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Coming up next on Passion Strike.
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I was rescued in 17 minutes and my friends who did amazing job to patch me up and call the heli on time.
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I think those heli were going to another I think things but I think I was more seriously injured so I think
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it was diverted.
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This is why I think I was picked up so quickly.
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Anyone who s listening to those petrol call signs, I don t know who they were, but I appreciate it for helping me out and keeping me safe and bringing me to Bess and saving my life.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become Passion Struck.
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Hello, friends, and welcome back to episode 419 of Passion Struck, the number one alternative health podcast.
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A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world.
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I am so excited to announce that my new book, Passion Struck, is now available, and you can find it at Amazon or on the Passion Struck website.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We have Episode Starter Packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize in a convenient playlist that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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In case you missed it earlier this week, I interviewed Jamie Kern Lima, who s an American entrepreneur, creator of a billion dollar success story, philanthropist, culture shifter, and highly sought after keynote speaker.
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Jamie is the New York Times bestselling author of Believe It, How to Go from Underestimated to Unstoppable.
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And in our interview, we discuss her latest book, Worthy, how to believe you are enough and transform your life to say thank you for your ratings and reviews.
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If you love today s episode or Jamie s, we would appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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Today, we re embarking on an extraordinary journey of resilience, determination and human spirit.
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My guest, Harry Budamagar, a man who has turned adversity into triumph in a way that challenges our perceptions of possibility.
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From the remote farming fields of Nepal, the battlefields of Afghanistan, and then to the soaring heights of Mount Everest, Harry s life is a testament to overcoming the odds.
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In 2010, his life took a dramatic turn when he lost both his legs above the knee to an IED.
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Yet, what could have been the end of a journey was only a transformational beginning.
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Today, Harry stands not just as the world s first double above-the-knee amputee to conquer Everest, but as a beacon of hope and a symbol of what can be achieved when we refuse to be defined by our circumstances.
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In this conversation, we ll uncover the layers of Harry s life.
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We ll explore his transition from a young boy in Nepal, fascinated by the Himalayas, to a respected Gurkha soldier.
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We ll dive into the harrowing day of the explosion and the subsequent battle, through the depths of despair, to the pinnacle of one of humanity s greatest physical challenges.
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Through Harry s eyes, we ll see how embracing our vulnerabilities and the very elements that seem to limit us can lead to transcending boundaries and realizing our ideal self.
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So join us on this journey of courage, transformation, and the indomitable will to surpass the imaginable.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have Harry Budamagar on PassionStruck.
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Welcome, Harry.
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Hello, John.
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Thank you for having me.
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I m talking to you today in England, but I understand you originally grew up in Nepal, and I thought that might be a good starting point to understand what your childhood was like and how did it shape your aspirations?
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Yes, I was born and raised in Nepal up to age of 19.
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My childhood
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was completely different.
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I m not sure your listeners, but it s completely different than how my children are growing in the UK at the moment.
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So simply I was born in Coweshead.
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I went to Bedford to school.
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about working about 45 minutes each way and I learned on wooden plank with a chukchi stone.
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We didn t have any pen and paper.
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Yeah, I was married at age of 11.
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I was forced to marry and I fell a few times in school and but I was the first one to pass high school from my village.
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So yeah, that s how and life in Nepal, many people still in those remote part of Nepal, we follow our parents  dream, then our dream.
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So I followed my dad s dream.
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He always wanted to join the army and he couldn t.
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At that time, he was just one son and my granddad didn t allow him to join.
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He always wanted us.
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We are three brothers.
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I m the oldest one.
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And also we need to see to believe it as well.
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A dream doesn t come something in your head.
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And we follow that.
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And some of my senior schoolmates who joined the Gurkhas, so I just followed them.
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I tried.
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And at age of 19, I joined the British Army and came up to the UK.
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And after that, it s a different life than living in Nepal.
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Yes, but I want to go back to it because I think I heard you say that you walked to school barefoot.
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And when you think of Nepal, you don t think of beaches or level land.
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You think about mountains.
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So I imagine it s very cold and snowy.
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Yeah, it was like, so I was born at 2,700 meters.
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So in the winter of a couple of months, especially northern part of the, you know, the mountains and hills, it was snow.
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Where I grew up was slightly down, slightly warmer.
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It was about, I think about 2,000 meters that I think I grew up.
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And from there,
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was I had to cross three rivers to get to the school.
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My village was like up and to go down and along the river and past the rivers and we didn t have any, say, commercial bridge.
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So the bridges were made of like wooden planks.
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You know that you go somewhere in the forest, you take one tree down
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and on one side you just chop it to make it flat so it can be able to walk and we don t also make it smooth because if it is smooth then it slips.
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So you can make it roughly flat so that it doesn t slip and yeah we cross that one.
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and then to have an arranged marriage when you were only 11 years old.
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I can t imagine at that young age what was going through your mind.
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Was it normal to get married that young in the village that you grew up in?
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Or was this something that was unusual?
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It was some ways, it s in remote villages, it happens even now, they get married young.
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We have our so-called that you and me are friends and if I got a daughter and if you got a son, we ll let them marry together.
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So this is the things that happen.
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And I don t think that our parents had a bad intention on us, but I think they thought that was the best thing, you know, for us.
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It didn t happen that way.
