At the recent AllTech One Summit in Lexington, Ky., Erik Weihenmayer shared his ability to define what it truly means to live a “No Barriers Life,” as he told stories of his groundbreaking adventures around the world as a blind adventurer. On May 25, 2001, Weihenmayer become the first blind person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech encouraged ONE attendees to pause for a moment and imagine climbing the Seven Summits ascending some of the most treacherous and scary climbs 3000-foot frozen waterfalls in Nepal.
“What about never seeing the finish line of that race? Or perhaps even though you’re at the top of Everest, not being able to see it?” Lyon says. “Erik is an individual that doesn’t see limitations. That doesn’t see any boundaries.”
Continually challenging himself to grow and evolve, Weihenmayer talked about the ability to climb in more ways than one. He shared that that while it feels good to talk about our accomplishments, what often doesn’t get talked about enough is the struggle.
“For me, it’s been a struggle to live this life,” Weihenmayer says. “There are the days where you’re just bailing it and bleeding it. And I think part of the equation of understanding this life is looking at the learning process.”
Weihenmayer shares that the triumphs are few and far between, but the struggle is constant.
Three Categories
According to Weihenmayer people can be put into three different categories—quitters, campers or climbers.
Quitters. Pretty self-explanatory. They quit.
Campers. Many people fall into this group. People who start out climbing with hope and optimism, and then somewhere along the ascent, things get in the way. “We lose belief in ourselves. Or maybe we try something out of the box, as they always say step out of the comfort zone. You try it. You get shoved backwards; you get shattered. And it sends a trauma through your soul saying, ‘Why would I ever do that again?’ Or maybe we reach a certain degree of possible prosperity, and we get to that nice safe plateau,” Weihenmayer says. “Now we’re camping.”
Climbers. This is a rare group of people. “There are those of us who continue to figure out a way to grow and evolve and explore and challenge themselves every day of their lives until the day we die,” he says.
While it is so much easier to camp, Weihenmayer says we must challenge ourselves and ask how can we climb every single day.
Personally, for Erik, he found out how to climb the hard way. He went blind from a very rare eye disease called retinoschisis. Weihenmayer’s expeditions and lessons have been turned into award-winning documentaries and his books provide a window into his life as an adventurer and speaker. He shares that being shoved to the sidelines was a more terrifying thought than anything blindness could do to him.
“I went rock climbing 35 years ago. That’s the reach. And it doesn’t matter whether you can see or not. We’re all in the same boat. We’re all reaching into darkness,” he says.
Weihenmayer says we all fear making mistakes.
“These fears. They conspire against us. They paralyze us. So that maybe we decide to stop reaching. I think there’s a big difference between many people and climbers. Climbers understand life is an ongoing, never-ending process of reaching out into the darkness when we don’t know exactly what we’ll find. We’re constantly reaching towards immense possibilities.,” he says.
As an adventurer who has climbed Mount Everest and kayaked the Grand Canyon while blind, Weihenmayer understands better than most that barriers are real. Our mindset can not only help us overcome our challenges, but also help us reach goals that we once thought were impossible.
To learn more about Erik Weihenmayer, click on erikweihenmayer.com.
