The School of Greatness - 487 Success Without Seeing: How Erik Weihenmayer Climbed Everest & Kayaked the Grand Canyon Blind
Episode Date: May 22, 2017"There is a way forwards, even if it's backwards." - Erik Weihenmayer If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/487 ...
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This is episode number 487 with Eric Weinmayer.
Welcome to the School of Greatness.
My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message
to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Now let the class begin.
Welcome everyone to today's show.
We've got Eric Weinmayer in the house, who is the only blind person to reach the summit
of Mount Everest.
And in 2008, he completed the seven summits to the highest point
of every continent. Eric's triumphs over some of the world's most incredible mountains were fueled
from a growing aspiration to take the lessons he learned in the mountains to help others shatter
barriers in their lives. And Eric co-founded a movement called No Barriers.
And the mission is to help people with challenges
to turn into the storm of life,
face barriers head on,
and embrace pioneering and innovative spirit
and team up with great people
to live rich in meaning and purpose.
And he also took on another crazy challenge
in September 2014 when he kayaked the
entire 277 miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. And in this interview, we talk
about how Eric sees with his brain, even though he is completely blind. What happens when you turn
into the storm of life, teaching your mind how to suffer
and why this is so important, what's on the other side of our biggest barriers, and how
to navigate the pivotal moments of our lives.
Such a powerful experience connecting with Eric, and I hope you guys enjoy this one as
much as I enjoyed hearing his story.
So without further ado, let me introduce to the
one, the only Eric Weinmayer. Welcome guys back to the School of Greatness podcast. We have an
incredible human being on the show in the Temple of Greatness today. His name is Eric Weinmayer,
and I'm super grateful that he is here.
So thank you so much, Eric, for being here.
Thanks for having me in.
I'm very excited about this.
You are 100% blind.
Is that right?
Yes.
What does that mean?
You can and cannot see.
It means I can't see anything, and I'm not legally blind.
I'm actually totally blind.
What's the difference?
My friends say I'm blind as a bat.
Okay. I know that's not very politically correct, but well, you know, I can't see light or dark or anything. In fact, I lost both my eyes to glaucoma several years ago. But the interesting thing is
that you actually don't see with your eyes. You see with your brain. So even though I can't see with
my eyes anymore, my brain really is listening and touching. I'm touching things. I'm experiencing
things and my brain is still processing vision. Really? Yeah. Wow. So do you see images in your
mind? I see it in my mind. Yeah. Like I'm listening to you and your voice right now.
And I'm imagining you and your face and your hair. Good looking. Yeah, exactly.
I know you're tall. So yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So you're kind of like imagining an image in your mind essentially. Yeah. Cause the visual cortex of the brain doesn't go dormant, you know, it's,
it has to continue to do something. So, uh, so it begins to process other senses that are coming
into the brain. So you almost have an advantage that you can create any image you want.
You're not limited to actually what people see.
You can create any vision for yourself.
Yeah.
And also, you know, I probably notice different things.
When I'm talking to somebody, I'm noticing things because it's not so,
I'm not distracted by the visual piece of what they look like.
Or, you know, I was a teacher for six years, and I used to love certain kids.
I loved all the kids, but I would talk to a kid, and he would, you know, he'd be so pleasant, such a great kid.
And then another teacher would say, well, you know, he's like chubby, and he picks his nose.
And I'm like, oh, why'd you tell me that? Right, right.
I don't want to know that.
Yeah. You know, I like my image. What are the things you notice the most when you either meet someone or you're
having a conversation? What are your senses telling you or what are you looking for
through your senses? I just try to be observant because as a blind person, when you lose your
eyes, which are such a powerful sense, you get so much information through your eyes.
Now you're trying to get beauty and information through your other senses.
So like when I'm up in the mountains on a big ice face, I'm taking my glove off.
I'm feeling the beautiful ice sweeping down through my hand, feeling it just drop away into space.
down through my hand, feeling it just drop away into space. I'm listening to sound vibrations,
you know, spanning out through the valley, over the valley, bouncing off of things. I was up on a mountain one time, way up high, and I was listening to the valley and this huge lightning
storm hit. And every time the lightning cracked, I could hear this really crisp sense of the way the mountains looked all
around me. And it just staggers you with beauty. Wow. What an advantage.
It's what I have. So you find beauty and you find joy with what you have. And you take,
I think, whatever you have, and you kind of make it into an advantage you know you make that that thing you have that storm that you collect that energy and you use it to make your life
great yeah what um so you had your sight when you were younger correct I did I could see till I was
14 14 yeah do you remember certain things that you used to be able to see I remember a lot of
things I remember riding through the forest with my bike and, you know, trying to miss trees.
I couldn't see very well.
I remember jumping off of boulders with my friends into big piles of leaves.
And I remember the way the leaves turned golden in the fall.
And I have a lot of beautiful memories in my mind.
When I finally went blind, I'm sort of a pragmatist, though, and even though I knew I was going to miss those things, those visual things, what I thought I would, what I was really much more scared about was being shoved to the sidelines, you know, like not being in the thick of things.
about was being shoved to the sidelines, you know, like not being in the thick of things.