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But at that time, I think many places around the world, we didn t have a choice.
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Children in Gaza, children in Ukraine, children in many places around the world where the conflicts are, we are simply in the middle and we don t have much choice.
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We go to school, we may not be able to return at home, back home.
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People may be working in their farms and they re never able to get back.
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That s how it is.
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And my life, I think, was similar.
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My dad gave me a choice that you leave your school or get married.
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And at that time I realized that
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only way coming up out of the poverty, coming out of those conflicts, coming out of those conditions that we were in, and also getting opportunity is only way is education.
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So I had not one chance if I wanted to go to school.
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So, okay.
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Yeah.
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I said, I don t want to get married, but simply you don t have choice.
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And so I didn t have a choice.
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I m third generation military.
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My grandfather was the U.S.
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Army Airborne Division.
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My father was in the Marine Corps, went force recon, and I m a Navy veteran.
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But listeners of the show might not be familiar with Gurkhas, who ve been serving with the Royal British Army now for a very long time, including Special Forces.
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Can you tell us a little bit more about the Gurkhas and what made them so famous?
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Yeah, initially, you know that the British were in India, so they colonized India and they went up to the mountains, so Nepal is just north of India.
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and they went up in the mountains and we fought with the British together and later they thought that it s maybe not worth fighting with us.
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And also you know that how clever they were and they ruled the world.
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They made an agreement that give us some of the land that they took it and instead of we ll join with them and fight with them around the world.
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So
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We serving in the Gurkhas since 1850, so it s over 209 years, I think, this year.
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Yes, I understand that the Gurkhas have been involved with every single conflict that Great Britain was in all around the world, and it s my understanding that you spent 15 years with the Gurkhas.
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Can you share some of the highlights and the challenges that you faced while serving with the Gurkhas and maybe some of the locations you were deployed in?
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I joined in 1999 at the age of 19 and came to the UK.
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They re like a British, normal British armies.
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Their basic training is two months and Gorkha s basic training is nine months.
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So after completing nine months, I went to regiment called 1st Battalion, the Royal Gorkha Rifles.
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In short, we call it 1RGR.
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And in the morning, we came to the regiment at 10 o clock, and at 4 o clock in the afternoon, we flew to Kenya.
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So that was my first experience with my regiment.
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I served in Africa.
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I served in five continents around the world, mainly for training, exercise, and some of them mainly peacekeeping force like Bosnia, Kosovo.
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Finally, 2010, I was injured in Afghanistan when I was serving.
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Harry, it sounds like you and I were in some of the same spots.
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I was in Serbia, Croatia, Iraq myself, but I never did make it to Afghanistan.
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By the way, I was in Iraq when I got injured.
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So I was from Afghanistan.
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I was flown to Balad in Iraq and stayed there all night.
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So I can t say I haven t been.
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Hey, Harry, can you lead us through some of the events leading up to and including the explosion that happened and how it impacted your life in a profound way?
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We just had been to Afghanistan and after a few weeks we went to a place called PV2, so Patrol Base 2 in Helmand province.
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And once we went our job was to, on that day we had a foot patrol, so our job was to go and familiarize with the area.
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Another one was to take two engineers to survey old damaged oil so that later they can go and repair so the local people can have water.
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So that was our mission.
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It was our mission to give security to them.
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And we re on the way and we passed a couple of compounds and some irrigation ditches and we re walking inside of the poppy field and we were in single file.
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We were 20 in the squad.
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I was 10th.
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We were all in single file.
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Nine people passed.
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And when I went and just went bang, and I left pretty much the same, you know, blink of eye.
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When my father was serving in Cambodia, he was actually a breacher.
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And he said when they went on their different patrols, he was always the first person in line.
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I always ask him, why did you end up doing that?
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And did you ever have fear while you were out there?
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And he told me almost nonchalantly that when you re in that position, you ve got a job to do and the rest of the team is relying on you.
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So you can t really think about what might happen to you or other aspects.
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You just have to go out there and perform your duty.
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But for you, it seemed like everything was just a routine day.
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And then all of a sudden this just happened.
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Yeah, honestly, we trained a very long time before we go there and we are pretty much prepared.
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And I think anyone who has been to the service, they know
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what happens before we win.
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We go to the war, we get ready, train for the scenario, go there, and we train very long before we win.
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The aim was to go there, do a good job, keeping safe everyone, and come back home.
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Life doesn t always go as planned, and sometimes it takes a completely opposite turn than we expected.
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And yeah, we re just to do our job.
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And who thought that?
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I never thought that I would.
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You normally expect first guy to hit back those counterinsurgency and this kind of oppression is, enemy is not just only the front.
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They are in the side, they are at the back, and they are everywhere.
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You don t know your enemy.
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So the hardest thing is you don t know your enemies.
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They look just normal civilians and
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Actually, they are there.
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Sometimes they are there to harm you.
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But simply, we need to do what we need to do.
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And if I wasn t there, then someone would have been there.
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And if I wasn t injured, and I think I m lucky to survive and came back, but we couldn t return many of our friends back home.
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And much of the operations in Afghanistan are in some pretty remote locations.
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However, I understand that you weren t in one of those, you were closer to your base camp.
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Can you give some context for the listeners on where this happened and how far away you were from that base?
