Podcast Ep213 Peter Bailey
Didrik Johnck: Have you ever considered giving yourself a little credit for navigating everyday struggles? Probably not. I mean, why should you? Curious how reframing your pain might fuel growth and future success, and how do you stop feeling like life is just happening to you and begin starring in your own movie. The Epic of You, Reframe Your Past to Navigate your future, is a new book by author Peter Bailey, and he's here today with host Erik Weihenmayer. Together, they talk about real transformation. What happens when you put yourself through the fires of personal growth and how the Heroic Journey isn't just for epic adventurers, but for anyone brave enough to step into the unknown.
Alright, let's get into it. I'm Producer Didrik Johnck, and this is The No Barriers podcast.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a no barriers life, to define it, to push the parameters of what it means.
And part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. And that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in and the summit exists a map. That map, that way forward is what we call No Barriers.
Hey everyone, welcome to the No Barriers podcast. This is Erik Weihenmayer and I am so excited 'cause Peter Bailey is joining us. He's a good friend of mine. And Peter, you are the president of the Prouty Project over in Minneapolis. And you guys are a leadership development company you do like human improvement and it's a lot of hands-on, cool stuff, transformative experiences and uh, you guys help No Barriers, get off the ground and figure out who we are.
Peter Bailey: it's a honor to be here, Erik. Great to be connected to you and your team again.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. Yeah. But you guys do some great work. I mean, like, tell me about like. I don't know, just like a really cool experience if you're, if you're not like a counselor where you're not allowed to talk about your clients.
But tell me about some of the recent experiences you've had with companies and leaders.
Peter Bailey: Oh, absolutely. So, as you said, working at the Prouty Project here in Minneapolis, we're essentially a strategic planning leadership development firm. And sometimes people come in the strategic planning window first or door and uh, yeah.
We get to help them really identify what their mission, vision, values are. Yeah. And then identify the pillars of where they're working. So finance, marketing, infrastructure, people, and then what are their goals, and then how do we help them develop their strategies to goals? Or in that process they say, gosh, we've got a new team members joining, or we've lost some people.
Or this international team is partnering with us, or mergers and acquisitions we need to develop more of a communication, operating principles for how we want to be and work together. Yeah. Can you help us with that? And so, yes, absolutely. So you mentioned, uh, what's the fun thing we did recently here in Minneapolis.
As I said, it's sunny and 50 degrees, but, nice, two weeks ago it was minus 22, freezing. And, uh, we were out there and one of our premier programs is called L3 Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading the Business. It's three days. Three days in August. Three days in October and three days in January.
Bless my team here. They, uh, they all showed up, all the cohort members showed up for the January term, even though they, uh, were coming from various places, much warmer than Minneapolis. And one of the fun things we did is, uh, we team up with a Voyager Outward Bound School, and we do dog sledding and winter survival skills.
So we were out there at minus 22 with 15 cohort members falling through the ice and rescuing them. And then learning how to hitch up dog teams and not just sit on the sled, but really pull the sleds, learn the ropes and harness dogs. And, uh, it was a great experience.
Erik Weihenmayer: Cool. You should make 'em go for a run in the, in the snow with wearing nothing but their running shoes. that would toughen 'em up.
Peter Bailey: That wouldn't do it, that would do it.
Erik Weihenmayer: I remember back in the day when, uh, we were all volunteers at No Barriers and we showed up at your office and you guys brought us through the strategy and the vision, and, uh, helped us sort of figure out who we are.
And I remember the story I always bring up is, uh. Mark Wellman, who was one of the founders of No Barriers, he's the first paraplegic to climb El Capitan. He showed up in like a tank top and shorts, and he's in a wheelchair, and I'm like, Mark, step it up, man. These guys are like a first class operation. So yeah, we've grown a lot since those 20 years.
Huh?
Peter Bailey: Yeah, well we still have pictures of you and Mark and, and Mike, Vicki and the team, and it was great. Bill was on the team and, wonderful to reconnect and, and some of those pictures bring me back to, you know, a growing experience for us at Prouty, you know, and we were first talking about bringing you in for strategy.
I said, great, we do these videos. And then I thought, well, that's not gonna be as useful, and we've got all these flip charts. And I thought, well, that's not gonna be as useful. So it changed my perspective of how best to work with a team who were, you know, physically challenged or gonna find, sight issues working with our team.
So remember I built a heroic journey with my climbing rope of course, and tied knots on each of the point, and then did braille on the flip chart board so that you could feel where the rope knots were and uh, and the different stages of the heroic journey. So it was a great experience to be with you and your team.
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh, it was such a great example of your guys' resiliency, and thank you for that. And so you've grown in love over the years with the Heroic Journey. Joseph Campbell's amazing work going around the world studying, different cultures and, uh, seeing what they have in common. So I guess two questions.
One, explain kind of the template of the heroic journey and why it's important. And two, with the Prouty project, how do you blend that into your leadership development with teams?
Peter Bailey: Yeah, just real quick, for those who aren't as familiar with Joseph Campbell's Heroic Journey Journey, it's a circle and I like to go count counterclockwise with it.
Yeah. So you start with the invitation or a call to adventure. So there's often some preparation like you going to the Chile trip or any of your climbing trips. There's a preparation for just staying in shape, and then there's the call and you get this, you know, hey. Erik, phone call.
You probably get him at two in the morning all the time, Erik, hey, we're gonna go climb this peak where you wanna come. And then you have to sort of balance out, Ooh, what else did I have planned? But as you described to yourself the. Pros and cons of doing the call to adventure, you end up probably saying yes to it.
