Living The Dream : Benjamin Jordan

Aninder: What's up everybody, welcome back to Paragliding Atlas. We are back with one more episode of the show and this time around we are talking about the topic of living the dream. As the name says it, we all have some dreams when we begin the sport and we all try our very best possible. To live it. And then there are some of us who go out and prove it and share the dream with the rest of the world through various ways. You know, usually when I kind of research for an episode or I try to write intro for it, there's a lot of background information that goes through my mind that,

you know, what can I bring in the first 10-15 seconds to keep the audience hooked to make sure that they listen to it until the end. But there was something about Benjamin that... kind of made me did not want to do it because even though i spoke with him for the first time ever in my life you know i've been following him and his adventures online like a lot of us have been in paragliding because of his exposure in the media and everything else that he does but somehow after recording this episode it just felt like I didn't need to because the content of the episode was

so good. So I'm not going to spill any beans for obvious reasons. But easiest way to find out is that give this episode a listen. To me, it was just like talking to a friend. And I think you guys will feel the same. These are just two old friends catching up and talking about how to dream, believe and achieve. But still, out of curiosity, if you're thinking why am I hyping this up so much, this guy has multiple world records and has done things which a lot of us would plan to for sure, but might not be able to complete if we do not have the willpower and the

mindset and everything else around it that is required to pull these adventures through. here it is benjamin jordan in part one that's another thing because the episode was so enriching that it just went much beyond the usual planned time for an episode for a listen so that's why i was like you know we'll split it into two so that the listeners can schedule their listening accordingly and that's why this is part one part two is coming out shortly it's already in post- production so as i always say stay tuned stay excited the magic has just begun

Benjamin Jordan, what an absolute honor to have a pilot of your stage around Panagliding Atlas, man. Thank you so much for coming. Hey,

Benjamin Jordan: thanks for talking to me today. Thank you for inviting me to be part of what you're doing. I was able to check some of it out and I don't know, I just, I got started getting excited again. It's been a bit of a, I've had a little bit of a break from my passion only because I've got these tiny children that I have to help raise right now. And I really value resources like yours that just keep people stoked no matter what's going on for them. So thank you for doing what you do and thank you for including me. Awesome. Benjamin, I was just wondering when I was

Aninder: preparing for the show that no one single podcast episode can basically do justice to the amount of feats that you have accomplished in our sport. And we have very limited time, but we will try and cover as many aspects as possible. But to begin with, out of curiosities, how many world records do you have to your name, man? Oh, that's a good question. I don't think, not too many. And world records are funny things, right?

Benjamin Jordan: Because as soon as you set them, someone else tries to or succeeds in breaking them because you bring the record into the spotlight, right? So... My first project, and it's a bit of a side note, was skateboarding across Canada. And that was, at the time, that was a world record. And then flying a powered paraglider back the other direction across Canada, which was at the time also a world record. And then just most recently, I say most recently because relatively speaking, during COVID, flying from Mexico to Canada, which still stands as a free-flying VolBiv world record. Got it, Benjamin. So basically, when I was researching more about these, one thing that stood out was these

Aninder: are not ordinary adventures. Like we all want to go out and have fun. And then there are some of your kind which want to go out and have fun in a whole different manner. So what I'm curious is that how do you conceptualize these, man? How do you plan these adventures? What's the drive? What's the motivation behind such crazy amounts of adventure seeking? Oh, wow. Okay. How can I be succinct? I think that it's important to first

Benjamin Jordan: state that where they are born, it's almost like babies having babies. Because when I first discovered paragliding back in 2003, my goal as a complete novice, I hadn't even done a forward launch yet. My goal was to fly from Mexico to Canada. This was a long time ago, almost 20 years ago. And I was pretty sure that I was going to do it the next summer. And again, I had never actually clipped into a paraglider before. And so I learned to paraglide and I loved it. I loved it, loved it, loved it. And I was even more certain that was going to happen. But then I quickly realized like,

whoa, XC, like that, you've got to catch these thermal things. That's crazy. They're invisible. How can I do this? It's in my heart, but it's not in my brain. It's not in my experience. I've never met anyone that could do that. How could I do it? And so... from there that baby of an idea that had birthed in my mind it had a baby and it was like wait a second look these people strapping motors to their backs okay they don't have to worry about so many of these different elements that i'm not good at so i'll just do that and i'll just fly really far using one of those But long