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Because I m thinking of the logistics to get you out of there in order to save your life.
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Yes.
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When I was injured, it was about three, four o clock in the afternoon.
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It wasn t that far away from the patrol base.
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I think it s about, maybe about within the two kilometers, because the explosion went, you can hear it to the base.
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So people at the base, they heard it.
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So it wasn t that far away.
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And when I got injured, I was just the only one who was hurt and we didn t have to fight.
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At that time, guys cleared a helipad, and I was rescued by your guys.
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You know, they were called Pedrocalsons.
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So they rescued, so two heli came, and one came to the scene and went up and just gave a cover, and another one came down and they picked me up.
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I was completely conscious till I get onto the heli and your guys gave me a mask and start cutting my combat dress then I was passed away and I woke up next morning in the Kambassan British base in Afghanistan and I was rescued in 17 minutes and my friends who did amazing job to
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patched me up and called a heli on time.
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I think those heli were going to some another, I think, things, but I think I was more seriously injured.
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So I think it was diverted.
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This is why I think I was picked up so quickly.
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And anyone that was listening to those petrol call signs, and I don t know who they were, but I appreciate it for helping me out and keeping me safe and bringing me to Bess and saving my life.
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Anyone of you know that it was 17th April, 2010 in nearby PV2 area in Nara Saras district.
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And about three, four o clock, I think in the afternoon, anyone that got involved, please keep in touch.
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And I would love to say personally, thank you to you.
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I am hopeful that possibly someone who hears this will know one of those helicopter pilots and will be able to make an introduction for you.
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And I remember I had my own traumatic brain injury and I remember as I was coming out of the hospital, I had to come to terms with the extent of the injuries that I had.
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What was that like for you to realize the full impact of what was happening to your body and how severely it had been damaged?
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One, I was completely conscious.
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So the first thing I noticed was it was ringing in my right ear and I had a radio on the left and I looked down and my right leg wasn t there straight away.
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My left leg was there.
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It was dangling and only bone and skins.
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So injured my right arm, if you see that.
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So couldn t able to move my right arm.
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And the first thing was, as we train, is there any enemies?
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Is there firing?
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Are we safe?
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And those are those things.
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Second thing was, am I going to survive?
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And after about five minutes, the guy said the heli inbound in 10 minutes.
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And I thought that I was going to survive.
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And also situation was quite not that harsh.
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No one is shooting at us.
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So the guys came and started patching me up.
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And the hardest, at that time, and once Haley came, then I thought that I was going to survive.
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And the first thing, another thing I thought was to my boys, because I was second in command in my multiple, and I was the most senior Gurkha.
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We had a very young platoon commander.
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I was just thinking that, you know, we just got into the new area.
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and what would happen to the chicks without their mom.
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You know, that is the things that I was thinking.
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And even when I would jump into my helicopter, I had my platoon commander was there and I was telling him, look after the boys.
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That was how I was taught.
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So, please look after the boys because this is how in a battlefield no one is come to help us out when the people who
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help us is out of friends and our colleagues.
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And those are the people who can save us.
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So we need to look after each other.
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And if we look after subordinates and they look after us, and also same ways, if our commanders look after us, then we look after them.
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This is how it is.
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And it s a buddy system.
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It s a teamwork.
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We re not fighting there all on our own.
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It s not like a, you know, one band hero things in a battlefield.
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It s a whole teamwork.
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Harry, did you ever have feelings of shame or a failure post-injury?
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And if so, how did that impact you?
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Yes, that is the thing that I realized that when I woke up in Kambassan.
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So from my chest down, it was covered by a white blanket.
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And I remember that I didn t have a right leg, but I had left leg.
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And is it still there?
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And when I just stared down like this,
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and it looks like there s not any, you know, it s covered, they look the same.
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And I didn t have the courage to open the blanket and have a look at it.
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And when I woke up, my commanding officer and Gorkhamesh, Gorkhamesh and Ayesh Rang in the regiment, in the Gorkhas, they were standing next to me, Sadar, and I really felt ashamed lying in front of them.
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My job
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was to go there, do best I can, and make, keep safe to the guys, but also do the job, make proud to our squad, our regiments, and come back home safe.
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And which is, I couldn t able to do that.
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I failed, I couldn t able to help.
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Yeah, I was ashamed lying in front of them.
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And honestly, I thought that I let down my team, my regiment, and whole Gurkhas and the British side.
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And my commanding officer said, okay, we re done already.
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We will look after them.
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But I didn t really believe that.
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I was still worrying.
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I came back to UK and it s still about two months and I was still worrying that what s going on in the ground.
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So my mind was all the time in the ground in Afghanistan.
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And my military liaison officer used to tell me that
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Don t worry about yourself.
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They ll be fine.
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Just worry about yourself, how to recover and how to move forward.
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But this is how we are.
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So we always think of those, our friends and colleagues and how they are doing.
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And yeah, I was, I felt really let down by my team at the time.
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A lot of people face different types of adversity, whether that s big T trauma or small T trauma.
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Obviously, you ve had to face something that very few people ever have to go through.
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It s impacted you physically and it s impacted you mentally as well.
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You lost both your legs along with
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many other complications and injuries.
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What was the recovery process like for you?
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And how did you give yourself the inner fortitude to make you want to recover?