I remember sitting in the cafeteria at school like a week after I went blind and I was sitting at a table by myself and listening to the food fights. All these kids were in this massive food
fight and I didn't, you know, mind so much that I couldn't see it. But what I was really mad and
upset about was that I wanted to be in the middle of that food fight. Wow. So when you lost it, what was it like for you? Those first few days, was it
heartbreaking or was it just kind of like something you accepted right away or how did
you deal with that transition? Because that's a huge loss for people, I would think.
So I was diagnosed with this rare disease and they said there's no cure. I went to a round of doctors
and as a small
kid, I knew I was going to go totally blind. Really? Yeah. Oh, so they told you this is going
to happen? Yeah, but it's like somebody saying you're going to die in eight years. You try to
block that out. The brain is incredibly powerful. So as I was losing my sight, I would just deny it.
The brain's amazing. It can deny anything. It doesn't matter what the reality is.
So my brain just completely, you know, I would be like,
oh, I didn't eat enough breakfast or, you know,
I didn't eat my banana this morning or like the light must be weird today
or whatever.
Your brain just can make up anything.
So I just completely was in 100% denial until that moment when I woke up
and I couldn't see to take a step.
And then I went, oh, okay, this is real.
Wow.
And I didn't really accept blindness either.
There was a little portion of time when I could see double.
Your brain just plays all these tricks trying to hang on to the little bit of vision that you have. And it started enabling me to see double,
like I couldn't quite see where things were. They'd pop up in different spots. And I was
walking down a dock and I could see two docks in front of me. I was trying to rush out there to
swim with my friends. And I went, okay, it must be the dock on the left. I'm just going for it.
with my friends and I went, okay, it must be the dock on the left, I'm just going for it.
And I took a step into space and I did a flip in there
and I landed on my back on the deck of a boat.
Oh man.
And I went, that was the wrong dock.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, and so some of these things,
when you go blind, you know,
or something bad happens to you,
of course it's this balancing act of what you can influence
and what you can affect, but also, what are the things you kind of have to you, of course, it's this balancing act of what you can influence and what you can
affect. But also, what are the things you kind of have to let go of and you have to accept?
And blindness was like that for me because once I accepted it, my life got a lot better. And then
I could push the parameters of what I could do. Crazy, man. This is amazing. Who was the most
influential person in your life growing up then?
Well, obviously my parents. I was really lucky to have great parents. In fact, as I was going
blind, my dad, he knew I loved to do things like I'd jump my bike over this ramp at the bottom of
my driveway. It was these wooden planks that I had set up, and I'd fly through the air. It was kind of like in the 80s when Evel Knievel was still big.
And my dad saw that I couldn't see the ramp anymore.
It blended into the pavement.
So instead of saying, you can't do that, which is the natural inclination of a parent, he painted it orange, like this really bright orange.
So it contrasted the pavement and I could jump my
bike over this ramp for probably another six months before I went blind. So my parents really
instilled this idea of what I call no barriers now, but back then it didn't really have a name.
And the other person who really influenced me was this guy that I never met,
person who really influenced me was this guy that I never met, who I think about almost every day,
and his name is Terry Fox. When I was going blind and I could still see just a little bit out of my right eye, I would press my face up against the screen. I could watch TV. I literally had
static electricity at the end of my nose. That's how close I had to get. And this guy was Canadian, and he lost a leg to cancer.
So they cut off his leg because it was cancerous,
and then he made a decision to run across Canada.
And this is thousands of miles.
It's a marathon a day.
And I thought, hold on a second.
That is not the decision somebody in his situation is supposed to make. Like, you know, what you're supposed to do is
like curl up in a ball and protect the little bit you have left. And this guy said, no way. Like,
I don't, that's not what I learned. And he, you know, he kind of understood that between the
things that happen to you and the ways that you're supposed to react, there's this space that you can operate in.
And he chose to run.
And he ran most across Canada and inspired a nation.
I think I read that in the book that he raised a dollar per Canadian, like a dollar for every Canadian for cancer research.
Wow.
He was like the original Lance Armstrong.
He's the original stud.
He's the original grandfather of disabled sports or however you want to look at it.
And so he never finished his run.
Cancer came back, got into his lymph nodes.
Oh, man.
So he ran without losing the leg first no he ran after he lost his leg so he had this clunky
clunky old prosthetic leg not these fancy flex feet you know or anything like today it was this
clunky herky jerky motion the look on his face was one of the last images I remember, just full of exhaustion and
exaltation, and it's all mixed together, and he's just running. And it was like, it inspired
everyone, including me, because I didn't even know at 13 years old what to call it, but I was like,
there's something inside that guy, and I wonder if I have that in me like i would i would i would love to think that that
exists in me and i hope it does and uh and so you kind of hope that when you turn into the storm of
life there's something that you can build and grow inside you and use that to i don't know not
not just survive because nobody wants to just survive, but really get stronger and better.
Wow.
Yes.
And the concept you're talking about is called No Barriers.
And you've got this book out called No Barriers, which I'm showing to the camera right now.
Make sure you guys pick this up.
It's a blind man's journey to kayak the Grand Canyon.
But you've done so much more than kayak the Grand Canyon.
You've been on the top of every major peak in the world.
Is that correct?