story short, that also requires a fair bit of skill and it requires some money to support that kind of a thing and to acquire that stuff. So then that baby, that had another baby. And that was, what can I do? I just learned to paraglide. I don't have any money. I don't have any paragliding skill. What can I do? I realized I can walk and I can skateboard. And so I said, okay, so let's just do something on the skateboard and see how that goes. And that's how that all started. And I wound up on this massive skateboarding expedition across Canada. And I learned so much in the process, so much about organizing long distance projects, so much about working with teammates, so much about

fundraising, so much. And it was incredibly enjoyable. I learned so much about my country, so much that I realized I don't have to stay in Toronto anymore where I was born and grew up. I could live anywhere. There's nice people everywhere. I don't have to be afraid. I learned so much from that baby of a baby. And so these ideas that somehow seem like they've come out of left field, that it's always just a matter of boiling the big idea down and getting rid of all of that. Okay, I can't do that. Can't do that. Can't do that. Can't do that. Okay, well, what's left? And

so what's left is what I would focus on. And then not ironically, I can't think of the word, but organically a project like that, for instance, skateboarding across Canada, that would give me the skills that I needed to then move to the next step and experience that baby's parent, which was powered paragliding across Canada, right? And then from that point, so on and so forth, now we're free flying across the United States. That sounds so interesting. And like hearing you talk about how you made it all happen is basically you structured it very well, like

Aninder: reproduction of ideas eventually coming down to knowing your reality and what is possible and then going for it. But this kind of makes me curious, and I'm sure some of our audiences can also resonate with this. Is there some sort of manifestation behind this, Benjamin? How does your visualization look like when you're thinking about these things? Of course, we all have our own way of dreaming and trying to have an idea. Even I had expectations before the flying, and then reality comes, and then you retune your expectations. But from what I see is that you are... very successfully able to navigate the expectation versus reality towards the point of manifesting it into what you want so can you help our

Aninder: audiences understand a little bit like how does your visualization in this context look like and what does when it really comes down to putting to work is that that that makes it count for you eventually

Benjamin Jordan: Sure. Okay. I think that one thing that I learned early on, and I have to learn this again and again pretty much every day, but it's really valuable, is that In order to avoid that feeling of disappointment that we know on big scale, on small scale, we have to be acutely aware of when there is an embedded expectation. Somehow, whenever there's an expectation, There can be, there can be a surprise to the upside. You can be blown away, but that you'd have to be, have really set the bar low for yourself to have that feeling. So if you're someone like me who wants to set a high bar for

themselves, it's a fine line to walk. And it's important to, to. keep an eye on that bar and say, you know what, that bar is there, that bar is high, but I don't need to meet that bar today. An example I would like to give from my life shortly before I got into paragliding was that I wanted to become a leader inside of a community that actually didn't even exist yet in my city of Toronto. I was 23, it was 2003, and I was taking a leadership course. And so I had to organize the event as part of my homework. And I realized I don't want to be a leader in the photography

community, in the fashion photography community. That was what I was at the time. I don't want to be a leader amongst my friend group, my friends from high school, which is still the people I hung out with at the time. I want to meet more people that are into skateboarding, that are into longboarding. And I organized an event in Toronto called the Board Meeting. And it was tongue in cheek because essentially it was a huge flash mob that I envisioned where all these skateboarders would come together dressed up like businessmen and businesswomen. And we would take over the city of Toronto. Toronto, for your listeners that don't know, is like the New York City of Canada. It's like our business. So I

just thought it would be hilarious if everyone was congesting the city on skateboards wearing business attire. I still think it's hilarious. And so I put up all these signs all over the city. I didn't know many longboarders at the time and longboarding was not popular back then, not in Toronto anyway. And so I put up all these signs, I got on the radio a little bit and I was even threatened by the police. They told me like, this is actually not a legal sport. You can't organize an event like this. You don't have a permit. And I was really nervous going into it. But what I was really nervous about was not being thrown in jail or fined, it was actually that nobody would show up. And of all the reporters that I

