I'm going to tell a few stories about living dangerous dreams and hopefully  surviving them and I'm going to start off talking about my parents. That probably  looks like child abuse to some of you and it's not far off. The kid with a really bad haircut that's 5-year-old me and obviously not much has changed here. My  dad's like 15 and I remember a couple things from this picture when we were out there. First of all I remember being really scared because if you fell down there it was quite obvious that you're gonna die. And I was like Dad this is bad and he  was like no son it's fine and went off on some long discourse. Main thing he said is you've got a rope on and if you fall off you're not going to die. And that was my first kind of Hazard recognition lesson in life and I didn't die. And the second  feeling that I remember from this slide is getting to the top of this thing and being so stoked because I was like wow I'm alive and I climbed something. This is the  best thing ever and this is what I want to do like forever and I was totally Fired  Up by it. And now what I do for 200 days a year is travel all over the world and  have Adventures of one kind, either as a guide or a filmmaker or a  photographer. Sometimes play a lot of different roles but get outside and have  fun that's what I like to do. And this is a quick video from a recent episode of  having fun, Ang Falls. Yeah, how cool is that you, yeah boys that was a  realization of a big dream. I spent a lot of time flying out and convincing  everybody from the governor of New York on down to the local parks  department that I could do this safely. And the safety plan was like that thick. It  was crazy and eventually got it all together got permission climb Niger fall is  really cool and I love doing stuff like that but I I just want to kind of go to the dark side here and have a look at some of the um kind of issues out there in my  sport. I don't want to gloss over this my sports are lethal if you do things wrong  and I as leader of these trips do things wrong people die. These are good smart  switched on Fast intelligent people. I am not better than any of them and I'm  playing the same game. And as I get older I really like playing this game and I  want to keep doing it. It's beautiful. It's magic when it goes well and it's horrible  when it goes bad. So I put more and more time into trying to understand what  I've done right what I've done wrong and learn from it and come up with a few  simple things that I can share. As I go through all this, it's not the systems that  have led to problems. You know ropes don't generally break. It's not that stuff.  There's no manual on how to do this. When I've gotten into trouble, it's usually  because my attitude hasn't been in the right place and my Approach hasn't been in the right place and now I've got an extra incentive to get it right. Okay yeah, she's just like me. You could see she's fired up. Daddy hang me  again. You know so I've got to deal with this and I've got to switch them onto a  way of dealing with the world so that they make it through. I don't know how I  survived. That I'd like them to and they're kind of the same as me. They're a dad and all the rest of it you know it's it's going to be an adventure for them so I've  come up with three kind of simple tools that I I want to work with and do my 

guiding with my business with everything I do. The first one is Hazard  recognition. If you don't know what the hazards are then you can't avoid them  and this is a way I look at the world. It's like all right what's going to go wrong  here? How am I going to deal with it when it does? And I'm running this program all the time. We all are, whether we realize it or not and how good is it. So if my  kids is an example of this, what I do is talk to them about it. You know they're out there. I mean the most that's going to happen here is probably sunburn, right.  But when we're in situations like this, I talk to my kids about it. I'm like all right,  what hazard level are we running here right now? What's going to go wrong?  And my kids look at me and they look around and maybe we're hiking along a  trail in the mountains and there's nothing going on and they're like bumps and  bruises. Dad we got this. Cool, then we're out there and the trails a little bit more radical. Big drop off and I'm like all right would happen if you fell off there? Is  that the main danger? They look at it and they're like well stay on this side of the trail but yeah Dad if we fell off of there we're at hospital for sure. So the next  level of course is we're standing on a street corner in Toronto or New York and  there's cars going everywhere and this is hazardous. I don't know how children  live in cities like I'm amazing even make it through but I'm like all right obviously  this is bad kid so how are we going to deal with this? Like we're going to stay  back. And I'm like what would happen if you ran out there? Death dad right on.  We got this figured out. I know that if I lose sight of them which I'm going to do  you know they're they're like me they're like over there over there they they're  they're they move I know they've got the skills to navigate that environment and  that's what I'm trying to impart and live by myself that Hazard recognition  understanding that life is dangerous and being aware of it and tuned into it. Now some of you are probably going he's really negative but I kind of think you're not  being very positive. There's this thing right now the positive power of positive  thinking just happy thoughts and it's all going to be good right and the universe  loves you. No it doesn't doesn't really care about you very much. So what I been to is the positive power of negative thinking and I hope that as my kids get older  they're also looking at it the same way. You know maybe my daughter is 15 and  and I know what I was doing at 15 and there's a bunch of drinking and there's a  car going somewhere and I hope she looks at that adds up the danger and goes death and gets it it's not negative. It's about making good decisions in life and  thinking things through. This has saved me over and over again. In this photo  here I'm 16. I'm positive I got this. I'm going to run this and then I'm also looking  over on the side there's ice there what if you got pushed underneath the ice in  your kayak like what would you do? And I was thinking about this and I paddled  off I got this I'm 15. I was really positive at age 15. Paddle off this thing. Current  stronger. Next thing you know I'm under the ice and it's dark and there's no air.  This is not going well. But I've been thinking what what I do in this situation and I was like well I I'd swim for the light. So I got out of my kayak and I got up 