Yeah, there's a lot of mountains out there, but I climb what's called the Seven Summits.
Seven Summits.
The tallest peak in every continent.
So from Mount Everest to Karsten's Pyramid, which is the tallest peak in New Guinea,
to Denali, which is the tallest peak in North America, to Aconcagua.
So it's been this great adventure to go around the world and climb mountains,
including tons of rock and ice faces that no one's ever even heard of.
And there's a lot of great photos of you climbing these mountains and ice cliffs
and kayaking through the Grand Canyon.
And there's a couple images of Kyle Maynard,
who's been on the show.
He is born without arms and legs.
And there's some great photos of him climbing the mountain.
And he started climbing because of you.
He came and started training with you.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I have this, I think it's an organization,
but it's really, I think of it more as a movement of No Barriers.
And so we held this big event called our summit.
And he came to one of our summits. And it's really a celebration of how people with challenges of no barriers. And so we held this big event called our summit and he came to
one of our summits and it's really a celebration of how people would challenges breakthrough
barriers. And he wanted to know how to climb. And we're like, you know, we had this great clinic
where we were taking all these different people climbing, blind people using trekking poles and
bear bells. And we had paraplegics that were cranking their way up
the mountain with their arms on these special devices and amputees that were using special
crutches and really cool devices and innovations. And then Kyle showed up. And I'm like, I mean,
we're no barriers. I don't know how we're going to get a guy without his arms into the elbows and
legs into the knees. I don't know how we're going to do a guy without his arms into the elbows and legs into the knees.
I don't know how we're going to do this.
And so we kind of got together a group of wannabe engineers, some of Kyle's friends, some of our team.
And we went to his hotel room and we got bath towels and packing tape and some foam at the front desk.
The images look very funny.
They look like big clubs of foam or something on his arms
for the first images, right?
Yeah, he could bop you in the face with one of those.
That's so funny, yeah.
And we wrapped him around his stumps,
and for the next eight hours,
he crabbed his way to the top of this mountain,
stood at the top of this 12,000-foot peak in Colorado.
I was right next to him.
I was behind him as he crabbed his way through mud and snow
and through boulder fields.
And I just, and believe it or not, that was the day, you know,
because you're always in these processes, like you have these great dreams.
And honestly, a lot of them sort of die in the recesses of the mind.
And that day, I got to the top with Kyle and I thought, okay, I've been talking about this idea to kayak the
Grand Canyon. Like this, I got to do this. This is not one of those ideas. I want to like die a
slow death in the periphery of my brain. So I saw that and I thought I can't do this. It was because
of Kyle. Wow.
And when did you do, how long did it take to do the Grand Canyon?
Well, the whole process was six years.
Six years?
Yeah.
To kayak it or?
Six years of training.
Training.
And eight years really of that moment when I spoke it out loud to the time that I did it.
And, you know, so I'd been climbing mountains.
It sounds really crazy, but mountains were my comfort zone.
I'd been climbing since I was 16.
And at 40 years old, I found myself on this river
and I'm learning how to kayak and I'm starting over.
And I'm like, you know, mountains are supposed to prepare you for your life.
You know, like climbing Everest, it was supposed to make me ready for this great adventure.
And I'm listening to the roar of the rapids below me, and I'm thinking, I'm not ready.
That's intimidating.
Yeah.
And so it was six years, and there were tons of things to figure out along the way, how to navigate, first of all, and how I would assemble my team around me.
First of all, I just want to make sure people know that I don't see myself as a crazy blind guy just taking massive amounts of risk.
I really am very methodical about this process that I'm always trying to implement, trying to build this
amazing team of people around me. Of course, there is, in any endeavor, there's a lot of flailing and
bleeding, but also trying to systematize things as best as I could, trying to kind of look, be like a
scientist, you know, trying to pioneer these ideas forward. And so developing how the person
would be behind me and how they would guide me, what they would be yelling at me, hard left,
small right, charge into the rapids. And then the radio systems that we would use, because
you're separated by 20 foot, 30 foot waves and you can't hear. And so I got this earpiece and we finally found this tiny little
company out of the UK, like a mom and pop communication system that communicated through
Bluetooth technology and relative real time and waterproof. That was amazingly hard to find. And
finally we found that and that was like kind of a game changer because then I could hear,
I had this voice in my ear as I was charging through this absolute chaos.
Wow.
Crazy, man.
So how long was the actual time in the boat or the journey
when you got in the Grand Canyon?
It was 277 miles all the way through the Grand Canyon.
Wow.
Grand Wash Bluffs is when you end this great canyon.
And it took 20 days.
20 days?
Yeah.
How long would you go on for each day?
You kayak about eight hours.
Wow.
Yeah, kind of six to 10 hours a day.
And at first, kayaking was so mentally tiring for me.
Of course, you're physically tired.
But for me, there's always this training in the brain because you're exhausted.
You know, I'm listening to this advice or not advice.
I shouldn't say advice.
Directions.
Yeah, it's not like it's not a choice whether you listen or not.
You know, it's a command and you got to do it fast.
And so, and if you're like a moment too late, you just get hammered.
You know, you blast into a rock, you go into a hole.
If your boat is face 10 degrees angled too far to the right, you're going into this area
of the river that you don't want to be in.