had convinced to interview me so I could gain publicity for this project, people kept saying, hey, how many people do you expect? How many people do you expect? I'd never done anything like this before in my life. And I realized that was the question that kept stressing me out. And I was saying, I don't know, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30, maybe 40. And at some point, I realized that I need to get rid of that expectation. How many people are going to show up? And so people would ask me, how many people are going to show up? And I'd say, at least one. And that's okay,

because... That's the first year. This is the inaugural board meeting. Maybe only one person shows up. Maybe it's just me. But as long as I show up, then the next year, maybe two people will show up. And then the next year, maybe four people will show up and then so on and so forth. As soon as I got over that it could just be me and that would still be a successful event, the event would go on. I didn't worry anymore about how many people would show up. And instead I could just put my energy into promoting it, to spreading the word and inviting people to come when I

saw them on the street, yada, yada. And so I, Long story short, 50 people showed up and that was mind blowing for me and for everybody involved. Nobody that rode long boards could have imagined 50 of them, of their peers all together for one event. And we had a great time. The next year, a hundred people showed up. The next year, 150 people showed up. I only ran the event for three years. And then I left the city on that skateboarding across Canada trip. But my peers continued to run the event and they continue to run it to this day. It would have just had its 21st

anniversary. And now something to the tune of two or 3,000 people show up, even if it's raining for this event. And it's important to recognize that I would have... killed this baby before it was even born if I had continued to be so paralyzed by fear of that maybe nobody would show up. And I appreciate this feels far away from paragliding because this is more to do with like the rejection of my peers and people saying, hey, this is not a good idea. And some people did say that. But the bigger picture for me and what I learned from it was to not be concerned about how

it went, but just to try and to document whatever it is and to recognize that as valid. Because when you look back on it, big picture, 20 years, hey, it would have been cool if I was the only person there. That would have been a real... I feel milestone because after 20 years, there would still be 2000, 3000 people there. And so I feel like that, freeing myself of that expectation, not being worried about the numbers in this case, which is really what matters for an event like this. I feel it was a big part of that and just embracing the idea of failure than that. And then

that idea of being okay with failure, has allowed me to plan these much, much more extravagant projects where it'd be very easy for me to fail in one way or another. Got it. This does resonate with a lot of other kind of advice that some of the most esteemed guests and some brilliant pilots

Aninder: in our sport has given on the show earlier. But one kind of clarification that I would request you to throw some more light on And that is a lot of them say that forget about the end result. Just keep on working on your craft until you reach wherever you want to or enjoy the journey. And one initial like one important essence of the fact is that I hear this a lot where they say that keep on doing it as long as it's fun. Now, failure or the expectation, having the kind of expectation of failure or challenges are not fun at all. There are times when, let's say, even a

normal cross-country flight, you will hit turbulence, you will have to go outside your comfort zone, and there will be times during that adventure when it will not be fun. drawing a thin line between giving up when it is not fun of course the flight is a very it's not the best example here because you're dealing with safety and a lot of other things as well it's a very dynamic adventure but chasing such other adventures like this which are long term and spread over a period of days even if it's raining and even if not enough people show up and it's not fun how is there a strategy that you put to your mind where you were like i'm not gonna block off i'm just gonna block off all of this i don't know if negativity

is the correct word for it but not the whatever i'm not getting the expectations from it and i'm still gonna keep on working on the craft like how do you navigate when the journey is not so fun still going towards it Yeah, I think that a big part of it is to, because I hear what

