Blind Ambition

Patricia Walsh: For me, from my perspective, I had always been ambitious when I was very young. All the stories anyone tells of me as a child were some sort of, never trying to walk or crawl, only trying to run, and I've heard that all my life.

Then when I lost my vision, all that had been a high achiever and all that had been ambitious was over, as far as I understood. And, unfortunately, all the messaging I got from my professionals, mentors, all the adults in my life, all the messaging said, "You need to give up on those hopes and dreams." That, really, anything that I wanted that was better for myself was considered denial, was considered an unwillingness to accept my limitations.

And that crushed me, at a real soul level, because I had always had these high hopes and aspirations and that was my identity. Even at such an age I knew that I wanted to be better and I knew that I had the God-given aptitude. But now I had this physical barrier that felt immovable. And I didn't yet know about technology, I didn't yet know about advocating for myself, I didn't yet know about the tools I could use to resolve the logistical problems and I, of course, didn't know that, in solving the logistical problems, I could reclaim that sense of identity.

So that all came through time. I struggled through high school, really just survived high school. I think often I was just passed through because the tutors didn't want to hold me back. It wasn't until I was a senior when it really came time for those hard questions of if a person is going to go to college or what is a person going to do with their life, did I really start to embody how I could help myself, and I realized very quickly that I wasn't doing everything I could be doing to try to improve my quality of life.

So, in all honesty, I had to go against my parents' wishes, I had to go against my counselors' wishes, and really reach out directly to the SATs, to universities, and try to figure out where could I make this big attempt. I think the thing that's interesting in hindsight is, when my friends and family retell it, they always say that I went out with something to prove or I went out with complete assurance that I knew I would be successful. But I'm very sincere when I say I had no assurance I would be successful, I was terrified that this could potentially be a failure, I was terrified that it may not work out. But I was absolutely willing to make an attempt because I knew, the one thing I knew with certainty, was that not knowing my limitation was driving me crazy, and that, if I went and made an attempt and it turned out not to work out, I was no worse off than I was already.

So it really was the beginning of my ability to self-advocate, and what started in these very small incremental challenges, and what started in even just a willingness to try or a willingness to risk failure, really grew into something beautiful and built some momentum that is my life today. And that is where I have opportunities to really pursue all my hopes and dreams. I have no sense of lacking or of being lesser than or being afflicted. I think, even as a blind person in the corporate roles, the athletic roles, at this point I'm a little bit difficult to keep up with.

When I lost my vision, I honest-to-God believed that my life was going to be reduced to just applying for welfare and disability, living on $600 a month, and just trying to survive. I thought my life had been reduced to surviving, and never in a million years did I think I would be speaking to potential as a knowable limitation, that none of us know the limit of our potential, and, as much as I've come so far, I still believe my potential today is untapped and I'm so excited to see where this goes and if I follow my own recommendations in the book: where can I get to and who can I bring with me? Which, of course, I hope to bring all your audience with me as well.

Rachel Salaman: It's an amazing story! So when you were at that point where you needed to find the motivation, where you needed the self-belief even though all your advisors were telling you that your prospects were limited, where do you think that motivation came from? How did you find that?

Patricia Walsh: I think the motivation may have initially been a little bit fear-based. I think I had a very sincere fear that all of the people recommending that I accept my limitation, I thought they were right. I wanted to know for myself, I wanted to know once and for all. I just wanted some resolution or maybe some closure one way or the other. I had everyone telling me that I needed to accept that my aspirations were over, but I didn't feel like my aptitude was gone. So it was a mismatch of what I was being told did not match what I was perceiving, and I felt like that warranted some further investigation, but I also had no part of me was confident that it would work out.

Even still today, in hindsight, I'm so grateful, but I think that's kind of a young woman's game. I think, as I've gotten older, I don't know if I would have taken that risk and that's why I'm so thankful that the timing was what it was and that's something I hope to inspire in your audience also, that it's really never too late to start that investigation of what you're capable of doing.