So it's-
Talk about having trust.
Yeah, it's a lot riding on me and my guide to make the commands.
So my brain would get just exhausted because I would be listening so hard
and so much pressure to not make a mistake,
which wound up being one of the hardest things about kayaking for me
because I had come from this environment of climbing
where you could move slowly and sort of very methodically bring uncontrollable situations into control.
But as I said, it's slow and methodical and you can stop and regroup.
In kayaking, there was no regrouping.
How did you prepare mentally for this?
Hmm. How did you prepare mentally for this? How did you train yourself to say, listen, I've,
you know, for this or for any mountain, you know, whether it be a mountain or the Grand Canyon or whatever it may be, how do you prepare yourself mentally for any major obstacle you're about to
take on? As, as you know, I mean, I think it's really cool, actually. It's a great question
because it's like, well, yeah, there's the physical training. And, you know, like when I'm training for a mountain, I'm running up stairs, you know, like I'd run up the tallest
building in Denver with a big pack on, just trying to make myself throw up, you know, just
as hard as I possibly could until you're just dizzy. And so obviously there's, you know, getting in that mental or that physical state
of, you know, being able to increase your VO2 max. Because at high altitude especially,
there's not really enough oxygen to survive. They call it the death zone. So you're trying to
stay just below that anaerobic threshold. And then there's the mental state.
There's a mental training, which is trying to take, as I said, these really uncontrollable situations and bring them under control.
Like coming down from a peak called Amadablam, which was a year before Everest, we were in this massive storm.
We were stuck at 20,000 feet for eight days.
And, and then my team leader tried to get up and push up higher and we couldn't, it
was just like the wind was knocking us over.
And, and we're like, we got to call this, like, we got to go down while we still can.
So we packed up and we came down.
This wind is picking you up and slamming you back against the rock.
Um, there's the, The whole mountain has changed now.
It's like glazed up with ice and snow. It's really cold. Your fingers are going numb. Your
toes are going numb. You're like, this is the time to panic. But there's no reason to panic
because it doesn't help you. So you have to sort of do this mind thing where you're like,
you teach your mind how to suffer and,
and,
and you keep it at the surface.
You're like,
this is hopefully temporary.
I got to stay disciplined in my brain.
And,
um,
and that was a huge adventure getting down that mountain.
It actually turned out my friend,
Erica Alexander,
uh,
fell and,
uh,
landed on this little ledge.
And so he came back.
We got him back up and got him on oxygen, got him down,
had to get a helicopter at base camp.
He was really banged up, and there was a little break in the storm,
and the helicopter swooped in.
We had to put him in a gammo bag, which is a hyperbaric chamber
that brings you down to a lower altitude.
So we pumped air into the bag for like 48 hours to keep the air,
the oxygen in there so he could stay healthy.
And anyway, we got him down.
And then, of course, people were like,
well, you guys had this massive disaster on Amidablam.
What makes you think you can climb Everest?
And no, I didn't see it that way.
You know, we had had this,
we had had many things go wrong on that experience,
but all the mental training, all the team training,
you know, it was like,
it's sort of, we had to go through that gauntlet as a team
to be ready for Everest.
It was the greatest experience we could have had.
You know, in some ways,
when I'm running or doing a hard workout or, you know, heck, I can barely climb Runyon Canyon,
which is not that high. When I'm doing these small little, you know, workouts and when I see the top
and I'm constantly looking at how far away I am, it's actually mentally, it
creates more challenge for me, more discomfort.
Do you feel like sometimes you have an advantage when you don't have to like see how far you
have to get to get to the top of certain elements in your life that you can just be in the present
moment one step at a time?
Or do you feel like it's a disadvantage?
Yeah, I think there are pluses and minuses there. I remember Kyle saying that
very same thing when he was climbing Kilimanjaro. He's like, I have this tendency of looking up and
going, I got so far to go. Right. And yeah, I can't do that. The Sherpas on Everest, they have
a great quote, and it's part of their sort of Buddhist philosophy, and I've tried to adhere to it as much as I can.
And they say that the nature of mind is like water.
If you do not disturb it, it will become clear.
or even kayaking, or a lot of parts of my life,
I try to understand that if you're doing the things that you know why you're doing it,
like you're there, you've made that decision,
you've gone through the process of second-guessing yourself
and all that kind of stuff, you're past that.
Now, how do you let go of all that fear and distraction
and chaos that really just weight, it just weighs you down, and it sabotages you, and your brain sabotages you, and it calls you away from this thing just because your brain wants to keep you safe.
And it's sort of like these monsters that are sort of pulling you away from everything you really want to do, and it's just to keep you safe.
And it's a genetic
dysfunction of the brain. And so if you can keep your mind clear, like still water,
and not allow it to get so muddy. And so that's the way I look at a lot of things,
that really that discipline of the mind that it's so hard to maintain.
How do you keep your mind clear?
Well, it really is like a muscle that you're training.
And so I try to prepare as much as humanly possible.