Benjamin Jordan: you're saying about things not being fun. And I think that a big part of it is to really try to cut yourself a lot of slack. And inside of paragliding projects for me, what that looks like, because we all know about pair waiting, right? Is that I don't assume that I'm gonna be able to finish a project that should take me a week inside of a week. I give myself months and months to be able to do something that maybe a better pilot or a luckier pilot could do in a week. Because I find that as long as I have enough time, then I don't feel the pressure. I don't feel the pressure to

make poor choices in terms of when I fly. I don't feel the pressure to... I don't feel like I'm going to fail just because my first flight was only 50K and it should have been 150K. And now I'm not going to reach that target. So it gives me... a lot more room to treat myself like one of those parents that's it's okay you can do anything you set your mind to and then just keep reminding myself that i have i really do have a lot of time and i think that's one thing especially in my life pre-parenthood that i was able to afford myself that I think is really important for other people

who want to chase their dreams, especially when it comes to paragliding is to really set an unrealistic amount of time aside to be able to do it and recognize, Hey, if I get done with this quick, then I can do whatever I want. I can start editing sooner. I could go on another trip. I could go hang out with my friends. I go to the beach, but give myself that extra few weeks, few months, whatever it is to be able to finish and Incredibly, if I look back on all of my projects, I've never finished early. I almost always finish at the maximum amount of time that I had, regardless of the

circumstance. And so that's how important it is for me to have carved out all of that time that may seem unreasonable from the get-go in terms of being able to finish a project, but also finish it, and sorry, finish the project, but also enjoy that journey that i'm not stressing out over am i even going to finish this meanwhile i'm trying to get to canada i'm still in arizona i don't have to stress out about that it took me two months to fly across arizona when i was only budgeting for a month for each state because I'd given myself an extra month. And so I used it there, right?

Just, sorry, not to jump ahead, but I think that's an important part is just to really cut some slack, let the dog off the leash. It needs to smell that fire hydrant for a few extra minutes. That's okay. That's a beautiful analogy. I don't really want to corner you with the follow-up

Aninder: question, Benjamin, but let's say some of us do not have that luxury of time. Because of course, if you are blessed enough to have unlimited time or something, and I'm just putting it in my shoes, I'm putting myself in these shoes, that alright, I have this Paragliding Atlas podcast project that I'm working on, and of course there are expectations versus reality. Is it 100 listeners? Is it 1,000? Is it 10,000? Am I going to make it? Is the show going to be super successful? Or what's going to happen? Will it allow me to live my dreams? And then The time constraint comes that, all right, you are on borrowed time because I moved from Asia to Europe to try and chase this passion and make it a

Aninder: reality. And then, of course, I have to justify my visa status and everything else. Personal challenges, personal goals. Everything comes down to putting in the effort versus the timely reward that should come before a specific time. Otherwise, you have to change your direction and then chase it through a hole. You just have to do some tweaks. So, of course, your kind of outlook works very well for people who have the privilege. But for someone who might not be having that kind of luxury, what would you say how to navigate this as successfully as possible without losing out too much on your goals? Okay, so I feel like we're almost having like a conversation of supply and demand here,

Benjamin Jordan: right? Where I could further elaborate into someone who might, look, let me give you a little bit more of a picture of who I have been so that, because people might hear, how do you have three months to do this? How do you have five months to do that? So back in, it was 2008, right?

I had just flown a powered paraglider across Canada. I was making a film. It was like my first film about that. It's called The Canadian Dream. And I wanted to do more of that. And I wanted to do it as... a free flying paraglider pilot. But I knew that I was going to have to invest a ton of energy into that. I knew that there wasn't a ton of money involved, going to be a lot of money involved, especially at the beginning from what I could tell. So I thought I can't do this and continue to pay my rent and continue to live in this town the way that I am and can all of these things.

So if I can't do what I love and meet the overhead that I've got here, then what I can either do is change what I'm doing and no longer do what I love so I can meet the overhead or reduce my overhead to match what I'm able to achieve with what I love. So I literally reduced my overhead and I took the school bus that I had purchased to follow me across Canada for my assisted powered paraglider record project. And I converted it into a winterized cabin, good enough for Canadian winters. And I lived in that. And I had a plan to live in that thing for 10 years. And I did that. And

during that time, I paid almost no rent. I lived rurally. I grew a lot of my own food. And I stocked up on stuff. And I lived in a very humble way in order to be able to afford myself the time to do whatever the heck I wanted to do. And not to have to worry about paying my bills and all of this kind of stuff. So I appreciate that's also not extremely realistic for most people out there. But the point is realistic, which is that, look, okay, so you're in a different position, right? You have this dream, but you've got this job. You've got these children. These are things that

