The Jordan Harbinger Show - 288: Erik Weihenmayer | A Blind Man Sees No Barriers

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Erik Weihenmayer (@ErikWeihenmayer) has kayaked the Grand Canyon and climbed Mount Everest -- blind. He is the author of Touch the Top of the World and co-author of No Barriers and The Adversity Advantage. What We Discuss with Erik Weihenmayer: How challenges unite us as human beings -- no matter our hardships or handicaps. Why losing his sight as a teenager didn't discourage Erik from excelling beyond the capacity of the world's most accomplished extreme athletes. How Erik embraces a "no barriers" philosophy to guide and lift others -- even when their own cultures seek to keep them down. Why Erik's not "the blind climber," but a climber who happens to be blind -- and why this makes all the difference. The instincts, senses, and technology that allow Erik to navigate around his dangerous terrains of choice without sight. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/288 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most brilliant and interesting people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see The Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave and help you become a better thinker as well. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for negotiation, public speaking, body language, persuasion, influence, and more. So if you're smart and you like to learn and improve, you'll be right at home here with us.

Today, Eric Weinmere, he was the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He's also completed the seven summits joining 150 mountaineers at the time who'd accomplish that feat, but the only climber who was blind. He learned how to rock climb at a young age, didn't need to see because he felt his way around a lot of the time, which frankly seems pretty dangerous regardless of vision. Eric told me that as a blind person, it sometimes feels like society is smothering him with a blanket, assuming he can't do what sighted people can do. Of course, he goes all the way full circle and around the other side and decides to do

what most people, period, can't do. Eric will tell you that what's within you is stronger than what's in your way, and he is the living embodiment of that. Eric recently also kayaked the entire 277 miles of the Grand Canyon, considered one one of the most formidable whitewater venues in the world. I loved this conversation, as Eric is truly a great athlete and conversationalist, and I know you're going to love it as well. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great guests and manage my relationships

using systems and tiny habits, check out our course, six-minute networking. It's free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us, and you'll be in great company. All right, let's hear from Eric Weinmayer. I mean, the whole thing is fascinating because you take on things that are deliberately really hard, but not just physically, not just your own emotions, but you're like, okay, I've sort of mastered

myself here. Let me bring other people where I don't have full control over what they're thinking, what they're feeling, and like try to get them in the same maybe mental headspace that you found yourself in when you were going through some hard times and see if they can get to a similar spot. Does that sound accurate? Yeah, for sure. And I find humans are very similar. You know, kids, going through any kind of struggle. I mean, you might be blind or you might struggle with depression. I mean, obviously, those are different things. But when you get really deep down the feelings that you have about them, the psychological stuff that happens around that challenge are very, very similar.

And so one of the premises behind no barriers is to unite that umbrella group of challenges and say, hey, you know, when we have successes, we feel pretty proud and egotistical. But when we have challenge, it's kind of something that unites us as human beings. And how do you lean into each other and try to figure out how to learn from each other, to learn some cool things about each other, about each other's challenges, and also figure out what we all have in common, what every human being has in common when you struggle through life. That to me is a super powerful feeling to walk away from a trip with that kind of connection with these kids. We visited, you know, disability schools in that area and a school for the deaf.

To be honest, American kids, no matter what your disability is, you're pretty darn fortunate. Yeah, I wondered about that when I saw you hiking up Everest with six Tibetan blind kids, and I just thought, people are tripping them and being horrible to them, and their parents are casting them out because they think they're possessed by the serpent spirit and all this stuff. And I don't mean to belittle the culture, but, like, at some point, your superstitious or religious stuff stops functioning when it starts to marginalize some of the most vulnerable members of your society, especially your own kids. Yeah, I got into a little bit of trouble because the BBC called me and they were asking my comment because Nepal banned disabled people from climbing Everest.

Wow. You know, I just said, hey, you know, it's a superstition. It's a fear, you know. They're like, well, one group's superstition is another group's religion and spirituality. And, you know, no offense to Buddhism because Buddhism is a beautiful, beautiful religion and spirituality. I don't think it's any indictment on Buddhism or, you know, Tibet or anything like that. It's more the idea that when you're like subsistence farming, barely scraping by, barely enough food to survive, if you have a kid who's born blind or disabled, well, guess what? They're like another mouth to feed. Obviously, they fall to the bottom of the caste system and you have to create sort of cosmic reasons why life is so damn unfair. And so, you know, you create superstition around these kids,

you know, hey, they're blind because they were murderers in a past life. So it brings sort of like a justice to the universe when there really isn't any. And so, yeah, these kids were pretty hideously picked on and ostracized. I, you know, sat there why one mother said, hey, you know, when he went blind, he was the smartest boy in a school. I wish it's better that he never was born, kids like. I saw that and I was crushed. She said, I think, and I'm trying to quote, but I think I'll end up paraphrasing here, she said, the most clever child is now a waste.

And I was just like, is he there? He's right there. Yeah, he's like sitting there. I'm like, he's not deaf, you cruel. But again, she loves her kid, but it's just such a powerful part of that way of life. You know, you're blind. You can't wrangle the yaks. You know, you can't farm potatoes.

I mean, that's the perception. So when Sabria, this really cool German explorer and adventurer, she's blind like me, she didn't get into the Peace Corps. She funded her own way to Tibet and rode horseback across the Tibetan Plateau. She was finding kids that were tied to beds in dark rooms and the parents just didn't know what to do with them. She realized that was what she wanted to do. So she started a center for the blind and just started with like a couple kids and grew it into this incredible organization called Braille Without Borders. had hundreds of kids. They were the most educated kids in Tibet. Within 10 or 12 years, sighted kids would come to the school and say, hey, could I get into the school? Because,

you know, these blind kids are so lucky to be educated in this way. And so that's flipping things on its head when sighted kids are wishing they were blind so they could be part of this community. But it really was powerful for me because it showed me what could be done with a small team to influence, to impact an entire culture. You know, these kids, went from being spit on to now making money as translators, as teachers, as business owners, and sending checks back to their families, sending money back to their families. And when you're the bread rent winner, you're the one sending the check to your family. You're no longer a pariah.

You're at the top of the food chain. So she really changed what it means to be disabled in this country in a pretty short amount of time. And definitely that was a huge influence for me going there and trekking, with her kids, we did a big adventure with six of her fit-motivated teenage blind kids. We were attempting a peak called Lockpourri, 23,000-foot peak next to Everest. We fell a little bit short, but we still had a great suffer fest with the kids. It's funny you should call it a suffer fest because that's exactly what it looked like.

And we'll get into that in a little bit, but I'm curious because I know that you were not born blind, and I think a lot of people are wondering, okay, well, if you weren't born blind, how did you lose your sight? You know, what happened? I guess the way I describe it is I won the lottery, but the opposite. So, yeah, I had a super rare disease. Nobody in my family had ever known anything about it or, you know, we can't trace it back into our bloodline or anything like that. But I was just born with this rare disease. My dad noticed that my eyes weren't tracking when I was like two or three years old. And that went to a series of doctors visits, you know, all around the country. And finally, they diagnosed me with the super rare disease called juvenile retinuskeesis.

