The Good Intentions Podcast
Good Intentions connects with experts and storytellers around social impact, psychology, mindfulness, personal growth, and health.
Each conversation unpacks the beliefs and rituals that drive and ground each guest. You will hear about achievements that go beyond the conventional and tangible to a deeper level, finding the meaning and intention behind what we do.
I believe that there is a deep longing in our culture and society for something more: something higher, something deeper. Material possessions and technology do not satisfy our souls. As human beings we long for connection.
I'm on a mission to spread positivity, drive connectivity and to inspire others to live a more meaningful life.
The Good Intentions Podcast
Ep 39 - How to Build a Stronger Mind (and climb mountains) – Caroline Leon
Caroline Leon is an Australian born health and fitness advocate, fitness professional, and the co-founder of A Life of Education.
When Caroline broke her back four years ago, falling from an indoor climbing wall, she never thought she'd be able to walk again. Her life-threatening injuries included two shattered feet, a displaced and fragmented right pelvis that was disconnected from the left side of her body and a bust fracture to part of her spine.
Her injuries were so severe that she wanted to give up, but after being confined to a wheelchair for six months, as well as undergoing 14 surgeries and 23 blood transfusions, she slowly regained her ability to walk and came up with a plan to get not only her strength back, but also her confidence to mark the end of her recovery.
Caroline decided to set a new Guinness World Record to become the first person in the world to summit all of the highest points in the Middle East in the fastest possible time, a feat that had never been attempted by a woman alone. What a woman!
I've wanted to talk to Caroline for the longest time. Her energy and attitude to life is so inspiring and I'm totally fascinated by her mindset, what gets her out of bed in the morning and how she faced down huge and tragic life events and emerged not only intact, but absolutely thriving.
Aside from her incredible story of triumph over tragedy, Caroline and I discussed how to navigate life when it keeps throwing you curved ball and finding our purpose and meaning. Spoiler alert, you don't have to climb a mountain to do this, thankfully!
We have everything inside of us that we need to succeed - we just need to believe it. It was a really wonderful conversation and I hope you enjoy it.
Follow me, and the Good Intentions podcast:
https://www.instagram.com/kellyharvarde/
https://www.instagram.com/goodintentionsuae/
Find Caroline Leon here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-leon-3277a724/
https://www.instagram.com/caroline.d.leon/
Immerse yourself in some of the books we discussed:
Ram Dass - Being Ram Dass
https://www.amazon.ae/Being-Ram-Dass/dp/1683646282
Wayne Dyer - The Power of Intention
https://magrudy.com/book/the-power-of-intention-change-the-way-you-look-at-things-and-the-things-you-look-at-will-change-9781781803776/
Welcome to Good Intentions, the podcast where we explore the world around us define meaning and intention in what we do. I'm Kelly Harvard and I'm on a mission to spread positive stories that will inspire you to live a more meaningful and connected life. Caroline Leon is an Australian born health and fitness advocate, fitness professional, and the co-founder of a life of education. When Caroline broke her back four years ago, falling from an indoor climbing wall , she never thought she'd be able to walk again. Her life-threatening injuries included two shattered feet, a displaced and fragmented right pelvis that was disconnected from the left side of her body and a bust fracture to part of her spine. Her injuries were so severe that she wanted to give up, but after being confined to a wheelchair for six months, as well as undergoing 14 surgeries and 23 blood transfusions, she slowly regained her ability to walk and came up with a plan to get not only her strength back, but also her confidence to mark the end of her recovery. Caroline decided to set a new Guinness World Record to become the first person in the world to summit all of the highest points in the Middle East in the fastest possible time. A feat that had never been attempted by a woman alone. What a woman. I've wanted to talk to Caroline for the longest time. Her energy and attitude to life is so inspiring and I'm totally fascinated by her mindset. What gets her out of bed in the morning and how did she face down huge and tragic life events under emerge . Not only intact, but absolutely thriving. Aside from her incredible story of triumph over tragedy, Caroline and I discussed how to navigate life when it keeps throwing you curve ball , finding our purpose and meaning. Spoiler alert, you don't have to climb a mountain to do this, thankfully. And how we have everything inside of us that we need to succeed. We just need to believe it. It was a really wonderful conversation and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Morning
Speaker 1:Caroline, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah , and thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. And
Speaker 1:You've just literally come back from climbing, I believe, yet another mountain. Where were you and and how was it? How was the experience?
Speaker 2:So I went to Iran to a mountain called Mount Dampen Land , and it's the highest mountain in the Middle East and the highest volcano in Asia. So it's pretty special. It's actually really lovely mountain. So, and honestly the climb is great. I've climbed it a few times, it's not too difficult, but this time what was really lovely about it is that there was actually snow most of the way , and I've never climbed it in those conditions. And so it was really nice to be able to see the same mountain in such a different perspective. So that was lovely. Yeah ,
Speaker 1:I saw some amazing videos of you sliding down the mountain. The climbing up does not look so fantastic to me. It looks terribly challenging, which I'm sure it's, but the coming down looks like a lot of fun. Well, to be honest
Speaker 2:With you never get to do that. You never get to slide down on your barb because you need kind of like the perfect conditions to be able to do that. You need the snow to be soft and it needs to be like powder snow and not ice. And you need enough snow and no CREs or CACs or anything like that. So you need to really know the terrain. And so it was , so it's actually the first time I got to really gade down a mountain for a long time, but it took us like seven hours to go up and 30 minutes to come down. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, quite a contrast. I'm sure that 30 minutes was a lot , lot easier and slightly more pleasant. And how was the experience in Iran as well? What was that like?
