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It could be a number, a status, a symbol…..
Most people never reach their “mountain top” for a myriad of reasons, but people like us do.
People like us are driven, resourceful, and too d*mn stubborn to quit.
But far more important than getting there is understanding and evolving who you’re becoming in the process.
Being on top of the mountain feels very different than the climb. You must answer a new set of questions and confront a different set of perceived problems.
While this list could easily be expanded, here are a few themes that might be useful to you who find yourself reaching your current mountain top, or on the journey of discovering you’ve been climbing a mountain that was never yours to climb.
1. “Why do I feel so overwhelmed?”
You climbed too fast. You haven’t adapted to less oxygen at these heights, and your body is now running out of air. Give yourself time: acclimate to scale in healthy and sustainable ways. It’s painful to get to the top and realize you brought nothing with you to sustain what you accomplished, let alone a map to remind you of how you got to where you are.
2. “How do I make this sustainable?”
You carried a set of tools with you to survive, as well as a mindset to survive. But you forgot that once you reach the top and, you now need to shift. Begin working on your mindset, team, and strategy now to answer a new set of questions when find yourself thriving rather than surviving.
3. “I thought this would make me content, so why am I bored?”
You’re a climber. You are an endurance machine. You love the peril of the climb so much that when you get to the top, you’re bored out of your mind to the point that you’ll sabotage everything just to climb again. You will thrive when you shift your mindset to realize that you have the ability to turn every mountaintop into the base of another. So you keep climbing.
4. “I’m grateful for what I’ve accomplished, but I feel like I’ve settled for someone else’s dream.”
I hear this one often. You settled into a great career with great benefits because you were told (for as long as you can remember) to get a nice, safe job and create a nice, safe life. But you sit in the house you’ve built on a mountain top you feel was never yours to climb. You constantly wonder and dream about the mountain you’ve longed to conquer, the hopes and dreams and calling you’ve avoided because you’ve consistently played it safe. It was an easy climb, and you live in regret and frustration. You long to ascend the uncharted territory of your yet-conquered passion and purpose.
Understand, we could keep going and creating more analogies… but the point is this:
What got you to where you are won’t get you to where you desire to be… and to get to where you want to be, you must come to the realization that it is a destination that does not exist.
People like us never stop climbing.
Cheers.
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Previously published on Facebook.
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