So like, for instance, the reason it took me six years to train for the Grand Canyon
or half my life to train for Everest was because I didn't want to
go on the fast track. You know, I don't think you learn much from, you know, squeaking by the skin
of your teeth. Like, you're not learning in the survival by survival. You want to flourish in
these environments. So six years, I was trying to train my brain to embrace this chaos, this
crazy storm of energy that you're riding.
You're trying to control some of it, but some of it you can't control, and trying to kind
of go through that mind process, and it takes a while to be able to do that.
But essentially, with all that preparation,
your fear and all that distraction
can kind of get replaced
or get pushed to the periphery
and replaced by awareness
and replaced by focus.
And, you know, it doesn't happen too often.
But, for instance, I was in the Grand Canyon.
It was like day 16,
and some rapids had gone well.
Some hadn't gone so well,
but I went into this one rapid called Upset,
and Harlan, my guide, he just said like,
look, you've got to get your mind in this frame,
in this right frame of mind,
because you're still doing this
thing where your brain is separate from the river, and you got to make them the same thing. You got
to make your mind and the river one. You have to be experiencing this thing and not have this
barrier of the brain, because you're defeating the purpose of why you're here. All that fear
is just killing you. And I rode that rapid. I remember there was a massive waves just crashing against the walls to my left.
To my right, I could hear this huge hole, just like guttural sound of this hole churning
water down into the depths of the river.
And I was squeaking this line right between.
And I got through that.
And I just remember feeling so weightless.
And so you're training for six years to get a minute and a half
of that. It's like an Olympian, you know, it's like an Olympian that trains for six to eight,
10 years to have 10 seconds or one minute on, you know, a gymnast one minute routine or 10
seconds and then one hundred meter dash or something like that. You know, it's like your
whole life essentially is training for a moment.
But you're lucky.
You're fortunate to feel that, to get to experience that and to know that the brain in certain
situations is like the impediment and to get past that and just be connecting.
It's really hard to do.
And I think you have to keep working at it time and time again,
but once you feel it,
it's really, it's powerful.
What do you feel about potential?
What's your thoughts on potential?
And do you feel like most people
never even get close
to what they're capable of doing?
And if so, why?
I do think people sometimes give up too soon because they're committed to a
process but then you know as they keep climbing things keep getting harder and then they and all
those barriers start turning into brick walls and they get shoved to the sidelines.
And now they're camping out, they're starting to maybe be stagnant.
You know, they're stuck and they don't know how to get back.
And so I think it's really the barriers that people confront that shove them to that sidelines and kill their potential. And eventually that safe spot becomes habit and now you're stuck
and you don't know how to get out. But I don't want to be like an elitist or a snob. I mean,
it's not about climbing Everest or kayaking the Grand Canyon, but it is about something.
It is about, you know, living in the current, which is where the excitement and fulfillment
of life is and not being stuck in the eddy.
And so I do think people give up too soon, but it's not because they're quitters.
It's because they just don't know how to break through that eddy fence into the current.
How do we break through?
How would you teach someone?
Well, what I learned through exploring the people that I did in the book, because the book was one, I mean, a narrative, an adventure, which was fun to write.
But it was also about looking at people.
Like, see, I hadn't, I'd seen so many people, including family members, just stuck in that dark place.
And I felt like, you know, has anyone illuminated the path that people take?
And not like in movies and fictional books, not like in the movies where it's a nice crescendo,
it's a nice arc upward, and then there's a violin music at the top, and then you tie
the bow, and then everyone goes home.
What's that map look like?
And so, look, there are thousands of elements to that process.
But for my map, I try to look at even fundamental things that seem almost incredibly obvious
but are really hard to do.
We have a lot of folks like injured vets
who come into our programs, and they've gone off on this journey, and they've gotten broken.
And like, what's something fundamental that they lack? They're sitting in their basement,
they're just, they've served, they've led, they don't know how to get back into the thick of
things. And we say, like, here, hair, we'll help you build a rope team.
In the mountains, you actually are tied to the people around you. So it's really cool because
if you fall, everyone's got to stop you or everyone dies. It's a great concept.
And so how do people build their rope team? So we'll help build the rope team. We'll bring
together all these soldiers and we'll say, this is your rope team. Okay, maybe you weren't lucky to have a great
family when you were growing up, but this is your rope team. And this is the group that will
elevate you through your life. And teams just don't happen. They're carefully, methodically
built, and we're going to facilitate that. And then you got to use that team. So I think building that team around you
is essential, essential part of that map. I also think, I mean, there's several others,
but I really think another one that I found is so important, it's bled into every part of my life,
is this idea I call it alchemy. And it's this thing that when you, these pivotal
moments, when these barriers pop up and you're stuck, how do you, do you allow that barrier to
become the thing that stops you? Or do you kind of gather up the energy that is created through that adversity and collect that
and harness it and ride that energy forward? Maybe not to the place that you would have gone to,
but maybe someplace brand new, maybe someplace you would have never gone in any other way.
And so I think that alchemy process is something I try to teach people who go through
our programs. And there's many more pieces, I think, of that map that are so counterintuitive.
They're not like the things that are logical. They're like Terry Fox doing the complete
opposite of what he was supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. What would you say is the
biggest lesson you've learned about yourself since going blind?
Well, when I was learning to kayak,
I was doing really well.
I was learning my combat roles,
working through all these barriers.
