#236 Nims Purja (Mountain Climber)

**David Senra** (0:00)
Fourteen mountains on the earth tower more than 8,000 meters above sea level, an altitude where the brain and body wither and die.
Until recently, the world record for climbing them all stood at nearly eight years.
Nepali climber Nims Purja announced that he would summit them in less than seven months. It was an audacious mission, and many were incredulous, but Nims had already sharpened his climbing skills on the brutal Himalayan peak of Everest, honing his survival skills while serving in the celebrated Gurkha and Special Boat Service units of the UK Special Forces.
Even more important, he possessed the courage, resilience and confidence to get the job done.
Today, Nims is the first man to ever summit all 14 of the world's 8,000 meter death zone peaks. He did so in six months and six days, smashing the previous record of seven years.
In this spellbinding memoir, Nims reveals the man behind the climbs, explaining how his early life in Nepal and training as an elite soldier allowed him to achieve his dream. Nims explains with great candor how leadership, integrity and collaboration drive the world's greatest climbing feats, including the first ever winter ascent of Pakistan's K2, another mountaineering milestone, which he achieved in January, 2021
In gripping prose, he reveals how persistence, a willingness to learn, and most of all, a belief in yourself are essential to success in work and in life. Both profound and inspiring, this exhilarating book reveals what it takes to go miles beyond the possible.
That is from the front cover of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Beyond Possible, One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime, and it was written by Nims Purja.
So real quick, before I jump back into the book, a couple of people have asked me what's the best way to buy gift prescriptions for other people to Founders. I always leave a link in the show notes on the podcast player on the Misfit feed. If you're using a podcast player, some of them don't make those links clickable. So if that's the case, just go to founderspodcast.com. You'll see buy a gift subscription. You'll see every plan, and then next to every plan, it says gift. So it's pretty easy. Okay, so let's get into the book. A few months ago, I had watched the documentary on this mission that Nims, this idea that Nims had. Hey, I'm gonna climb all the 14 peaks, and I'm gonna do it in 1 10th the time of the world record. It is an amazing documentary. I was completely blown away. And so as I started doing more research on Nims, I realized he had written a book documenting his early life and this incredible mission that he calls Project Possible. And so this week I read the book and I rewatched the documentary and took notes. So I have notes from the documentary and notes from the book. And most of the people that we, you and I study on the podcast, every single person that you and I study on the podcast has an extreme mindset. Normally that extreme mindset is directed towards the very difficult task of building a successful company. In Nims' case, his extreme mindset is dedicated towards doing something that has never been done before. And his primary motivation of doing this is to prove to other people that nothing is impossible. And so one way to think about Nims is he's an evangelist for the power of self-belief and not listening to the negative people he talks about. I've heard him talk in interviews as well, that most humans are just way too negative. I wanna jump right into the introduction. He's 35 years old. He's been serving in the British Special Forces and he decides to quit his job to pursue this crazy dream. And we're gonna see his mindset right here. And he's talking about this crazy idea. He says, I wanted to try. And to do so, I quit the British military where I had served as a Gurkha soldier for several years before joining the Special Boat Service, which is a wing of the Special Forces. Walking out on my career felt risky, but I was prepared to gamble everything for my ambition. Fueled by my belief in myself, I treated this challenge like a military mission. I had even named my attempt Project Possible. And then we see his, he's got a gigantic personality. And if you see it, you could see it in the documentary. It also comes through in every single interview, and it also comes through in the writing of the book. And you see this right here. The title, which means Project Possible, later came to feel like a one-fingered salute towards the people who couldn't, who wouldn't or couldn't believe in my dream. There were plenty of them. Doubters appeared everywhere.