Welcome to my website, ‘Aiming at Everest.’

My name is James Hoare and I have had an eventful life to date. There have been many highs and many lows. I developed a condition called hydrocephalus soon after my birth, which required 2 brain surgeries plus 2 associated procedures before I was 11 years old. However, I have had a full life, including graduating from university, doing overseas aid work, mountain climbing and running a half marathon. I was also assaulted some 8 years ago, which lead to my needing further brain surgery, & which necessitated my absence from work for about 4 and a half years. I have learnt a lot about myself – and others – in the years since then. I started public speaking in 2020, as I wanted to use my life experiences to help other people who are going through difficult times, whatever they may be.

During the course of my work, I was assaulted in 2015 and 2016 and progressively over time I slowly lost my eye sight before finally collapsing on January 27th 2017. My recovery from the brain surgery on March 23rd ’17 has been long and slow and setbacks of any kind have been hard to take.

I reached a point after the surgery when I decided that I wanted to get my life moving in the right direction and I wanted to help others in the process. I realized that I needed a new career that better suits my new reality, which involves sleeping a lot and employment that offers little to no chance of being assaulted. I have changed a few things and started on that path.

I decided to try to use my life experiences to help others, particularly school students, to deal with the problems they face in school.

The idea for doing public speaking and for the format of my first speech came about after I saw a presentation on YouTube by Admiral William H. McRaven. He used his experiences from his time in the American Navy to get his points across to the university graduates that he was talking to at the University of Texas in 2014. He broke his presentation down into smaller points that he related to his own time in the Navy and then he related the points to the graduates. All his points helped to get across a larger message, a goal.

My first presentation “Getting through tough times” came about after I thought about what I had to give to the world, what made me different from everyone else.

The psychologist who’s helped me with my PTSD, anxiety and depression, put me in touch with a group called MIFWA – The Mental Illness Fellowship of WA – as she thought that this group might aid me in my recovery. While I was attending a MIFWA course, the ladies running it put me in touch with a motivational speaker called Ben Aldridge. He has used his situation to his advantage. He has turned tragedy into triumph after he fell 30 feet, (10 meters), off a cliff and became a quadriplegic. This is what I want to do, make a good situation rise out of a bad one.

Ben told me to go back to my old high school with an idea for a speech, as a starting point for who I should speak to first. It worked and I did 2 speeches for the year in October of 2020 to a group of about 50 year 11 boys each time at Aquinas College. I think that the speeches went down well, as I was invited back to do 4 speeches in October each year since.

I want to help as many people as I can and I think that telling my story of how I have started to put my life back together might help others.

I hope you enjoy looking at my website, Aiming at Everest