W.

Mitchell
The Badass Project
Transcript
Johnny B. Truant: Hey everybody, it is Johnny B Truant with the Badass Project
and Im very excited today to have on the line W. Mitchell. The reason that Im
really excited about this is that actually from my earlier life, I kind of grew up
listening to Tony Robbins. One of the people Tony talks about a bunch of times is
Mitchell, so when i found out that my new friend warren MacDonald knew him, I
said: Hey, lets set this up! So with that introduction from the island of Molokai
in Hawaii: Welcome, thanks for being here.
W. Mitchell: It is a pleasure, nice to be with you, Johnny.
JBT: Excellent. Well for anybody who is not familiar with you as an
inspirational/motivational speaker, start out by telling us your story, tell us what
happened to you around the early seventies.
WM: I was a grip man on the cable cars. Id been a marine, grew up on the east
coast of the USA and wound up stationed in Hawaii. Rough duty, right?
JBT: Right
WM: Absolutely loved it out there. Did a bunch of stuff, worked on the radio, did a
lot of things, and then in the late sixties I moved to san Francisco, and I got a job
driving the cable cars. I was also interested in flying. Id started my pilots training
to become at least a private pilot. I went on to do more than that it turned out.
Bought a brand new motorcycle one day and after Id flown an airplane solo that
morning, I was on my way to work and a laundry truck ran into my motorcycle,
knocked it to the ground, and the gas cap popped open. And I was burned over
65 % of my body. It was pretty touch and go for a while.
In the hospital for almost four months, lost all or most of my fingers and obviously
pretty severely burned, but thanks to some wonderful people in my world
including some fabulous nurses and my girlfriends mom, just some great folks in
my life, I was able to come back from that experience, not easy, not quick, but I
was able to come back from it. About two years after that accident I received an
insurance settlement.
And with that money moved to Crested Butte, Colorado, a gorgeous mountain
town, used to be a mining town, just really a beautiful town, and my life was anew
if you will. I obviously still had the short fingers and I had and unusual
appearance but I had learned a lot of things along the way. I was thinking just the

W. Mitchell
The Badass Project
Transcript
other day in conversation with a client (I do a lot of inspirational and motivational
speaking) and in the conversation with the client we were talking about gratitude.
It was important to him to share with some of his team the concept of gratitude.
Now, so you think to yourself: Lets see, youre grateful that you were burned
almost to death, Mitchell?
No, thats not what were talking about. What were talking about is: that was
then, now is now. I can spend a lot of time, and my theme is: its not what
happens to you, its what you do about it.
So, life happens, stuff happens, and then you get to choose what youre going to
do about it. So, am I grateful that I was burned? Well wow, thats pretty tough to
imagine, but am I grateful about what Ive learned, from the experience of being
burned or any other experience in my life? Do I want to go back and be burned
again so I can learn some more? No thanks, that was one time too many as far
as Im concerned. I got burned but I didnt sign up for being burned, I got burned.
But then the question is: Do you want to be grateful for your life, or do you want
to sit around and go Oh, ehh, I got burned, woe me. If I hadnt been burned, I
would have longer fingers and if I hadnt been burned, Id look like Brad Pitt. I
didnt look like Brad Pitt before I was burned by the way.
And so its finding whats good in your life, and what can be good and
recognizing that you get to choose most of your attitudes. Now, stuff happens
and you get angry and you get frustrated. I do, we all do, thats normal. But the
concept is that you pretty much get to choose your response, and thats really
Steven Coffees definition of responsibility: The ability to respond, the ability to
choose your response to what happens in your life, and if you recognize that
power, that incredible power, then when bad stuff happens, its not that you walk
around saying: Im so glad that bad thing happened but it happened, whether I
caused it or somebody else caused it and then I get to choose my response to
whats happening.
JBT: So you mentioned that you learned lessons and youre grateful for the
lessons youve learned. What kind of lessons have you learned from that
experience?
WM: Well obviously, one of the lessons that I had heard before and I think
intellectually believed was a really important cornerstone and listeners to this
interview might want to pay attention to this one particularly.

