of my life. And I believe that to be the case. It's extremely emotional. And I would urge anyone to, to, to watch a clip of your final ascent to the summit.

to watch a clip of your final ascent to the summit. When you summited Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, in some ways, I think you said that was even more difficult because of the conditions. The conditions, the altitude. So the difference between Kilimanjaro is 19,34 feet okonkwo is 22 800 and i think 809 something like that so the difference between 19 000 feet and almost 23 000 feet you know that that doesn't seem like a ton but it's not a linear increase it becomes like uh linear increase it becomes like uh almost not quite exponential difference but it becomes like a significant like a you know geometric kind of curve parabolic like once you're going up that

high like we spent maybe four or five nights above the altitude of the summit on kilimanjaro so your body is just in the state of decay and you know really like pushed to the to the limit there and um it i think was just you know there was also to a bit of like what i believe to be like divine intervention and like celestial alignment like literally like the the heavens opened it was the most perfect summit day everything and we were still like i hit the summit at 4 15 p.m um which was 15 minutes past our turnaround time which my guide gave me as a grace period and thankfully you know we had some some issues you know and but it was just it was a really really intense day there was um you know and psychologically too it was was really was it was difficult as well

there was an american climber that we knew that was 24 hours ahead of us that um had fallen like fallen down from a stroke and hit his head and had died and just brought his body down like like right as we had gotten there and you know i was thinking to myself like the same thing like you know my body was in full shutdown mode like do i continue to go and push forward for the summit or like is that going to go and cost me my life yeah no certainly um not for everyone and and and you know i gotta give you a lot of credit that you know you pushed yourself to your limits why don't we talk a little bit about hidden disabilities you mentioned uh to me in the past that you that you have adhd and um maybe you can talk about that and what impact it's had on on your life and and how it

shaped your life yeah um i mean so for starters it's not really something that i've talked about a ton you know so um it's kind of new to me but i know it's something that like it would probably have been more beneficial to like to bring up earlier. I know a ton of people, you know, battle the same, you know, or similar challenges. I think that like, you know, for, for starters, one of the things that comes to mind was, you know, signing books for kids where the, you know, I would be writing an inscription and that the parent would go and tell me like, Oh, my child has, you know, ADD or ADHD.

And then I would have that conversation and dialogue with them and go and tell them like, you know, or adhd and then i would have that i could get a conversation and dialogue with them and go and tell them like you know basically like hey like i i've got the same thing too you know it's like maybe maybe i didn't say that in the speech but like it's it's definitely you know been you know a challenge in my life but i've always called it like my secret superpower too because i think that like you know like we've talked about before with disabilities it's kind of like both sides of the coin right right? There's the adversity that we go and face from it, but it also shapes us and molds us and helps build us into who we are. And, and also, you know, just statistically, empirically, I know, you know, tons of people with ADHD, you know, do pretty, you know, incredible

things with their life, whether it's like, you know, becoming first responders or special operations in the military, you know, entrepreneurs, or special operations of the military you know entrepreneurs i think that people are like 300 more likely to be an entrepreneur with ad add or adhd than without so you know sometimes like we get caught in like i think that like diagnosing something as you know like we can like put like that box and that characteristic around it and create the limitations around what something could be as opposed to like seeing it for the beauty that it can go and be.

That doesn't mean that it doesn't have enormous, you know, challenges and consequences too, right? Like I think the internal aspect of the disability that I face, the one that you can't see on the outside is probably as hard or harder than the physical nature of the disability that I face, the one that you can't see on the outside is probably as hard or harder than, than the physical nature of the disability too. Right. So like people can go and see, you know, if your listeners recall from like, you know, I was talking before, like basically I'm born a congenital amputee. So my arms end at the elbows and legs end at the knees. And that's,

you know, obviously presented, you know, other challenges, other opportunities too. But, you know, the hidden things, the unseen disabilities, like, you know, that I faced there, like it's a totally different world, totally different set of challenges. And, you know, I went and resorted to try to like medicate for a long time, you know, especially like with, um, you know, caffeine, you know, into like prescription medication and iridolin and Adderall, um, you know, and other, you know, types of, uh, stimulants and, um, sought kind of anything that i could to try to like help you know make it better um you know i know even recreational drug use at points for escapism you know i would

never would have like wouldn't have considered it like you know full-blown addiction to things other than like stimulants and caffeine in particular but like i know it could become a big issue right like we you know rely upon on something that you know in order to go and compensate and overcome i mean every single person on the planet has like those those hidden disabilities too right like i can't necessarily look at you and know what yours are and that's the crazy part about it too so it's like what do you do with that like i figured you know that would, it would be interesting to have this conversation with you and open up and like,

and share about something I never really shared about before. Right. Yeah, I have a son with ADHD who, you know, I can just tell he's going to be a great entrepreneur and it's part of who he is. And, you know, I think with,

especially with mental health issues, a lot of us don't want to talk about it. And there's a tremendous amount of stigma around it. But you're a very visible person and you've been, you know, very outspoken about, you know, what you can do and what you've accomplished as a person with a disability. There's so many different people who are great athletes are speaking out. I think it's going to do wonders for our kids. Yeah, I'm hopeful for that too.

I mean, I think that like if I put myself in like, you know, in your son's shoes, for instance, right? Like if I got diagnosed with something that, you know, most people would go and look at and, you know, and think of it as this like really negative thing. But then I go and see other people that have done successful, you know, like lived a great life and, you know, achieved great things that had the same thing.