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Because so many people might have given up at that point, given the state that you found yourself in.
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What kept you going and what are some of the initial steps that you took?
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I think my biggest problem was my perception, the way I grew up in Nepal, the way I saw how disabled people were treated back in Nepal, and how they perceived.
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So I perceived myself that way as well.
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So that was the biggest thing to
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overcome.
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I thought that I couldn t do anything.
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I couldn t able to walk.
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I thought that I have to sit on wheelchair rest of my life.
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I m pretty much useless and I m gonna live as a burden of the earth and maybe I ve done something wrong in my previous life so maybe I m having this.
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So
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That was very simple things that I couldn t able to do.
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Go to toilet myself, just making tea myself, going on a wheelchair.
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You can t go everywhere and you can t go and play around with your children and play football with my children.
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Even on chair, I couldn t got onto wheelchair from the floor as well.
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I had to rely pretty much everything with someone else and
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That was really hard, but slowly and a couple of times.
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So I stayed about a month in hospital.
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Then after that, once I discharged, I was sent to rehabilitation center.
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And at rehabilitation center, we only allowed to stay four weeks there, then were sent to home for another four weeks and go back.
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And I did that process nearly three and a half years.
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And when you go to the rehabilitation center, you meet similar people like yourself.
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You still have a good time.
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You try to recover.
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You work harder.
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But when you come back home, you have nothing to do simply.
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You don t have a job.
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You don t have not much to look for.
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So mostly I was just drinking.
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alcohol to just control my pain and emotions.
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And I was just frustrated myself, sometimes with my family, sometimes just doing pretty much nothing.
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So at that point I found it very difficult and I was drinking so much and when I didn t drink, my hands were shaky, my mind started getting foggy.
2
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In the UK, the ceilings are quite low.
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I was imagining that lack of ceilings like in Nepal, and you could have a fan.
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just in the many people who taken their lives you know hanging themselves but I also found that it s very difficult to do that when you are on wheelchair.
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Also I realized that on the UK the train bridges
2
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are protected.
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They have got a bar, a wall and bar on the side to protect from people from jumping.
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So yeah, I was thinking all of that and I couldn t drive at that time.
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And I was just thinking to take, if I could drive, I d take a car and just go on your own and just finish up yourself.
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And that was really tough.
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And later, some ways I could look at my family, especially my son was two and a half years old when I got injured.
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And looking at his face, if I die, it s in my story, but my family will suffer from that because of me.
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So I didn t want it.
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Okay.
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One day I decided that, okay, I m going to live my life.
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I have to live for my family.
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Then it was pretty much magical moment that what could we able to do?
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Then after that, I went to skydiving.
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I had two feelings at the time.
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One was I never done the parachute, so I wanted to experience that.
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Second one was I was bit suicidal mode.
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If something goes wrong, then half my body is gone.
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If another half goes, that s not my story.
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But when we landed safely on the ground, I realized that you can do things even if you don t have legs.
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And I had little confidence then my aim was to what can I do physically after losing both legs.
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And I tried all the sports and adventure and
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I could able to do everything.
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It s just different way of doing the things.
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Then later after that, I could be able to climb the mountain.
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Well, we re going to get to climbing that mountain here in a second.
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But before we do, I had another question for you.
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I have several amputee friends and colleagues who have residual pain following their injury.
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Have you ever experienced that?
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And if so, how did you deal with it?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It s because you don t have legs, but it s still your mind says that you have still legs.
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So that s a very weird thing.
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And I think I still remember that on my hospital bed, you know, I thought I had a leg and nearly fell down on the bed.
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I fell down a couple of times at home on the couch because my mind still says I have a leg.
2
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But another thing is I never heard about that phantom pain.
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After losing a leg, you know, phantom pain was really, really bad.
2
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You know, you have so much pain.
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It s like you ve got pinion needles on your feet.
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But when you find it, you can t find it.
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You can t find it.
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You feel that itching in your ankle and on your toes.
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And you don t have toes yet.
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It s a very weird feeling.
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But the pain is also sometimes, still I do have sometimes, if I do a very hard exercise,
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Still, I do have.
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It just comes for a while.
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Sweating, pain, it s like that and just have a pin and needles on your feet.
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Yeah, it s very weird, weird pain, but slowly it just went away.
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As I said, still I do, I still have sometimes.
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But yeah, I m not that bad as I get up on the bed feeling that I have legs.
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So I dreamed many times after losing my leg, I was just running around chasing the Taliban off.
2
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Still some of my dreams, still I m running around normally.
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It s a bit
3
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weird.
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But when you wake up, it s a bit weird.
3
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But that s how life is.
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One thing I did want to talk to you about is your consumption of alcohol.
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And I think many people who have to deal with their inner demons end up becoming, and I think so many of us, when we re trying to deal with our inner demons, end up becoming addicted to one thing or another.
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Could be alcohol, it could be drugs, could be work, could be sex.
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How did you relieve yourself of that need that you had to drink to overcome the demons that you were facing?
3
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It s a coping mechanism, isn t it?
3
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So we cope in different ways.
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And I think it s very easy when you are feeling bad.
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It is very easy to take a glass of a bottle of whiskey and pour in a glass and drink it.
3
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That s the one way.
3
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Yeah, that s one way you can cope.
3
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But it s a short period of time only that helps.
