Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jason Dennen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Jason, so happy to have you with us today and there is so much we want to ask you about. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others developed certain skills or qualities that we are struggling with can be helpful. Along those lines, we’d love to hear from you about how you developed your ability to take risk?
I was sitting in my wheelchair in my hospital room. My nurse opened the door and walked into my room for my afternoon health assessment. His first words to me that day were, “Don’t stop taking risks, you won’t be happy if you avoid taking them. Don’t allow your accident to prevent you from taking the risks you will need to take in the future.” This was not the advice I was expecting from my nurse but it was just what I needed to hear.
For the last 3.5 months many people had been telling me all the things I wouldn’t be able to do after my skydiving accident. I had crashed through a cattle fence and into the side of an airplane hangar going 30 mph. I broke 20 bones, 4 organs had to be fixed, my heart ended up on the wrong side of my chest and I spent 8 days in a coma. Every person that entered my room liked to remind me that I was lucky to be alive. But was I lucky if I wasn’t willing to take risks? I was happy to be alive but just existing would not be enough for me.
My alarm clock went off at 10:00 PM, 3 hours after I went to bed. Truth be told I had been awake for at least an hour just waiting for that sound to give me permission to start my day. It was time to see if I was still willing to take a risk. I microwaved some chicken and rice to get some calories in my body for the upcoming journey. I hopped in my car and headed north. I left so early the bars were still open so the drive through lane of the 24hr fast food restaurant was empty. I left early because I wanted to be alone in the moonless night to decide if I was ready or not to push myself beyond the limits of my comfort. I increased my speed and my shoulders hunched forward in an aggressive position as I quickly turned my wheel back and forth as I drove through the increasingly tight S curves that led me to the dead end road where the real work would begin.
The parking lot at the end of the road was completely empty. Perfect. I put on my backpack, turned on my headlamp to add a little light to the dark trail. It had been a long time since I had been alone approaching a mountain covered in darkness. The darkness makes me question myself. Am I ready for this? It has been so long. Am I still the guy that can do this? My crampons and ice tools rattle as I walk over the snow covered trail. I finally reach the bottom of the ice covered mountain and can barely make out the start of the ice gully where I am supposed to start. I quickly strap my crampons to the bottom of my boots and pull out my ice tools. I look up to the dark unknown, take a deep breath and start climbing. Each step requires a kick of my boot into the ice. To make upward progress I must trust that I have properly kicked hard enough into the ice to stick to it. Each swing of my arms with my ice tool penetrates the ice. I test that the pick of the ice tool sticks enough that I can pull on it hard enough to allow me to make upward progress up the sheet of ice that towers over me.
Doubts start to recede into the back of my mind as I start getting into a rhythm and I memorize the sound that my crampons and ice tools make when they stick in the ice with enough purchase that I can climb upward without my foot slipping or ice tool ripping out of the ice. I am in my own little world, in the present moment, nothing exists beyond the 10 feet that my headlamp illuminates. Slowly I climb deeper and deeper into the danger zone. Cracking sounds from the ice hundreds of feet above grabs my attention. Is that ice going to be funneled down the gully I am climbing and rip me off the mountain? If it does come down at me, I won’t be able to see it until it is too late or not at all with the speed it will build up over those hundreds of feet.
I ignore the crackling of the ice and continue to progress upward until the gully narrows to 10 feet wide and the ice and snow starts to become thinner and thinner until it disappears at a dead end where a rock wall guards additional progress. This is where the real risk starts. Everything up until this point was just a warmup for what was about to come. I was not aware that I was going to have to climb this rock before I started. It had been 18 years since I had climbed this mountain and conditions had changed over the years. Had I changed over the years? Was I still willing to take the risk? One misstep would mean a 2000-foot fall to the bottom of the climb with little potential for survival. The options were retreat down the route on the quickly deteriorating snow and ice which had its own set of dangers or climb my way up this rock headwall and to the summit.
I removed my gloves and hooked my ice tools over my shoulders so they wouldn’t fall down the mountain. Finally, daybreak came which gave me enough light that I could make out the small imperfections in the rock where I could place the metal spikes from my crampons on and grab with my hands to make upward progress. My hands were losing feeling from grabbing onto the cold rock but I was not going to trust my life by grabbing this rock with my hands covered in clumsy gloves. I blew on my hands hoping that feeling would return. I slowly edged my way up the rock and was able to exit the rock face onto easier ground. I thought I was close to the top and through the difficult section until I turned the corner and saw an additional rock wall that I would have to climb to get to the top of the mountain. This time there was no choice other than to climb it as the rock I had just climbed was far too difficult to climb back down.
There were two options: tuck my tail between my legs and make the humiliating 911 call to search and rescue and get plucked off the mountain via helicopter or climb the rock wall. I stared at it for 5 minutes trying to figure out exactly where my feet and hands would need to be placed to surmount the rock wall. I wasn’t 100% sure I had the ability to climb this rock section. It seemed blank without many holds. Adding to the difficulty I had not rock climbed in a few years and had not attempted to climb rock with my big clumsy ice climbing boots with the added difficulty of having these metal spikes attached to the bottom in 15 years. I took a deep breath and started up and slowly progressed. The sun finally rose enough to start illuminating the rock 20 feet above where I was hanging on the wall. As I stared up to see the light shining on the rock it reminded me of the first light I saw shining through my hospital window when I opened my eyes for the first time after my 8-day coma. I had been searching for 8 days in that coma for the light beyond the darkness of the coma and today I had been battling through 8 hours of darkness to get back to the light of the rising sun. I started tapping into that same place in my mind it took to battle through that coma in order to climb that last 20 feet of rock. There was no room for error as the consequence of failure was the loss of my life. I delicately placed the metal front points coming off of my boots onto the dime sized ledges in the rock and clung to the rock with my finger tips and kept 3 points of contact attached to the rock while I moved one limb at a time slowly and with absolute precision as if my life depended on it because it did.