By the time you're teenager, you're totally blind. There was no cure or anything to be done. You've said things like blindness is now just a thing that happened to me. But how long did it take you to get there mentally, right? Because I would assume you've resisted blindness at first and didn't just go, oh, okay, this is just going to happen to me. Just knowing your personality by what I've seen so far, you don't seem like the type is like, oh, I'm going blind. Nothing I can do about that, just going to sit back and watch Netflix. You know, like, not really your style. And I was really stubborn.

I guess I still am. And I'll admit, I'm not the smartest guy, you know, like I'm not like a person who can just intellectually embrace something without the suffering, without the failure. So, yeah, no, I fought blindness every step of the way. I fought every teacher trying to teach me anything about blindness or using a cane. I fought my parents. I remember one time throwing my cane down the sewer. I just was like, screw this.

I don't want to use this cane. I was so pissed. My mom who said, you know, you have to use this cane. And if you want to get out of the house, if you want to go out of the house. And I remember, you know, being a jerky teenager, I called her a bitch. And she said, well, if I'm a bitch, you're a son of a bitch and use the cane. Yeah, you can't really argue with that logic, right? But my mom was so tough.

And, you know, everybody in my life just kept pushing and cajoling. And, you know, eventually you sort of climb out of this thing. Although I won't say exactly what you said about, you know, blindness is something that happened to me. You still struggle, you know, some days, you know, I'm 51 years old and I'll be packing for a trip to Nepal and I'll spin around and walk into a wall. My, you know, blood's spurting everywhere and I'm like, ah, hate blindness, you know. So, you know, there's still moments where you feel it, but I think you feel it less as you learn the tools and you learn the mindset how to, break out of that prison. Some stuff you probably still struggle with.

Like you said, you walk into a wall. But I'm guessing, just on the lighter side, do you lose your phone a lot? Is it like, where the crap? Where did I put? Because that happens to everyone. So the fact that you can't really see where you put it, it just adds another layer of kind of shit that you have to deal with. Yeah, and it makes you, as a blind person, be incredibly systematic.

You know, like when I go into a hotel room, I don't just throw stuff everywhere. I'm really careful. But even, yeah, despite that, you know, I'll lose my phone. and it'll be like five feet away. And you can't just use your eyes to glance around. You've got to feel every inch. And you might just be missing it by an inch, you know? And so, yeah, that's not the easiest.

But, yeah, I can always call my phone. So that works. That's your fire. I suppose that's true. Yeah. What about something like sharing food? Like, are you the guy who, if you get a plate of nachos, it's like, oh, man, he's going to stick his hand in the whole plate,

now we all have to eat it. How do you know me? You must have some kind of insight. from something you read or something, because my friends don't let me touch the nachos. They're like, quit, get out of there with your braille fingers. That's funny. Because, you know, for me, my fingers are like little snakes, you know, like little snails going and find in their way, you know, and they're like, get your hands out of the nachos.

Right, like, we'll put nachos on your plate. What do you want? That's what they do, actually. You have to. You know what it is. It's not even necessarily something that I read. It's just, I was thinking, okay, what if you can't see, what are some of the more annoying things that I can readily think about, just sitting at home doing research. And I was like,

sharing food for sure is one of those. And at the moment I was going to write that down in my phone, I was like, crap, where did I put my phone? And I was like, I got to remember to add that one too. Well, the other thing is that when you walk around with a cane, the way you see is through the tip of that cane. So you'll tap somebody in the ankle or something. And they'll like, say like, oh, wow, like, well, excuse me, you know? And you're like, no, sorry. That's just like me looking at you. That's me feeling you. I have to feel you to know you're there necessarily to get around you. So yeah, there's some sort of awkward societal parts of being blind that don't mesh, you know, with people's normal lives. I would imagine also a lot of people don't know how to

react, right? Like, I was thinking, oh, do I just say blind or do I have to be like, and then I thought, you know what, you don't seem like the PC type, so I'm not going to try to figure out the 2019 word for it. Person of sightlessness. Yeah, I mean, that just sounds ridiculous to me, but of course it's whatever you prefer, but there's a part of me that's like, okay, what's easier here? What's more functional? No, I'm very old-fashioned in that way. Like, I think blind is a great word. I mean, I'm totally blind.

I'm blind as a bat. You know, I don't think you have to change the words. You know, people are trying to update words because those old words get full of negative connotations. But I'm thinking, you know, it's better to just use the same words, but make them positive. And I think for me, blindness, as we just talked about, you know, it's not, it doesn't have all that fear and dread associated with it as much as it used to. So blindness is blindness, and that's what I am. I know you'd hated blindness at first, because I think you'd mention this in the book, or at least in one of the documentaries.

You said it represented helplessness and the unknown. Were you most afraid of this maybe impending darkness in the loss of sight, or were you more afraid of being written off by people or being seen as maybe incapable or defective? Kind of like the Tibetan kids, you know, were you worried about people thinking less of you because of this, especially after growing up to what, age 13, more or less, Yeah, for sure, it was the latter. I mean, I was a pragmatist, like not being able to see sunsets and things like that, although I do miss that stuff now more and more. That wasn't really the main issue. The fear was the hard side, you know, the fact that, you know, all my friends are having so much fun and driving and dating and having food fights and, you know, just doing all the things teenagers do, you know, cruising around, going to movies, playing sports, that I would miss out on all that, you know,

know that I'd be sitting on the sidelines, listening to life go by, and I never really have a life. Like, what would my life look like? I hated being removed from things. And you're 100% right. I hated being looked down on. I have to admit that. You know, it is ego. But it would, like, feel like, you know, people were sort of treating you like they felt sorry for you. And they had gloves on and you were, maybe the way I described it, no barriers was like you're like an egg that had cracked in the hallway and everyone's sort of stepping around it, you know, kind of awkwardly, what do I do here? Yeah, no, I think that piece was really hard. You know, I think it's also true when somebody gets hurt, you know, is in a wheelchair. I noticed that kind of thing. You know, you're now

sitting. People are looking physically down at you. It's just really hard on the psyche, I think. A few things got me out of that, which was one, wrestling. I signed up for the wrestling team. Once I learned how to wrestle, you know, I found I could compete with people on a equal basis. I could be a part of a team that was bigger than me. You know, made blindness less at the forefront. And it really made me feel comfortable like I could connect with a group of kids. So things like that started bringing me out of that kind of fear and apprehension. How do you recommend people react to something terrifyingly life-changing like this?