3
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also taking same as like a drug or even taking a life itself.
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But I think as a hard way we do is, it s also sustainable.
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It s useful, much more useful.
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Say,
3
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Just going out and doing something, waking up early on time or staying late in the evening and doing something is hard.
3
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Like doing the exercise, going to the gym, going to the swim or doing some kind of outdoor activities is hard.
3
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It s in the cold, it s the rain, sometimes too hot, whatever it is.
3
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But that is, I think, the best way to do it.
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And once I
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you know, my aim after the skydiving was what can I do physically after losing both legs.
3
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So because of I had some kind of I want to test myself that what can I do physically because I didn t know at the time that how powerful is the mind.
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So my aim was to try to do other things and I think kind of compensated
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the way I was drinking and I could be able to focus.
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And when we challenge ourselves, then we start finding the opportunities.
3
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We start seeing the hope.
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We start seeing the things that are good for us.
3
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And simply that s how I covered.
3
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And in some ways, where I am now is because I ve used those sports and adventure as a therapy.
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I didn t take it as a therapy at that time, but I feel it was therapy.
3
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And sports and adventure has
3
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massive power in it.
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I m not sure how about adventure trainings like US Armed Forces, but in the UK, that let s say if you go for overseas exercise training for six weeks, one week is called R&R.
3
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So R&R is
3
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not really less than recovery, but more about you go and do some adventure stops in civilian clothes, say kayaking or hiking or mountain biking or skydiving or horse riding.
3
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or kayaking or something to do with.
3
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But I think without that, I think I wouldn t be here.
3
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I think those sports and adventure give us a confidence.
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And so that I think if I had a power, I would give people a confidence.
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I think if you have confidence, we can able to do anything else.
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Even let s say you like someone and you want to go and talk, you need confidence.
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You ve got some idea, business plan, and you want to go
3
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and share with someone, you need the confidence for that.
3
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Or you want to go and do some adventures, you need the confidence for that.
3
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So anything we do in life is confidence.
3
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And confidence doesn t come with like a magic wand, abracadabra, here you go and rule the world or go to climb the mountain.
3
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It s not like that.
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It comes from very little things like just jumping on a wheelchair from the floor.
3
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It s a sense of achievement.
3
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I achieved something.
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And if you feel good, you go to the kitchen yourself and make a tea yourself.
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You feel good.
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Go to the toilet yourself.
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And yeah, you feel good.
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Then you can drive yourself.
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It s better.
3
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Then later you start working on the prosthetic legs.
3
SPEAKER_01
And building confidence takes time.
3
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And it comes with a challenge.
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When we challenge ourselves,
3
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We create opportunity for ourselves, but also create opportunity for others.
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Challenge gives us experience, and experience gives us confidence, and simply confidence is, I think, everything in the life.
3
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And do it hard way, sometimes, you know?
3
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And that lasts for a long period of time.
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If we just do very short way, we take drugs, and yeah, we might feel well for a while, but in the long term, it doesn t really happen.
3
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I m so glad that you pointed that out because one of the things I talk about on the show all the time is that we have choices that we get to make every single day.
3
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And when you think about it, we have 60,000 to 90,000 different decisions that we make in any single day.
3
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And every single day is an opportunity to start making choices that challenge the way that you re living your life.
3
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And I try to educate people at this power of micro choices that we get to make in our lives.
3
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can help you transform your life and take it into a positive direction because you didn t get into the situation that you re in currently in one fell swoop.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so you re not going to break out of it by doing one huge movement.
3
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It s going to take a series of micro steps to get you on the path to recovery.
3
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And I think what you just said about building confidence, because the more challenges that you start putting in front of yourself, when you start accomplishing them, you re going to reward yourself even more for doing them.
3
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and it s going to lead you further down that path and it s going to expand in you this desire to want to achieve more, to be more, to become more, which becomes this overwhelming confidence that just grows over time.
3
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So I think what you just said is a fantastic example of that.
3
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And also I think it s when we think about choice is we are privileged to live in a free world where we can choose the things.
3
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We can choose, children can choose what subject they want to study.
3
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can choose what job we want to do, we can choose how we want to live our life, right?
3
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We have so many choices and if we choose the right choices then our life becomes positive and in Nepali we say that if you are good and you see everything is good, everything turns into good.
3
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So I think that s really important and I think
3
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We all have negative feelings and that negative feeling is in our mind.
3
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If we put, let s say, a wall around our mind with a filtration of that.
3
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And if we are positive, then all positive things are observed in our mind.
3
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So that wall lets in to observe that positive.
3
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If we are negative, then it doesn t
3
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the positive things doesn t penetrate in our mind and the negative things penetrate in our mind.
3
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We see everything in the world is negative, it s bad.
3
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So I think being positive and that positiveness is, again, confidence and sense of achievement and sense of living without values, without self.
3
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And I think for me, hardest thing was to accept that I don t have legs
3
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and I have to live the rest of my life without legs.
3
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That was hard things.
3
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And once you accept it, then it becomes easier.
3
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I m sure there might be some listeners today who are struggling to find their path, or perhaps they feel like they re a spectator in their own life.
3
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And when all this happened to you, I imagine that you were probably looking at your life in a completely different way than you do today.
