A friend of mine recently reached out to our Mastermind Group and wrote this:
I’m feeling rather under-inspired and just blah about online business these last couple days. You know the mountain climbing times…. anyone else? Revenue is fine…. but I don’t know… anyone else understand?
Ahhhh, yes. I understand this. I understand completely.
I actually used to climb mountains and guide real expeditions for a living. Like big, painful, tear-filled expeditions.
Here’s what inspirational mountain climbing metaphors, with images of triumphant climbers on top of the world, don’t tell you:
At a certain point when every step is a struggle and you can’t breathe and the weather sucks, the bargaining starts.
You stop focusing on the top or the end of the expedition and you start really focusing on the right-now choices: will I rest, take a few more steps (or if you’re on a river expedition, take a few more strokes), or will I retreat?
You can always turn back, but the other choices are just as important: you can rest or you can move forward with a few more steps.
And that’s it.
I’ve bagged entire eleven and thirteen foot peaks ten steps at a time. And done crazy river expeditions ten strokes at a time.
I’ll stop, rest, look up the mountain or down the river and say to myself, OK just ten more.
When those ten steps are done, I face the choice again: rest, turn back or take ten more steps.
It’s the same in business, isn’t it?
You get to the point where it isn’t fun. It’s hard. It hurts and you’d rather be curled up with a good book forgetting the woes of the world.
And you have a choice: you can rest, take another step, or quit.
Climbing mountains is really hard. So is running a business.
In the middle, you’re never thinking about the glory or the beauty of the summit. You’re just focused on the handful of steps in front of you and constantly checking in with yourself to rest, take a few more steps or retreat.
You don’t have to summit the mountain in six seconds, you just have to decide whether you are going to rest, take another step or retreat in this moment.
That’s it.
You really only need to decide what to do in this moment.
And you always have choices.