But as a younger woman, I think I couldn't yet accept what I was being told about what I couldn't do. When I talk about perceived limitations, people when they look to me, the quantifier in my world is always "for a blind person." They say, "You're fast for a blind person," or, "You're good at this for a blind person." And my aspiration is just to be good: I will be good at this by comparison to anybody.

I spent a brief time teaching math and these perceived limitations will hit anyone; I'd have a student come out to me and say, "I'm not good at math," and this person may have been told that. It has nothing to do with a limitation they've truly experienced; it has to do with a belief in their limitation.

So, one thing I speak to in the book frequently is that your perceived limitations may not be holding you back as much as your belief in your limitations. And certainly I think I have challenged those repeatedly, and I think I will continue to challenge my own perceived limitations. And I don't think it's the type of thing that you truly overcome, I think it's a bit of an ongoing process.

Rachel Salaman: Now, I suppose I should speak for a moment for people who don't feel very ambitious, that they would say they don't see the point of reaching for the stars and they're happy to have no ambition. What is your message for them?

Patricia Walsh: I think that each and every one of us has something that we truly care about, and that is somehow in our intrinsic motivation. It doesn't have to be an Iron Man. It doesn't have to be a world record. It can be something small. It can be something achievable. It can be something that you are providing security for yourself, providing security for your family, providing an opportunity that you may not have previously had.

So when I hear people tell me that they're not ambitious, what I really hear is that they feel like their goals don't measure up to others' goals. I have a dear friend of mine who is actually an Olympic swimmer gold medalist and she gave me a beautiful expression, and that is that comparison is the thief of joy.

So, if you are feeling like you are not an ambitious person, what might actually be happening is that you feel like your goals, because I do believe each of us has something we care about, aren't measuring up. Well, to compare is to undermine any sense of joy - there is no sense in that - so I do speak in the book about how there is no goal too small and all I care about is that every individual is pursuing their best self, pursuing something that they honestly care about. It doesn't need to be of international caliber - it can be something that just changes your own stratosphere. And that will bring a quality of life and a sense of fulfillment to anyone.

Rachel Salaman: So in your book, you outline your approach to achieving goals, which is summed up in three words: fuel, fire and blaze. So could you just talk us through that please?

Patricia Walsh: Yes, absolutely. The key piece there in fuel, fire, blaze is that this is a continuum. It's not a sequential step, so you need all three existing at one moment in time. When I speak to the intrinsic motivation or to the highest level goal, to something that you honestly care about, that's a blaze goal.

So from my worldview, a blaze goal is I live to be an athlete who is on par with elite able-bodied athletes, such that anyone who comes behind me will not have to overcome the perceived limitations that I've experienced. So I hope to be a change in my industry, such that the way persons with disabilities are perceived is changed, such that eventually no one will be surprised to see a blind person do well and what's key in this is the fact that I care about that today at a heart level. It gets me very excited, the fact that I could help someone else not experience that helplessness and not experience that despair because they have some role models. That gets me excited in a way that is inarguable. I will never feel less excited about that. In six months I'm excited about it, in a year I'm excited about it because I honestly care about the goal, aligning my intrinsic motivation with my day-to-day tasks.

So that's your blaze goals, your highest level goals, how you are intrinsically motivated. The fire is then your milestones. So if I want to be an athlete who is on par with elite able-bodied athletes, milestones are the various races where I have an opportunity to demonstrate the success or the improvement I've seen as an athlete.

And then the fire, which is where we all struggle, is the day-to-day tasks. So from my worldview, the day-to-day tasks are the everyday workouts. So, for example, I had to be at the pool this morning at five thirty in the morning. It would be remarkably easy for me to wake up, maybe I hit seven days, but by the eighth day maybe I say I'm tired. It would be remarkably easy to give myself an out, but, since I have that day-to-day mapped to something I honestly care about, all that I have to do is on that eighth day when I'm feeling fatigued and I'm exhausted and I burn out and I don't want to do it any more, I have to wake up and I say, "These are the tasks that are going to help that intrinsic goal, that goal that I care so deeply about. This is what's going to move the needle to make that happen." It's the consistency over time.