3
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You were probably that spectator looking at yourself, and now you ve undergone this transformational change to rebuild your life from scratch.
3
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What would you tell someone else who might be listening today if they were in this exact same position?
3
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They re trying to find their purpose in life or what steps they can take to rebuild it.
3
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How do you find that problem that only you were called to solve?
3
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How do you get yourself back on track of crafting the life that you want?
3
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I think I have got one kind of principle that I use.
3
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Whatever happens, it happens for a reason.
3
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And if you are positive,
3
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even someone s throwing you at mud, you become a flower, you start blooming.
3
SPEAKER_01
I never thought that I would be here, I would be doing these things.
3
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I never thought about that.
3
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But one thing I had was I had something positive in my mind.
3
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I think I have achieved more than what
3
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I imagined to achieve when I was young.
3
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I never achieved this thing.
3
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I never achieved even joining the British Army because it s very tough.
3
SPEAKER_01
Over 12,000 applicants, I got into 230.
3
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I never thought that, but when we try something,
3
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you know, it just happens.
3
SPEAKER_01
I tried to become British Army and I became.
3
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I tried to climb Everest and I climbed.
3
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If you don t try, you don t know your limits.
3
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You don t know what we can able to achieve.
3
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You know, you can also see that I had a very good career in the army.
3
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And, you know, after losing my legs, I lost both of my legs.
4
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I lost my career.
4
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I lost my job because I couldn t walk anymore in the army.
4
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And still I m fine.
4
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And whatever happens, we ll be fine as long as we are positive and have the right mindset.
4
SPEAKER_01
Barry, thank you for that.
4
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You talked about the importance of actions and how they led you to where you are today.
4
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What inspired you to go from doing the action sports that you were doing to doing the mountaineering that you re doing today?
4
SPEAKER_01
I have to imagine that preparing for those initial climbs without having any legs and having to use prosthetic legs made that extremely challenging.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I never thought that I would be even walking after my injury.
4
SPEAKER_00
Who thought that I would be climbing Mount Everest?
4
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But I think climbing is simply, as I said, I grew up in Nepal.
4
SPEAKER_00
In Nepal, from a very small side, we are educated Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s in Nepal.
4
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Mount Everest is a pride, symbol and identity of the Nepalese people.
4
SPEAKER_00
If we say in many places in America, it says,
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you know where is Nepal?
4
SPEAKER_00
Which means they won t know it.
4
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But if they say, do you know the Everest?
4
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And I think they know that.
4
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So it means to something to me from very little age.
4
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But also I think is one thing is I think it s really important that it s not about what we do.
4
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It s about why we do it.
4
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It s our reason why.
4
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Anything that we do, we have our own reason.
4
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It might not mean nothing to you, but it means to me.
4
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I think that is the thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was always fascinated climbing mountain from my childhood.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is why my recent name is Concurrent Dreams.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s my childhood dreams.
4
SPEAKER_00
I grew up looking at the mountain every day.
4
SPEAKER_00
And after losing my legs when I was skiing here in Europe and in Colorado,
4
SPEAKER_00
Looking at the mountain, I was thinking of Mount Everest.
4
SPEAKER_00
And later I just went to test myself and I tried.
4
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, finally took nearly six years to get there, but we finally achieved our dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, there was many, many challenges along the way.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like say there s no Pacific lakes where are designed to climb ice and snow.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we actually designed that and
4
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the friends in America who helped me, so to do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this is why I have very close connection.
4
SPEAKER_00
I served with your guys and I ve been helped to climb Mount Everest, so it s very close to my heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there was a ban, they banned double amputees, so Nepal government banned.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was supposed to climb 2018.
4
SPEAKER_00
And end of 2017, Nepal government brought the rules banning double amputees and visually impaired.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we had to go to Geneva.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had to go to Supreme court in Nepal and overturn the rule.
4
SPEAKER_00
It took a while.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had to raise lots of money because I m three times slower than normal people.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need more help and support.
4
SPEAKER_00
So simply everything I need is three times more, maybe more.
4
SPEAKER_00
And just raising funds was very hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
So first thing was nobody believed me that I could be able to climb the mountain.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had some money when I was injured, and I used that to climb through mountains.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now, later, my family and friends start supporting me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe he might be able to climb it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they start supporting me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Later, some charities came to support me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then later, the other individuals, my friends and families and communities and some corporates who believed me and we were able to raise all the money.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the first one I approached, I think
4
SPEAKER_00
100, 99 corporates said no, because there was a reason behind it.
4
SPEAKER_00
They said it was an amazing story, what an inspiration, and all those things.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when it comes to taking the money out from their pockets, they say, sorry, we ran out of the marketing budget, or they make an excuse.
4
SPEAKER_00
But behind that, there was a reason.
4
SPEAKER_00
One thing, they didn t believe that I could able to climb it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Second thing, if something goes wrong on the mountain, they don t want to associate with me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there are lots of, lots of, but I think one thing is if we are true to ourselves and we have a right intention at that time, then someone in hundred, 99 won t believe you, but one people always with you and will support and
4
SPEAKER_00
I had a few.
4
SPEAKER_00
And once one person starts supporting, other people will follow.
4
SPEAKER_01
Gary, that s great advice.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I understand that when you first started this mountaineering expedition, you had to use your own money to prove that you could actually do it, to climb peaks like Mirror Peak and Mount Blanc.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that allowed you to have the opportunity to raise money to try to climb Mount Everest.