And then I went to this river called the Usumacenta.
It was this giant river in Mexico, and it was great training, but there was a flood. And instead of being 40,000 cubic feet per second,
it was 120,000 cubic feet per second. To give you perspective, that's like 10 times bigger than the
Grand Canyon. And these whirlpools, there's just like a torrent of water.
And I was still kind of a novice.
And one of the things that happened when that much water is flowing down a canyon
is that these crazy things begin to happen.
You don't even get why at first.
Like these things called vortexes, they're whirlpools.
They swirl across the river.
And they move in these chaotic, unexpected ways.
And they can be nine feet deep. They grab the bow of your boat. They suck you down.
They rip you out of your kayak. They pull your shoes off from your feet. They're so strong.
And they hold you down for more than a minute under the water. And then they just disappear.
And then another one pops up.
And I get in so over my head.
I couldn't get back into my kayak.
I mean, you know, I know like motivation is great,
but it didn't matter how many motivational programs I listened to.
I could not get back in my kayak.
It was like, you know, so our program, we work with all these folks with ptsd and after that i got this weird
taste of ptsd like i'm not saying i had it but i definitely felt like i had trauma i started having
this dream um where i was blind in my dreams i'm usually i can see in my dreams but in this dream
i was blind and i was getting sucked down the river and I had no guide. And I was convinced that the river was going to like swallow me into nothingness.
Wow.
And I just couldn't get back in my kayak. My friend, thank God, that rope team,
one of my guides said, hey, like, let's start over. And so that was the greatest lesson that
I've learned is that I couldn't go up. But I did have control.
I could move backwards.
So I decided, okay, I got to reprogram my brain.
So I went back to the Whitewater Center, these man-made rivers that we're so lucky to have in 2017,
like actually man-made rivers where you can go train.
And I got on these baby rapids, these little rapids,
and had to relearn the whole process again. I'd lost my role. I'd lost my confidence.
And so it took me about a year to rebuild. That's a lot to want to go back and start
basically brand new on something that you put a lot of energy into and you kind of lost confidence and you know a lot of fear in this experience and then to recommit to a vision and say i'm
going to start from the bottom essentially and start one step at a time again that's a hard
thing to commit to it was hard and maybe people don't have time for that in their modern world
lives right but it for it was a great lesson
because it was like, look, it's possible.
Like you can say like, look, I don't have time
or I'm on the fast track
or I'm just, it's not worth it to me.
But you can't say it's not possible
because there is a way forward,
even if it's backwards.
Right.
Wow.
That's powerful.
And you have a family, correct?
I do.
I have a wife and I have two great kids.
And what is that experience like?
Because none of them are blind, correct?
No.
My son is 14 and we were lucky to bring him home from Nepal.
So it was great to climb a bunch of mountains and bring home a son.
That's not a bad bargain.
Nepal was in the midst of a civil war,
so we were going to these embassy appointments
trying to go through this crazy, insane rigmarole
of all the red tape that we had to go through
and all the appointments and all the letters that you have to get
and all the just hundreds and hundreds of letters that you have to get and all the just hundreds and hundreds
of things that you have to do and trying to get to our appointments in the civil war kind of
low-grade civil war people protesting on the streets flaming bricks flying over your head
tires burning in the street and you're like excuse me mind if i get if i step around this and i got
to get to this appointment this is really important if you don't mind. Sure. And two years we brought him home.
But I remember in that process thinking, God, I wish the process was as easy as climbing Everest.
It was harder for sure.
Wow.
And there was a long delay where the Maoist took over Nepal and we thought we'd never bring him home.
But we just kept sort of driving forward
in every way possible.
We got to Nepal.
We got positioned, like ready for action once it happened.
And the process took almost two years,
but we got this guy home and he's a, he,
he plays a soccer and, uh, he, he plays basketball and he rolled, he could roll his kayak at nine
years old and he can ski way better than I can, which he likes to brag about. Yeah. I used to
love bragging about being better than my dad and everything. Once I got to a certain age and I
could get bigger than him.
What's the thing you're most proud of?
Of all you've done, you've accomplished and overcome and broken barriers on so many things.
What's the thing you're most proud of?
Well, I think the Sherpas on Everest,
they have this cool thing that they say,
and they say that when you reach the summit of Everest,
it's only halfway summit, like not the real summit, and they mean you got to get down.
And I've interpreted that, though, beyond that, and I think it's like, yeah, you know,
you're not climbing these things or kayaking rivers as escapism, but hopefully, ideally,
as escapism, but hopefully, ideally, you're taking these gifts down from the mountain that you've earned through struggle, through that flailing, through that bleeding, through that
sense of self-discovery, that path that we're all on, and we use it in some ways. And so for me,
coming home from those mountains and starting No Barriers,
and it was just started at first with a bunch of dirtbags like myself,
climbing dirtbags.
One of them is a friend of mine named Mark Wellman who's a paraplegic.
He has no movement from the waist down. He climbed El Capitan, that 3,000-foot granite face.
He did it by doing 7,000 pull-ups in eight days.
Oh my gosh. That's crazy.