So my mapping my day-to-day activities to something that is a higher-level goal, something that I sincerely care about, it enthuses my every day with inspiration and motivation and accountability towards making the most of my own life and of my own opportunities to change an industry in a way that I deeply care for. There is not a moment where I will stop caring about changing the industry and, now that I have tied that to day-to-day opportunities, I am now enthusing my everyday mundane tasks with a higher level of ambition and excitement and being my best self every day.

Rachel Salaman: Can you help us, perhaps, think of an example of what that might look like in the workplace, like for, let's say, a middle manager who is running a small department in a multinational company?

Patricia Walsh: Absolutely! What I like to hone in on is that we all talk about time management and how time is a resource. We manage time, we allocate time. We do not put that same level of resource management on energy, and that is your focused effort over time.

So, for anyone in middle management, what I would say is that blaze goal is what's going to differentiate your company. What is going to be something that will move the needle for your industry? What is going to maintain parity with your competitors? If you can figure out what those higher-level objectives are, then map them to milestones, then map them to day-to-day tasks for your employers. What you're answering is the question of, "Why are we making this investment of our focused energy and of our focused effort as an organization?"

So what this will really help for middle managers is triage any activity that is not promoting your organizational goals - that is a waste of energy and therefore a waste of time. So if you have side efforts or side endeavors where you are spinning your wheels, and I've worked in the corporate role enough to know that there's a ton of time spent that is really just spinning your wheels, that is meetings for the sake of meetings, that is a little bit of bloat in our organizational structure, but if you can re-evaluate your calendar, re-evaluate your whole schedule, and figure out why exactly are you doing this task that you're doing, why is this organizational process in place. Get rid of anything excess and just focus on those blaze goals that will move your organization forward.

Rachel Salaman: You talked a bit earlier about limits and limitation, and this is something that you return to in your book from time to time. I wondered if you could talk a bit more about those ideas and how people can apply them to their daily life.

Patricia Walsh: I think the very first step in understanding limitations is to maybe just take a day as an individual and any moment in time that you feel shut down, take a little note of what's really going on there. And you don't have to write a dissertation, you can just take a small note and try to figure out where the patterns are where you yourself are feeling shut down. And try to figure out of those moments where you're feeling limited. What are the forces being applied in those moments? Is it a co-worker interaction? Is it in your own mind? Is it an interaction with a family member? And try to figure out where your own perceived limitations are because I do believe we all have beliefs about ourselves that are holding us back.

For me, mine was so tangible in the fact that I am a blind person, so I have that same message reiterated to me over and over, a million times a day, but I think for others they may come in more subtle forces - moments where you have something to say but you do not feel the confidence to say it - and try to figure out what is that risk, what is holding you back.

So I would say that is the really key first step in understanding our own perceived limitations, and then, once the perceived limitations are identified, I would say start with incremental victories. For example, if you feel like you are not having confidence in the workplace, if you are finding yourself not speaking up in conference rooms, practice having one-on-one conversations with those people who you do find intimidating, practice building relationships. In building those relationships, and you're chipping away at the problem in these manageable chunks, you will enthuse yourself with confidence such that, over time, you will hear your own voice and you will find that you are saying those things you say and having faith in what you say and being able to substantiate what you say. And I think you really can overcome your limitations with self-awareness and some deliberate practice.

I heard something recently that I really appreciated. And that is to say that we all think people learn from experience and what I heard recently that I loved is that we don't learn from experience unless we evaluate our experience. So, in understanding our own limitations, it's a matter of adding a practice of evaluating our experience such that we actually can learn from them. So having some awareness of our limitations and then providing ourselves opportunity to practice, which is gaining experience, and then adding the step of evaluating that experience is how we can, as individuals and as leaders, overcome our perceived limitations.

Rachel Salaman: Well, let's talk about mental toughness now. Can you tell us a bit more about the Iron Man challenges that you've done, including what they are for people who don't know, and how you developed your mental toughness to compete in those?

