Moving Mountains

hi everybody

my name is caroline leon and it’s such a

pleasure to be here with all of you

even though it’s virtually um so thank

you for having me

and i hope that you gain a little bit of

insight

uh from my story and what i have to

share with you today

so firstly i want to tell you a little

bit about who i

am i have been living in the middle east

and particularly dubai for the last

11 years and i’ve gone through many

trials and tribulations here lots of ups

and lots of downs

um and my story is a little bit

tumultuous

i am a business owner here in dubai i

own a company called the life of

education

and i’m also an avid mountain climber

and last year i embarked on a guinness

world record attempt

to summit all of the mountains in the

middle east in

30 days and five years ago

i had a really severe rock climbing

accident

and i stupidly climbed an

outdoor rock climbing wall and then the

peg came off and i fell all the way down

and i broke most of my body

and i ended up in a hospital in dubai

and i had 23 blood transfusions

and i had 14 surgeries and i had my

whole body reconstructed so i had my

feet reconstructed because they smashed

i had my pelvis reconstructed and i also

had it attached

to the other side of my body because it

when i landed it went like this

um and i had part of my spine replaced

which

exploded in the accident so i spent

a good two years um undergoing lots of

surgeries and going in and out of

hospital

and really learning what it

feels like to be at rock bottom

because trust me when i say i was at

rock bottom

and uh really difficult and challenging

circumstances

and the reason that i bring that up

because to me

it really showed me that

actually our everyday heroes they

certainly do not wear capes whatsoever

our everyday heroes are the nurses that

looked after me

or the friends and family that come and

visit you when you’re really in need

so i mentioned to all of you that i am a

little bit of an

amateur mountain climber and after my

accident

i um it took me a really long time to

to recover and to learn how to walk

again and like

little bit by bit i started to get this

idea in my mind

that i wanted to do something that was

going to really transition me out of

being

in a wheelchair and on crutches and

being broken

and being reconstructed and i wanted to

to do something that was within reason

kind of

and to really like push myself forward i

wanted to

to push myself through something where

once i did this i was no longer a victim

of my accident i had i would have

transcended that and

in my mind i was looking for something

that was just a really clear line

and i remember getting this idea that i

wanted to

to climb a mountain and all of a sudden

it kind of spiraled and i ended up

climbing

a lot more mountains than than is

reasonable

and for any person and um

on one of the mountains that i was

climbing it’s the highest volcano

in the middle east that has volcano in

asia

it’s in iran and it’s called mount david

and this volcano is quite an active

volcano it has like

a little um sulphur that comes out from

the summit

and it is 5 62 meters so it’s

it’s a higher altitude mountain and i

remember the first day on the summit it

was like oh this is so beautiful

i just loved being in iran it was such a

beautiful country

and the walk was gorgeous and day two

it was a little bit colder and um my

lips were cracking

and my hands were a little bit colder

and by day three when we were

above four 000 meters i started to get

all of this doubt in my mind i was like

what am i

thinking like am i absolutely crazy to

do this

and i had literally just finished

climbing another mountain before i was

in turkey climbing mount ararat

so i finished climbing mount ararat and

i flew straight to iran

i changed all my clothes and went

straight onto the summit

and halfway through being on the summit

in iran

i literally thought i was crazy i

couldn’t believe that i was doing

something like this i thought it was

ridiculous and i thought i’d totally

lost my mind and what was i doing a

disabled person trying to climb the

mountain

and i started to really feed on the

doubt

and it was really funny because i had

these kind of like this battle in my

mind going on

it was like you’re here

you can do this like you can do this

you’re almost there

you’re really close you’ve got one day

left to get onto the summit

and the other other part of my mind was

like i’m

crazy there’s no way i can do this and i

kept looking at the donkeys

and the donkeys were carrying people’s

like cargo up and they were carrying

food and firewood and all this stuff

up the mountain and i kept looking at

the donkeys going oh my god maybe i

could pay

one of the the um the people to to put

me on the donkey and carry me off the

mountain like that’s how

desperate i was to find a way out of

this because

i put myself in a situation where i just

had so much doubt

and then we get to summer night and

summer at night

we left at like two in the morning and

it is freezing it’s literally

minus it was minus 11 on the summit so

it was -11

and i’m leaving my tent and my fingers

are freezing and

it’s pitch black and i start following

my guide

mariam up this mountain and we’re taking

one step at a time

and when you’re climbing a mountain it’s

literally like

and every step that i was going through

in my mind was just like

darkness darkness it was like what am i

doing here i wanted to get off i wanted

to run away i didn’t think i could do

this

i was crazy but i kept going

and i just kept following marion all the

way up and

literally 12 hours later so this is now

2 p.m we’re still summiting the mountain

and we’re about 200 meters away and the

mountains full of sulphur smoke and so

it’s

even harder to breathe and now you’re at

5

500 meters with literally only 60

to 100 to 200 meters to go and i could

see this summit

and i was like oh and for some reason i

got in my mind that it was 200 meters

like a flat wall but it was actually

only 200 meters in elevation but then we

actually had about

30 minutes left of walking maybe a

little bit more

and those last 30 minutes were

horrendous for me

they were filled with like this complete

battle and i knew i had to push through

so the reason that i’m telling you this

story and before i tell you anything

else

i did get to the summit i managed to get

through but

literally by the hair of my chin um i

got to the summit i started

crying my eyes out because it was the

hardest

battle that i’d ever gone through it was

literally a battle within my mind