Should we find ourselves in a similar situation? I mean, it seems like you resisted it for a while. And then you found wrestling, do you recommend maybe people find something that, I don't know, what would you say? If I told you, hey, man, look, I'm going blind. I'm going to be blind in a year or two. What would you advise me to do to kind of accept that instead of just sitting at home and crying about it or being upset about it? Or even beyond blindness, you know, like I have friends and people, no barriers who lose their businesses or, you know, they go bankrupt or they get hurt in some way or they lose somebody in their life. You know what I mean?

it's like it almost doesn't really matter what it is. I guess, yeah, wrestling brought me out of it, being a part of something that, you know, is bigger than you, I think was really important. I think also just letting yourself go through the process, not getting stuck there. One of our no barriers, moms, her son is disabled. And sometimes he has really low moments. And she's like, okay, we're going to have a 24-hour pity party. We're going to like hug and cry. And, but then the next day, we're going to get over it and we're going to move on. So yeah, I think feeling that, feeling the process, feeling the loss, making sure you don't shortchange yourself by trying to just pretend it didn't happen, but feeling it fully, but then figuring out a way to continue to

move forward. I guess that's really the most important because I see people get stuck and mired in challenge and they never get through it. It's like they're in this state of suspended animation. They can't go forward. They can't turn back. They're just stuck. And I see that so much through my experiences with our No Barriers community. And it's become a big piece of what we try to do to get people to be unstuck. But yeah, no, for me, definitely feeling angry and dark for a long time.

But a section of me, maybe a part of me, still had this open heart, you know, this idea that like maybe there's a glimmer of hope, there's possibility in the future if I could just figure out how to break through this brick wall that I couldn't figure out how to get through. But I never was like suicidal or totally giving up. I was always keeping that sliver of hope, you know. And so when like somebody would present an idea like, oh, you know, maybe you should join the wrestling team or when my dad got this newsletter and it was a group taking blankets rock climbing and horseback riding, I signed up, you know, because that part of my heart was still excited about living and figuring it all out. So, yeah, I think you have to keep yourself open to possibilities.

If you shut down and get into that state of suspended animation, you're just stuck there for maybe forever. It seems like the bus driver, is it like a disabled bus or something like that where they were picking up and you're kind of pissed off? This is like the turning point for you, right, where he kind of said, like, are you going to accept this or not? which is a funny thing because you don't think of a bus driver as playing a major role in a turning point in someone's life, typically. Yeah, I was pretty crazy and out of control at that time because I did not want to be disabled. I did not want to, as I said, have people look down on me and pity me. And I hated taking that bus. I mean, I look back now and I think, wow, I mean, it was a bus that a little special van that would pick you up in your driveway.

You didn't even have to walk to the bus stop. But at the time, I wanted to be with my friends. and I didn't want to be with the disabled kids at the school. So one day this bus driver, he got sick of me just railing about, I'm not disabled. I shouldn't be here. I should be with my friends. And I almost wonder if he was testing me, but he screeched to a halt. He said, get out of the car.

And I did. And he took a basketball and he threw it and it bounced off my head. I think he was literally testing me. Like, maybe this guy isn't blind. But yeah, the ball bounced off my head. And then he retrieved it. And he said, He said, okay, that sells it.

You're blind. You can't catch a basketball. He said, now this time I'm going to tell you when it's coming. I want you to put your hands out. He said, now. And I put my hands out and I caught the ball. And he said, you know, you got to stop fighting everyone in your life. You've got to let people in.

And, you know, you'll learn to catch again. And I don't know how that guy was so wise. He was just like the bus driver. And I think he was like the assistant coach on the basketball team. But that was great wisdom for me because I was. being an a hole. And, you know, and people hadn't given up on me, but I was hard to be around. It reminds me of, have you ever heard of that book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior? I think I read it, yeah.

Yeah. So it's written by a friend of mine, and he's got this, you know, spiritual teacher, Socrates, who's like this guy who works at a gas station. Right. When I saw the story about you and the bus driver, I was like, oh, this is kind of like, for at least a five-minute period, your Socrates, where he's like, look, man, you've got to drop this BS or you're going to be stuck here forever. and it seems to have hit home. I'm wondering, did it hit home right away,

or were you kind of like, oh, this guy's such an a-hole for the first few days? First I was a little bit shocked because, you know, my head stung, like, bounce basketball, bounced off my head. I was kind of, like, wanted to fight him, you know, a little bit. But then, yeah, it sunk in over time what he was saying. It was an odd lesson, but it was such a powerful lesson

once it sunk in. But I was super, super lucky because I had teachers who would say, like, hey, look, you're going through a struggle now, but you're going to turn out well. you're the kind of kid that's going to land on his feet. And, you know, I had friends that were really cool and believed in me. When I joined the wrestling team, you know, one of the guys who I'm still friends with today would bring me out to the middle of the mat to help me get my feet like on the perfect, you know,

because you have to put your feet right on these two pieces of tape. So I had a lot of people and my parents who somehow just had way more belief and hope than I did at the time. And I'd say that carries to my teams today, you know, just like my team's supporting. me and pushing me and believing in me, you know, on mountains time after time, you know, sometimes when I'm frustrated or feeling a bit hopeless. So yeah, I've always had been really super lucky to have that kind of support. First blind climber to climb Everest and now the first blind man to kayak, the Grand Canyon. I would imagine going up there, even if you'd felt like

giving up or had some issue, you can't quit, right? Because otherwise people will go, well, he's blind. What do you expect? Of course he wasn't going to make it. Did that ever run through your head. Yeah, of course. Right. Yeah, I mean, you don't want that to be the motivation, but it's hard for it not to be because, you know, yeah, we had support from the National Federation of the Blind. It's like 50,000 blind people, a lot of whom are unemployed. Most of the world of blindness is unemployed. Working age blind people. I think it's like 70%. So that was blind people doing car washes and bake sales to raise a couple hundred grand for our team to go climb Everest. Wow. So, yeah, it was a lot of pressure, although, You know, when it comes down to it, you can't let that pressure make you do things that are stupid or unwise on a mountain. You know, you can push and be calculated, but, you know, the mountain kind of ultimately speaks. I had such a strong team, you know, you could go up on the mountain and get beat up in this really punishing terrain and then come back and take a day or two off at base camp. And, you know, the whole team was ready to go back up and do it again. So, yeah, we were there for two and a half months and had an amazing summit day.

You know, we got pretty lucky with weather. The summit day was not so windy. Wind is what really kills you up there because you're in the jet stream. So you want sort of a quieter day at 29,035 feet. And yeah, we got a really nice day and we all felt really strong. And I couldn't ask for anything better. It was our first attempt. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Eric Weinstein.

Mayor. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's guest so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from Eric Wine Mayor. That link is in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com.com slash podcast. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.

com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show, as always, is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing. And now back to our show with Eric Weinmayer. Why did you even want to experience this type of adventure? I mean, to adventurous people, this question probably answers itself. But for the rest of us, whims, we kind of need to know what's going through your head here. You know, like, it's objectively very difficult.

