I'm Possible

Johan Ernst is one of the world’s leading explorers and motivational speakers who has done things no other person has done before. Like traveling from the North Pole to the South pole by foot, bike, kite-ski, and dog sledges, or building a flying boat! The acclaimed explorer has completed over 50 other incredible expeditions and has held Guinness World Records several times. When people told him that these things would be impossible, simply because no one had ever done it before, he found a way to make it possible. 

Along his travels, Johan became known as the ‘environmental explorer’ because of his passion for the environment and reducing climate issues. For over 20 years, he has been raising environmental awareness and supporting numerous charity projects including the recent Towards Nature event in Marbella. 

Since Johan has got himself through treacherous conditions on several occasions, from sheer exhaustion, to deadly animals, we’re kicking off the conversation talking about fear…

What’s the scariest thing about your expeditions?

It’s not always what you think it would be. Take bungee jumping for example. Even though I have climbed Mount Everest, when I bungee jumped at the Niagara Falls, going up there and standing out on the wooden ledge with 1500 feet below you… even though you’re attached, that was scarier. Everyone thinks that the freefall will be the scary part, but afterwards most people agree the scariest part was before the jump. So, it can be more scary before you do something than when you actually do it. 

What would your advice be to prepare yourself for potentially scary situations in life?

Well, I look at it from more of a scientific angle. Like when I was sleeping in a tent in Nicaragua, there were cockroaches all over me inside the tent. And I was like, ‘ok fine these are very uncomfortable, yes. I don’t like them, but are they dangerous? No. Ok, let’s go to sleep!’ I could not do anything about it, there were hundreds. If there’s a snake, it’s dangerous and I do care, but I have learned with time that if I cannot do anything about it, why worry? It won’t help. If I’m up on a mountain, if I can’t do anything about it, then fear will just be an obstacle, fear will just be something that makes the situation worse. I have respect and I prepare to avoid things, but I try not to be scared as it doesn’t help me. 

How do you find the strength to keep going even when you are in rough situations, tired and injured?

I will tell you a little story as an example. Just outside the Spanish coastline, there was a bay and I thought it would be much faster to cross the bay in my kayak than to go around it. Halfway across the bay, the wind came against me and I was still far from the coastline. Soon it became evening, then nighttime and so dark I couldn’t see the waves. I still hadn’t reached the coastline, it’s pitch-black everywhere, I was just trying to balance with the invisible waves moving the kayak.  All I could do was follow this lighthouse in the distance...

After 3 hours, I realized it wasn’t a lighthouse I was following, it was a boat and I was on my way to Morocco going the wrong way! So I had to go all the way back with strong winds trying to force me the other direction. Seventeen hours of kayaking later it was hard, but I knew if I stopped, I would turn over. If you asked me to kayak for 17 hours against the wind now, I couldn’t do it, but for some reason then I could. It was survival. Some people have said to me ‘Johan you are so strong kayaking for 17 hours’, but I didn’t want to kayak that long, I had no choice! So, in those moments it’s not about motivation or strength, it is survival. I understand that some things I did then in a survival situation, I could not do again on demand.

What would you say to people who want to go out on expeditions to push their own limits?

Well, you don’t have to go out on an expedition to push your own limits. I want you to climb your own mountain. But to answer your question, I do think people should go out in nature more and do things every now and then to push their own limits, but the main thing I want to teach is that whatever Everest you have in life, try to climb that. And don’t be afraid of failures because you need to do failures on the way up and learn from others. Like back in the 90’s when I was climbing Mount McKinley and I asked people around, ‘what is your biggest failure?’ Those answers became my knowledge. Do plenty of research on whatever it is you want to do.

You have been doing some great work with kids, how do you think we can guide them for a better world for the future and do you think social media has the right impact?

Things that are possible now that were not possible before, a lot of jobs that will exist, don’t exist today. For instance, in the future there will be lawyers available on an online apps with artificial intelligence and doctors the same. Even models can be replaced with AI, so it’s not easy to tell kids today what they’re going to do when they grow up. 

I saw a survey that asked kids what they wanted to be when they grow up and many said ‘famous’. I think Instagram promotes a certain lifestyle with appealing images, whereas Facebook allows you to talk more and creates millions of dollars for charity every year through initiatives like the donate buttons. I think there is still room for Instagram to use its power among young people to make the world a better place. What I advise kids to be following is their gut feeling, their dreams and what makes them happy. Do not be afraid to walk over that bridge from where you are now, to where you want to be. 

 Do you have any more expeditions planned?

Well firstly, define expeditions…I start to realize the biggest exploration you do is actually the inner journey. I climbed the Seven Summits for what I thought was an egoistic reason to prove to myself that I could do it, but afterwards I realized that was not the reason. It was to overcome my fears, to try to do things I never thought were possible. This is what I call the 8th Summit. It’s about understanding the actual knowledge from the Seven Summits was not the geographic points it was more about the inner learning.

Next year I am doing a 108-day silence meditation in Tibet to study all scriptures and try to understand more about the background of life from different perspectives. I will have no access to internet, but I will have a laptop with Word. During that time, I will be going through all my expeditions, evaluating my experiences like, ‘why did I do 52 expeditions and what did I learn?’ That inner mountain is the 8th Summit for me. 

www.johanernst.com