and i was crying and crying and taking

videos so eventually i could post them

on social media and just like

proclaim that i managed to get there

even though

the whole process was so hard but the

reason that i’m telling you this

is because this is something that i’ve

drawn from my experience of climbing

like amateur mountain climbing is that

when you climb a mountain particularly

some at night

summer night is dark and it’s cold and

you literally sometimes can’t see the

end in sight

but at the end of the day at the very

end of summer night

if you persevere so if you push

through all of that darkness and all of

the failure

and you keep going keep going through

that tunnel

at the end of the tunnel is the light

and on mountains it’s almost like

you keep going you keep going and you

don’t give up and you don’t give up and

eventually

you get to the summit and most the time

if you’re lucky summit comes

also with the rising of the sun and you

see

just so much light and you see the arc

of the earth and the clouds underneath

and everything just kind of goes into

perspective because you can

see the bigger picture of of some of

these really challenging events

and the reason that i’m explaining you

this story

is that life sucks

sometimes there are situations that are

really really hard

and sometimes there’s situations that we

have put

on ourselves and uh sometimes the

situation’s completely out of our

control like

covert but the point is is that the

situation

itself is what makes us

molds us into the better version of

ourselves

if we allow ourselves to do that so

for me it was i was either going to

succumb to the darkness of my own mind

all of those thoughts that i couldn’t do

this

i could have easily spoken to my guide

and asked him mary

please get me off this mountain let’s go

down on a donkey

and that would have been it and i would

have not persevered and i would have let

the negative voices in my mind win

but what i want to share this story with

you is that

if we let our light win and we

turn down the volume of all of those

dark noises

all of the the voices that say to us

that we can’t do this that we can’t go

any further that it’s too hard

that this is the situation is

insurmountable

if we keep going and we take one step

at a time and keep pushing through

eventually we’re going to push

through that darkness that tunnel and

we’re going to come

out the other end and if we allow

ourselves to

then that situation itself is going to

mold us into

something stronger it’s going to mold us

into

a better version of us and so my lesson

here

and i think i’ve said this before to

many many people so

sorry if i’m repeating myself is i

remember listening to this nursery rhyme

when i was little

and the nursery at night rhyme goes you

can’t go

over it you can’t go under it you have

to go through it

which to me it means that you can’t hide

from a situation right none of us can

hide from covid

and we can’t run away from covert that’s

for sure because we’re stuck we can’t

travel

um but what we can do is go through it

with our best foot forward and we can

persevere

and if we take one step at a time and

listen to the light inside us the

the part of us that’s like you know what

i can do this

i can i can be the best version of

myself in this situation

and i turn down the volume to that

darkness to all those noises of doubt

and we keep going then we’re going to be

able to

come through the other end and

an interesting quote that i really love

is this quote about

um about life and really challenging

situations revealing to us who we really

are and we have to give ourselves the

opportunity

to reveal that actually there’s really

good inside of us

and we want to reveal the best part of

us so

one of my favorite books is a book by

naseem talib called

anti-fragile and something that i

learned from this book and i really like

a nugget of gold lesson here

so nasim talib explains what it means to

be anti-fragile

and to be anti-fragile it means that i’m

going to be

robust enough that i don’t break

but i’m also going to change

so i’m not going to break but i’m going

to transform

and that’s what it means to be

anti-fragile so what’s the next

situation

so the next situation is that i have an

object and this object might be like a

book

and i dropped the book on the floor

again and so the book doesn’t break

which means that it’s not fragile it has

a certain amount of robustness to it

but it also doesn’t change the floor

doesn’t make it stronger

the floor doesn’t make it wiser the

floor

does nothing to change its essence the

essence of the book

and that means the book is robust but it

doesn’t have the ability to evolve

and we don’t really want that either so

let’s think about the next situation

right

and now imagine that i have you know one

of those play-doh balls those really

like

rubbery balls and i i drop that onto the

floor

and it doesn’t break but when i pick

that ball up i

notice that something’s different about

it it has maybe an indentation or it has

a mark or something

in that ball is actually making it

stronger it’s making it evolve

and that’s what it means to be

anti-fragile

it means that i am robust enough not to

break

but that i also learn some really

valuable lessons from the situation

and i grow and i change and

to me naseem’s book really epitomizes

what we all want to aspire to which is

we want to aspire to

being like robust and unbreakable and

brave and strong and all of those

those beautiful words that we hear when

we think about

heroes and when we think about people

that we aspire to be like

and then in addition to that we also

want to let situations

like situations like covert make us

stronger and

make us more resilient to life and make

us see

the bigger picture because sometimes

when we’re in that dark tunnel

like i have been many times through my

accident and through all my mountain

climbing expeditions

you get into this mode where you just

literally

see only the darkness and you’re you’re

not able to take yourself

out of that and see the bigger picture

and the bigger picture really

is is that inside all of us

we have the ability to evolve

to change and to be that hero

and we really just have to get out of

our own way

and allow ourselves to rise to the

occasion

and like dr phil said situations do not

make us hero they reveal to us

who the heroes are and i wanted to leave

you with that as a final thought because

i know

inside all of you there is a hero inside

you so get out of your

own way and rise to the occasion

thanks