And right before you say yes to it, you bump into the guardians of the gate,
Erik Weihenmayer: but even before the guardians, what I, I liked about one, one of the interviews I saw you on, I mean, you were saying it doesn't, it's not like these, it doesn't have to be these. Epic, adventures that you're saying yes to. It could be like, I'm gonna adopt a puppy.
Right? Like, I liked your examples of like, real life things that call to action, call to adventure. Like, I'm gonna step up and do this thing that I've yearned to do inside and have been too scared to, to do it right.
Peter Bailey: Yeah, well, you know, the original time I've worked with the Heroic Journey was all about these huge, you know, mountain trips or overseas living trips or coming back from divorce.
But in the book, the Epic of You, I really wanna call out not the epic of Peter, but the epic of you and others in their normal everyday lives. What's epic about that they don't have to, kayak the Grand Canyon like you do, but they have to recognize that, you know what, being a single parent, pulling wet laundry out of a dryer that didn't work with your two kids, getting back in a cold car, getting them macaroni and cheese for dinner that night.
Those are epic moments that I don't think the average person gives themselves credit for.
Erik Weihenmayer: Agreed. That's awesome. Alright, we'll continue then.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. So that, that call to adventure, and to your point, sometimes those are precipitating events. Something that happened like a layoff or a health crisis or nine 11 or Covid, um, something that happens that thrusts us into change.
And then once we say, yes, we're, we're gonna deal with this. We bump into guardians who kind of push us back a little bit, Erik, and say, are you really ready for this? Are you serious about it? Or are you just sort of being cavalier? And then when you step over that threshold into that new experience, that's when it gets hard.
That's when it gets really hard and you get the, what we call the road of challenges. And, and Joseph Campbell talks about that being really the, the rubber meets the road. The, that time when you're, Chiat MHA talks about your in flow state where you've been preparing, you're muscled up, you're gonna do the best you can, whatever your systems were to support you.
That's when you need them in the road of challenges. And everybody, your, all your listeners have been through some form of a road of challenge that was a period of doubt, their own downward spiral self-consciousness, their own feeling about, God, this is hard. Why did I say yes to this? And yet when we stick through it, there is a gift.
And Joseph Campbell talks about that peak experience where you're coming back from something that was really momentous, that, oh, that was so hard. Or coming out of a health journey or a divorce, or coming back from something and you're like, okay, I gotta come back to my life. That return from the bottom of the circle is really the beginning again, of recognizing, okay, how do I keep this, how, what did I learn from that journey? And that's when the guardians of course slam into us again, or we slam into the guardians and uh, and they push us back and they say, well, who do you think you are? You know, and they kind of humble you a little bit so that we own it.
We have to come back, otherwise we will never have changed. People do not want us to come back, changed people, so they try to push us back into the boxes they remember us in, even though we've had a life changing experience. And so that reentry and that top part of that circle coming back, that what Joseph Campbell calls the choreographer of two worlds.
Mm, we have to be the person I was before, but also what have I learned from this journey. Yeah. And then a last piece I'll add before we keep talking here is that each of those quadrants have allies. Who are the allies that helped you make a decision to go on that trip or take on or to quit the job that you hated?
Who are the allies that helped you when it was really hard? Who are the allies that helped you as you begin to reenter and come back from what we call the down climb. You remember from your experiences and all the mountaineering, that's the dangerous time. You're overtired. You're kind of cocky on how good you think you are and you really wanna get back to base camp.
And maybe we don't check the carabiner to make sure it's locked. Or maybe we, we skip a clip in because we just wanna get down there. And it's those times when it's most dangerous. So I like to say that that magical return is re, it really warrants our attention and that's where allies can help us and say, be careful.
You're coming back, you know, and let's help you think through the reentry so that it goes better than it could.
Erik Weihenmayer: And those guardian at the gates, the opposite of the allies. Man, why do those guys exist? Like why, why? Why are they like, oh, I'm gonna get a puppy. I'm thinking about it. He is gonna pee all over your carpet.
You better not, he's gonna,
Peter Bailey: right.
Erik Weihenmayer: Is that just part of human nature, I guess just fear or they don't want somebody to step out and become some maybe exceptional in some way?
Peter Bailey: Yeah. Well, I think the Guardians first blush appear to be barriers. They push us back and say, you're not strong enough.
You can't do this. You haven't practiced enough. Who do you think you are starting your own small business. There's a million people out there. You're gonna fail. Those are the voices. And so we begrudgingly either listen to them or dodge them and go anyway to prove that we can do it. I think in my work of this over 30 years now, I've realized I think those guardians, believe it or not, are allies in Wolf's clothing, you know? Yes. they're hiding there. They're pushing, they're actually elevated allies. Interesting. They may have kept me from joining a company that I truly was not suited for. Right. You know, and a quick story for me, I applied at Citibank a hundred years ago, and I've got somehow into a potential.
I had 14 interviews with their international banking at Citibank in New York City, and then the last meeting fell apart and they ended up saying, no, we're not interested. And I was just so you know, demoralized that I tried so hard to get that and that could be seen as a barrier like that. Those guardians of the gate, who do they think they are?
They didn't want me. And yet in hindsight, that would not have been a good fit for me.
Erik Weihenmayer: That's so interesting 'cause I have like a little experience like that where I applied for, teach for America.
Peter Bailey: Yep.
Erik Weihenmayer: And um, and they said we're not gonna send a blind person into like a difficult, urban area.
Uh, you know, there's no way we're gonna do that. And I failed and I. and so that pushed me to say, yo, no, what I can, I want to be a teacher. And I went out and got a master's degree and taught for six years. I taught english and math to middle schoolers. So yeah, you're totally right. They're a, in a way, they are allies, aren't they?