Speaker 2:Iran is actually one of my favorite countries. It's such a beautiful place and to be honest with you, I love really love being there because it's almost like going to one of the very few countries in the world where you go and it's completely untouched by Western influence . And because of that it means that you really get to see it in its real kind of raw rawness and you get to see what it's really like, like real architecture and shops and, and how kind of the country operates. And that's, yeah, it's really lovely. Like I love not seeing any Coca-Cola or any like, you know, normal cars or Starbucks or the architecture that now just like sweeps over the world and is the same, you know, tall buildings in Iran, you really get to see the traditional Iranian, the Persian mosaics in the buildings and you get to see like local businesses that operate out of like these little garage kind of things. And they're tiny individual businesses and one person sells plastic and the next person tires and the next person. And so it's nice to be able to, to see that again. I , I love it personally. Yeah ,
Speaker 1:That sounds fantastic. And did , did you get any sense of the feeling of the change that's been happening there recently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually, so what's very interesting is that I've been there three times in the last three years. So I've gone every single year and I've been able to see how different and how much the country's changing over the course of these this time period. And what I've noticed the most is actually that when I first went there, everybody was covered , including myself. Like I like to be ultra-conservative there and I go in a hijab and full head scarf and fully covered . And this time when I was there I walked into a restaurant and every woman had their scarf and I was really like very, very shocked to see that, to see, and this is in Teran , to see how much the city's changing itself. So although the western media's reporting different things inside the country, it's different. Yeah . Wow . So
Speaker 1:Interesting to hear from someone who's actually been there. Cause um, yeah, as we know, especially living in this region, the western portrayal of the region can be very, very different to us having a natural lived experience here . So it's really interesting to hear about the fact that you've actually been there and experienced it. So you've just recently climbed one huge mountain, but back in 2015 you actually had a really bad accident. You fell and you broke and you broke your entire body into pieces. Um , and yet you're sat in front of me now looking so healthy and so strongly, you just achieved something so incredible. I mean, what, what happened to you back
Speaker 2:Then and , and just to talk us through it. Yeah, so it's kinda interesting cause at the time that this happened , it almost felt like this is the end of my life. And now that I reflect back on it , it actually was probably the beginning of my life , the beginning of a very authentic version of me . And , uh, it's quite interesting to see how things can change and progress. But to kind of give you an idea of what happened, I was , um, rock climbing with a friend of mine and on an outdoor wall . And uh , I had been , you know , rock climbing a lot when I was younger. I used to crazy cliffs in when I was a little girl. Used to climb them up in the swimsuit, look at the surf, and then climb all the way down and just, you know, when you were young you were really fearless and reckless and you just have no concept of, you know, safety and danger. Um, so I used to do that. So when, when I got to this wall with my friend , I was like, we were joking around and uh , I was like, yeah, I I can do that . Easy peasy , you know , a little bit cocky. And I started to climb and when I got to the very top , I remember like putting my arms on in the very top ledge of it and looking out into the distance. And I remember now feeling something, something in the air and I couldn't quite figure out what it was . And obviously, you know , you have that intuition , but like most people , we ignore it . And I remember at the time thinking that I was really high up and I was looking at the interior of the wall and like, maybe I can climb down the interior of the wall. And I was like, no, no, no , that's absolutely ridiculous. Cause I started to play it out in my mind it's like crawling on this beam and then dissenting the staircase in the center, like it was crazy. So I went down the same way I came and the the peg that I was holding onto came off and I just remember the yellow in my hand. And then I just fell and I fell in like two seconds Before I knew it , I was smack on the floor, I landed on my seat , both my feet shattered my right foot because I landed on my right foot a little bit more. I basically had what we call a vertical sheer fracture, which is that my pelvis went like this . And so off the other side of my body and my pelvis shattered , my pubic disconnected and uh, part of my spine just went, it was a burst fracture. And uh, yeah, my right sort of came out of my body and then I found myself laying on the floor covered in blood and just, you know, time really slows down. And uh , I just remember like, I think it was maybe 45 minutes whilst I waited for the ambulance and it felt like years just laying there . But, you know, years just sitting in one moment I remember breathing, I remember the hypnotic sound of my heart . Like I couldn't hear anybody around me . I couldn't talk to anybody. I was just listening to this hypnotic. And I was hypnotized by and just completely like suspended in this moment . And then , um, I was very sharply woken up by someone who was tapping me on the shoulder and they were saying my name . And I , it was like the coming back into and , and then I just started listen was to instructions like, can you hear me? Can you steal me? Can you talk to me? Can you tell me that you're okay ? And, and then they were talking neat through , you know , we're gonna put something around your neck. You're gonna us put the gurney behind your back. We're gonna roll you over , we're gonna do this . And then people , I heard people talking about my feet and then I, I held him touching my legs and , and saying , you know , can you feel , can you feel my touch? Can you feel when I touch this and that ? And then can you move your legs ? And , and then before you , before I knew it , I was in the ambulance . And then I found myself in rash hospital. Even though I didn't know I was in rash hospital, I just found myself in a hospital. And uh , I remember people talking me through what they were doing next and you kind of just go onto this medical machine , which is like scan, scan, scan, scan surgery. And uh, yeah, when I woke up, I was, I wasn't allowed to move anymore. I was completely like laying flat. I had , um, basically rods in my back because I had no vertible body there anymore. So they had to secure my back and I had bandages on my feet and I had this thing in my leg that was like this external contraption that does traction to bring your leg into alignment. Cause I was, this part of my body was now in my rib cage . And so they had to bring it down . And uh , yeah, that was it . And I , I just remember having bruises all the way to my elbows on my arms and having cannulas everywhere and , and a blood transfusion and waking up and in that kind of place is kind of very stark awakening
