387 The Blind Blogger Inspires With Mindfulness; Maxwell Ivey

Maxwell Ivey is a personal coach and teacher, who, through his many challenges, motivates others through theirs. He was born into a family of carnival owners in Texas and at age 12 permanently lost his eyesight. Having a natural gusto for life, Max graduated college and became heavily involved in the Eagle Scouts. He also worked in the family business alongside brothers until his father succumbed to lung cancer. Faced with his own mortality, Max made some life-altering changes. He underwent gastric surgery and lost over 250 pounds. He started his own business, buying and selling amusement rides, and learned how to blog using software for visually-impaired people. Max then made a name for himself online as The Blind Blogger.

Contact Info

• Website: www.TheBlindBlogger.net
• Blog: http://theblindblogger.net/blog
• Book: The Blind Bloggers NYC Adventures + How You Can Make Your Dreams Come True by Maxwell Ivey
• Book: Leading You Out of the Darkness Into the Light: A Blind Man's Inspirational Guide to Success by Maxwell Ivey

Most Influential Person

• Adrienne Smith, Blogger http://adrienneksmith.com/

Effect on Emotions

• Well, I am generally thought of as somebody who doesn't care because people don't realize that my approach is not that I'm not affected, but it's that I am focused on things that are more important to me or that are more important at the moment.
• And some things that just totally, you know, ruin everybody else's day just don't bother me. I mean, a perfect example is the number of people who have lost focus over the elections. To me, I just have a good laugh at all of that stuff and go about my work

Thoughts on Breathing

• You know, I don't focus that much on breathing, but as somebody who likes to sing, I noticed that, when I'm singing, that that helps me. It helps me think, helps me focus, and I like to refer to it as one of my ways of what I call modern meditation.

Suggested Resources

• Book: The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness by Erik Weihenmayer
• Book: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Book: Leading You Out of the Darkness Into the Light: A Blind Man's Inspirational Guide to Success
• App: n/a

Bullying Story

• I was once bullied for a short time. My parents relocated me to a different school district.
• My father worked construction before he was in the carnival business; sometimes we were in Texas and sometimes we were South Carolina. For a short time I went to a school where I was made fun of a bit because of my weight and there was one day where I didn't realize they were being mean until after it was over with.
• The other kids got me to sit on one end of a seesaw and then they wanted to see how many kids it would take on the other end to make it go up and down. I think it ended up being like six or seven kids and at the time it was funny, but later on my parents were not happy. So I realized that this was not a funny thing.
• So they decided to move me to a different school at that point. And whenever we lived in Texas in Spring, which is where my family is from, I hardly ever had trouble with that [bullying], because my grandfather had moved all of his family out to this area, it was the country at that time.
• And so if you went to school with the Ivey's, you also went to school with the Wagner's the Server's to Crouches. So if they mess with one of us, they had to mess with all of us.

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