And in a ironic way.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. And so in a way, so once we've done a few heroic journeys, we become allies to others. But it's also really important to recognize. Huh? When have I become a guardian of the gate to other people?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: Where have I said, no, you, you can't go out looking like that on a Saturday night to my, my son or my daughter, you know?
And where have I been controlling their experience, as you said before, with fear with my own personal agendas. And yet sometimes that also might have been a good thing that actually we're curbing their experience until they're ready for it in a different way.
Erik Weihenmayer: And you work with a lot of clients like,
just human beings, but a lot of corporate clients too. So do you think that obviously the heroic journey applies in different ways to, to different facets, of what people are dealing with?
Peter Bailey: Oh, absolutely. Um, in fact, I've brought the heroic journey into many corporations. In the senior leadership team, we'll have the CIO, the CFO, the COO, the CEO, sitting in a circle, and they were given the homework assignment to bring in, you know, a three to five minute presentation on their heroic journey. And it's an amazing bonding experience when you hear somebody's personal and professional journey of how they got to where they are. And I think that's part of the, the new leadership model is to be more vulnerable. Thank you Brene Brown.
But it.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: You know, it got us into thinking, you know, it's not about vulnerability being weakness. It's actually a sign of strength. And so when we get leaders to share a bit more about who they are, they don't need to be so defended. They can say, we don't know, and they can ask for help and recognize the allies in that heroic journey model, much more readily.
Erik Weihenmayer: What I love about Joseph Campbell is that he figured out this thing that taps into our deep psychology as human beings and our yearning, right? He studied cultures around the world and he found that these stories, that archetype of, that template of the heroic journey, it's, it crosses all cultures, right?
It's, it's this thing that's, that all human beings share. why is that You know what I mean? He could have found that the stories were completely different, but he found that they all shared this thing and, and then all movies like Star Wars, everything's based on the heroic journey. I mean, I wrote, all three of my books are based on the heroic journey.
You know what I mean? It, it's like the perfect template for life.
Peter Bailey: Well, it really is. He didn't, invent it. He just discovered it.
Erik Weihenmayer: Right,
Peter Bailey: right. And, and I think one of the things that I love about having lived and traveled in 50 countries is that you see that monomyth, the storytelling, the circling around the campfire, the elders coming together in circles, women working, cooking, knitting together, having conversations.
Those all exist so richly in so many cultures around the world. I grew up white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, outside New York City in the suburbs, and wasn't given as much of that, so I was hungry for it. So when I stumbled on the Heroic Journey, I thought, oh my gosh, I've been missing. There's actually a map to life.
Woo. How cool is that? And I've used it ever since. Not only in hindsight, which I use in this book and help people see that, but even on my day to day, like, oh gosh, that's just a road of challenges. Or, oh, here comes an ally, or That's a guardian of the gate. I get to use that. And then even thinking towards the future, what do I wanna take on next?
And how do I better prepare for that? Who are the allies I can reach out to to make this a successful journey?
Erik Weihenmayer: Because otherwise the alternative is that your life is just, you're a victim and you're just going through the motions and things are hitting you and barraging you. You're getting slapped upside the head and you don't know why, and it's just chaos.
And this gives a coherent story to your life with you as the protagonist, right.
Peter Bailey: Yeah, going back to the dog sledding thing up, I'm on the board of directors for Voyager Outward Bound and did about a number of 10 day staff trainings where I was in the back country in the middle of the WIL wilderness for dog sledding training.
Yeah. And one of the sleds has a statement on it that says, always star in your own movie. And I love that. It's like, that became a motto for me is like, okay, that's it. We're each in our own movie. We have to star in our own movie, how are we doing that? And I think the Heroic Journey really lends itself well to that.
Erik Weihenmayer: And I, I mean, I, I don't know why, but I'm just thinking like, but not in like an egotistical way. Like the world revolves around me. I'm the hero. It's a, it's not quite that context. Right.
Peter Bailey: Right, and I think that's where I try in the book, the Epic of You, let people know that you need to go through, and this is, this will date myself, the old Rolodex of those cards stuck in a file where you have people in business cards.
think about all the experiences if you stack them on cards. What are the experiences that were hard or painful that. You look back in your life and you say, ah, that sucked that I hate that moment, or that really was painful. And yet I looked at some of those and I said, but wait, why separate those?
Some of those gave me what I call honey to my heart or made me more compassionate. Yeah, and those other hard ones, those gave me what I call strength to my sword arm. They made me resilient, gave me fortitude, gave me that ability to get up at four in the morning when I didn't want to. And I'd say that everybody, all of your listeners, have that willingness or ability within them to look at their lives and begin to sort out all of the things that happen to them being, I hate to say 'cause the people will re reject it, but a gift in some way. Yeah. You know that we've learned stuff from it. A friend of mine says, life happens for us, not to us. And so how do we own those experiences? And even if it was a chip off a piece of glass like a diamond, every one of those facets gave us more brilliance, gave us a chance to shine more brightly as who we are as individuals.
And you know, your story is amazing and all the people you've brought on for podcasts, everybody seems to recognize we have learned so much from the challenges we've suffered.
Erik Weihenmayer: That's for sure. And you've suffered a lot, as part of the Minneapolis community, with, you know, what you guys have been going through with ICE and the two Americans that were killed.
The heroic journey applies to individuals, but it also applies to teams and communities, right? Like at a more macro level, do you think there's a Heroic Journey going on with what you guys have suffered through?