People die doing it. You know, what's the appeal to somebody doing this? Especially then you bring a bunch of kids up there. must have been like, you irresponsible jerk. What are you thinking? My daughter was eight months at the time when I left for Everest. My wife and I thought this was a good time to go because Emma was still pretty dependent on her mama. And so we thought it's just going to get harder and harder to go out the door. So maybe this was a good time. But there was a radio host at the time, Dr. Loris Leshensher. I know. Who was railing on me one day. Somebody sent me a cliff saying, I was so irresponsible,

not just for being blind, but for being a parent. And I got hammered a little bit. But that's a hard answer because I had been climbing since I was 16. It wasn't like I just said one day, I want to go climb Everest. I had gone rock climbing with this group of blind kids. And I loved it. And I got to know the guides. And the guide said, hey, you know, come back.

I think you have talent. So I'd come back like a time or two up to New Hampshire and climb with these really nice folks. And then in college, I got into climbing. and moved out to Arizona afterwards and joined the Mountaineering Club and was accepted into that club and learned all the ropes of how to, you know, do anchors and how to lead climb and blah, blah, so by the time I was in my late 20s and thought, okay, could I make Everest happen? I'd been climbing for, you know, a dozen years, you know, so Everest was, for me, kind of a realistic thing. It was a really scary moment when I mentioned it out loud for the first time because, yeah,

You'd think people are going to think you're crazy or presumptuous or something like that. So I would just bring it up with my good climbing friends. And a lot of them would say, hey, you know, like you're as talented. You have as much chance as anyone on that mountain. There were things that I couldn't control, though. Like you can't go to altitude. You can't go to that extreme altitude. So you can't really test yourself.

And so one of the things I worried about was at that extreme oxygen, your brain gets really reduced. You know, as a blind person, I'm thinking about the terrain. and I'm thinking about things, I'm evaluating things. If that capability was reduced, you know, that might be kind of overwhelming to be at that extreme altitude. So, yeah, I still had some fears and apprehensions, but I knew there wasn't any way to prepare for that except to go and try it out. When you say your brain's reduced, is it kind of like the reduction I get from two

glasses of wine or is it, is there something else? Is there a different feeling? Yeah, it's like having a flu. Imagine having a flu where you can't breathe. very well, you're congested, you just, you feel like you're suffocating, you feel like you're trying to run a marathon with a plastic bag over your head. You know what it's like, it's like a really bad hangover. Well, I think that most of us can identify with, yeah. Yeah, and so it's just hard to think, it's hard to process. I didn't do so well. One summit on Ak and Cawboy, I felt really

strained, really weak, and I described it as feeling like I was perceiving reality in the world through a straw, just like my whole reality was just a little straw going into my brain. So trying to make decisions. Everything's delayed. Everything's really slow. You're really sluggish. And so sometimes that happens to you. I just got back from a peak in the Himalaya called Amadabalam. Literally, I just got in a few days ago. And that's at even 22 and a half thousand feet. And I was feeling pretty darn sluggish up there as well. It just seems like just absolute punishment, but also the reward. is much higher than what you would get from a night of drinking. So I suppose if you're looking at it that way.

Well, also being blind and getting through that terrain, you know, crevasses and you're traversing along sketchy things where you're like, it's very specific. You're putting your crampon points like on certain little chunks of rock and chunks of snow and, you know, everything's so precise. For me, it just takes so much huge amounts of energy to deal with altitude, to deal with blindness, I'm working very, very hard up there. Yeah.

Not, you know, feeling sorry really for myself because I know that's part of the equation. That's just like, we'll work twice as hard as anyone else, and that's the way it is. You just got to keep that idea of gratitude that you're there, that you're up there persevering with a different equation. Yeah, completely understand that. I think you'd said in the book, it doesn't matter how many perfect steps you take if you make one mistake, the mountain won't tolerate it. In other words, you can't take.

Take a cognitive break because if you step to the left where somebody else would have just paused unthinking, you could fall off a mountain and that's the end. Other little things I was thinking about this because I just got back from Bhutan, which is not ever, but, you know, higher than I'm used to at sea level here. And I was thinking, as I was researching this, you know, if I'm hiking up to a monastery and it's 14,000 feet up or something like that, if I'm hiking and then the next, let's say, 10 yards are kind of more or less flat and straight, my autopilot. it kicks in and I can just walk forward like I would if I were walking downtown San Francisco. You though don't necessarily know that that's going to be an easy stretch. So you're still treating every step like it could be treacherous. There could be a drop off pretty much anywhere. You don't really have the ability, I would guess, to sort of go, oh, all right, well,

the next 10 yards, no problem. Well, that's definitely true. But remember, I have a team too. So I'll have friends who will say that. They'll say sidewalk for the next 30 feet, you know. good. They'll give me a break, you know, they'll tell me, hey, let your guard down. So you're not worrying about every step. But there's also, like on Amina Blom, you know, hours and hours where every step matters, like literally every single step you take. I mean, it's a, there's a couple

hours of a knife edge ridge. I mean, there's a part of it that was the width of my body with thousands of feet on both sides. And you're literally crawling on your hands and knees across this with the wind completely howling. And it's just every step matters. And it's just, can for sure become exhausting. I'm glad I'm home. Yeah, I bet. I know what it was like for me just getting in my own bed and being like, it's not cold for once. Thank God. It just feels so good. Yeah. I know that your mom had passed away when you were a teenager. And I'm wondering, did your mother's death lead you to appreciate more of what you could get out of life in some way? I would imagine getting that sudden news was actually in many ways probably even harder than going

blind. Yeah, anytime you have the death of a loved one, you know, my mom died in a car accident at 16. I was at wrestling camp. My dad showed up early. I was like, Dad, what are you doing here? You know, the tournament is until Saturday. And then he told me my mom had been killed. It made like going blind look like the minor leagues. It was just nothing compared to that, you know, because that's permanent. You know, blindness, as I said, there was like a little sliver of hope always. But death, I mean, that's it, you know. You'll never see that person again. So I'd say that was way harder. But yeah, over time, you just persevere through that too, even though you never get that person back, you know, what choice do you have? You have to go forward and you have to make a life and you

have to live in the way that they would be proud of and take a little bit of them, you know, with you, some of their personality, some of their adventure. My mom was a big adventurer in a totally different way. She would travel all through these Asian villages and through Africa, getting collector's items and like beads and semi-precious stones that she would then come home and make a beautiful jewelry line. And it was when she died, it was catching on like at Bloomingdale's and Sacks Fifth Avenue. And she was like making a name for herself as this really cool jewelry maker. You know, you want to kind of take that spirit and take it as far as you can with what you have. So partly in her honor, I realized like it was so important to succeed and never give up.

Someone had mentioned you're the blind climber, but you said, look, I'm not the blind climber. I'm a climber who also happens to be blind. Why is that difference important to you? You know, it's sort of a modern thing. You know, like I have a friend Mandy Harvey, who's this incredible songwriter and musician. It kind of bugs her when they call her the deaf musician because she's like, no, I'm a musician who happens to be deaf, you know. So people always say, you know, the person should come first. So, you know, maybe I'm a person who is blind.