Yeah. And the third guy is this guy, Hugh Herr, who's a double leg amputee. And he was another
dirtbag, but he had an engineering mind. And he said he looked down at where his legs were supposed
to be because he had lost his legs in a climbing accident
and for a long time had loss.
And he looked down where those legs were supposed to be
and he said he saw a blank canvas.
And so he went back to his garage.
He started building legs with these,
they're tiny little legs with like feet.
Imagine they're tiny.
They look like a doorstop.
And he can wedge them into seams
no human foot could even stand up on.
He became a way better climber
than when he had legs.
He's actually now the head
of Biomechatronic Laboratory at MIT.
He builds like $62 million prosthetic legs.
That's pretty cool.
But back then he was just a PhD student
and it was, so the three of us climbed this tower in Moab.
I carried Mark down the trail.
Hugh led.
We got to the top of this tower.
And I think that was the beginning of No Barriers for me.
I thought, like, what is it inside those guys?
Like, is there something you can take out of them and export it into others so that we're like maybe there's a way to better equip all ourselves for that journey that we're on so that we emerge on the other side, not broken but change or growing or even transformed, although that's a big word.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do you say is the big barrier for you next to overcome or break through?
You've overcome so many things.
What's the next thing?
For me, it's committing to change.
I have a really fulfilling life.
I have a busy life.
But I'm sort of like in the same boat as everyone where there's dozens of things I would like to do.
I would like to be a better technologist. There's a lot of amazing technologies out there that I would like
to spend more time experimenting with. And for instance, there's a really cool new device called
Aira that works on Google Glass technology. And I can call up an agent. He or she is around the
world and they can see through the
camera no way yeah and they can talk you tell you what's going on yeah like so the other day
that's cool I used it when I was on the stair master in the gym and it broke down it could I
this and I can't see the screen and I and I and I called up this agent I said help me start this
machine again wow he's like yeah move your butt finger to the right and push that. There you go, the start button. And here's the resistance. So yeah,
just having more time for these important things. And we get so distracted and we take, you know,
it's so easy to take the path of least resistance. And like what I learned from a lot of the
characters, a lot of the people I studied in
the book was that the path of most resistance, and this isn't like a motivational statement or
anything, it's just like it's a reality that the path of most resistance is sometimes not the
direction you want to go, but it's the thing that where you grow and learn the most. It's this crazy dichotomy that when you're kayaking,
you don't want to be off the line.
You don't want to be in the chaos.
But that's where you learn the most.
So it's a balancing act.
And that's the biggest barrier for me,
just trying to figure out how to change my own habits
so that I spend more time on the important things that I want to devote my life to
and not just reacting and responding, which is what we probably do, I don't know, 80%, 90% of our lives.
Sure, sure. Powerful.
A few questions left for you, Eric, and I'm really grateful you came on.
What is a non-negotiable for you every single day that you must do,
either a routine or a habit or something that you need to do every day to prepare yourself?
One of the things I do, and I've heard a lot of your guests say this,
so it's kind of a universal thing I think for all of us,
and I've heard a lot of your guests say this,
so it's kind of a universal thing, I think, for all of us,
is to wake up sort of with gratitude.
Like, you know, blind guys don't climb mountains alone.
Blind guys don't kayak the Grand Canyon alone.
I've ridden on the shoulders of amazing people.
People have devoted their lives to me.
They could be doing a lot of things. My friend Rob Raker, for instance, in the middle of
our kayaking six-year process, he gets diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. This means
your time on earth is concrete. It's not 40 years. It may be a lot less. And he continued
to guide me down the river despite the fact, or down the river despite the fact
that he was on ADT,
androgen deprivation therapy,
stripped away all his testosterone.
Wow.
He was sick.
He was in diapers having it,
you know, in his kayak
because he had no bowel control,
but he was guiding me down the river.
Wow.
So I wake up with gratitude every day
for that amazing people in my life.
Yeah. It's life. Yeah.
It's powerful.
Yeah.
If you had one minute of perfect eyesight and you could be anywhere in the world or be in front of anyone or experience anything and you had a minute or a few moments, let's say,
what would you choose to see with your eyes?
So I don't miss seeing mountains or rivers.
I've experienced those things.
I've seen them in my own way, and that's great.
So I don't have any regrets there.
I will say, though, that faces.
I remember when I could see just a little bit, like looking down through the window
with some binoculars and seeing people's faces, like walking down the streets and going,
whoa, that is crazy to look in people's faces and look into their eyes.
And so I would love to see my kids. But I will say this, because that probably won't happen for me,
and I'm okay with that.
I can live with that.
I won't see their faces.
But there's another amazing device that I've worked with
that I write about in the book that's based on neuroplasticity,
and that's the BrainPort.
It's a camera that takes a picture of an image,
and then that gets sent through a microprocessor that then sends
electrical stimulation to my tongue.
No way.
So essentially, my tongue is the images that the camera is seeing, the light and dark images,
the contrast is being projected onto my tongue in this electrical stimulation.
And so I've used the device to just stare into my kids' faces.
Really?
Yeah. And it's crazy because you're looking at their, you're feeling their face, like,
you know, their cheeks. I remember my kid telling me jokes, and he's telling me these great jokes,
and his cheeks lift up, and his smile just consumes his face, and his eyes, I mean, like some of it's in your mind,
but I could have sworn I felt his eyes twinkling.