Peter Bailey: Absolutely. And I think truly I've, again, in my life, people have had way worse things happen to them than I've had in my life.
But the painful things that I did have did have an impact. It set me up for low self-esteem and a challenge growing up. But I'd say that anybody listening could look at the politics of the day or what's happening in cities around the country, around the world and say, where's the Heroic Journey happening here?
And the power of that is that when you build a Heroic Journey mindset, and I know with the No Barriers mindset, that is such a significant piece of how to come up from the ashes of seeming tragedy and say, the mindset is what's gonna bring us there. I think that's what people have shown up with here in Minneapolis, and as difficult and as painful as has had been, the counter to that has been not meeting, violence with violence, but meeting it with this, softer, more caring, compassionate approach.
It's like what Gandhi did, you know? Mm-hmm. When you have that toxicity fighting against that, if you go soft and, and it, there were singing, there were food groups, people were, bringing flowers and, and, And candles and it was cold and everybody was rallying around neighbors.
People are bringing food to people who are shut in because they're afraid to go to their jobs. People are paying them not to come to work. I mean, what rallies around hardship like this, I think is the, is the heart of the moment. And that's so powerful. And sometimes we don't see it. we're on a regular commuting day and we think, yeah, people are just distracted until a crisis happens.
And they say like, don't waste a good crisis. This crisis actually brought our community and countless communities across the country together around what's important. Is this the right way of going about this particular issue? How do we take care of people?
Erik Weihenmayer: It reveals the strength of your community. Wow.
Peter Bailey: Absolutely.
Erik Weihenmayer: Huh.
Peter Bailey: Absolutely.
Erik Weihenmayer: Hey everybody, this is Erik and I want to take a little break from our interview to tell you about No Barriers. Obviously, we're interviewing these amazing No Barriers pioneers, but behind this podcast is an organization called No Barriers, predicated on the idea that what's within us is stronger than what's in our way.
Our mission at No Barriers is to help people with disabilities to break through barriers, to tap into the light of the human spirit and to reclaim their lives, sometimes to reclaim their potential. In the business of shifting mindsets and it's proud work and I hope you'll get involved. Learn more about us. Check out our newsletter. No Barriers usa.org. No barriers podcast.com.
And you've touched on your life a bit, and I know you, and well, I think, and I've known you for a long time. Why did the Heroic Journey appeal to you personally? Because I know you didn't have the easiest childhood, right? I know you've struggled with addiction and things like that, that you've written about in the book and, uh, some crazy risk taking when you were younger, right?
Like why did it connect to you from a personal level? Yeah,
Peter Bailey: well, you know, I have this theory that, you know, if you put a plant in the closet, it eventually will figure out how to live. So in a dysfunctional, loving, but dysfunctional family, a plant in less light with not enough water, not enough sunlight or good soil will figure out how to survive.
And I call that mutating. We will mutate in a dysfunctional family or even a dysfunctional organization to survive. But when you're in a healthy situation, give it. Plenty of sunlight, water, and, and good soil. We all have a chance to bloom. And in my situation growing up, my dad was a Navy pilot, really cool guy, track team in high school and came home from, from being a pilot and got an aneurysm out of the blue at 27 years old.
My mom, single parent, working as a nurse at two different jobs took care of us. But I felt, you know, for whatever it was in my addictive background. I absorb the pain of that thinking, oh, there's something wrong and I'm to blame. And so I developed this low self-esteem and fear of being judged by others.
And I even talk about it in the book of the disease of comparison of, you know, gosh, I don't have enough money. I don't have that car. I don't, I'm not tall enough. You know, all these things that we can judge ourselves so harshly on. And that began that sort of journey for me without a map. And so it wasn't until, so I did, like you said, the stupid thing, six lane highway outside of New York City.
I was dared to cross the outside of a chain link fence on that overpass. And I even dangled my feet in the middle to show my friends how cool I was. And I lost grip. I mean, I was, I look back at that moment where. God or whatever, higher power you believe in, pick me up and said, well, we gotta help this knucklehead because he's gonna need some help, because I was taking risk.
Glad you're here like that. Yeah. Seriously. My, my palms still sweat when I, I see climbing videos or think of myself in that chain link fence because those things, we get through, we survive our childhood, but at what cost? and some of those. those maps of sort of good character building. You know, my mom was an amazing person, sent us around the world and really supported that, but wasn't there for us at times when maybe she could have been.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: And so I looked to fill that with other energy and that didn't help me until I stopped drinking at 22. But the map of Heroic Journey, when I, when I came across that was like, oh, that's a call to adventure. Oh, that's a road of talent. I mean, it began to make sense that I could, yeah. Map in hindsight and present and future in ways that I just didn't know.
And you know, just to add one more thing. Tanya works at, as you know, works at the University of Minnesota, right? Yeah. And she talks about suicide is the second highest form of death on college campuses,
Erik Weihenmayer: right?
Peter Bailey: So this is not just about, you know, I'm 66 and we're in our later years in life and we're being reflective about something.
No, most of this part of my book is about those early years of trying to figure out what the heck is going on and how do I make sense of a crazy world. And frankly, all these kids who were losing across the country to suicide are in that focus point or the crux point of how do I make sense of this?
What do I need to go forward? So I'm really hoping that there is value that people see that you can do these hard things, like you say, and No Barriers too. Yeah. That there's more inside you than you think there is. Stay with it. You will come through.
Erik Weihenmayer: Awesome. I know you went through your own kind of Heroic Journey, discovery process because I know when you were young, you traveled, I think you traveled all throughout Africa, right?
And just looked at different cultures and, and just observed right?