That, to me, is a little bit of semantics. But I do feel like I'm a climber. I climb with my friends. I mean, blindness really isn't a huge part of it anymore. You know, we'll go out ice climbing and rock climbing. We'll be having a total blast. It's like the way we connect. And it's like, you know, maybe a person going out and playing golf or tennis with their friends.

Yeah, I do think of myself as a climber first. And then I also have to figure out ways of adapting. and creating systems to be safe and be able to flourish in those kind of rugged environments. But definitely feel climbing comes first. I guess at some point everyone is blind up there because you can't even see your feet depending on the snow. And when you're summiting, you leave it like 9 p.m. at night, right? So it's dark.

I guess you're all uneven kind of. Yeah, Everest, do you leave at 9 o'clock at night? And you'd summit like maybe 9 or 10 the next morning. So, yeah, everyone's in the dark. And in fact, on Everest, it would still to this day crack me up because people are like, I can't see. And I'm like to suck it up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm feeling like the fast guy, kicking steps, making good time, you know, just happy as can be leaving at 9 o'clock at night. For me, dark is and light are the exact same thing. I can feel the heat of the sun, but there's

no perception between light and dark for me. Yeah, I would imagine if somebody around you goes, oh, no, I can't see. You're just thinking like, oh, really? Like, you're going to complain to me about that? I don't think so, buddy. Yeah, I'm pretty compassionate, though. Like, sometimes, um, When we're coming out in the dark, you know, I'll let somebody grab my pack and I'll guide them down the trail. I know I've had, you know, what, 30 years to practice and somebody's blind overnight, you know, they're not in the same physician. So it's pretty scary at first. Yeah, that does make sense. It's kind of like somebody who's being thrust into something for the first time.

And you're like, okay, yeah, at least I know how to not pee on my shoes if I go to the bathroom or something like that, right? Oh, I still do that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that seems kind of unavoidable in some ways, too, right? Like, everybody's gone to the bathroom at night in the dark and been like, how do they manage to do that? I better clean that up before my wife gets up. Or on Amidablon, it's like you're usually even pooping off a cliff.

You know, you're hanging onto a rope, hanging it over the cliff, you know. Oh, my God. That would be embarrassing for that to be your last position. Oh, yeah, that your last moment? Like, what was it? Oh, well, his pants are down at his ankles, so I think we kind of know what he was doing when he fell. Yeah, it happens. Oh, that's awful.

way to go. Yeah, that's really bad. I mean, I guess if somebody passes away, you have compassion, but also it's like, people are going to ask, and it's like, oh, that's how it happened. He didn't slip off the summit while planting the American flag. No, it's not very dignified. No, no, oh man. People must say, well, when you get to the top, you can't even see the view, right? Like, you got to, I assume there's something more in it for you other than looking around when you get to the top. I think what I'm enamored by in climbing is one, obviously, the scenery, but it's not the big sweeping view, obviously. I mean, there is a cool scenery of what you're feeling under your hands, the rock and the ice and the way you're swinging your tool into the ice or snow,

or just the rhythmic nature of your body kind of moving through space. There's kind of a rhythm there or sometimes a lack of rhythm. Most blind people these days use something called echolocation, which is using the vibration of sound, bouncing off of objects and coming back at you. Yeah. It helps you get information. Like you can hear open space. You can hear. You can drop-offs, you can hear rocks and boulders and trees and pretty much anything if you train for it. So I have all that. I have the scenery. But I also think I'm enamored by the process of just trying to move through a process, something that can be really daunting or feel like almost impossible and figure out, okay, how do you build the team around you to compensate for your weaknesses?

How do you create a lot of systems? Like how to use trekking pulls, how to follow somebody jingling a bell, where to swing my tool in the ice by listening to the sound or feeling the vibration through the ice. You know, just so many things that are so fun and exciting to learn how to break through those barriers. It's a very specific process that I found now, because I've gone through it so many times, you can actually teach it to other people. That's the fun part too, knowing that these systems and these processes can be applicable to other people going through similar things. You said echolocation, you learned echolocation. Can you explain how this works? I feel like I've seen this on Discovery Channel where this guy was biking and he's going like,

and he can hear cars and garbage cans and he's biking. He's a blind guy biking, which seems extremely dangerous, but he's sort of clicking with his tongue and he can tell where things are. Cars and parked or not and street signs and all this. It's just, it's amazing, really, is the only way. It doesn't seem real, does it? It doesn't seem real. It seems almost like make believe or something that he's cheating.

but this guy's name is Daniel Kish. And Daniel is like the, they call him the Batman. You know, he's like the godfather of echolocation. He calls it actually flash sonar. You're right. And he's clicking away like a crisp click that creates a nice echo. I actually worked with him for three days. He's actually worked with our No Barriers organization teaching clinics for us.

So yeah, he can walk around and he can hear a cup on a table. He can hear a sign on the side of the road. actually rides a bike and we actually went bike riding in a park. So yeah, it's real. There's a kid on YouTube that was a protege of Daniels and he was on YouTube playing ping pong with his brother. And you're like, come on. That's, that's taking this echolocation thing to a crazy level. Like I'm still not convinced that you can use it to play ping pong. But that's what the kid was doing on YouTube. So we'll see. Yeah, that's one of those things where it's like, okay, I need to prove that you're blind. at this point. If you're playing ping pong, that's

beyond, that's incredible. Because, I mean, I'm cited I can't play ping pong to save my life. It's really hard. So the fact that somebody who can't see the ball can track it, and then also the speed at which that must work is really, really something else. Well, I mean, but you see, you know, like

world-class athletes and people who aren't athletic at all. And I think that's the way this echolocation works. Some people probably like me take it, you know, to a fair degree. You know, I can use it to hear parked cars and I can tell the difference between a car and a van or a truck, you know, by the sound coming out, emanating from that object. I can tell the difference between a tree and a rock.

But, you know, it's not super precise language for me, but some people take anything and they bring it to the nth degree. So who knows? Maybe some blind people are just incredibly talented and you start when you're young and, man, he makes it happen. Often cited people say things like, oh, I want to look him in the eye and see if I trust it or whatever it is. Is there a blind version of that? Is it voice? Is it touch? Is it something else? No, I don't think there is an equivalent. Obviously, like when I'm talking to somebody, I'm listening to their voice. I'm listening to the authenticity of their voice, like how their voice works for you're getting a lot of information like that. But yeah, you're missing eye

contact for sure. When I was on Everest actually hiking up through the kumbu, the Sherpas actually didn't believe I was blind because, you know, I was functioning. I was using a cane or two trekking poles like, you know, navigating these rocky trails. So they would come up to me and they would wave their hands in front of my face. And, you know, you'd feel the wind off their hand and you'd flinch a little bit. And they'd say, look, you can see. And it's like, no, no, I just felt your hand. I took our head, Sherpa, what's called our Sirdar, into this tent.