Right.
It was good.
It was good stuff.
That's cool, man.
Yeah.
That's very cool.
This is a question that I ask at the end.
It's called the three truths.
Yeah.
So if this was the last day for you many years from now
and you've achieved everything you wanted to,
you've written all the books,
you've said all the things you want to say, but you only get to share three lessons left to the
world. For whatever reason, this is all that people would see of your work left are these
three truths you write down on the paper. What would you say are your three truths?
Well, first, I mean, we spent some time today talking about this map that we're all building.
All our maps are slightly different, but there's also some universals to that map that we're building.
But I think fundamentally, maybe it comes down, the truth is that it comes down to a choice that we make.
You know, are we okay sitting in that semi-self-induced prison?
We put ourselves in that prison.
Are we okay with it?
Most of us aren't.
So there is a fundamental sense of courage just to say,
I'm not okay with that, and I'm going to find a way to break through,
and I'm going to be in the current.
And that's where the excitement, that's where the joy,
that's where the fulfillment, that's where the discovery is that's where the fulfillment, that's where the discovery is.
But it's scary as hell.
So it's one a choice.
And I think the second truth is this idea of courage.
And one of our soldiers in one of my No Barriers programs told me this.
I'm blatantly stealing it because I love it so much.
He said that courage is not a state of being. It's a choice.
It's a choice that we're making constantly.
And so he said what he tries to practice every day is
this insignificant acts of courage.
Maybe it's wearing that shirt that, you know, everyone makes fun of, but you love it.
That tank top, you know, that's gone out of style.
Or maybe it's having a beer instead of a Coke, a Coke instead of a beer.
Or maybe for me, when I was hard, couldn't get back in my kayak,
it was just sitting in my kayak,
then it was in my garage,
I would just sit in my kayak.
So those insignificant acts of courage
lead you to those moments when great courage is required
and then you're ready.
So it's like a brain,
it's like a muscle in your brain that you're training.
And I think that's a truth for me,
I think about that all the time.
Yeah.
Wow.
And maybe the last one is have fun.
I call it suffer well because in any great endeavor, there's suffering.
So my friend Chris Morris, he's this great adventurer, but he's hilarious.
He's from Alaska.
And you'll be sitting in this terrible storm, hammering wind in your face.
You're miserable.
Your hands are cold.
You're eating gross food with rocks in it.
And he'll say, sure, it's cold out here, but at least it's windy.
Or we've been climbing a long way, but at least we're lost.
And I love that.
It's like, yeah, life is suffering, but you gotta ride that suffering
and know that it's for a good purpose.
And also it's a way to say like,
hey, we own it.
It's a hard road,
but I always own that road no matter what.
And so Chris has helped me understand that
through his philosophy.
He calls them positive pessimisms.
Yeah. I like that. Thank you for sharing those. Yeah. So throw some positive pessimisms out.
Perfect. The book is No Barriers, A Blind Man's Journey to Kayak the Grand Canyon. A lot of great
meat, storytelling content in here. I think you guys will love this one. Make sure to pick it up.
Eric, before I ask the final question,
I want to acknowledge you, my friend,
for showing up the way you do
because not many people who have eyesight
are willing to put themselves
and break through the barriers that they have.
And you're willing to do so much more
than most people with no sight
because you have incredible vision, my friend.
So I acknowledge you for all that you do to show up passionately with love, joy, playful, curious, and willing to
commit six, eight, 10 years to make something come true, not trying to take the fast track,
but really making sure you're prepared for something great. So I acknowledge you for that.
Thank you. Yeah.
And the final question is,
what is your definition of greatness?
Well, I think one, as I've said before,
it's not about climbing Everest.
It's not about blind people or people missing legs
or whatever, like doing big things.
That can actually become sort of shallow.
I just think greatness is people living, you know, fully living, fully experiencing that
sort of storm that we're all riding and committing to it, like you just mentioned,
committing to it, like you just mentioned, committing to that life and not allowing themselves.
Look, I don't care if people climb mountains or climb scary rock faces, but I met somebody the other day who said, yeah, I tried whitewater rafting and my boat flipped. And ever since then,
I could never get back into the river again. And that was a physical thing.
I mean, that was a concrete thing.
But I thought, what a shame to be driven by your fears.
And so I'd say, you know, not being driven or demotivated or even influenced by our fears.
It's not like we're reactionary.
We're trying to just confront our fears
and do things just because we're scared.
Then I think that's just as shallow.
But at the same time,
not being controlled by those fears
and all those crazy little things
that our brains do to us.
For me, that's what greatness is. And if you're truly
committed and engaged in life to whatever your vision is, then I'd say that's great.
It's impossible to define it in terms of a something.
Yeah. I love it. Well, Eric, you're a great man. Thank you so much for being on here.
The book is No Barriers. If you guys go to touchthetop.com slash greatness, you can get
some more information about the book and some more goodies at your site, which is touchthetop.com
slash greatness for more about this stuff here. Eric, thank you again for coming on. I appreciate
it. Thank you, Lewis. And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed this one and make sure to share this with your
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great week on the School of Greatness podcast and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there
and do something great. Thank you.