underneath the the ice and I went along it and the air bubbles, I still remember  this, were too too thin to suck on. Tried that out and I just kept moving toward  the light and I popped up. And all my friends are like, no way. You lived. So that's what I mean by the positive power of the of negative thinking. It's like, have a  plan and even for when things are going sideways and it leads you more  towards success the next one I use a lot is anticipating and expecting change.  This is this is abnormal. You're all sitting there nicely but things change all the  time. When I'm out in the mountains guiding my client, maybe like we're getting  to the summit, and I'm like this isn't a bad Everest movie. We're also going to get down you know we're going to make it down today. And then maybe the weather starts getting better. And I've won a lot of competitions and stood on a lot of  summits by myself because I also recognized that things were improving. So  changes, both negative and positive. It depends how you look at it. And the fact that you embrace it and pull it toward you and what you do with that. Now the  next thing that I'm into thinking about and sharing as I do all these high-risk  things I learned from a very famous Eastern Zen Buddhist philosopher named  Clint Eastwood. There's this scene in a movie that's really struck with me and he looks out and he goes, a man's got to know his own limitations. And what he  meant by that is, you got to know when you're operating in an area where you're competent and in an area where you're not. YouTube is full of people. You had a very high level of confidence. I can do it my mom said so. I'm going for it. And a  very low level of competence, right. This is what the fail reels on YouTube are  full of and I don't want to be that guy very often. I'm going to make it  occasionally but I I want to avoid that. So I always think, do I actually know what  I'm doing? It's a really relevant question. And if not I bring people in who do. A  few years ago, I had this great idea that I was going to go climb icebergs and  this sounded rad. You know here in the Rockies, icebergs. I'm really good at  climbing ice. I actually know something about that. I've been doing it my whole  life. Right on, and I showed up. There icebergs. I know how to do with these but  there's an ocean I knew nothing about that I had this idea that that if the iceberg  started rolling the boat would come in and I'd like nimbly leap onto the bow. And  it isn't like that when those things roll big chunks come flying off and the boat  heads the other direction. You are on your own. And so I was like, all right that's  not going to work and uh I just recognized I was way outside my league and got  some great pictures. The return on investment was great for sponsors and stuff  but I ran away and that decision is what allowed me to climb Niagara Falls 20  some years later. Which you got to recognize when things just aren't working out and get out or get more confident somehow. So if you put these three things  together there's pluses and minuses in all of them but what they really are is  kind of an Arsenal to defeat fear. Because the other great philosopher Frank  Herbert wrote the series Dune. He had this line, fear is the mind killer. It's what  takes you down, destroys your dreams, stops you cold from functioning 

effectively, and it's no good. So what I often see is people saying, ah conquer  your, here this does not work. I've tried a lot it doesn't but if you use these tools  and dig into it it's like right what's going to go wrong and what's my plan? If it  does is it still worth it, yes. No, what's happening are things changing better  worse? Do I know how to deal with that yes? No and you chip away at it. Am I  any good at it. I hear Clint Eastwood's voice all the time. Once I've done all that  work, then and I've pushed into that fear, I've leaned into it, given it a shoulder,  and we've wrestled bit and felt each other around, then we can dance. We can  go out and do something cool and go out and do these amazing things. My little  daughter the other day was on a trail and it was pretty steep on one side she'd  already identified that this was Hospital terrain but we got into a section where  there were bushes all over it but it was kind of steeper and scarier and she  stopped and she was quite scared. And it was only after we realized that those  bushes would stop her from Rolling that all of a sudden her eyes lit up and she's like, ha I'm safe. You know, I can build my teddy bear Forts and do stuff  here. And that's what I'm looking for in my own life. Not ignoring danger. Not  pretending it doesn't exist. But looking into it, leaning into it, coming up with  plans, and executing really cool stuff without getting killed because this is a  pretty rad life. You know, we're we're lucky to be alive. We're in a safe place you  know relatively speaking. We have endless opportunity, and it is awesome. And I might be crazy but I'm not crazy enough to approach all this stuff in life without  some kind of plan. So as you drive home today, check things out. Look at your  own kids playing maybe some of this will resonate with you and you'll be like ha  bumps and bruises or I got it I'm going to lean into the fear, work through it, go  out and do something really cool. That's all I got. Thank you very much



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 6 يوليو 2026، 8:50 AM