Iclif : Overcoming Hardships | Norma Bastidas
Channel: Iclif Executive Education Centre at ASB
Date: 2017-02-08

Norma Bastidas a record-breaking athlete, survivor, and humanitarian. In this awe-inspiring interview, she shares how she went from being a human trafficking survivor to the world record holder for the longest triathlon.

In 2014, she swam, biked and ran 3762 miles from Cancun, Mexico to Washington, DC, and set a world record for the longest triathlon ever. She's only the second person in the world to have run the seven of the most difficult environments in seven different continents and the first to do it within seven months. 

It’s a remarkable story of human ingenuity, human spirit, human energy. She’s gone from victim to champion and is now a strong leader able to tackle the most difficult challenges and expeditions. 

Silence breeds violence, and that's why Norma now speaks against human trafficking to educate people because that's the best way to fight it. Women, especially in particular cultures, learn that men have control over them, and more so if they don't have money. 

Norma didn't know what human trafficking was back then, and there was no law against it. The only reason she escaped was because of human kindness -  someone saw her in a situation she didn't want to be in and offered her a way out.

When her oldest son was diagnosed with Conrad dystrophy and started going blind, that changed everything. Even though she had never really wanted to talk about it, she needed to confront what had happened to her, to help her son. 

When she couldn't sleep at night, she began to run. It cleared her head and gave her purpose. It gave her something to look forward to, and she qualified for Boston within eight months. Then she went full on doing ultra races. She went online talking about her training because people wanted to donate for her races, connecting her activism and sports. She found her message in educating people on difficult topics. She gave herself a purpose, which gave her energy. 

Her world record triathlon, for example, followed a human trafficking route and she had survivors telling their stories as she crossed through different areas. Norma had encountered an incredible lack of empathy to tell these stories - a lot of people did not want to talk about human trafficking because it’s ugly. This inability to talk about human trafficking is what made her go bigger, to do the triathlon, and learn to swim. The greater the resistance and the more people she wants to help, the better she gets. In the end, she almost tripled the triathlon record, setting a Guinness world record for the longest triathlon.

The catalyst was her son's condition. She had been in difficult situations before, but the situation with her son became the turning point. She could do the same things and not be public, but once she gets an organization involved or she’s talking about causes such as human trafficking, everything she does is not tied to herself. 

When she’s racing, Norma sometimes gets tired but never feels like quitting. There's a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a wonderful thing because it's tied to success and to a goal. Pain is sometimes what it takes to accomplish something great. So once you understand this, pain is tolerable. Knowing that she’s not in the suffering stage helps Norma take on new goals. Many people who know her now had absolutely no idea about her past when she finally started to talk about it. That’s her biggest success, to overcome the biggest misconception that victims are damaged, vulnerable and weak. 

Once the purpose you define for yourself is greater than yourself, then absolutely nothing is impossible.

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At Iclif, we focus our attention on leadership energy which we define as harnessing human energy for a better future. 

The Leaders Room, an initiative of the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre, is a place for conversations with people who have either already built or are continuing to build a better future through their work, passion, and purpose in life. 

In this space, we invite leaders from all walks of life, to talk to us about their values, life purpose and the mindset that keeps them moving forward when they confront resistance and challenges.  

This Iclif Leaders Room Interview was conducted by Rajeev Peshawaria, CEO & Executive Director, ICLIF.