Speaker 1:Course . Yeah . And so when you fell and you landed , you were conscious throughout the entire part of this process. Yeah . Which it's okay . Gosh, it's incredible what your mind will do to protect your body. Cause I'm hearing you saying like you focused it on your heartbeat. It's kind of , you are there but you're not there. Uh , I mean, aside from the fact that you are like still living and breathing, and not only that, but you're actually thriving, just the fact that your mind can kind of control such a terribly traumatic experience and get you through it is just
Speaker 2:Wild. It is wild. But you know, I , I don't think that this is something that's unique to me. I think this is something that happens to everybody in those moments of survival. Like people, you know, say to me, oh, you must have been in so much pain. And actually initially I didn't feel any pain. I only felt started to feel pain when I got into the hospital and people were mu me around then I was in a lot of pain. But initially, like the moments that I happened , I didn't feel anything. And uh, really interestingly, it's all of this stuff and stuff happens like automatically, you don't think, oh, brain, don't focus on the pain, focus on the breathing. But you're just there . You're just focusing on your breathing . You have nothing else to kind of clasp onto . You don't have enough cognition to powerfully move away from what your body's naturally meant to do . And , uh, in those moments of survival, I think we just bold to these operational processes that our bodies do on a cellular level and they're just like, ok , great. And that's ,
Speaker 1:So it's incredible that we actually have, you know , that we're living in these incredible machines. Um, I interviewed Marcus Smith, you probably know him. He's an ultra athlete and he, he was knocked off his bicycle when he was out doing one of his crazy training sessions and he was hit by a truck on one of the roads to Fuji and he was thrown across the road and he actually said he came out of his body and watched the whole thing as give him a goosebump, even now just talking to you and talking to him, he watched his body from the other side of the road and he watched people coming and he watched them attendings to him, which is obviously, you know, your body's, your mind is doing something to take you out of that situation so that you can, you know, survive it. Right . I guess because living through, you know, I'm lying on the tarmac and my body is broken, is just too much for you to be able to comprehend. So incredible and incredible just to hear you talk about it. Thank you for sharing that so openly. I mean, just such a hugely, hugely traumatic incident. And then obviously you then had a very long recovery period as well. I mean , I really don't think anyone would've blamed you, Caroline, if you'd have just said, right, that's it. Now I'm gonna sit on the sofa, I'm gonna crack open the s I'm just gonna have a really quiet life. And yet actually you've done completely the opposite. So you're actually living a very bold, brave life and just doing all this adventuring and exploring, I mean, what in was it, what is it inside you that compels you to do this and to carry on taking these huge challenges after you've been through something so traumatic ?
Speaker 2:I dunno entirely, but I feel like it's , um, without getting too deep here , it's this idea of like , how do I explain this in , in every moment in our life, accepting what is , and once we accept what is really understanding , this is how it was for me is , okay , I'm here now , what am I gonna do with this now ? And being able to transcend every moment of darkness, like that's what this whole thing has taught me. And now I'm able to do it much faster because of this experience. And I have learned to understand the process of that. What I find really interesting is that every, everybody has trauma in their life . Everybody has something, whether it's, you know , the loss of a child or whether it's the loss of your parents or an accident or a divorce or any of those things . But it really is about how what we do with that and how we transcend that moment. And it's very easy to see and it's very easy to become complacent and get stuck in a moment. Like , I am a person who had an accident and this is me forever, and I'm allowing myself to get stuck in this moment in time where this is me now forever. And I don't think that we have to do that. And I , and it certainly wasn't what I chose to do . And again, it wasn't a choice that I made consciously, it was just how I came out of the situation happened to be really a lot of work for me, and I chose to take on the work. Like after I had my accident, I realized that, oh, okay , my, my body's getting better, but there's something really wrong with my mind. Like my mind is just in this complete disarray and I didn't know how to fix that properly. And I didn't know how to bring my mind and my body back together. So there was like unity and collusion of thought and feeling because I was doing this and feeling and saying this, and there was a real disconnection. And I started to acknowledge that disconnection. It was about how do I bring myself back so that I'm a whole person? And uh , when I started to dive into those things into my mind and the psychology of it , then it just naturally startled to happen where I was taking one step in my mind and then the next step, and then the next step and the next step. And then this whole kind of world opened up to me and , and startled to snowball really. And yeah, and I , I'm sure at some stage, this part of my life will come to an end and I'll allow it to end gracefully and then, you know, flower in a different direction. And