W. Mitchell
The Badass Project
Transcript

There is no absolute relationship between any two variables. You have to be

good looking and rich to be happy, anybody knows that. You have to have
inherited millions of dollars in order to be successful, everybody knows that. You
have to live in a beautiful place and have the right car and the right house and
the right job to be happy, everybody knows that. Well if you know that, then the
90 percent of us or whatever it is in the world, the 99 percent of us who arent
rich, who arent gorgeous, who dont have the right house and the right car at the
moment, then we have to be miserable, is that true? I dont think so.
I see lots of people in the world who seem to have a pretty satisfying life in spite
of the fact that theyre not rich, theyre not famous, theyre not beautiful but they
understand that you dont have to be any of those things to be happy and more
successful.
JBT: Were you always as optimistic as you are now, the whole idea of :its not
what happens to you or is this a new thing? I mean, not new, but you know,
since...
WM: Im hopefully more optimistic, more positive, more powerful, more wise,
more happy, more charming every day, wouldnt that be nice if I was? Am I warm
gracious, charming, happy, perfect every day? Well I tease people when I talk to
audiences and I say: Well if my dog could talk....
Im like anybody else. Except, the one thing I know that Im better than I ever
was, is I still wind up in the ditch. I still wind up losing my direction and falling
down or getting in the ditch, getting off course, but Im quicker at getting back out
of the ditch. I spend less time laying in the ditch saying: why me? and more
time saying: Well, what do I want to do now?
If you give yourself that power which we all have, its just recognizing it, its just
realizing it, that understanding that there are no absolute relationships between
any of these things. Oh, I wish I had more of this, oh I wish I had more of that.
Well if wishing would do it, I would probably have more money than Bill gates
and Id be smarter than Albert Einstein and the whole thing. Doing gets you
there. Wishing dreaming... go ahead and dream, a dreams good, but then go
ahead and do something to realize your dream.
The concept that I cant because... is not a valid concept for me, and I would
hope that I was pretty optimistic and pretty upbeat when I was 6 or 16 or 26 or 46

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but its like doing sit-ups. If you do one sit-up youre probably not going to get real
thin. But if you do 20 of them every day after a while that stuff does work. So do a
lot of sit-ups.
JBT: Do a lot of sit-ups, ok. Im gonna do that right now, take a break (chuckles).
Ok, theres more to your story though, right? Four years after your got burned
and you started to recover mentally and so forth. You got knocked down again,
was that like a huge, like.... can you tell that story?
WM: I had moved to this gorgeous little town, Crested Butte, Colorado, and I had
started some businesses, I took some of the money I got with the insurance
settlement, and helped two other guys start Vermont Castings, a woodstove
company. We manufactured wood range stoves, fireplace inserts, all kinds of
things. We started that company in about 1975 and I was the founding chairman
of the company and it ultimately became very very successful Made a lot of
money from that, started other businesses and I finished that pilots training that I
had been doing before I was burned, I got my private, my commercial, my multiengine, my instrument rating.
I love flying, had a beautiful airplane and agreed one morning, one cold
November morning, way up there in the mountains, to take four other guys and
my plane out to the west coast. We started to take off, rolling left in the air and
the plane fell out of the sky. It stalled crashed back into the runway. The four
guys were able to escape and I sat there, unable to move my legs. I started to
feel a pain in my back and later when I was told I was paralyzed, that Id never
walk again, Id have to use a wheelchair to get around, well thats terrible. Thats
awful. No one would want that or like that, or sign up for that.
Yeah, ok, but there are people in wheelchairs who do all right. A guy named
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the president of the United States, was elected
four times. He was elected more times than any other president was elected. He
did ok.
I had a neighbor when I was younger who was paralyzed in Korea, in the Korean
war. And he did ok, and maybe it is what you do about it.
Oh wow Mitchell, youre cool! So what you do is you go get burned, you go get
paralyzed, and then you can be really successful. Well I dont think you have to
get burned or get paralyzed to be successful, and I dont think that because
youre burned or paralyzed you have to be a failure, you have to be a loser.