4
SPEAKER_01
which I think is a very important part of your story because I ve talked to successful entrepreneurs who have built unicorn companies.
4
SPEAKER_01
The vast majority that I ve talked to went through some period of disbelief and some of the same challenges that you faced as you were trying to attain your goal.
4
SPEAKER_01
So a
4
SPEAKER_01
person I often talk about is Jim McKelvey, who founded the company Square with his friend Jack Dorsey.
4
SPEAKER_01
And along this journey, they faced one challenge after another insurmountable challenge, because the whole banking industry was against them.
4
SPEAKER_01
They didn t want them to create this new financial system.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the banking industry kept fighting them.
4
SPEAKER_01
and they had to fight their way through it.
4
SPEAKER_01
There were many times that they almost wanted to give up because they were running out of money.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were running out of the stamina to keep up the fight, but they ended up persevering.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s interesting because when I talked to Jim, the interviews that I ve done with him, he tells me that one of the biggest things that he sees for entrepreneurs who fail is that they find this problem that only they can solve, that they have this burning desire to go after.
4
SPEAKER_01
but they end up running into adversity and they give up on their dreams instead of doing what you did and making the calls and keeping after it until you finally achieved what you set out to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Many times I wanted to give up.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes I was just thinking what excuse I could make it and give up.
4
SPEAKER_00
I thought about it many times, but
4
SPEAKER_00
When some people start helping you, giving their time, money, and efforts, then you can t let down those people.
4
SPEAKER_00
At least you do your best to make them proud.
4
SPEAKER_00
You couldn t be able to give much, but at least I could do my best to make them proud.
4
SPEAKER_00
And on the mountain also, I wanted to give up many times, but things that drove me, it s a responsibility.
4
SPEAKER_00
people that who believed me that I don t want to let down that let them down so.
4
SPEAKER_01
Harry, there had to be a lot of mental and physical preparation for preparing to climb Everest.
4
SPEAKER_01
How did you self-prepare for that and get yourself up to the task of the mental challenges that you were going to have to overcome in climbing the mountain?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because whether you re able-bodied or not, I m sure everyone who climbs Everest faces tremendous mental hurdles on their way up where they want to give up because it s windy and it s cold.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s grueling.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re in pain.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to keep going.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think this is where your dreams and passion works.
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If you have a dream, if you have a passion, then can make you wake up early in the morning, make you stay late in the evening, also to make you work harder.
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And many of the training and principles that when I was serving helped me.
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So a couple of things that I was thinking, there is the, in our British Army s doctrine,
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there is the word called momentum.
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It s a principle of war.
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And that is not about going fast or slow.
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It just keep it going.
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And I use that principle when I went to the mountains.
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I will get there if I don t stop for a long period of time and I don t give up.
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I will get there some point, in some way.
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So I need to prepare for that.
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And on the other principle I use,
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is adaptation.
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So his whole life is all about adaptation.
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We can see the history of the human revolutions and things like that.
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And we always adapt.
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We take it very easily.
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So if it s cold, we put a jacket on.
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If it s rain, we put a raincoat on.
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So if we go to play sports, we put our sports shoes on.
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So we do it all the time, but we don t realize it.
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But this is really powerful tools and principles that we can use in our life.
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When I was thinking about climbing Mount Everest,
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In the old days, we couldn t run fast enough to explore around the world, so we started designing the things that can take us faster.
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Something like, for the land, for the sea, for the air, now we can go to another planet.
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We made that possible.
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We humans made that possible.
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We adopted it.
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according to our needs.
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So climbing Mount Everest with no legs should be possible.
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This was my principle that actually I used it.
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Also in the business world or anything in the world that we adapt according to the time and situation and our ability to make things happen, simply.
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So simply, like say for one example is when Corona popped in, I was supposed to be climbing Everest and I didn t climb at that time.
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instead of I was in quarantine and doing the things.
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So that is where we were adapting at that time.
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So we always adapt, but if we use this tool right away, it s very powerful.
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So there s two principles that are super important for me to get to the summit of Mount Everest is adaptation.
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So I adapted my legs according to the time and situations.
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and get up to the mountain.
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So that s how it is.
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And we are very good in adapting, and some we are not.
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But I think if we could adapt, whatever way we can, we ll make anything is possible in the world.
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And whole human revolutions came from challenge.
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So let s say if Wright Brothers, they didn t dream of flying, we wouldn t be flying.
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If Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, they didn t dream of climbing Mount Everest, maybe we ll be still waiting for someone to climb for us.
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We made many impossible things possible by just challenging ourselves.
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I love that.
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And I have my own book that just came out and in it, I have a chapter called the action creator.
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And in it, I focus the chapter on the story of my long-term mentor, astronaut, Wendy Lawrence, and her core message is you have to permit yourself to dream your dream.
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And when you do permit yourself to dream your dream, you gain this consistent momentum that keeps
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you going forward.
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It keeps these actions propelling you to where you want to go.
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So Harry, I love what you just said and the adaptability.
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So I want to step back for a second because I want to imagine you now on the apex of Everest.
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I can t even imagine what was going through your mind at that point.