Speaker 1:You mentioned, you said, so my body was healing, but my mind wasn't. You , you said something really powerful. Like what , what do you mean your mind wasn't healing or the , your mind was, I don't think you said the word broken, but you said, you know , my mind, I was basically struggling with that part of it. So
Speaker 2:After I had 14 surgeries and, you know, 23 blood transfusions and a lot of work, when I started to do rehab, I could see that there was, there's a lot of progress in my physical being . I was going to hydrotherapy and, you know, from one week to the next I was able to sit up and then I was able to roll over and I was able to crawl in rehab and I was able to drag myself on my elbows. So I was doing a lot of things that were physically making them stronger and I was able to see those physical changes very quickly. But I started to notice there was a splintering in my psyche, like my head was doing something different and I , I can't describe this except to say that it was like my personality had splinted into like an angel and a devil. Like there was something that was self-sabotaging, everything that I was doing. And it was like, you know , who do you think you are walking again ? You can't walk . What are you doing ? You just disabled, you can't do this . And then there was this part of me that was trying to get better and heal and go to rehab and go to therapy. And then this other part of me was just complete self-destruction. And uh , when I started to see all the ways in which my personality had splinted, I started to recognize that I needed to come back and be whole again. It wasn't just about making my body like the only way that I was really gonna heal was if I healed everything. And that was my speech, my thought, my body, my mind, my will , all of those things. The ethereal stuff that we don't really think about every day .
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. Very powerful. And I mean clearly you're, you're extremely strong, you've got huge amount of tenacity and, and some of this you potentially maybe learned from what you went through with the recovery from the accident. I mean, how much did you have to teach yourself this? And how much do you think was kind of already within you?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. I think perhaps it was already all there dormant and sleeping and then I just woken up. But I also feel like that's probably true for everybody because inside us we have this , you know , ancestral DNA and this ancestral survival stuff that is impregnated in ourselves. And I believe that we all have that there. I think perhaps society and culture just dumbs it down. Society teaches us that we're not good enough and that we , we don't have all the power in us and we don't have this and that we're lacking so much . And really it's about remembering , I think, remembering that actually, you know, I am an artist and I have all the power inside of me and I have, you know, everything that I need to sustain the right inside of me.
Speaker 1:No, 100% . And you know, it's something that a lot of my guests, a lot of themes come up for the amount of people that I've spoken to over the years. And this is a really strong theme. I think Dennis Murphy said it most recently, he's the gentleman who wrote The Blame Game, which is an amazing book. Um , but he says, you know, literally we've got everything that we need, whether that's physically, biologically, and mentally, you know, everything is there. But we're kind of taught and like , like you say, society, we're taught from a very young age that things must be hard. It's a battle, you've gotta fight for what you want. It's not gonna be easy. And it's not to say life is always easy or to sort of do this, you know , positive, toxic positivity or whatever. It's, but he said, you know, everything is there, there within us and it's just a question of reminding yourself of that. And, and once you tap into that, then you know , that's when you kind of become superhuman because you have this innate self-belief and this innate innate strength, which I think we're kind of , yeah , it's beating out of us in many different ways as we go through life . But yeah, many people have said similar to me, so I completely agree. Doesn't sound strange at all. I mean, we've obviously, and I'm self-perpetuating this because I've started by asking you about your accident, but do you ever feel a , like it just defines you a bit too much? Are you , are you tired of talking about it? Do you want to just sort of put it behind you or is it innately sort of tied in with who you Hannah ?
Speaker 2:No, you know, at one stage I was kind of like, I don't wanna talk about this anymore . But on a personal level, like I made a decision on social media that I , that I wasn't gonna talk about all the time. Um, I do speak about it. Cause what I've come to realize is that there is, I have hope that through my story I can help other people realize the same thing, that they have everything that they need really. And it's made me shy away less from speaking about it and more being gracious enough to share it with people so that it's not something I selfishly hold, like this is mine. I wanna be able to share it with other people. Cause when I reflect back, it's actually how I recovered was also by watching this in other people. So I remember very early on when I was in , uh, in the hospital, I used to watch this girl called the Amy Purdy . And she's like this Paralympian who's had both of her loves amputated. And I used to watch her on social media and watch her walking and, and I remember visualizing the same thing in myself, like, okay , she, if she can walk, I can walk. So I kind of used her story more than she would ever know to really motivate myself to do the same. And I feel like I have the opportunity now to hopefully do the same to other people and therefore it's something that I wanna do . No, that I
Speaker 1:Completely agree . It's such a beautiful way of putting it. I like to be gracious enough to share it . I think there's just such a lovely way of expressing it. I mean obviously you had this big accident whilst you were climbing, you've just come back from climbing another mountain. What did it feel like the very first time you started doing something, doing the climbing again , and this is the very thing that had injured you? What did that first climb feel like? It was
Speaker 2:Awful.