And I just said, hey, like, I don't know, I find it sort of funny. Like, you know, just FYI, I am blind. And I popped my glass eyes out for him. And he was like, okay, I believe you. and he went back and told all the Sherpas, like, this guy actually is blind. Glass eyes. Yeah, I have two prosthetic eyes. Oh, wow.

I lost both my eyes from glaucoma, which is a secondary degree disease after retina skeecious. And so, yeah, the pressure my eyes got crazy. They're kind of like balloons ready to burst. So I had to have both my eyes removed. So, yeah, these are the best eyes money can buy. Wow. Yeah, so you had to take your eyes out just to prove to these guys like, no, I'm not faking it. Yeah, there's no sighted here.

There's no little bit sighted, a little bit blind. I'm blind as a bat, as I said. I think he was a little bit grossed out, but he took the message back to the Sherpas. Yeah. Yeah, if you're going to keep making me flinch, it's not going to, this isn't going to work, so here we know. Yeah. You've got the sort of tongue grid that allows you to see, right? The brain port, tongue vision technology, for lack of a better term here, how does that work?

What's going on there? I learned about it in the newspaper, maybe like 14 years ago. It's a technology that was created by this guy, Dr. Paul Baccarita. He was one of the preeminent scientists that was working on this theory of neuroplasticity, the fact that the brain is, it's not like one thing in the brain has a certain function that other parts of the brain can take over, can compensate, that there's always a pathway. The brain's very nimble. And the brain can do things that, you know, nature didn't really even intended to do.

Like, for instance, if the eyes stop working, well, the eyes are just the mechanics. They're just the hardware. The software is the brain. The brain is what sees. You know, the visual cortex usually is what sees in the eyes. It's processing sight. The eyes are just the portal. And so he said, well, maybe if we could figure out a new portal into the brain, blind people

could quote unquote see. And so he invented this machine, this technology called the brain port. And the portal is the mouth, the tongue. and so it's basically like a retainer, and it's got maybe 500 tactors, these little vibrating pixels. And so you put your tongue onto these vibrating pixels, and it's a camera that you're wearing on your head

that's taking a light image, and there's an algorithm that translates that light image through a computer, little tiny computer you hold in your hand, to this plate that you're feeling with your tongue, and it works off of contrast. So, like, I'd feel your face, literally. I'd feel your face.

I'd feel your indention of your eyes, your nose. It would vibrate in a different way. I'd see your lips. It might feel like the concave of your mouth. And I'd feel the shape, and I'd be able to examine it on my tongue. And then my brain reinterprets that as the images that I used to see. So it's a really cool technology, very simple. It works really well on certain applications.

But you're not wearing it, like, all day now. No, it's totally exhausting to wear it. I'll wear it for like an hour or two and I'm exhausted. It's like you're learning this really complex new language and trying to interpret everything. It's hard to interpret stuff. An example might be like I was walking along and I just saw this thing flicking away in front of my face and I could feel it on my tongue. And I reached out to touch it and my daughter said, Dad, don't. And it was a flame of a candle.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So I mean, you're like, you know, it's hard to figure out what this stuff is, all this information that you're getting on your tongue because you're trying to reinterpret it as things. things that are in front of you, obstacles and pitfalls and things like that. So, yeah, it's really exhausting. Like, when I get off the brain port, I'm like, I have a headache sometimes. I have to go chill out. Yeah, I can imagine, because your brain is basically relearning. It's relearning. It's like a baby, like looking at his toes and trying to figure, okay, those are my toes. And now let me expand beyond my toes to the whole world in front of me and try to interpret it from this vantage point.

And so that's the way the brain port is. You're like a little kid trying to rediscover the world in a new way. It's super, super fun, but it's really exhausting. I like climbing with it, and the rock gem especially because you have holds that are dark and against a wall that's lighter. So actually, I can see the holds. And, you know, normally I'd have to feel, I have to lock off with my elbow and then reach up and start scanning my hand across the face to feel the next series of holds and decipher the wall by my hands and feet. But with the brain port, I can look up and I can see these holds that are sitting on the wall that are beyond my reach. And it's just so crazy because I have hand-to-eye coordination again or hand-to-tong coordination again. I can reach up and I can plant my hand on

that hold and I'm doing it in a way where I'm not touching it. You know, that's something really interesting. And I think I miss, you know, about being cited. You know, you can reach out and just grab something, pluck something out of space. I can compensate by, you know, a glass is on the table. and I can scan my hand over the table real slowly, and I will come across that glass, but I have to be super careful not to knock it over. With the brain port, you can see that cup. You can see the handle looming in space.

You reach out with your hand, and it's there, and you're touching it. It's really cool to reclaim hand-eye coordination again. Is everything black and white, or is that kind of irrelevant? Well, yeah, that's irrelevant because it's really a tactile image on your tongue. And then my brain reinterprets, you know, what I'm feeling in the way that I used to see. So I was always legally blind. I could never see that well. So my brain, I imagine, I think, must be processing the world in the same way that it used to with sight that I remember, which was never too good.

So in my brain, it's contrasts of gray and light and dark. It's not real vibrant colors or anything. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Eric Weinmayer. We'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, so you can check out those amazing sponsors,

visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. If you're listening to us on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Eric Weinmayer. So with the brain port, there must have been a first time that you saw your wife and children's faces.

What was that like? Well, my friend Jeff Evans, came over. He was one of my good climbing partners. And he didn't believe me. He was like, whatever. And he took this Coke can and he put it on the table. And he had me go out of the room. And I walked over.

I scanned my camera across the table. Found that Coke can, reached out and plucked it off the table. And my friend started crying. It kind of blew him away. Really powerful moment. Same thing when I tested it for the very first time, this lady would roll a tennis ball across the table. It was like a white tennis ball and a black tablecloth and I could see that thing rolling towards me getting bigger and bigger on my tongue and I just reached out and plucked it out of space.

And that just blew my mind. And then you're right, seeing faces, they're harder to interpret for sure. But like my son Arjun was maybe like 10 at the time when I brought a home version of the Brainport. He was telling me a joke. And I sat there with the can. camera trained on his face as his mouth moved and he told this joke and then he burst into this huge laugh and his head tilted back and his eyes squinted and his whole face turned into like this giant smile and it was uh just made me realize how much i missed faces how complex faces are you know like when i try to envision a face and my brain after being blind for more than 30 years it's sort of like a cartoon image but that was really cool to be able to see a face and a and a and

and the way his smile just engulf the whole face and his eyes and like, you know, maybe I was making it up, but I swear his eyes were twinkling. And it was just really, really cool as a parent. I have a baby used to almost four months old, and I can imagine every day with him, he like does something new, right? So that's probably as close as I'm going to get, right? Seeing something new from a child that you haven't seen before. You kind of got that almost all at once with this new technology. It's like they're used to it and you're seeing it all for the first time. And playing games with my kids too, you know, like I love it the most playing games. Like I can play card games, like just simple games like war where you're looking at the numbers on the card.