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And I m guessing that moment was such a powerful catalyst for you being in your home country of Nepal.
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How do you hope that your achievements, when other people who have disabilities see them, give them the inner courage and the perception to view that anything is possible?
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I gave them some hope to the people who possibly read, watched my story.
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One thing is the government that who banned
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us from climbing mountains.
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The tourism minister was waiting at the airport to welcome and congratulate me.
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And the same day, I was invited at the Prime Minister s office to congratulate.
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The same day, the President was ill, so he sent
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his press officer and his daughter to congratulate me in person.
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And I was invited by many ministries, like House of Speakers, to so many major political parties who invited me in their office to congratulate me.
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I believe that, so I said about why we do it.
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It s not about what we do it, it s about why we do it.
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I think climbing a mountain, I don t think so I enjoy climbing a mountain.
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It s enjoyable after you climb, but every step is a struggle for me.
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But why I do it is I think it s important.
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And I went Everest to making awareness of disability because the way I perceived myself, because I wasted my time, one and a half, two years of my time.
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I just wasted my time.
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And if I believed myself, I could pick up much quicker and use that time to make it much more meaningful and worthwhile.
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So my aim was to making awareness of disability.
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Why it s important?
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Because people like myself, I don t know when I was before I was disabled, is make sure you believe something that you can able to do.
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Something.
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I think that s important.
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I think people with disability, that s one awareness that we need to make.
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Another awareness I wanted to make.
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was to, it s not just our problem, it s a problem of our families, our friends, our community, and authorities that who look after us.
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If you see the disabled population, it s about 1.3 billion disabled people live in this world.
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So that s about 15% of the world population.
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We can t hide them.
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If you want to develop the countries, develop the world, and we need to make it inclusive, we, you know, they have to support us some ways.
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It is making, oh, it s like the government that we re going to ban us, the things that we do.
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And these are the things that we need to make awareness of the other people.
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And many people who are out there, everybody, I was
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completely able-bodied until age of 31.
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Suddenly my life changed in that way and many people s life will change in the future.
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And for them, make sure instead of feeling sorry for themselves, believing something that they can able to do and go and achieve something that they love to achieve and achieve something that they have their own reason why.
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So my reason why is to making awareness of disability.
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And I ll keep, this is not overnight change, it will take ages, ages, generations, it will take to change.
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And the rest of my life, I will be making awareness of disability, whether through the sports and adventure, whether through the social work, whether through the business, whether through the charities, I will do that.
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Harry, thank you so much for sharing that.
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And I think that is a great way to end this interview.
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After achieving so many things that you never thought were going to be remotely possible, that you have now accomplished, what are your future goals and dreams?
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And what do you look forward to?
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I get asked this question quite a lot.
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And as I said to you earlier, that what s my future aim simply is to making awareness of disability and inspiring other people to climb their own mountain, whatever that is.
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getting a job or getting a better grade or starting a business or getting married or going through some problems that they have.
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So that s my aim.
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And to do that, I think I m 44 now.
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And I think up to age of 50, I think I can do some sports and adventure.
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I will be, now I m in process to complete my seven summits.
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So I have four summits to complete.
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And if your audience, they don t know what are the seven summits, they are highest mountain in each continent.
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So that s what I m trying to do for the next few years.
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And if I get an opportunity.
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I would like to take some more people with disability, maybe from different complex and different side, and, you know, travel from one pool to another pool, making awareness of disability, promoting climate change, because I ve been in mountain, and when you look at how fast the ice is melting, it s very scary.
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And whatever we have right now, it s because of our previous generation.
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So even we can extend the Earth s life for a while.
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it would be great for our future generations.
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And also that we don t need to fight if we don t need to.
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Yeah, we are soldiers.
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We fight for everything.
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I will fight even if I don t have legs.
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But we can solve our differences in a peaceful way.
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We don t have to solve our differences in a violent way.
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I think
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We have different faith, we have got different interests, we have different values, we have different culture, but we are humans and we need to make this world slightly better and safer place in the future.
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Beautifully said, and Harry, it was such an honor to interview you.
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You re such an inspiration to so many people worldwide.
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It was so fantastic that I could have you on Passion Strike.
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And thank you so much for having me.
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What an amazing interview that was with Harry Buda Maggar, man.
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He is amazing.
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And I wanted to thank Harry for giving us the honor of interviewing him.
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Links to Harry will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Videos are on YouTube at our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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You can find me on all the social platforms at John or miles, and you can sign up for our personal development newsletter, live intentionally at passionstruck.com.
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast with Charles Duhigg, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, New Yorker staff writer, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit.
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Charles brings his signature blend of in-depth research and captivating storytelling to his latest groundbreaking book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.
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All of us have that person in our head.
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Everyone who s listening knows exactly who they d call.
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That person for you is a super communicator and odds are that you re a super communicator back to them.
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But there are some people who are more consistently good at this.
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They re that person for everyone.
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They can connect with anyone.
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And oftentimes it s only because they re thinking a little bit more deeply about how communication works.
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They ve paid a little bit more attention to it.
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And one of the things that they know to do is they know to listen closely.
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The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting.
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If you know someone who could use the advice that Harry gave in today s show, then definitely share this episode with those that you love and care about.
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The greatest gift that you can give us is to share this show.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Until next time, go out there and become Passion Strike.