Speaker 1:Was it really ? Oh my goodness . I thought you were gonna say . Oh fantastic . Oh really? It's
Speaker 2:Really hard. It was really hard. I was with , um, I was with a friend of mine in Australia . We were climbing mount and uh , at couldn't walk more than two hours in one feet were so sore, they would just get really swollen and stiff. And the second that my feet, something used to happen to my feet when they got tired, they just gave , gave up . And I couldn't get them to work like normal feet . Like they , they couldn't do this thing. I could just shuffle. And then when my right foot would give up , then my hip would start , I'd start limping really badly . And I remember getting halfway up this mountain , it's only a six hour walk to the summit , it's one day . And I just started crying and, and my friend was like, okay , can let me piggyback you. So he was piggybacking me and then we had to call the park ranger cause I couldn't walk . And yeah . And then the park ranger drove up , picked us up , took us down and drove home . And then for a week , oh my goodness , what used to happen to me all the time, I'd go through AK walk and then I'd be in bed for four days and then AK walk . And then in bed. Fortunately enough , my feet started to learn how to take weight and pressure again . And they learned that skill . But it took time to be able to, you know, go for a walk and then consecutively the next day be able to do it again. Gosh ,
Speaker 1:All these things that we just paid for granted. And yet you carried on Caroline, you didn't just think , you didn't , you didn't open those s and sit on the sofa , you just carried on you ,
Speaker 2:You
Speaker 1:Kept going back out there .
Speaker 2:Yeah , honestly feel like I had no choice . The stakes were really , it was , I'm either gonna accept what is, which means I'm gonna be disabled and be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, or I'm gonna try something different. And I just , you know , early made the decision to try and really partly out of complete and out of water . I had no job. I was confined to a hospital bed at plane . There's , there was nothing that I could do except participate in my life. Well , no ,
Speaker 1:Completely. And and when you first announced you were gonna go off climbing again, how did your friends and family react when you told them ?
Speaker 2:I think the first big challenge that I did was to go and climb all the mountains in the Middle East. And when I told that to my friend , they were not so worried about the climbing. They were just like, you're going to every country in the Middle East <laugh> . And that was more of a concern back then. Like they all were really worried that I was gonna go climb a mountain in Iraq like that stuff , or I was gonna travel to Yemen. It was more more about that. But what I discovered is that I just, something inside of me came alive and this was the avenue in which came alive in . And I, at the time, I just had to listen to that and trust that. Cause I couldn't, I couldn't, I didn't have any, anything else in my life that was a full green light. Do you know what I mean? When your soul is just like, I know this is the right thing for me and I cannot explain it to anybody else, but I just know that this is my path . And I had to trust that. And I did, I trusted it fullheartedly as obscure and absurd and stupid and ridiculous as it sounded at the time. I just had to trust that cause it was the thing in my life that was like, I felt so deeply and viscerally and I just followed it
Speaker 1:As , as you're explaining it to me, thinking of course you have to go and climb a mountain lightweight when it's that it's not even that it's important to you, but it's almost it's part of you than how can you argue
Speaker 2:With them . And you know, since then I've become so superstitious about mountains. Like when I went to Chile , the local indigenous people in Chile were telling me that the mountains are spirits and they call them the ands and mountain spirit, a mountain god. And each of the mountains have a story and they have an essence and a feeling. And when we walk to them , we can't communicate and share part of our story with their story. And so when you start to look at the really ancient shaman kind of healing rituals that people do, people go to sacred places to heal. And uh , and now that I understand that a little bit more, I kinda get an essence of what I was doing. I was going to these mountains that obviously had something that I needed and they were healing me as much as I was, you know , visiting them . Oh ,
Speaker 1:This is so beautiful, this whole mountain spirits. And I don't think people talk about this enough, I feel that, but we do like to be quite outdoorsy in the UAE when the weather permits and people are often hiking or going, you know, outdoors. But we don't talk about the sort of spiritual side of it as much, I don't think. And what, what you , the feeling that you can get and the power that they've got is sort of beyond the space and beyond the being outdoors and the beyond, you know, what you're doing for yourself. I think that's really interesting. It's the first time I've ever heard anyone explain it like that. And I was actually gonna ask you, but I think you've answered the question. So you actually, you climbed from Mount Sidley at New Year, which is the highest <inaudible> peak in Antarctica, which I was obsessed with by the way. I was checking every day to see where you were because Antarctica just absolutely fascinates me. But , um, it was minus 30, you're pulling a sled, you were saying that like if you take your goggles off your eyeballs for <laugh> , you can go snow blind . I was like, oh my goodness. Like what , what about this is pleasurable for you, but now you've just explained I think to me what it is. But I mean, how , how do you sort of go through an experience like that that obviously is your calling, it's , it's so important to you, but also it's just really blinking hard as well. Like physically this is a very hard thing to do. How do you get through that?