Peter Bailey: It was an overland trip from London ni London to Nairobi in 1978. I was 18 years old. We, we had a Bedford four by four truck, one of these big military trucks. We sat in the back under a canvas roof. There were 16 of us, and it seemed like it was a, here we go, we're just gonna travel across Africa.
But what ended up happening, the group leader left us there. We got sick. I got malaria people. We went through cholera country. The borders were closed. We had to forge passports. I went looking for poisonous snakes up a little river without telling anybody, and I found one on the way back from the stream, you know, and I mean, we just did all these amazing adventures.
But that was my 11 countries in Africa. I, before that my mom had taken us to India and Iran and Afghanistan when I was 16. And some of my PTSD was being in Iran in a riot, a street riot. And I was 16 years old with no parents around trying to figure out how do I get enough cookies from the corner, newsstand and water for dinner that night.
Yeah. And I had to run through the streets to get the food. They then go back up to the hotel room. You know, those things are just kind of a blur. But you know, we all have some experiences that shake us and also make us who we are today. And so I'm grateful for them and they were hard. You know, I smell diesel now, or even some of the movies I can't watch that have, you know, some of the violence in the Middle East because you know, I was there for some of that.
Erik Weihenmayer: What I like about your story is, don't take this wrong, Peter, but you didn't start out as this like heroic, natural leader. You know what I mean? You know, which is even cooler, right? That you've sort of discovered this stuff along the way. Obviously in some ways. you were built for this, but like Michael Jordan I heard became a coach and he was, he wasn't a very good coach because he, he was such a natural at everything he did.
He was just like, what's wrong with you people? Why don't you have intrinsic motivation? Well, I think, you know, like coaches like you are, are better sometimes when you've gone through the same struggles as, as every human being has, like, the non exceptional sides of life.
Peter Bailey: Yeah, I was always,
Erik Weihenmayer: if that makes any sense.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. I was the shortest kid. I joke about being four, nine for like five years in the world and, uh. Yeah, and I got picked on and bullied and and then I got to work in the South Bronx High school system running an Outward Bound based program and got a chance to work with kids who were coming outta families that I came out of and got a chance to introduce them to backpacking, canoeing, rock climbing, camping in the, in the mountains around, uh, northern part of New York there. And it really changed for me. Wow. Self-esteem is something you be, you get Yeah. When you don't think you can do it. And so let's set up situations where kids, I'm not sure I can do this. Great.
Let's help you see that you can, and now take that back. And once I got into the, the ability to set up those trips and experiences, I was done. I'm, I've been an Outward Bound for 40 years and, running programs like that, even with our corporate groups, as I mentioned, the dog sledding, I love putting together scenarios and situations where people get to see themselves in their own behavior and challenge their limited thinking in a way that they're more coming out of it than they were going into it.
Well it just took you 30 years to write this book, uh, the Epic of You, Reframing Your Past To Navigate Your Future. So that's really exciting. And it seems like it's come out, in a pretty good time. a sad time in a way because I feel like the world is kind of in crisis right now. Yeah, I think we are, and I think, I'm hoping that this adds to the literature out there that helps us not get into downward spiral or blame. Yeah. Or into the poor me. Look at me, I'll never mount to much, but look at those voices in our heads and say, you know what? Look what you've done. If you know, if you've driven 30 years on a commute to a job that you didn't actually love, but you did it for your family, that's heroic.
Or if you found yourself staying in a marriage longer to make sure the kids got out of school before you separated, that's heroic or leaving jobs that you felt really didn't speak to your soul, that's heroic. I mean, like how do we begin to see that? We can do our lives our way. That disease of comparison is so dangerous, particularly when you look at social media today and how much the comparison of, oh, look, what the bling is that they're wearing, or the trips that they're on, or the dinners that they're eating, that just continually reinforces I am not enough.
And the message of this book is, is that not only are you enough, you are a diamond, you are a single, you know, unique diamond fashioned, only the way you could have been. I go back to some geology and as a, you know, as an English and biology teacher, Erik, I go back to talking in the book about the three kinds of rock of, of, you know, sedimentary and igneous and, and metamorphic, and that our upbringings are ge geologic.
You know, there's pressure over time that creates who we are. And yet as we come out of these experiences, we sometimes just think, oh, I'm just a rock. Rather than, no dude, you are obsidian. You know? Mm-hmm. You have or, or you are nice. You know that. Yeah. Really good granite. Like you have been fashioned a certain way by all the facets of your life and you are certainly a testimony of that with the way your parents raised you to take on the next challenge, the next challenge, the next challenge.
That's the mindset we're talking about here.
Erik Weihenmayer: Mm. Uh, what I really, I, one thing I really love about the book is that fact that you, it's not just like a step-by-step methodology for the Heroic Journey, but you blend your own experience into it. So that's, that makes it really fun to read because it makes it so much more authentic.
Peter, you know, really awesome.
Peter Bailey: Thanks.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: I have to do the work on myself if I'm gonna be any good to somebody else. Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. So important, because nobody believes anything these days. So you really have to ground your work in like, you know, this is true to me. This is authentic. And I love that.
But, so give us a little lesson. How do you reframe your past? You talk about pain as training. I've heard you talk about your wife Tanya's story when she got cancer and she named her breathing tubes. Just like little things that we do to reframe our stories, start us out with that. Because a lot of us, a lot of people can't do that.
They don't know how to do that. You know, they're just stuck. And this story, that they've been telling the themselves their entire life and they're trapped.