I'm familiar with now. okay so now because i i can't take on my other strategy of living like a squatter in a school bus that i don't have any bills now i've got some bills now i have these children that i love and i want to spend time around so now i can't adjust the overhead i can't move my family into the school bus right i i do have bills to pay So now that's a hard limit and I do have less time. So now what I have to do is I actually have to adjust the other end. I have to create projects for myself that accommodate that, that are realistic inside of that. So now I have to

downscale those in order to meet that reality. And so it would be unrealistic for me right now to think that I could go and allocate five months to paragliding from Mexico to Canada given my current lifestyle. So in the past, I changed my lifestyle. I reduced all my overhead in order to accommodate going on these large, expensive, time consuming projects. Now I can't change the lifestyle nearly as much. So now I'm going to have to adjust the projects in order to meet them. But at the end of the day, that's all you've got. If your key is fixed, then you have to adjust the lock. If your lock is fixed, then you can adjust your key. Words of wisdom. So many analogies. I truly apologize. I like your

questions and I like this conversation, but I hope that this sounds reasonable to your listeners. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's brilliant.

Aninder: And I hope the audience appreciates it too, because it's coming straight from your heart and you're putting it as simply as possible. I think to sum it up, it's like figure out your resources and then figure out your plans and then try and meet a sweet spot and go discover that yourself because you're the only one who can answer that. Nobody else can do it for you. And then you just make some magic. I imagine that you've

Benjamin Jordan: got a lot of younger listeners, too. People are getting into paragliding. They're younger and younger. And people that are trying to chase these things and hear maybe some ideas from older pilots like me might be listening right now. And I feel like those ones there, they probably have a lot of societal pressure, like I did, to live in a certain way, look a certain way, drive a certain car. All of these things, those are just speak to those ones directly. Those are the ones that can seriously make a change. Like I did back when I was whatever I was 28 to say, I'm just going to do everything I can to reduce my budget, to reduce my cost of living so that. I have the freedom and the flexibility to do

whatever I want for the next whatever it was. In my case, I bought myself 10 years. And inside of that 10 years is really how I built my career to this point. I could not have done that. I could not have done that and taken on these things. I couldn't have just disappeared and gone to Malawi to teach some guy to paraglide with two days notice. And now I'm gone for two months to do this project. if I had any sort of commitments, if I was doing anything other than just living in a school bus in the woods where nobody knew, right? And these kinds of things would have been

completely unrealistic if I was still trying to live in a nice place and have all these bills that I had to negotiate and had to pay and all these jobs that I had to do on the side in order to get by. So just to those folks, whether you're young or you're not, if you can bring down that insane overhead, that insane cost of living today, which really everyone's dealing with it. Everyone's dealing with the insane costs of today. If you can just bring that way down, You may find yourself in a position where you can just all of a sudden pick up and go and you can dream about

being in India today. And then you could be there in a week and feel very comfortable. That was my life for a very long time. And that is what has allowed me to create the things that everyone's so interested in knowing about. Indeed. And I think this just brings back the most

Aninder: beautiful and famous saying that where there's a will, there's a way. And I've seen a lot of super successful people just apply this and make it happen. So if you really want it, you will figure it out. It's as simple as that, I think. And just really don't feel that there's really any value

Benjamin Jordan: in the narrative that society's placing on you. I'm not gonna give examples, because everyone's got their own feelings of pressure. but those things aren't real. They're just ideas and they're only as real as we make them. And if they're not, if those things aren't working for you and maybe they'll work for you down the road, maybe they are important, but maybe they're not important like this year or this decade. Understand that what's important to you right now is what's important to you. And you didn't ask me about this, but it's this little thing that I keep in the back of my mind, which is that When people do something that they love versus doing something that they don't love, it is said that

they are something around 10 times more effective. So if you are doing something right now that you don't love, you are 10 times less effective inside of whatever it is that you're doing than the thing that you're thinking about doing. So I would strongly encourage people to consider, just really consider adjusting their big expectations as far as how society views them and to consider making some change in order to be able to steer more towards or directly towards the things that they are most passionate about. Because that's the impact that we can have, right? It's the 10X impact. returns that we want to get and that we want to offer the world not the one x doing something that we don't like just to be