Speaker 2:Do you know? It's really funny, but I don't feel the hardness of it anymore. I feel kind of the piece of it, if that makes sense. Like , um, what I was saying to some of my friends is when I was in in Antarctica it was like I was vibrating something like joy, like in my whole system there was just joy. I was so happy to be there . And the team that I had at the time was so great that it was just, it was this perfect storm of amazingness and I was, yeah, I was just operating on pure joy. It was the best experience of my life. And I, now that I've been to Sydney , I get a , a sense of her, she's on half of her is completely white and kinda this rolling like uphill snow and ice and it's beautiful. And at the top she's got these big mushroom like mushroom and configuration. So they're just stunning. And then the other side is an open caldera . So like the volcano is open sideways and it's this big circular like volcanic opening . And so she almost has this duality to her. She's immensely beautiful and then immensely harsh and unforgiving. And then there's all these little baby volcanoes around. So I call her the , you know , the mother goddess of volcanoes because she has that, that feel to her she's like humble and beautiful and then very sharp and harsh and unforgiving and it's beautiful to be able to, you know, walk on her on her ground and feel what she's about . It was very beautiful. So when you're in the presence and you are quiet enough to hear it and to feel it , you don't feel that , oh my god, I'm uncomfortable and my leg hurts. And this , because you're just literally in the most amazing environment in the world and you are just lucky enough to be able to hear, hear what this mountain has to say . And it's just, it's really humbling and it's so beautiful. So when I was there, I didn't really feel how hard it was. You know, there were moments where it was very miserable because it was very cold, but you know , you kind of , you deal with it and you laugh and joke around and , and like I was at one stage my team, they were laughing at me because I wouldn't even leave my suit . I was in this full suit was all I wouldn't get outta so slept fully in a puffy suit in a , a big minus 40 sleeping bag in a sleeping bag liner in a full like Everest puffy suit.
Speaker 1:Sounds like the best option to me. I mean, you're talking to the woman who really struggles doing two minutes in a nice bath. So this sounds perfect for me. Keep lemme keep the suits on. I mean every year is sort of a ritual aside from the Christmas time . My daughter and I go to Ski Dubai , you know, when it's getting really hot in the summer, we're like, we just gotta go and be cold. I mean we last about half an hour in there. So how <laugh> Ski Dubai wonderful. Not the same as being on top of the mountain . I mean, aside, aside from anything else, you're not, you are kind of visiting these amazing places that probably so few, few people have been to. I mean, how does that feel? That must feel like such an immense privilege.
Speaker 2:It really is . You know, I'm very lucky and I know that and I'm grateful of that every day . Cause I really am . It just, I always think that, that if we allow those hard moments in our lives to take over us, they, we get stuck in that they , if we can transcend them , then the greatest opportunities open up . If we listen to what's really in our hearts and what we really want and that deep calling within us . And I'm very lucky that I did , um, because it's opened up the most amazing opportunities for me as an individual and as a woman. And uh , yeah, as as a client . It's been incredible.
Speaker 1:It sounds amazing. And so you're now obviously a very pet and healthy and you've even created a business which is sort of all around wellness and exercise and fitness. What do you think about this whole mind body connection and, and how our health and fitness is to some extent? I mean obviously there's a lot of things that play into this, but a lot of our health is dictated by our mental state. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I am a great believer in that the mind and the body are not separate. And that most of the time our mind will manifest disease and our mind can also manifest health . And it's just really our choice. And uh , I feel like that is the first thing . The medical industry is very quick to say, oh, you know, you have cancer or you have , uh, arthritis or an autoimmune condition. And, and that's completely separate to your mind. But I don't feel like they're separate at all. And you know, from what I've read of and some of the other psychologists that are pioneering this mind body thing, I really feel like we are one being , we are a mind , a body and a spirit. And you cannot separate those things . And the greatest way to make yourself come alive is to ignite your spirit and then your mind and your body will . But if she , your spirit has nothing to be alive for , like you're not doing something that makes you feel alive, why wouldn't wanna participate this ? And so I think there is , you know , trifecta and going and really have to kind of do them all. Like you have to state your spirit on fire and then your body and your mind follows or vice versa or something like that. But yeah, I think they're separate at all.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. And I mean you talk about sort of this something being ignited in you. I mean you clearly have a very sort of, you have fantastic energy and you have a very clear purpose about what you want to do in your life. I mean, how can we sort of try and tap into that more, you know, without, without necessarily being superhuman like you and climbing 10 mountains or 20 mountains or 30 mountains. How can we sort of tap into that purpose and, and listen to it and find out what we're supposed to be doing?
Speaker 2:I am not superhuman at all. I'm just a normal person <laugh> , you know , I'm just doing what, what feels right for me . And uh , I think that can be translated into any, any other thing. I dunno how to like express or convey the idea of how you do that for yourself. But I, I think it's really about listening to what you're interested in and listening to what , what you love. And once you kind of start to walk that path , like, this is what I love, this is what I'm interested in. I think that it starts to open naturally, but it has to be so authentic. There can't be any rubbish around that idea. There can't be, oh I wanna be saying this and there can't be like any social media . Like it has to be so pure and I, I dunno how to explain how you get that kinda purity of feeling, but it has to be. Cause if it isn't pure and if it's inauthentic, it just won't have legs. It has to be more and real and pure and something that you do despite whatever else is around you, you have to believe it too . That's the best kind of explanation that I can , I can give to that . I dunno anything else beyond that , even though I've experienced it myself, but it just has to be pure. You
Speaker 1:Seem you've got this great energy, you're very optimistic, you must still have bad days. I don't know if you're still coping with any sort of relics of, of the accident, whether or not you're still dealing with physical pain, but how, how do you handle these bad days and how do you get through them and, and think about your next mountain and think about your next challenge?
