Becoming your very best by helping others.
In what areas of your life are you putting yourself first? It’s a question we should be asking ourselves.
As adventure tourism explodes in the high country of Nepal, guide fatalities are up 27% in the last year alone. They’re so programmed to put others first, they don’t realize it’s costing them their lives.
Sherpa and African guides die while escorting wealthy, privileged clients to the top of the world. Susan Purvis, unwilling to accept these needless deaths, starts a high-altitude medical school where she changes lives—and saves lives—for indigenous peoples; the invisible ones, the poorest and most underserved.
Considered two of the most dangerous and fatal mountains for clients and guides to climb, Susan volunteers for a decade training farmers and yak herders to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Everest. With no education or wilderness medicine experience whatsoever, the African and Sherpa guides become international superstars, learning to put their lives first, and going on to save the lives of others, too.
Susan captivates and inspires her audience with stories from the field.
You, too, will be inspired to look for opportunities to help the invisible become invincible which may mean looking at yourself.
Apa Sherpa and I trekked for 6 days near Mt. Everest to recruit top Sherpa students. I was determined to not just teach them basic lifesaving “how to’s,” but important unspoken rules: Put your own oxygen mask on first. Your life matters. It’s not just about what your clients demand but keeping your entire team alive. I discovered ramifications weren’t just safer climbing practices but 15 years later, there are significantly fewer deaths. The Sherpas I’ve taught have gone on to better their lives and communities in ways I could not have imagined at the time.