able to get by anyway this is so cool i'm while listening to this i'm getting goosebumps that why aren't we told this in the school or in the classrooms that Cause that, cause somehow, and I don't, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this. We're not told this stuff in school because it just doesn't like we live inside of this huge system. And I'm not going to be someone that's saying that it's being controlled by any one person or any one entity or group. I don't have to believe that. I just know that everything in our universe exists inside of equilibrium and And so in order for our species to continue to be what it is, like a colony of bees, you've got the one queen, right? And then you've got all these

workers, right? And all those workers are so important because they need to keep that queen alive because that queen keeps the order. And we have to ask ourselves, are we gonna be a worker? Are we gonna be a queen? And it's not possible for everyone to be a queen. And so I feel like the schools, for instance, they're there organically to create the balance that's required to create enough workers to support the queen. There's so many things, like the things that I've talked to you about, but also just really just like the basics of investing economically and the compounding effects of all that stuff. You just don't learn that stuff. Although it would be wise for them, it would serve us if they

taught it to us in third or fourth grade. and that we would really start that kind of stuff really young and not just be frivolous consumers. But in order for our country's GDPs to be what they are, we need to consume blindly. And so there's so many things like this where hopefully podcasts like yours are helping turn the lights on for people who are experiencing a little bit of darkness. Indeed, and I think your

Aninder: parallel adding atlas is all about sharing knowledge. But I think we basically circled back to the theory of evolution or Darwinism, as most of the people say that. It's survival of the fittest. So if you want to go ahead and chase something that is not the usual path, then go out and do something which is not the usual path, and then be ready to pay the price on the way. And the harder you chase it, the higher you go, basically.

Benjamin Jordan: Man, honestly, feel free to edit this because I appreciate I can be a little bit long-winded, but there's this other aspect, and you might be able to use this at any point in this interview, but there's this thing that I would love to share. And it was a thing that I learned while skiing with my friend on a ski hill many moons ago. We would go to the ski hill almost every day. We had a season's pass. Again, the privilege of living in a school bus. And we would always be looking for the best snow. And we found that on a lot of days, it hadn't snowed for a week or two and there was

no good snow. But then we invented this thing called awkward lines. awkward lines was that it was the idea that, okay, if you just keep following the path of least resistance from the top of the lift down to the bottom of the ski lift, you're going to keep hitting the same thing that Beth and Veronica and James all hit, whether it's a black run, a green run, a jump, whatever it is. But if you go out of your way to look for two or three birch trees that would be really awkward to fit your body through, and you just try to fit your body through there, not only is

behind those birch trees gonna be a fresh stash of untouched snow, but from that point, even if you took the path of least resistance from that point, you would end up hitting all this extra cool snow. Because nobody started from that awkward point. So whenever we found one of these things, we were in the forest, we're like 20 meters apart from each other going, ooh, we'd say awkward lines. And that would let the other one know, hey, look, I just found this really awkward spot. Get in here. Let's get in here and see what happens. And that really has to, that's a great visual representation of not following the herd, but not being so contrary in that it's painful, just making a couple choices and then

following the path of least resistance and starting, but starting from that awkward place, starting with that awkward line. Does that sound okay to you? That sounds wonderful, man. And there's no editing required for such amazing content.

The funny part in my mind, maybe you won't find this funny, is awkward lines. I imagine whenever you yell awkward lines, you have to crack your voice. Awkward lines! Awkward lines it is, and I'm so happy to choose my awkward lines. Very awkward. Yeah. But I think I'm not going to take this

Aninder: point forward and let the audience process it the way they want it to, because I think you just put it very beautifully across. And for anybody who just wants to re-listen to it, just hit the 15-second rewind button on Spotify or whatever you listen to this to, and it's nothing but waste of distance right there, I would say. I really want to bring up this question that I had saved up for a later part of the episode, but we are having such a beautiful conversation around this point, and Paralyzing Atlas is all about, this show is all about sharing the truth and the reality and all aspects of the sport that we do. This, you can call it inherent, I wouldn't say inherent fear, but inherent doubt or

something, but there are highs and lows in any kind of lifestyle that you chase, and And chasing dreams comes at a cost, undoubtedly. So what I'm wondering is, the lifestyle that you have lived and made for yourself, we have talked about all the how to make it and how glorious it is and how much it gives back to you. But are there any downsides to it that you would like to share, man, that you have felt at times that this was hard? And every part has its own obstacles. And if there is any discussion of hardships that you can present to our audience, if any, I'm not saying