Peter Bailey: Well, I'll tell the quick Tanya story because it's so powerful and she's such a hero for me. Um, she had a cancer jury, cancer journey a number of years ago where she had throat cancer, non-smoker, non-drinker vegetarian.
Like how did she get it,
Erik Weihenmayer: Right.
Peter Bailey: And, and yet she did. And in the process of all the chemo and all the radiation, they said, well, you're gonna not be able to eat. They're gonna so inflame your throat, you will not be able to eat. And I'm like. What do you do in that case? And they said, well, we'll give you a, a PEG tube, which is, inject is a tube that goes into like an IV bag of food that drips into your stomach directly.
And then a port will be a, a way of tapping into a, you know, a major vessel in your blood, your body, so that you can just do blood infusions and, uh. And she said, I don't need those. I can just do them the regular way. And I just freaked out and got so scared and she said, okay, I'll do this, but I wanna rename them.
I'm gonna name the, the port tube Power and I'm gonna name the peg tube Purpose and now I have Power and Purpose to help us on our journey. And I get like choked up.
Erik Weihenmayer: Amazing. That is goosebumps.
Peter Bailey: For sure. It's goosebumps. And yet that's available. So simple.
Erik Weihenmayer: Right?
Peter Bailey: Everybody is to okay, calamity strikes. How are we gonna get through this?
Who are your allies? Reach out for people you care about. How do you name them? Even symbolically of power and purpose made those things successful. I.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's almost like she studied the Heroic Journey.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. Well, and she lived it and it's that mindset. Yeah. She lived it. Of how do we, how do we take on the next one and the next one.
And I think the more we do it, the, I talk about getting buoyancy or having, you know, loose knees. On the TED Talk, you know, where, how do we become a little more buoyant, that it doesn't, every calamity doesn't knock us off the box, but that we actually can withstand this in ways that we're much more resilient than we think we are.
Erik Weihenmayer: Hmm, yeah. I can think of people that they create. It's like certain rules and expectations in their mind, and then when the world doesn't live up to that, they're just, they go around just sad and disappointed and, just feeling alienated, right? Yeah.
Peter Bailey: Well, and that's where that, I like to, you know, clap and say pattern interrupt.
Like, stop the tape. That's an old tape that goes back to the plant in the closet upbringing, Totally. And yet, if we can reframe by saying, you know what? I am not in. like any PTSD coaching, I'm not in that situation. Now i'm in this one. What are the variables that I have control over?
And certainly going back to Viktor Frankl, my attitude is the first thing I have control over. So let's get out of that bad attitude and look towards possibility thinking on how do I fix this particular situation. Once I stop that old tape, and I even sometimes refer to it Erik as rumble strips. So you know when you're going along the road Yeah.
And you're, you're starting to drift into the next lane. You hear da, da, da, da da da da. That's the rumble strips that bring us back on the lane. I'd like to say, what are your personal rumble strips that you can begin to identify that when we stay up late watching too many Netflix movies, or you're doom scrolling on, on your phones, or you're eating too much sugar or bad food, power drinks or something, and you just notice you're not taking good care of yourself. Those are the rumble strips that are gonna set you up for less than a successful and joyous day. Mm-hmm. And so bring yourself back. How much exercise have you had today? Not enough. Great. Go do it. like we know.
I love the saying that we're not punished, for our sins. We're punished by them. We know what we're doing that's not helping us.
Erik Weihenmayer: So, so do we all need rumble strips, right? Like we do. I mean, like, I love how you talk about this coping. We all develop these coping mechanisms in the dark, right?
Meaning like most of us, I feel like most of us who have had difficult childhoods, Because you're trying to cope like you did with your mom, like I did with my mom, who, as you know, passed away right when I was 16. you develop these patterns to cope, to survive, and they are in the dark, right? Like, I use a kayaking analogy, like in terms of like most of the energy when you're kayaking the surface of a river, most of the energy is happening from beneath the surface, and you are not aware.
You're only aware of the sliver of awareness on the surface. You're not aware of where the energy is coming from. Deep, deep down at the bottom of the river, which is I guess our psyche. Right? And so, so is a little, so is the rumble strip the way we get out of that?
Peter Bailey: Well, it's one of the two
Erik Weihenmayer: because I mean, I had to go to like, honestly I did after my divorce, which was so difficult for me.
I went to a couple years of counseling to create like a consciousness around like, oh my God, I've had all these patterns and I didn't even know they existed. I had no idea. They were invisible to me.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. I think that's part of putting together a toolkit that supports you. So having a community of people you could talk to going through a divorce or coming through a family crisis, that rumble strips is a way for me to know, am I taking care of myself?
And starting to look for signs that I am. So like we just saw two, um, mating, um, bald eagles circling in the sky over our home today. And I thought, oh, that's a sign that I'm doing it right or, um, when I catch the number 11, 11 on the clock again, oh, that's a sign I'm doing, like I'm on the road. I'm doing things correctly.
It's just a chance to start pulling things back and say, what do I need to do to make sure that I'm available and present and looking for the signs. And a lot of that is get, it's like, oddly enough, it's self-focused, but not about self. It's about getting out of myself to be more aware of other people.
The book I talk about reframing and just using the acronym of reframe Review, everything that happened. What are the details? Just the facts, ma'am. You know, like go back to Dragnet, the old TV show. Yeah. And then the second one is to evaluate and say what are the things that actually happened and that might there be a silver lining in some of these things.
And then the F is to say, find the positive and forgive. And I know I've even put an asterisk in the book about it's gonna take a while sometimes to forgive people or situations for what has happened. Put that on a shelf. That can happen over time. But right now. What are the positive things that we can begin to draw on that in my small circle, I can make a difference. And then remember the R is, remember because everything that's ever happened has been a billiard ball that's clicked to make me who I am today. There's no mistakes. I am today. You are today. You know what happened with your mom and your dad and, and at 13 losing the light coming through.