W. Mitchell
The Badass Project
Transcript

I dont think that theres an absolute relationship between those two variables.
Now, did I wake up every morning saying: Wow, this is great, being paralyzed?
I dont know maybe I did, maybe I didnt, but the fact is: Im fine. Would I like not
to be paralyzed? Sure! That sounds good. Would I like to look like Brad Pitt?
Yeah, hes a good looking guy, Im sure the girls would love it.
But what does that have to do with me and anything? And to sit around, saying: I
cant, because... instead say: I can because... Its just a T. The difference
between success and failure is just a T. Take the T out of cant! And its the [...]
what can happen. And, does that mean... Whoa, Mitchell, youre so smart. Wow,
youre really cool.
So youve got it figured out, youve got all the answers, you know everything, and
you have 12 billion dollars. Well I have plenty of money and I live in a beautiful
place, Im in Molokai Hawaii today talking to you and I live in Santa [...] (Barbara)
my life is great, my lifes good. I have as much as Ive arranged to have in my life.
And in the proportions that Ive arranged to have it. So, the concept that... Aww,
my father beat me... or Aww I didnt get as much education or Oh i dont have
enough money to go to college.
I used to listen to a guy on the radio who said: Lets see, you cant go to college
because of what? Because you dont have money??? Well get a job! Yeah but
I wont make enough to- Well then get two jobs! (chuckles) Get three jobs.
You go to college for what, six hours a day? Lets see, I think that leaves 18 more
hours that you get to do something else. So go do whatever it takes.
And its the business of finding the obstacles, the barriers, as opposed to saying:
Ok what if? What if I really want to do this? How would I do it? See, could it be
that theres anybody else on the planet whos ever done it? Maybe. Maybe I can
just go and find that person or read a book about that person. See how they did
it. Find out somebody elses strategies.
JBT: So, at what point did you run for mayor? Because I love this part of the
story. Was it after at least after your first accident, right?
WM: That was after I was burned, after I was paralyzed I was telling this story
the other day to a friend of mine I got snagged against my will into filling a
vacancy on our county council. I didnt want to do it, I didnt want to be tied down
to that tiny responsibility.

W. Mitchell
The Badass Project
Transcript

So I was taken to the town council meeting one evening with the mayor and his
view of the thought of this mining company coming in and doing what they do,
destroy the mountain, destroy our way of life or damage the wilderness or the
environmental quality of the area. His view was that they were too big to say no
to. Nobody ever said no to them. And my view was: Well if we dont at least try, if
we dont stand up and say: Wait a second. What we have here is priceless.
What you have can be found in lots of places. And so, I ran for mayor and I won
by a landslide, it was dramatic, one of the Im surprised you didnt read about it
in your local papers: I won by 20 votes.
JBT: Well, it was before I was born.
WM: Thats probably why. And so I won by 20 votes, and the headline ran four
years later after two terms as mayor, and the mining company had left and
decided that it wasnt worth the effort after all. They called me The mayor who
saved the mountain. Now, in fact it was the whole community that saved the
mountain. All us working together saved the mountain. I got to be the leader and
I got the credit but it was again one of those great experiences, once in a lifetime
experiences, just an incredible education and unbelievable opportunity for me to
learn and see things and do things that I may never have done.
So I loved that experience and because of that I gained an even greater
understanding of the political world and I ran for our Congress, the United States
House of Representatives. At the end of that election my opponent got a few
more votes than I did and he got to go to Washington and I didnt and while that
certainly didnt feel good, it didnt make me unhappy. The fact is that the
experience made me extremely happy, because it was another wonderful
education, and to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, our former president, cousin
of Franklin obviously, he said: The losers in life are the people who dont get in
the race. Who stand on the sidelines of life and have never tasted neither victory
nor defeat.
And if you dont step up to the plate, to use the overused sports analogy and if
you dont swing the bat, if you dont take your hockey stick and hit the puck, or
swing for the puck at least, then youre never going to score a goal. Youre never
going to get a homerun. Now, the other side of that is: You are going to strike
out. And you are going to miss the goal. A bunch of times. And if you see that as
failure, instead of as experience, then youre going to go around your life saying:
Oh I never do anything, I can never do anything right.