I love playing rock, paper, scissors with the kids. Like, I love looking at their hands and seeing their hands move into different shapes. Just simple things like that are just really beautiful for me because, you know, one of the things that you lose with blindness, okay, one, you lose your sight, right? But you also lose your connection. So much of the world, if you think about it, like, 90, 99% of the world is visual. It's eye contact. It's looking at people's faces. It's games that are visual. It's information that comes visually. So it's always this huge catch-up game as a blind person to try to find ways of connecting in a meaningful way with the people around you, your friends and the family that you love. So to be able to play little games and stuff with my kids and to see their hands, drawing an X on a piece of paper, that's just incredible. expedition leader had said, don't make Everest the greatest thing you ever do. What did he mean by that? And how did that affect you? Because that's almost like, it's almost like, hey, give me a break. I just climbed the tallest mountain in the world. Yeah, it was at the end of the Everest trip.

When we'd come down, I'd made it through the ice fall. The icefall is like a blind person's worst nightmare. It's like just, I don't know, imagine taking a glacier and then exploding an atom bomb in the middle of it. You know, it just, it's like splinters of ice. huge cornices, bridges of ice that are like as wide as your body's zigzagging along. And, you know, it's constantly changing and collapsing and exploding down the mountain. Sort of like an ice river. And so I had crossed through the ice fall 10 times. And I was gotten down below the ice fall that last time.

All the objective dangers are behind you. And I knew I was going to live like, okay, I lived. I lived through this experience. I'm damn. And then PV brings me over. and he says, hey, you know, good job. He said, your life's about to change. Like, you're going to get a lot of attention over this climb.

He goes, but do me a favor. Don't make Everest the greatest thing you ever do. And I thought that's like the worst timed motivational advice in the history of the world. You know, like, let me go home and chill out, you know, maybe until I'm 85 and look back at, you know, this incredible thing I did when I was 33 years old. You know, I'd been dreaming, like you had said about like just nice, smooth sidewalks that I could walk down and nothing was going to kill me. I was so psyched to get home. And then he had to hit me with that. And it turns out PV was a genius, you know, because these things, you know, like I talk a lot about adversity, you know, when I'm talking to groups or writing books and articles and things

like that. And adversity can stop you short for sure. It can stop you in your tracks like we were talking about. But success can do the same thing. That's the craziest part. Both sides of the sword are perilous because you have this huge success. And what PV was saying is that, that success becomes like the trophies that you put up on the shelves and the pictures, you hang up on the walls and the citations you hang up. And that success becomes your mausoleum, the thing you look back on. And, you know, the reason why you don't have to, like, do anything cool the rest of your life. And it can be a total trap.

And so he was saying, like, don't look back too much. You know, use this as a catalyst to go on and do something bigger and better. That's not to say something more dangerous or more. risky, but something that's important that's meaningful to you rather than this thing being just like a trophy on the shelf. I wonder, and maybe you're not comfortable talking about this, so let me know, but have you ever tried psychedelics and had an experience that felt like eyesight even after losing your vision? I'm kind of a wimp. I'm scared. Like, I have a bunch of friends who have done psychedelics and say we should do some shrooms and try it out. I haven't done it yet.

It's something still awaiting me. Fifty-one years old. Am I too old to try? Well, I don't know. I don't want to recommend anything, of course, but I'm not a doctor, but there's a lot of people of all ages trying. I'm just, you never think, like, hmm, okay, well, if it's all created in the brain, and the eyes are just the hardware, then if you're doing something in the brain, maybe it'll create something that looks a lot like vision. I mean, we just don't know. Yeah, I think I will. I will probably, you know, give it a try, because I've been doing a lot of reading and obviously it's like all over podcasts, like the therapeutic for, you know, idea behind it. So yeah, I think I will do it at some point, but I'll let you know that'll be a cool experiment. I was so curious about that. Yeah,

I would love, I don't know how to get the update on that because it's probably not something you want to blast out in your email newsletter. We'll go do some ayahuasca together. Yeah, look. I kind of regret, I've been to Peru a ton of times and I've been a wimp. I've never done it, partly because I hear you puke your guts out and poop your pants before you get the good stuff. Yeah, like 10 times from what I understand. I haven't tried ayahuasca either, but like, is it my eyes doing that or is it my brain? I don't know. Yeah, how cool. Yeah, I'd like to open up my brain because I'm a little bit like kind of linear and sort of a little bit German. You know what I mean?

Like I'm very, very disciplined and stubborn. But yeah, it'd be nice to kind of open and tap into that part of the brain at some point. Well, what's next for you, man? I mean, seven summits, kayaking the Grand Canyon. I'm sure you've got something in the works. But where does the challenge sort of go from here? Well, as I said, I just got back from this beautiful peak. I mean, in a way, it's harder than Everest.

It's this really steep, stunning peak called Amma de Blom. In year 2000, we went there as a way to train for Everest as a team to get to know each other and kind of begin to work as a team. My friend, Eric Alexander and I got to about 20,000 feet and got stuck in a bad storm. We're on this tent, like hanging out on this like bird's nest, like the corner of the tent was hanging over. Two or three thousand foot cliff just storming every day. The team tried to get up to us and fix lines a little bit higher and just the wind. was knocking him over and we called it and we came down and Eric unclipped from one of the lines and slipped on a rock and fell about 150 feet. It's a miracle he didn't die. And they got him up to safety.

He kind of went into shock and pulmonary edema as lungs were starting to fill with fluid and all this terrible stuff started happening to him. Our doctor got him down. We got him on bottled oxygen and put him in a gamo bag, which is a hyperbaric chamber that it's a little bit of a science lesson. You actually pump air into this vacuum bag and you increase the air pressure, therefore bringing him down to a lower altitude and getting more air and oxygen into his lungs. We pumped air into that bag for like three days before. There was a little break in the storm and we were able to get a helicopter into base camp and get him down. So that climbing trip turned into a rescue mission pretty fast. So yeah, we've been dreaming about this peak for like 18 years. So good logic. You know,

I couldn't climb it when I was 32, so now at 51, we go back. All of us went back, and even including Eric Alexander, and we made it to the summit just about 10 days ago, got to the top. It was a beautiful, clear, super windy day at 22,500 feet and a satisfying day, too, because it took me 18 years to get back to Amma de Blom. So, you know, I think I'll always continue to adventure. We'll see, you know, right now I'm a little bit washed out from just getting. home from this massive month-long trip. But yeah, there's always something. You know, I'll never get to even 1.1% of the climbs out there and the adventures to be done on Earth. You know, you'll never even scratch the surface. So you never have to worry about, you know, my running out of things to do.