Speaker 2:You know , I have like everybody else, I have bad days, I have arguments with people, I have like difficulty with my family, with friendships, with all of that . But whenever those issues come up , come up , I seem to have become very superstitious with life . Um, in the sense that I kind of like step back and I'm like, oh , like this is really interesting that this is happening. Why is this happening? And I do a lot of reflection. So if I have an argument with my sister, I will step away from that and be like, oh, like what just happened there ? What's going on? And I start to think about what my part in that is. How am I keeping us trapped in the same behavior? And for me these days, it really is just about moving and I don't wanna keep my family stuck in my rubbish. And so if it's my rubbish, then I need some pick up on it . And then I'm , I'm so sorry , I love you . Please forgive me . How can I help you ? Or something like , and that seems to be beneficial for me to not stay stuck as well and acknowledging where I make mistakes and and stuff like that. And you know, just being gracious, like I , I don't wanna fight with people I'm not right. Like it's, and I used to be very much like, no, I'm right and continue to argue and argue and argue , argue and argue . And now I realize , okay , I just needed few minutes to check myself and check what this discussion is , my own , my my own insecurities, my rubbish, my baggage, all of that stuff. And then just, you know, acknowledge it and try and let it go and figure out where it comes from. Stuff like that. It's, you know , it's a lot of work to be conscious and to be conscious and present in your own life and your own actions , but I've found that it works best for me because then I can move forward . And I think now in this part of my life I'm moving forward faster than I was and I'm only talking about mentally and spiritually because of this idea and this just taking full responsibility and just like move on forward as much as possible. And then also trying to make the right decision. Like I, I had recently some moments where I was on a mountain with somebody and they were really sick and collapsed and they were like, you know , you keep going, go on. And I was like, oh , I could totally go on it . We're so close. And then I was like, oh no, no , no , no , no , that's , that's not the right thing to do. No summit is worth this . And then just being able to go, no , like this is the right thing to do . Yeah ,
Speaker 1:Just take a lot of work though, like you say and , and it has a lot of sort of leaving your ego behind as well I guess I think is is key to it all. Which I think, I think it becomes a bit easier as you get older. I always remember a friend of mine said many years ago we're talking like over 10 years ago she was introducing me to somebody and we were chatting and she said, yeah it's really important to Kelly that that she's right must been , must have been debating some sort of. And I just thought, oh God yeah it's really important to me to be right. And then I sort of went away and thought about it and it was like, why is it so important to me to be right And you know, did a lot of unpacking around that and, and now I can honestly say it just doesn't, doesn't matter to me so much anymore . Still matters to me sometimes cause I'm a work in progress. But yeah this needing to be right this needing to sort of always have the last word
Speaker 2:All a working <laugh> very well . So
Speaker 1:Very much. And over the last , I mean you've , you strike me as somebody who's sort of a constant quest for self-improvement and I wondered if over the last five years or so, if there's any sort of new belief or new behavior or a habit that's really improved your life.
Speaker 2:Um, everything now is in my head <laugh> . Basically all of the self-improvement. It's just, it's my life is the same on the outside, just much more peaceful. But everything is in my head . I am one whole being that just breathes and thinks and fuels all on the same cohesive pattern . I really like, I can't remember his name, Gabrielle Cruz or something like that. He has four agreements and it's uh , one of them is the impeccable with your word . That one really resonates with me a lot. And I am on a constant quest to be impeccable with my word because I'll feel like words have energy and the more that I'll clean with my speech , um, and that includes what I say about myself and what I say about other people and what I say about things in general, the more my life reflects that clarity. So that's probably one. And yeah, I try and look at everything as well an opportunity. And everything's a good, I try and move through obstacles very quickly, which is to kind of see, see them for what they are and acknowledge them , acknowledge my part in them and really start to work through the feelings that are stuck in those moments and then what it is that's really right for me . There's some good things and then in every moment I just try and be authentic as possible. And that really comes to the being impeccable with your word. Cause I don't wanna lie and I don't wanna be full of. So when I catch myself saying something that isn't really authentic, I'm like, ah . Like that's not really real or true or, and the more I can do that then I just, you know, the other stuff kind of seems to fall away.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's so interesting what you said about being impeccable with your word, but that also counts on what you say to yourself and about yourself because yeah, I think it's, it's, well for me anyways, much, you know, I'm loving giving, I say great things to people about people, but the way that sometimes I speak to myself and the way that we speak to ourselves, especially I think it's quite gendered as well, I think as women as well. Cause there's so much noise outside that can be a lot harder and that's something that we often forget about. I definitely forget about it. So yeah. That's really interesting. Thank you for mentioning that .