W. Mitchell
The Badass Project
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Did you ever hear that expression when somebody says: I knew that was going
to happen, when they drop something and I think to myself: I wonder why you
did it then. If you knew it was going to happen, why do it? Well of course you
didnt know it was going to happen but if you had a little bit of a sense that this is
an iffy proposition, then do it differently next time. Dont stop doing it.
JBT: Mhm. So, when you were campaigning for mayor or any of the stuff youve
done: resuming flying after your first accident and then not having as much
fingers to grip the instruments and so on [...]. Do people say youre crazy, thats
ridiculous, is it too audacious for most people?
WM: Well its easy to understand that people cant see how you do something
with different equipment than they have. I have a wonderful friend called Jessica
Cox. Google her. Youll watch her fly an airplane. She has no arms. She was
born without any arms. I dont mean a little arm, or part of an arm, I dont mean a
flipper, I mean nothing. Zip.
And shes a pilot because she chose to be a pilot. Now, you look at her and you
go: Isnt she wonderful? Well, yes, she is wonderful. Because she gorgeous and I
love her, shes a great woman. But shes no more wonderful than you and me!
Except if we dont choose to be as wonderful as her. She just happens to
choose to live her life. And she has different equipment.
Helen Keller, she was blind and deaf and she in her life chose to be a
remarkable writer and an amazing person. But shes not a hero because she
does this. Jessica is not a hero because she chooses to live her life. Theres
nothing heroic about what I do or amazing about what I do; I just learned another
way to do it. We are adaptable creatures if we choose to adapt.
A baby learns how to walk. Thats the hardest thing youll ever do in your lifetime.
And he does it after failing if you want to use that term, thousands and
thousands and thousands of times. Imagine how many times that baby wants to
walk wants to standup, so it can run away from its mother but imagine how many
times that baby attempts to walk and falls down, and hits its head and lands on
its butt. And if it had any of the fear and the concern we have about public
reaction it would never walk because it would be afraid that they would call it
stupid because it was failing so many times. But a baby doesnt know what
failure means, they havent taught it that.

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The Badass Project
Transcript
Weve learned the concept really well, so when people look at me, people will
want to help me with my wheelchair. Sometimes, I need help with my wheelchair,
thank you very much. Come and ask me if you think that it looks like I need help,
and well discuss it. And if you need help, Ill come over and see if I can help you
as well. But I wont come over and start pushing you around the airport or
pushing you somewhere, I wont come over and look at you and say: God, you
must not be able to go anywhere, youre blind.
I have a buddy here on Molokai who camps out, he comes here every year for
months and he camps out by himself. He has a camp site and he wonders
around and hitchhikes to town and he does stuff. Well, he doesnt see himself as
amazing. Hes just somebody who likes to go camping.
JBT: So what do you think is behind the phenomenon where somebody is you
could say it for you and you could say it for Warren as well somebody who was
born with a certain set of equipment and then they have a setback. So for
instance your friend Jessica, I interviewed a guy called Kyle Maynard the other
day who was born with congenital amputation of all four limbs. Those people,
well ok, they had to learn and they had to adapt and you can definitely say they
had different equipment. Now, folks like you and Warren where there is this
abrupt change: What do you think this phenomenon is, where a lot of people will
give up, and theyll say: Im just Im going to opt out.
WM: I think , and I have no statistics to prove this point, I think there are a lot of
people who opt out who have all their equipment and a lot of people who dont
opt out who lose their equipment. And there are a lot of people who opt out after
they lose their equipment and a lot of people who dont opt out who have all their
equipment.
There is no absolute relationship between any two variables. And I think that one
of the bigger challenges that somebody has whos in the situation such as being
paralyzed, and I see it at the hospitals, at the rehab hospitals. Because theyre
overwhelmed by family members who are just grief stricken, who are
overwhelmed by this experience. And who cant imagine how the person that
they love so much is ever going to survive, so of course they knock themselves
out to do stuff for that person.
And thats one of the beauties of the rehab hospitals because the people who
work in the rehab hospitals say: Get off your butt and go do this. Its time to go to
work. Its time to do it. Yeah, I understand its a big change, I understand that its