Aninder: just make them up for this question, but I'd love to have your idea on that perspective as well. No. Because, okay, I'm not... Okay. Throughout my

Benjamin Jordan: journey. Okay. So not right now, but throughout my journey. And I, this is, I think really important because people may be just starting their journey or they may be on their journey. I

don't like to use the word depression casually. Because I have a sense that maybe I have no idea what the extent of genuine depression is for people that have it. And so I'm not trying to say that I have lived that. But I think that everyone has their own experience of that in some way. If you've had an extreme high, then it's not hard to feel an extreme low.

None of the things that I've done, and let's just start with the skateboarding across Canada, have really resulted in any kind of like lasting euphoria that I would imagine. Here I am. I'm skateboarding across Canada every day for five months and nine days. I'm meeting all these people. I'm shaking their hands. I'm seeing their smiles. We're in the media. And I just feel like I'm on the moon. And I'm thinking, this is it. Like my life just, I'm like, I'm just going to ball, like not crying. I'm going to be balling, have this epic life from now on. Thank you. Thank you universe for giving me this gift, this privilege. But a year later, I'll find myself

like a blackout drunk alcoholic now living in Vancouver with no friends. you because I've left Toronto in pursuit of living in the mountains, being a paraglider, but not knowing how I'm gonna make that transition from, okay, yeah, great, that's great, but you skateboarded across Canada, but you can't get the support to fly a paraglider, fly a powered paraglider across Canada. You don't know how to do that. You're feeling too insecure. And all of those epic euphoric feelings that you were feeling while skateboarding across Canada, they're nowhere to be found. So why don't you just have a drink? Okay, why don't you have to why don't you have three until the point that like,

you've actually got a problem. So that's just one example of me going through a real real down period between these journeys. I don't think that it's easy to argue that would be a real downside, and a real risk to someone like myself. Maybe not everyone has the same personalities where they could become so addicted to something like alcohol. But even then, long story short, I left Vancouver. I went to Nepal for five months with the goal of learning to be a great cross-country pilot and get sober. I became an okay cross-country pilot in Nepal and I did get sober. And so paragliding saved me from that and it gave me the sobriety and steered me towards what it was that I needed to do to convert

skateboarding into powered paragliding. But then the same thing happened. I think it was either 09 or 2010. I think it was 2009. I flew across Canada in the powered paraglider. Again, absolute euphoria, world record. Oh my goodness, on all the news. And then... A year later, I'm completely lost because now I've done this next incredible thing, but how am I going to keep that going, right? How am I going to get there again? Because you've touched the moon and now you're back on earth. And all you can think about, again, is how do I get back to the moon? But that's not where the inspiration comes from, right? The inspiration comes from an idea that sort of tickles your soul. And then just by following

that, watering that seed, let's just say, it grows into a plant that happens to touch the moon or doesn't. But it's not just that you want to touch the moon. And I keep getting, I would keep getting trapped. And I feel like to this day, I still get trapped in that. And it can be incredibly unsatisfying. And I've learned to cope with it more now. And I don't, I wouldn't really call it, I wouldn't even venture to call it depression now because I've seen it come and go so many times. But It has felt that way many times. And I've been stuck in those ruts for, let's

just say a year at a time until something happens. I have some sort of a dream either while I'm asleep or while I'm awake. And it gives me this little flicker of light, just this little flicker. And I realized, oh, I got to feed that. I have to feed that. Let me write about it. Let me talk about it to somebody. Let me do a little bit of research. Let me just keep feeding that fire and see if I can grow it into a... to a blaze. And that's where every single one of these ideas has come from, right? But there is a prolonged period of darkness, I would say, that precedes that blaze.