Speaker 2:Do you know what's really funny is that when I forget that and I start saying like rubbish about myself, I listen to this book, I dunno you've heard of it's called of course . So Yes , this book . And it's like , so he talks the whole thing and yeah , I have that on Audible and I just listen to it and he's like, you know when you have a thought and you have to analyze the thought, is it true or is it not true? And I do that like, is this thought true? Which is like, you know, for women it's like, oh I, I don't, I'm not beautiful, I don't look good , I'm fat or all of this stuff. I'm like, is this true? Is it not true? Where in my life is this reflected that it's true? So I do this thing that he says and, and then I'm like, yeah, it's. And then it's like, I can't think that anymore . I can't think it , I can't say it , it's gone like a
Speaker 1:No , I , I love Wayne. I mean I still listened to, he had a podcast , um, cuz he had a radio show back in the day . So there's actually a podcast which is all his sort of radio shows and they still released them like one couple, a couple a week. I still listen to them in the car. His voice is so soothing and so beautiful and, and I have so much great stuff to say about everything
Speaker 2:Honest and real. No, that's what I , I love, I hate like the inauthentic like gurus . The people were like, I'm gonna preach to you. But inside it's hollow like that I not into. Yeah , but Wayne I agree. It's just so,
Speaker 1:And a lot of people I've noticed that you know, have now come to grow sort of great acclaim. They're actually taking his stuff and and trying to pass it off as their own or regurgitating it and it's actually, it's all
Speaker 2:From him.
Speaker 1:So yeah. No , I totally agree. He's amazing. Slightly more light question now from the very deep things we've been discussing. If you could climb a mountain with anyone, Caroline, anyone at all world's leader , celebrity, who would be your ideal climbing partner to take up to one of those very extreme heights where your eyeballs might freeze?
Speaker 2:I dunno , do you know I've never climbed a mountain with my sisters and I think I would really like to do that with them . I'm really lucky that I have really good people. Like my sisters are really good people. They're pains in the butt and they drive me crazy. But I think outta anybody in the world , I'd probably go with Sam . Yeah . Because I know we'd get up there , just laugh , I know that then be complaining and there'd be gold and then the three of us would be in the same sleeping bag . I like it . It would just, you know, when you're with family, you're just all huddled in the same space and it's funny and yeah, probably my sisters
Speaker 1:Probably an answer . I hope they listen to this and Phil , um,
Speaker 2:So warm
Speaker 1:And , and , and they're not such pains in the butt towards you after they've heard that lovely answer. <laugh> , um, you mentioned a couple of authors obviously, but are there any sort of special books that you keep going back to or any, any books that have meant something to you? Do you ever take a book up the mountain? Do you have space to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah , I take a book all the time . So I read Wayne Dyer a lot. Um, I don't read Louise Hay , but I used to, when I was a bit younger, I used to read her a lot and really been really interested in rum Dust recently. So he's got an autobiography that I just devoured and , and I love his book because again, he's just really honest and real and uh, yeah, it's um, that kind of stuff. I've been reading a lot about shamanism at the moment. Cause when I was in Chile recently, I , I got to hear all of these stories of the mountains and the spirits and stuff. So I've been reading a lot about that, which I really like. Even in Mexico, the, the Mexican mountain, how they have stories and spirits to them as well and it's full on room and Juliet lost story , which like I fell in love with , so I've been reading a bit of that . Yeah . But I take books on almost every mountain and uh , yeah , train . I love reading. It's , you know , amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna look for this round D book . Cause Wayne Dyer mentions him a lot. They were very good friends apparently. So yeah, I've heard him reference but I didn't realize he had an autobiography. So I'll go and dig that out and um, and have a look. Thank you for that recommendation. And given everything that you've been through, you know, this huge sort of upheaval trauma, you then achieved so much since then and your this fully formed human being. What , what do you consider to be your greatest achievement out of all of
Speaker 2:These things? Getting to know myself probably is , yeah, I think , um, I was probably quite inauthentic before all of this happened. I never felt inauthentic. I felt like I was real at the time. But yeah, now it's just, it's different. I very, very different and I can see when I'm around my family I can see it the most because the , all the stuff that used to trigger me about them when we used to get upset and cry and now we have like two minute and they're just like , bang that and it's over . Whereas used to drive on and on. I've used to go days about talking to each other and yeah, now it's quick . But yeah, that's probably my greatest achievement is just to get to know who I am and what I'm about and what I hear on this world to do. And I don't know , I really feel like , um, those psychologists were right, you know , uh, Carl Young when he said the only thing that we're really meant to do here is to know who we're and uh , and to what I kind of think is that life is not about the things that you accumulate , but it's about the blossoms that you kinda move through. And for me, like as a being, I feel like okay , the , the greatest gift that I have here is to live, which means that everything that is coming to me is like a gift from the universe to help me grow and move forward. And now that I see it that way, I like, oh, okay , this is, yeah, this is just the Mox chapter in whatever it is that I'm meant to learn and whatever it is that I'm meant to do and how I'm meant to do that . And I think that's probably my greatest achievement is probably to get my, to know myself just a little bit more than before.
Speaker 1:Gosh, absolutely amazing. And yeah, very powerful and what an incredible point to end on. Thank you so much Caroline. I absolutely loved that conversation.
Speaker 2:My pleasure and glad that I was able to sit down and talk to you finally. It was lovely.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening to the Good Intentions podcast. You can find links to issues and to books that we discussed in the show notes. And you can look for the podcast on Instagram. It's Good Intentions uae . Please do make sure you subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed this conversation, I'd so appreciate a review on whatever platform you're using. It helps more people find out about the podcast. See you next time.