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The Badass Project
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a shock, I understand that it creates a lot of struggle especially in the early
stages, but in the end theres no reason that you cant do just about anything you
want to do.
I told a young patient who had broken his neck in a climbing accident, who would
never climb a mountain again, who would never ski again and would never race
his bike again, and he had really given up - his life was miserable. And I said:
Before I was paralyzed, there was 10.000 things I could do. Now there are 9000.
I can dwell on the 1000 I lost or I can concentrate on the 9000 that are left. And
in my lifetime, if I do only a few hundred of those things, Ill be one of the most
remarkable people on the planet because its not what happens to you. Lots of
stuff happens. And sometimes its an emotional scar thats far more debilitating
and difficult than any external scars. Sometimes its a mental wheelchair that
limits people dramatically more than a physical wheelchairs do.
Again: Mitchell, you make it sound so easy! Nonsense; whats easy? Easy is
once upon a time there was a guy in Australia, a prime minister, who used to say:
Lifes not meant to be easy. Thats life. Life is when stuff happens and then you
get to choose what it is. Is it extremely hard, is it sort of hard, is it sometimes
hard...? Well, all of that can be true, but if youre listening to this interview you
probably already there was a great line in used by Ann Richards, the former
governor of Texas when George W. Bush was running against her for governor.
Ann Richards said that George Bush was born on third base, and thought he had
hit a triple. Now, that was a cute line and it worked well, and I loved Ann Richards
and the whole thing, but the fact is, just about anybody listening to this interview
was born at least on third base. When you look around the world and I dont do
a thing like: Well Im better off than that person or better off than this person I
dont do that.
However when you look around the world and you realize that half the worlds
population lives on less than two bucks a day, or two bucks or less a day. Half
the people on the planet. Every other person. Most of us, at least from the
economic resource standpoint are in pretty good shape. But there are people that
I meet in south Africa who live in little townships and dont have much, who seem
to have a decent life and there are people that I know who seem to have it all
whose lives dont seem to be quite so good.
JBT: Let me ask you my concluding question and then Ill let you get back to the
sunny day I see happening behind you.

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WM: Well ok, its actually windy and rainy, its kind of a monsoon and its
gorgeous out there. I love it when it rains out here, I just love it. Beautiful.
JBT: Yeah Im buried in snow so I dont know. My final question is this, and you
already sort of answered it but lets put a fine point on it. When somebody says,
and Im thinking especially of somebody who doesnt have an apparent disability
but anybody, who says that they cant do something. They say:
I cant do it. And Im thinking of excuses like I dont have enough time, Im the
wrong color, Im too young or too old. Whats your response to that?
WM: Well, it was Henry Ford I guess who said: If you think you cant, youre right
and if you think you can, youre right. Attitude has a huge amount to do with
what we accomplish and dont accomplish in life. And to get back to the thing of:
Its not easy, were not talking about whether its easy or not: Well I could just do
that, but you can find an excuse for almost anything.
If you want to excuse away the reason you cannot do it, well ok. That works for
me. Go ahead. Follow that course because obviously thats the one you want to
follow. Im not saying you can just snap your fingers and stuff jumps out and
lands in your lap. And Im not saying that sometimes people havent been
inflicted such scars, such deep seeded emotional stuff that they have much
bigger challenges than I could ever imagine. Im not saying that I have all the
answers for everybody.
Overwhelmingly most of us arent doing what we want because were choosing
to find an excuse not to do what we want. And: Oh, I wish I could do that... I
wish...
You know, we spend so much time looking back Oh you know, if only I had
turned left back there. Oh, if only I had been born rich, if I had only been born
something else, if I only had this, if my wife only did this, if my kids only behaved
this way... And theres a great line that says: Its ok to look back, just dont
stare. And all that time we spend staring at the Oh wish I would have, I could
have, oh I should have... All that time we spend is just wasted time.
Think of what it is you want to do. Think about the fact that theres probably a lot
of people who have done what you want to do and go... do it! Or dont do it and if
you dont do it Smile (chuckles)

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JBT: Right! Well thanks so much, thats everything I have for you. I really
appreciate you joining me, this is awesome. Thanks so much.
WM: Johnny, its a pleasure. Great being with you and great being with your
audience.
JBT: So this is Johnny B Truant saying bye, for the Baddass Project here with
W. Mitchell.