The Incredible Kyle Maynard — Fear< with Tim Ferriss

In this live Fearless with Tim Ferriss episode, Kyle Maynard recounts his journey from losing every wrestling match in his first season and a half to becoming a 36-win senior with a state-champion scalp. He discusses how his parents instilled a sense of normalcy, how making his first football tackle pulled him out of a suicidal low point at age ten, and how his deepest fear was being seen as helpless. The conversation ranges across mountaineering on Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua, the prototype gear he engineered to climb, his evolving spirituality, and the danger of fears that run the show from outside one's awareness. Maynard also champions asking for help, updating one's mental 'maps,' and his Mountain Movement project encouraging people to hold beliefs loosely.

• Maynard lost every match his first wrestling season and through half his second, then won 36 varsity matches his senior year, beat a state champ, and placed one match from high school All-American.
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• At age ten Maynard reached a point where he did not want to go on living, swirling with fears about whether he would ever have a future or companionship.
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• Making his first tackle in football, diving under the center to sack the quarterback, was the turning-point moment that pulled him out of that darkness.
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• His father got him back into wrestling with a complete lie that nobody wins their first season but everybody wins their second; Maynard discovered the lie years later interviewing his grandfather.
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• The same people who once called his wrestling 'child abuse' later complained he had an 'unfair advantage' after he pinned their sons.
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• A recurring childhood dream of a runaway car with a parking brake he couldn't pull crystallized his lifelong fear of helplessness, which he only consciously decoded two years before the interview.
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• His climbing footwear was a homemade prototype made from a mountain bike tire cut into pieces for traction, finalized only two and a half weeks before the Kilimanjaro climb.
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• Maynard's congenital amputation has no known cause; doctors and his parents never determined why he was born this way.
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• He was born at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where many veteran amputees go for rehabilitation, despite ultrasounds appearing normal.
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• He stopped wearing prosthetics in kindergarten after fumbling a toy machine gun during show-and-tell; classmates said they liked him better without the arms and legs.
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• In high school he competed at 103 pounds, with a larger upper torso than the opponents he faced.
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• On roughly 95 percent of any climb he wants to quit; the option to pay extra for a helicopter evacuation on the final day actually made the suffering worse.
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• He met with the Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon to discuss veteran issues, including why around 22 veterans a day die by suicide.
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• He decided to attempt Kilimanjaro after a CrossFit workout sprinting up a 900-foot stone mountain; he was told Kilimanjaro is like 20 or 21 such mountains stacked together.
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• Early climbing gear experiments included leather welding sleeves (which ripped his skin), bath towels, duct tape, oven mitts, and knee pads before the bike-tire solution.
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• Maynard's faith evolved from a Baptist upbringing through a period of full atheism to an inclusive spirituality and a return to Christianity after a trip to Thailand.
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• He credits Amanda Palmer's TED talk and book on asking for help, and recommends Kevin Kelly's '1,000 True Fans' essay to entrepreneur friends.
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