Patricia Walsh: Yes, thank you for asking. Iron Man is considered one of the most challenging endurance races. It's 140 miles total. It's a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile marathon.

I accepted the challenge of an Iron Man on a dare from a dear friend of mine. I accepted that challenge prior to really understanding the complexities, the logistics. I didn't know how to swim, I didn't know how to bike, I was just ready for a big challenge!

To maintain mental toughness is really a battle of staying in the moment and maintaining focus, and that really is a matter of all those moments where your mind wants to wander, and you bring it back and you say, "This is the task at hand."

I would argue that Iron Man, albeit a physical challenge and a physical result, it's a mental sport because you do your 2.4 mile swim and you're exhausted and now you're about to get on your bike and really there is a moment, no matter how fit you are or how strong you are, in every Iron Man there is a moment where you are wholeheartedly ready to quit. And I think it's then that you bring back your fuel and fire and blaze, and remember that, in this moment, your fuel is simply to keep moving, your fire is of course to finish the race, but your blaze is whatever it was that motivated you to take on this challenge in the first place.

My first Iron Man, I became the first blind female to finish with a female guide and my second Iron Man, I actually won the world record for blind and low-vision distance athletes, male and female.

Rachel Salaman: I was interested that, in the book, you draw a distinction between mental toughness, grit and resilience. They are all quite related, though, aren't they?

Patricia Walsh: They absolutely are related and I think you could argue that you can't really have one without the other.

If we were to try to define them, I think of mental toughness as being the focus and the practice and having a strategy of maintaining focus. When I think of grit, I think of it as a personality trait that you can cultivate by having a belief in yourself that's unwavering. And when I think of resilience, I think of those moments where, inevitably, we have things that are unexpected and we have to figure out how do we get back on track? How do we not let this instance get the best of us?

Rachel Salaman: One of your chapters is called, "Abide by the Route Line," and you explain that, in long distance running, the route line is the shortest possible distance that a long distance course can be run. So how does the advice "abide by the route line" help people achieve their goals?

Patricia Walsh: So, when I think of "abide by the route line," I think of cutting out anything that's unnecessary. Think of those times that we have made choices that made our own life more difficult, adding in extras that didn't necessarily promote the goal. So when I think of abide by the route line, I think of staying focused on the blaze goal at hand, using the fuel, fire, blaze to triage anything unnecessary. There is no reason to add extra distance; you are only making your own life more difficult.

So, for example, if we're making choices as leaders that are stretching our organization too thin, that's not abiding by the route line. We need to stay focused on exactly what's going to move us forward and do only that. In leadership, you often find that kind of type A personality - they want to say yes to everything all the time. That is not a strategy for success. That is a strategy to leave yourself less effective because you're not guarding energy like a resource.

People are always asking me about my diet or if I have a cheat day, and I wouldn't do a cheat day because that's a choice I would be making to make my own life more difficult. That's a choice that moves me further from my goal rather than towards my goal. So that's a very small example, but it's a good example of abiding by the route line such that every decision I make is focused on moving me forward, which then eliminates decisions that would inadvertently move you backwards.

Rachel Salaman: You talk about personal values in the book and you share yours. What's the best way for a person to identify their core values or their personal values and, once they have, what should they do with that knowledge?

Patricia Walsh: I was very proud of introducing my own core values in the book and it's something that I do try to embody every day and really live to be the poster child of my core values.

My core values are integrity, which I clarify in the book. I don't necessarily mean integrity for myself to others, which of course is a byproduct. What I really mean is integrity to myself, of I am honest with myself, of where I need to improve. I'm honest with myself of how I've impacted a situation, reclaims a little bit of control over how much I'm inputting into my situation so I'm not the victim of any situation.

Humility is one of my core values and that is to say that, if you feel like you're a big fish, re-evaluate the size of your pond and, if you want to learn that lesson quickly, become an athlete, because every time you move up a level of competition you are now - where I was the fastest of a division, now I'm the slowest of a new division and I think, as managers, we experience that every time we advance a level - now you're learning a new skill set. And that can cause humility and I think it's a matter of having admiration and respect for others who have come before us. And, of course, I speak to you failing gracefully and that is a willingness to take a bet on myself and a willingness to make an attempt at something that I may or may not be successful at, but I'm willing to try.