And that would be a major downside, I think, for having such highs. I love your honesty, man. Not a lot of people are this transparent while

Aninder: sharing their journeys and all the adventures. And the way you're putting it across is nothing but pure gold. I cannot believe the amount of value you're adding to my show and the audiences out there. So thank you, man. It's an absolute honor. Oh my, this is... It's my honor. Love it. You know, just quickly, I want to touch upon this fact. When you say there's a light or there's a thought, do you believe there's a stronger power or some kind of thing helping you push? Just out of curiosity, not divulging into any other topic, but just how does that happen? Or is it just the way of life, the way you have lived ever since growing up? That's how your life was? I couldn't deny that there are forces that are greater

Benjamin Jordan: than I or anyone really can imagine. I say, or anyone, because I really, I feel like it's important to, for me anyway, to recognize that anyone who thinks that they have the answer probably doesn't. And that this is to just... point at any of, I don't know what, are there thousands of different religions that people follow around the world? I feel like these are great ideas and great codes to live by, but to also recognize that there may be an even greater force that is connecting all of this. what do i say first here i've done a lot of presentations usually before and after a film and almost always there's someone in the audience that wants to come up to me after the q a and talk to me about god because i'm not

talking about god In my films, I'm not talking about God in my Q&A, but they see me talking about God when I'm answering some of the questions or when I've presented something in a film. And I'm always polite and I listen, but I... did not grow up in a religious capacity. And I have traveled, I'm very lucky to have traveled around the world and seen so many different people with so many different gods and see their passion for that and see them being great people because of that passion. And I respect that and wouldn't choose to change anything about anyone that's doing right by their neighbor. and being a great contributing member to society in whatever they're doing. But none of those stories,

none of those things that people want to use to explain the world away really makes sense to me. if there were to be some greater force that I think everyone could be humbled by and that continues to humble me every day that I'm privileged to go for a walk with my son or my family is the power of nature. And I don't just mean a tree growing over there, a plant growing over there, like the atmosphere, the water, the way that the gravity works, which is nature, not just within our universe, sorry, our world, but nature within our greater universe. all of this is having an incredible effect on us. And as human beings, I feel scratched the surface to know that, wow, this is big, but I don't think any of us really

have a sense of how big, but that thing that is that big truly is impacting us. And so I would just say, whatever you believe in, if it's working for you, if it makes you feel great, then just keep believing in it. I believe in, I don't wanna sound cliche and say, I believe in the universe, right? I believe in something that is so big that i can't even begin to imagine it but i do believe that i am completely and we are all completely being affected by that thing and so all that can leave me feeling is infinitely humble and i feel like that does help inside of dealing with some of these

expectations that we talk about of what is it that we can achieve, but then also dealing with the expectations of the sort of, to use an expression, like the negative Nancy inside of us, because the negative Nancy says, and no offense to Nancy's out there, but that tells us what we can't achieve. And so let's also be humble there, right? And realize that the truth is we have no idea. All we can do is go out and try. But to answer your question, that is the force that I believe in, is the force that is so far beyond me that I couldn't even begin to describe it. Now, I

Aninder: love it, man. Of course, there's no way to put a definition on this because everybody has their own way of defining such a feeling or such a power. But I think this circles back to what you said earlier in the show that you are 10 times more productive when you do something that you want. And it reminds you of a very famous proverb or saying from back home. I don't know if this is universal, but it should be. And it goes that when you really want something so bad, The universe conspires to give it to you in all its abundance, provided you put in the effort and you do the

needful and everything. So I think the bottom line is, when you decide that you want this, and there are times when there are challenges, regardless, because you really still want it so bad from the bottom of your heart, and it's a low phase or something... the universe or that higher power or whatever you can define it, figures out a way to bring you out of that and show you, shine the light and guide you on the paths to get back and chasing glory and making it happen, I guess. I think on that note, Benjamin, we have run out of time for this part. Initially, I thought I'll bring you on board for the topic of flying and filming, but the way this conversation is going, this is more like living the dream.

So what we're going to do is we're going to save the flying and filming part for the second edition of this episode. So for now, it's been an absolute honor and a pleasure. Please do stay tuned to all our audiences because Part two of how to make your dreams come true on screen and share it with all the audiences across the globe is coming up. And Benjamin is here to guide us through it. With an unexpected twist.