My big goals are now with no barriers. You know, we work with like maybe 15,000 people a year, people with challenges, people who are blind like me, but more people who have what we call in visible barriers, a lot of veterans coming back from the different conflicts. We work with a lot of kids who are struggling with anxiety and fear. We're building curriculum that we're getting into a bunch of school systems around the country. We take people out on big adventures and where they kind of learn about this no barriers life. That to me has been really fulfilling because it's like a way to sort of figure out how to take some of these processes that I mentioned and translate them and hope maybe others can benefit from that community. So yeah, that's where I spend a lot of my time nowadays.

How do you know what your limitations are? You know, how do you know when to give up or say, maybe this is too dangerous? Maybe I shouldn't try this because you can't really listen to other people. They're going to tell you, don't leave your house. You're blind. Yeah. How do you find that line? Well, what I have a bunch of friends who don't buy into that. You're super adventuresome people, you know, and they kind of know me beyond blindness and they'll push me and say, yeah, you can do that. like I'll think like, you know, I went and climbed Mount Shaston, skied down it in early June. And it was like 8,000 feet of elevation gain in one day. And I thought, I don't think I can do that.

My friends are like, yeah, you can do it. Don't worry. So you just kind of trust people that know you. Sure. So that's one good thing. But also, there have been times where I called it, you know, there was a time, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago where I started learning to paraglide. And I had an instructor who was like, yeah, this is cool.

We'll figure out how to push it as far as we can. I'm not really sure how far we can push it. But yeah, I started paragliding solo. He would be looking up and he would be talking to me via these radios, you know, like 90 degrees right, 45 to the left. And he would talk me down and then he would count from five to one and then say flare. That was for landing. And if that didn't work, I had this string tied around my waist with a bell hanging about 10 feet down. and that bell would hit the ground, and then I would know to flare my wing and slow myself down.

But I realized eventually, after a few weird, like where I landed in trees and stuff like that, I just thought, you know, this is nobody telling you this. This is you telling yourself. You're going to kill yourself. And maybe this isn't the smartest thing for you to do being blind. A year of paragliding, I called it quit. So yeah, I think sometimes I do have that ability to say, hey, enough already. Yeah, that seems wise to be able to listen to what you feel like your limitations are. I'm wondering if you have advice for people who maybe are selling themselves short, but also it's easy to, in today's world, right?

Everyone's like, go for it. And it's like, well, yes, but there are certain logical constraints that I think people, they don't really have a good grasp on what those might be. Yeah, I agree. I think you have to, I guess, examine why you're doing the things you're doing. You know, for me, I have a hot tub downstairs. I like to hang out in it and reflect. And I was thinking one night, you know, like these things have to be important to me, right?

Like I'm not like the blind evil can evil that's just going out and like achieving, you know, like people say, what's your next stunt? You know, I'm not interested in those kind of stunts, you know, just like I want to top myself, you know, things have to matter. Because if you commit to them to do them well, it involves a huge. degree of suffering and commitment and time and preparation. And so it's got to matter. It's got to feel important. It can't just be like I want to post it on on Instagram. Yeah. Because you're going to go through hell getting these things done. I've never gone and done anything big without going through a huge amount of suffering, just mental, emotional suffering where you doubt yourself, you're afraid, you know, that fear can almost crack your psyche sometimes. And so it has to be important to you.

beyond the trophy. Eric, this has been amazing. I really appreciate your candor, openness, and everything that you're doing. I think it's just, it's amazing in a lot of ways. It's inspiring in a lot of ways, but beyond that, you're just really open guy, and this has been a fun conversation.

Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, when I'm talking to friends and people, I respect, you know, I try not to be like the motivational speaker. I speak to a lot of groups, but for me, it's more important to be honest and authentic and kind of no BS with people. because it's not so easy doing these things, but, you know, it is important and it does matter. So, yeah, so it's good to have those honest conversations that kind of try to go a little bit beyond the latest motivational poster.

Yeah, yeah, precisely. Well, how can we support the mission that you have? I mean, I saw the school in Tibet, and it seems like that's a worthwhile cause, but you've got a lot going on that you're highlighting and supporting. Yeah, no barriers is people can come out to our events like next September. Francisco. We have a huge, what we call our summit. We'll have thousands of people, youth and veterans and people with different kinds of challenges all gathering together in Candlestick Stadium. So yeah, we do a lot of events that people can take part of. We have programs if you know a veteran or a youth who is going through some challenges who's maybe a little bit lost. Send them our way, no barriers usa.org.

And then, you know, I kayak the Grand Canyon in 2014. But just significant as the expedition, was the film. My friend Michael Brown made this documentary. And, you know, like three years later, he was still languishing at the computer, you know, just we didn't have that much financing. And he didn't have a huge team of people, you know, just a couple editors that he was working with. And anyway, we finished the film and entered it in the Panth Mountain Film Festival and won the grand prize and it's gone on to win probably a dozen more festivals around the country. So good job to Michael Brown. I'm really proud of them. And people can see that on iTunes now. It's out. on iTunes or wherever people go get videos.

So yeah, go check out. It's called The Weight of Water. We'll link to that in the show notes and people can play it right there. We'll embed it. We'll make sure people can go and pick that up. And we'll link to the books and everything that you're doing as well in there. So no problem. Again, thank you so much for your time and your openness.

I'm looking forward to meeting you. Maybe I'll pop by the No Barriers 2020 Summit because I want in San Francisco. Yeah, we'd love to have you there. That'd be so awesome. Yeah, I just added myself to your interest list. but maybe, I don't know, should I tell Skylar to, like, give me a heads up or something like that? Yeah, for sure. Let's just chat.

We'll let you know all the details. Great. Thank you very much, man. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, super fun. I'm looking forward to it. You know what I like about what you're doing is it's like there's zero cheese factor involved

and a lot of sort of motivational self-helpy stuff has like really, as you mentioned before, sort of devolved into posters and Instagram memes. And you're really not doing that. It's like, look, we're solving real issues for real people. It's not just like kids who can't get out of bed before 11 a.m. who are trying to get motivated for psyched for life. Quit talking about my kids like that. Yeah.

All right, brother. Big thank you to Eric. He's got a lot of books and a lot of videos and talks, and we'll link to those in the show notes. There are also worksheets for each episode, so you can review what you've learned from Eric at Jordan Harbinger.com in the show notes. We've also got transcripts for each episode,

and those, of course, are found in the show notes as well. We're teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits, you know, consistency, not one big thing, not a whole big to do. Six-minute networking. It's our free course. It's over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you're thirsty people.

Once you need relationships, you're too late to make them. You can't make up for lost time. The drills take a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. This is an absolutely foundational skill set, whether it's for personal or business purposes. Find it all for free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us.

You'll be in smart company. In fact, why not reach out to Eric and tell them you enjoyed this episode of the show? Show guests love hearing from you and you never know what might shake out of that. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out and or follow me on social. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is created in association with Podcast One. And this episode was produced by Jen Harbinger, Jason DeFillipo, and edited by Jace Sanderson. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola.

I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. That should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't.

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