After 15 minutes of slowly inching up rock I pulled on top of a rock ledge and then climbed the last 100 feet incline of snow to the summit. I took a risk battling through the coma as I had no idea what was waiting for me on the other side. I started climbing that rock on this mountain without knowing what was on the other side. Taking risk takes practice. It is not comfortable but by continuing to take risks you start feeling accustomed to the discomfort and have the confidence that you can survive it.
After getting to the summit the heavy weight of the moment lifted as I was safe and all I had to do was walk down the easy side of the mountain, but before leaving the summit I scanned the horizon for the other mountains in the area. After surviving this mountain I started planning next week’s climb and then thought about what I would climb two weeks from today. For the next 6 Saturdays I reacquainted myself with risk until all of the snow and ice melted to the point where there wasn’t much left to climb. All I was left with were the thoughts of what risks I was going to take the following spring when the ice on the mountains came into climbing condition again.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Before I became an author, inspirational public speaker, and motivational thought leader, I was an ICU trauma patient fighting desperately for my survival while trapped in a medically induced coma for 8 days.
I am a New Jersey native and moved to Colorado in September 2001 to explore my limits. For over two decades, I have worked in financial services. I am an avid athlete and have competed in more than 50 multisport races.
I began skydiving as a release from my 70-hour work weeks as a financial professional. My passion became life-or-death in June 2018 when on an otherwise ordinary jump, a freak gust of wind violently threw me off course through three wire strands of a cattle fence and into the metal wall of an airplane hangar crashing at 30 miles per hour. The impact was so great that I snapped 11 ribs and my heart was propelled to the opposite side of my chest—an injury that my surgeons had never seen a patient survive.
Surgeons repaired my collapsed lungs, a spleen laceration, and my ruptured diaphragm. My colon had to be moved back into place. My left femur, pelvis, right wrist, and left elbow had all endured massive fractures. It would be more than 14 weeks before I was allowed to leave the hospital.
Rehabilitation took 11 months, I pushed myself and was determined to repair my body. I beat doctors’ predictions, walking in three months and returning to work five months ahead of schedule. One year after the accident (364 days, to be exact), I raced a triathlon even though doctors told me I wouldn’t be able to run again. Later that summer, I completed two more.
My mission is now to impart the hard-won wisdom that I learned from my accident to help others live lives of meaning, compassion, and conviction. In 2022, I released my memoir 8 Days Till Sunrise: A True Story of Survival, Rebirth and Discovering My Purpose in Life.
On the speaking circuit, I talk about healing, my enduring faith, overcoming adversity and the power of connection. I am based in Boulder, Colorado, I continue to ask of himself—and others—the hard questions that I contemplated as I recovered: What does it mean to live a good life? Which pursuits leave us feeling hollow? And which imbue our lives with meaning?
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Never accept limits other people try to place on you- After my accident there were medical professionals that all made predictions of what I was going to be capable of in my recovery. Whether it was telling me that I wouldn’t walk out of the hospital on my own, that I probably would never run again, that certain parts of my body would never fully recover and get as strong as they were pre-accident. They didn’t bother to predict if racing a triathlon or mountain climbing was possible as they didn’t consider it worth making a prediction as it was out of the question. If I listened to all the predictions made about what was possible and what wasn’t, I would have never made the recovery that I made. The only way you are going to find your limits is if you go out and test them.
- You are your habits and the experiences you have lived through-Shortly after waking up from my coma my dad was sitting beside my bed and he said to me that this experience was going to be just like training for one of my races. He referred to the 5 Ironman triathlons and 15 Half Ironman triathlons I had completed previously. Without knowing what my injuries were yet I knew what training for a race was like as I had done it so many times before. I thought whatever was wrong with me must all be fixable and if I was willing to dedicate myself to rehabilitation the same way I dedicated myself to train for all those races I did in the past, I was going to recover from all of the 20 bones I broke and the 4 organs the doctors had to fix. I knew I needed to create a plan for recovery with my end goal of racing in a triathlon again and as long as I stuck to the plan and continued to stick to the plan obsessively and just worried about putting a great effort forward every day and have an attitude that I cannot be stopped from reaching my goal I would recover and race again. Knowing how to push myself to improve every day from training for racing gave me the knowledge and habits to understand what I needed to do to come back from my accident.
- Fear can either protect you or hold you back from things you are capable of accomplishing-I chose the triathlon as a goal because I had the need to feel normal again to strive to do something I was able to do prior to the accident. Was I sure I could accomplish it? No. Was I going to give it everything I had? Yes. There were no guarantees that I was going to finish the race because of the distance or could I finish before the time cutoff. I couldn’t let the fear of re-injuring myself or not finishing the race stop me from doing the race. The fear of failing at my goal was the fear that could hold me back, not the fear that was trying to protect me. So I decided to race because I couldn’t risk not testing myself or not having the courage to fail. Whatever the outcome it was worth breaking through the fear to find out what was possible.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
I would like to thank all of the physical therapists, nurses, doctors, hospital staff, friends, family and God for helping me survive the unsurvivable. I was in a fight for my life and then a fight for my recovery. All of these people gave their all to help me battle to get back to where I am today and I could not have done it without all of these people as they were willing to put so much energy and passion into helping me heal.
Contact Info:
- Website: JasonDennen.com
- Instagram: JWDBoulder
- Facebook: facebook.com/jason.dennen.5
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jasondennen
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