For an individual to identify their own core values, this was a long process for me and I made a list of 10 things that I felt were important to me and then over time, not a huge amount of time, maybe over a week, try to have some self-awareness of when did I feel that I was demonstrating integrity or when did I feel proud of something I had said, when did I feel like I had made a statement that I would stand behind, and with this self-awareness I started weeding down and filtering my own core values.

So, really, I would say a little bit of brainstorming, a little bit of self-awareness, maybe some exercises on writing down core values and explaining why they're important to you, and then take a week and let it unfold. Let it bake a little bit and see what really resonates at the end of the week.

Rachel Salaman: As you said, one of your core values is failing gracefully, and failure comes up a lot in your book. What are your thoughts on the best way to deal with failure?

Patricia Walsh: When I think of dealing with failure, I want to go back to the previously-made statement about we don't learn from experience unless we evaluate our experience. So, I think there have been moments where I really have failed for whatever reason and sometimes it has been my fault, sometimes it has been a circumstance. One classic example in 2013, I went to the World Championship ITU race, actually in London, and I had come out of the water strong, I had a strong bike, I was leading, the closest I've ever come to winning a world championship, and I got a flat tire.

And it's these moments where you feel like you did everything you could have done to be successful and you still had to walk away defeated. And in those moments, I try to evaluate, "OK, what did I have control over? What did I not have control over and what can I do differently for next year?" Well, I could have been more prepared and had a flat kit, but, truthfully, in a sprint-distance triathlon, the comparison I make is it's like a 200 meter dash - if you stop to tie your shoes, by the time you're done tying your shoes that race has finished.

Now, in this particular instance, I had enough of a lead where, if I had had a flat kit, we probably could have medaled at least. Now, I did not do what I needed to do to prepare for the negatives, and my reasons for not preparing were sound, but I think, in the future, I would have done it differently.

So, when I talk about failing gracefully, basically what I want to do is remove that fear that we all have. Every single individual that you've ever met has a fear of failure, that is a human condition. But I don't want to give that fear of failure control over my future and I don't want you or your audience to give it control over their futures either. We all experience fear of failure and we all experience failures, but it's a matter of making a conscious decision to make an attempt. You are no worse off. No matter how that attempt lands, you are no worse off.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. If you had to pick one or two top tips to set people on the road to achieving their dreams, what would they be?

Patricia Walsh: I would like to suggest that everyone really take an instant to determine their blaze goals, figure out what it is that is important to them as an individual, or figure out what it is to their organizations. What are those things that are really worth the investment of energy? And then, of course, map it to the fire and the fuel, to the day-to-day, because I think that is really what I have experienced in protecting my energy levels and in using the best I have to offer and grit and resilience and mental toughness to move myself forward. And I think that, for your audience as managers, can help them see the greatest amount of impact with really just some reorganizations and reframing of some of the efforts that they're already doing. So I would highly recommend doing that fuel, fire, blaze exercise.

And if I had a second one I highly recommend doing the exercises that we previously discussed about determining your core values. In having your own core values articulated, it gives you a comparison, it gives you a framework when you're making decisions as something that you can stand behind. And a decision that is in keeping with your core values that will always pay off in the end. And it is not necessarily the easiest decision, but following your core values will always pay off in the end because you will not have regret, and regret is a drag on a system. It will only bring you down.

You cannot eliminate regret, but let's reduce regret by making decisions that we can stand behind, and decisions that define us as leaders, and define us as individuals that we are proud of, that will propel you forward.

Rachel Salaman: Patricia Walsh, thanks very much for joining us today.

Patricia Walsh: Thank you. I've greatly appreciated the interview and I look forward to any emails or questions you have from your audience.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Patricia's book again is. "Blind Ambition: How to Envision your Limitless Potential and Achieve the Success you Want." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.