I mean, I remember your story telling about that. It's just huge. All of these things shaped who we are today. And then the accept part, the A, accept everything has sculpted us to become the best. Erik or Peter, we can be. And then the next one is to make a conscious effort to live into that energy. How do I bring, not the downward spiral, but okay, I've had this horrible thing happen to me.
How do I do this with that also as part of my journey? And then embrace ourselves as a spirit? Like a diamond, like every one of those chips was a facet that gives us more light. It lets more light in like Leonard Cohen says in the song.
Erik Weihenmayer: Hmm. I love it.
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Erik Weihenmayer: I had a reframing story years ago. Yeah, I remember. 'cause I've, I just remember it so powerfully. I was getting off an airplane and I didn't have my guide dog, which makes it harder.
And I'm usually, I have somebody escort me to baggage clam and they never showed up. And so I was like tapping my cane through the airport, just trying to figure out, like listening so hard. And I think I ran into like a sign or something like. And anyway, I eventually found my way to the escalator and had to ask people to get to the carousel and I was leaning over the carousel, touching every single bag, like trying to find my bag.
And you know, there's hundreds of bags. And I was just like, starting to lose it, right? starting to be like, my life sucks. and then somehow I just took a breath and was like, look, is your life miserable? Like this miserable, nightmare or is life an adventure? And I just thought my life is going to be an adventure.
And it did, it reframed and it put a smile on my face and I found my bag. And ever since then, I think, you know, like when these things, when these chaotic things happen in my life, I go, you know what, it's just an adventure going on right now.
You know,
Peter Bailey: that is such a great example of the mindset shift because we all could go there.
We could downward spiral and say, sucks this, I hate this. Why me? And there are a lot of miserable people who have that why me attitude. I remember growing up, and I mentioned this in the book, a bumper sticker in a car in front of me that said, life sucks and then you die. And I'm like
Erik Weihenmayer: very positive.
Peter Bailey: That's so horrible. Or even, I was working with a, you were a teacher. I worked with a teacher group and they actually had a framed picture on the wall that said, due to financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off until further notice. Oh my God. and that's the, they chose to frame that and to put that in the teacher's lounge.
And I thought they are living under that as a shadow, rather than the possibility of what are we doing to help kids today? how are we connecting with families in a way that nobody else is? So it's all about reframing, Erik.
Erik Weihenmayer: So you talk a lot about, also in the book, a lot about mindset, right? And that word is a really interesting word.
'cause it can be, it can have so many definitions, right? And I think, you know, I see it as like just the story, right? Like the lens through which we see our lives in the world, right? and so. you make these stories of your life into power, into fuel, into, into strength, right?
Peter Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. and mindset, I think is the action word of being more purposeful, being more mindful, and it's also having to be a little reflective to say, what is my wor my worldview?
What is my glo? Is it half empty or is it a half full glass? I left my first marriage because their worldview was, well, I'm not gonna be excited about anything happening and that way I won't be disappointed.
Erik Weihenmayer: Right.
Peter Bailey: Ah, right. And I was like waking up every morning watching the sunrise, waiting for the next miracle.
And our worldviews were so different that it just became evident we weren't suited to be together. And I think sometimes you just have to realize what is my worldview? And then how do I use that as a muscle group to move me through life, more smoothly and obviously distributively.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. Uh, I don't mean to like brag or anything 'cause this isn't about me.
I've talked about this on other podcasts, but like, I feel like I'm like emerging into a good part of my life where I've done a lot of work and yeah. I used to kind of sometimes fall into the victim side of, you know, my childhood going blind, losing my mom, blah, blah, blah. You know, like just all the things I had to endure, like, and then now that I've been really thinking about like this idea of how to develop myself and my mind and my, my spirit, at 57, sad that it's been taking this long, but I'm very proud of what I've been able to overcome. It gives me pride. I've achieved and overcome things that no human was meant to overcome, but I did it somehow. And it gives me like a strength and a pride in my heart. If that doesn't sound too braggadocious.
Peter Bailey: No, but I think that's what I want everybody to get to. And they didn't have to climb Everest or kayak the river to, to, you know, the Colorado River to get that. They had to look at their lives and say, I fed my family. I, I help teach my kid how to drive. I, I wrote a magazine article or a letter, you know, a, an editor op, opinion letter to the newspaper, you know, an op-ed.
You know, I, I did little things that are actually part of the ripple effect that make our lives so magical. my license plate, you can sort of, it's visible behind me on my bookshelf is the word create. And I would love if people pick the words that would be positive for them that they wanna put out in the world and say, what are your license plates?
Pick a seven letter word that would say, what's your message out there? Tanya's for a while was blissful and she said, you know, let's have that be the thing. So I think this is our choice. That's the mindset, Erik, is to say, at your point in your life at 57, you have done a lot that you wouldn't have done if other things hadn't happened, so,
Erik Weihenmayer: right.
Peter Bailey: Let's go back and celebrate all the people in our lives and, and thank them, frankly. I think that's part of it is to, I, one of the things I love doing is ask a group of corporate executives to line up and call out alphabetically, you know, in an alphabetical lineup. Who are your mentors in your life?
Personally, professionally, spiritually, teachers, sports coaches, anybody, and line up and call 'em out. And it's amazing to see people kind of get wistful again of the mentors in their lives. Yeah. Everyone's had somebody. And in a leadership legacy, when you're working with leaders. They will be called out at some point too.