It completely kind of like reframes and shifts the disability. You know, it would make me more proud of it in that way, right? Like I would want to embrace it. And I don't want to downplay or diminish like the difficulty that something is especially with add right like it's you know but then at the same time it's like like the positive side of that too though like i realized that like wow like that's actually like a huge gift and a superpower to be able to go and see you know different threats or things like that or you know other things that other people wouldn't necessarily realize respond to add people to respond to fear in a different way that's why

like most people so like you know like first responders and uh oftentimes you know military um and you know like i'm sure maybe frontline workers on any level right now that like you know like have to deal with like that response to fear you know and going into scary situations you know entrepreneurship in and of itself is like a scary thing right you're taking like an unproven concept and you're you know you're trying to go and make something work with it and trying to like adapt it and you know you don't necessarily know if it's going to work right but then at the same time like if you never know you never if you don't you know if you don't try you never know you know you don't get to have like you know like a company like a uber you know appear overnight

and completely like change the the entire like world right like if without somebody that has like that kind of thinking of like just you, you know, thinking in a totally different way. So I think that that's. I mean, I think there's so many people in history that have probably had, um, mental health issues that we just don't know about, but it was part of who they were and, or who they are. And it made them great entrepreneurs, great artists, um, great athletes. And it's something that, you know, I totally get you. I mean, the traditional classroom for someone who has ADHD or ADD

is not the best environment. But, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, doesn't have anything to do with, you know, your abilities to succeed. And I think, you know, we have to blow those stigmas away in order to allow people to feel good about, you know, who they are and what they can do in our world. Yeah. Not only is it like, is the traditional classroom not set up for people

and that it's, it's almost like the exact opposite right like it's there's that latent aspect of our of our dna and our like you know our biology that we're suppressing especially among like this specific group of people who are potentially some of the most important people in our society in our culture that you know are, you know, effectively at times just being punished because, you know, you can't sit still and, you know, listen to a lecture or whatever, like, you know, but then at the same time they can go out and solve, you know, enormous problems and, you know, and be great leaders in so many other ways in so many other industries. Right. So I'll tell you something about my son, you know, he's been diagnosed and doctors have said, listen, if you are going to

succeed in a classroom environment, you have to take some medication to handle your executive functioning and be able to sit in the classroom and keep up with the work. And he's like, I'm not doing it. I'm not taking medication. You know, I will not do that. And we're like, all right, you know, that's your choice, but this may be difficult. He's like, no, you know, it doesn't, I don't feel myself. And he's like, there are, I have friends who do take it. I have friends that don't take it.

And I don't want to take it. I want to feel myself and I'm going to do fine in school. So, you know, there's no one formula. I know people feel strongly on, you know, different ends of the spectrum about, you know, medication or no medication, but, you know, I don't think that, you know, whether he is successful in a, in a traditional environment or whether he's not successful, he's going to reflect on, on his ultimate success in life. I mean, I can just tell from his personality that, that, you personality that he will be a successful person.

So I totally get it. I really appreciate you speaking out, you talking about this aspect of yourself because it's in us all. There's no one who is completely perfect. I don't think perfect is meant to exist or what perfect actually is. But we all have a role. And I think that we should be proud of ourselves and love ourselves.

Let me just ask you, what's the future hold for you? I mean, you're an athlete. Where does your athletics take you? What's the next hold for you? I mean, you're an athlete, you know, where, where does your athletics take you? What's the next challenge for you? And I'd also ask you to give, you know, for all of those listeners, especially younger listeners, what piece of advice would you like to depart to them? I think, you know, right now I'm kind of in that process of recreating and redreaming, like, you know, who I am and what I want to go and take on and do

next. And there's a million different things and directions. It's almost, you know, narrowing it down is the difficulty. Because, you know, all of us have 24 hours in a day. And there's only so many different things that we can go and do and take on. Yet at the same time, like I said, you know, really like the, and I don't say this to, you know,

to be completely absurd cliche, but like the biggest lesson that I'm learning right now and I think that the lesson that I've imparted to others is like, you know, really to stop and smell the roses and, you know, in, in the world right now, like it's, it's just, it's crazy. What's, what's, you know, the, the, I think a lot of it is the, you know, the 24 hour news cycle, you know,

focuses so much on the negative side of things. Right. And then especially when we're inside and cycle you know focuses so much on on the negative side of things right and especially when we're inside and you know connected door devices and that we're having more of like a you know digital communication and interactions with each other then it's um you know it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there's still so much good in the world. And that like as a species, as a, you know, just global community, we've come a long way and there's still a long way to go. But at the same time, I think if there's one unifying thing

that would matter to me in terms of leadership and my contribution, and I think that you're right. I think you made an interesting point there and I will retract what I said of like not seeing myself as, as, as a leader inside of the community because what I do in terms of, you know, my own path and leadership is, is my own path and leadership,

but what you do inside of yours is yours and that they're both critical, that they're both important. But I think in terms of going forward, you know, I learned recently that the word prosperity, it actually means towards hope. And I think that that's the direction that I feel, you know, aligned with most is continue to go in and help drive myself, you know, and hopefully those around me and those I interact with towards hope that the future can be better than it is today. Well, Kyle, I really want to thank you. This has been an interesting conversation.

I've learned so much from you, not only from our discussion, but from seeing you in action on film, which I would urge people to Google you and to see what you've done and also to read your book, No Excuses. I want to wish you the best of luck. I know these are trying times, but things are going to get better. And you have so much energy to depart to this world. So thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you, Jay.

Appreciate you. Great. And I hope we get to see each other in person one day. Absolutely. Let's do it. All right. Take care. Thank you.

Thank you. All Inclusive is a production of the Ruderman Family Foundation. Our key mission is the full inclusion of people with disabilities in all aspects of society. You can find All Inclusive on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. To view the show notes, transcripts, or to learn more, go to rudermanfoundation.org slash allinclusive. Have an idea for a podcast? Be sure to tweet at Jay Ruderman.