The Easy Way to Climb a Mount…ain.

SPOLER ALERT: There isn’t an easy way to climb a mountain only people who make it look easy.

I love running Mount Lakeway, which is, well, a “mount” outside of Austin Texas. It’s not big enough to have the “ain” part added to it. But for Texas, it’s challenging. For my old knees, it’s super challenging.

It’s about a 1000 ft. elevation gain with all the switchbacks considered into it. (I’m certain my Maine friend Corina is laughing at that. She likely climbed 10,000 ft. this past weekend.)

It’s always a challenge for me to run to the top of it. And then to make it back out to my car way over there without having to be life-flighted out.

Standing at the top from my viewpoint it looks super impressive. Until I decide to take a photo.

It literally looks like nothing. Have you ever done that? Climbed a mountain or gone snow skiing and you take a photo from the top because it’s so foreboding and gorgeous in person and then you look at the photo and it looks like a big pile of nothing.

You send the photo to your friends anyway and then someone will say something like, “that doesn’t look that hard.”

And you reply, “Bite me. It wasn’t exactly easy.”

Climbing mountains is hard. Climbing “mounts” is still pretty difficult. But for some reason, we think it should be easy. We think transforming our lives will happen overnight and that we’ll be an overnight sensation.

I love the stories of “overnight sensations.”

Did you know that Harrison Ford didn’t get his first real break until he was 31 when he landed a role in the iconic American Graffiti in 1973? A film by a guy you may know named George Lucas. Okay, everyone knows him by that name, because that’s his name. We know how that played out working with the creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Ford appeared as Han Solo in ‘Star Wars’ when he was 35. Yet before all of his “overnight success” he worked as a carpenter while chasing the acting bug.

J.K. Rowling’s is one of my favorite stories because her pitch for ‘Harry Potter’ was rejected 12 times. How would you like to be the person who rejected it?

After Fred Astaire’s very first screen test the feedback noted that he, “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” 

Sidney Poitier was encouraged by a casting director to “stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something.” By 1964 he won the Best Actor Oscar for “Lillies of the field”. He became the first Black man to win the coveted Best Actor prize.

Like I mentioned in last week’s Transformation Tuesday Post, Going All In, it doesn’t always come easy. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s easy for everyone else but you. But you, you’re a tough cookie. You can climb that mountain.

It takes putting one foot in front of the other consistently with great perseverance no matter what the naysayers say.

Even worse, what you tell yourself. It’s not supposed to be this hard. It looks so easy for everyone else. I’ll never make it.

Of course, you won’t with that attitude. Don’t be your own worst critic. (I just shook my finger at you.

Also, don’t look at the whole mountain at once. You don’t have to. You only have to look at the next step your about to take. That’s the only one that matters. Each step you take moves you closer to the top. The more consistent you are with those steps the faster you’ll get there.

What mountain are you climbing?

What do you need help with? Find a friend to collaborate with. Even worse, find a friend who will hold you accountable. Yeesh!

I feel like I did that with all of you when I promised last week to have a post per week. Didn’t think I was going to pull it off, yet here we are.

Thanks for holding me accountable! Now, go climb your mountain! (More finger shaking!)