So
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: people will call out your name and, and the team at No Barriers that they worked with as mentors who gave them hope when they didn't have it. You know who said the right thing at the right time. The person who helped you find your bag, you know, at the airport. Yeah. You know, it's like those are the people, the angels that show up in our lives that are just blissful, that are really amazing.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. I can think of a lot of them. Uh, when people come back from the Heroic Journey, as you mentioned earlier, and they have this choreograph of two worlds and they're trying to like explain to the world what they've experienced and the gifts that they now understand, you know, and they wanna share it with the world.
Sometimes it's really hard 'cause they world don't wanna listen. So, you know, is there a way to translate that experience of coming back to the world and creating kind of a collective consciousness? Or collective movement to impact the world in a greater way.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. I think that's part of the, the challenge that we don't give ourselves the advantage of is that we don't look for reentry well. Right.
Um, I don't think we help bring people back from experience as well. You lived overseas for two years. Alright, great. There's your desk. Good luck. We don't process what it was like living in India running that division for General Mills, how do you reenter the community in Minneapolis that you've been a part of, or from a health journey or from a promotion, how do we bring people back?
And I think what you're talking about is really powerful. What I think does help is to recognize I've just had a huge experience and nobody back home is gonna wanna hear about it. except allies, right? Except people who have often been through this. So that's why my experience with 12 Step Groups has been so powerful because recovering alcoholics and addicts know what you're going through. So go tell them, you know, go find former expats who are living in, in Poland and in England and and Brazil, and as your network, talk about that with them because others are not gonna understand it. So part of that is really recognizing how do I tell the story in a way that's non-threatening?
And also I can ask them better questions. What's happened for you in my two years that I was gone? You built a deck in the back of the house. Cool. Your kid graduated from high school. Cool. We sometimes get caught up in the whirl of our world return without digging back into them and saying, tell us what's happened for you.
Because that's been a growth journey for them without judgment. Very different. Mm.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. And what I think maybe for me, if I think about like just the coolest part of the Heroic Journey is this idea that it just seems like we are divided like we've never been in, you know, in my lifetime, like. There's all this identity politics and you know, we don't even see each other as human beings hardly anymore.
We're just, the way Trump like lashes out and just, sorry to get political, but you know what I mean. It's like we, we don't treat each other as human beings. And the Heroic Journey is this framework that says, there are these archetypal things that we all share as human beings.
It's part of our collective experience. We're actually very, very similar. We've been, going through these experiences since the beginning of human history, like, you are not alone. That's really tremendous.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. I do think it's about coming to the core of heart conversations, not head conversations.
I think you can argue about what you think, but you can't argue about what you feel.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Peter Bailey: And so how do we change the conversation down to what's important to you? Why is that? what's motivating you? And if it's all about people and taking care of families different ways, or educating your kids a certain way, how can we align those Venn diagram circles so that we see where they overlap?
Yeah. Too often, and I think you just said it too, we, we are much more alike than we are different. And so approaches may be different and that we can argue about, but if we come down to the basis of what, I wanna raise my kids so they're healthy and contributive. How do you wanna raise yours? Oh, healthy and contributive too.
Great. Let's go there. And, uh, Rumi has a fabulous quote. the Sufi poet, he says, outside the realm of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Erik Weihenmayer: I love that. Oh my gosh.
Peter Bailey: And I think we need to get to that place where it's not about your way, my way. Red way, blue way. Any of those divisional things, right?
Let's just say, what are we trying to create? And it goes back to Peter Senge, way back in the fifth discipline. He wrote a book and he says that vision is an immune system. And I think as a society, we've lost our vision. So we need to figure out what is the vision of who we wanna be as a country, as a society, as a community, as a corporation, as a nonprofit, what's our vision?
And then how do we enroll people in that vision so that we get the best people behind that to make it happen?
Erik Weihenmayer: I love that. And if you can, if you can live in that way and reframe in that way, then it's so much easier to love people and have harmony, right? and love the human race. rather than just being absolutely divided.
I, that's, that to me seems really important for right now.
Peter Bailey: Yeah. And one of the things about that plant in the closet story is that sometimes what I have to get to when I'm dealing with somebody I find really difficult or from a point of view that I do not share, I think, Ugh, this poor person, what was their plant experience?
You know? Yeah. How, what, what formed them that they are this way and isn't that sad? Because for them, they are obviously acting out in ways that are in their mindset the right way, but it is so different from mine and I, so I have to find a way to tap into compassion, which isn't always easy. I believe me, but I try to go there.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, thank you Peter, for bringing the Heroic journey to so many people all around America and the world. It's just really powerful work and uh, I hope the book just. Takes off and crushes it because people need to know this and experience this. I benefited from knowing you and from, reading all your work and, and watching your TED Talks and everything, and, and, and I'm really honored to have you on the podcast.
Thank you so much.
Peter Bailey: Oh, Erik, you've been a friend and a, a mentor and an inspiring leader since we've worked together 20 years now and, uh, it's just been fabulous. So thank you for doing the great work and to continue to spread the work and to help people see that it's the epic of them, that they really do have a way of adopting the, the No Barriers mindset, the Heroic Journey mindset to live their lives and care for people a different.
So beautiful. Thank you very much.
Erik Weihenmayer: Thanks, Peter. No Barriers to everyone.
Didrik Johnck: The production team behind this podcast includes producer Didrik Johnck that's me, and audio engineer, Tyler Koman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song guidance, and thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, share it, and hey, we'd be thrilled for a review.
Show notes can be found at nobarrierspodcast.com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.
