Choose the path of greatest gain

Beyond the Summit: Setting and Surpassing Extraordinary Business Goals
by Todd Skinner

(Page 6 of 8)

Goals with the most rewards are often the most difficult to achieve. We pick challenging mountains not because they are hard, but because we have the most to gain there. We are trying to become people with the ability to accomplish remarkable things, and for maximum gain we must seek ultimate mountains.

My sport is relatively simple: you start at the bottom of a cliff and try to get to the top. When I speak to business groups, I like to illustrate this point with a photograph of a canyon wall in Mexico where I have trained in the winter. It is columnar basalt, a volcanic rock that forms evenly angular corrugations, like a wide stairway tipped on its edge. Each section of rock looks just like the next, and this uniformity makes one "summit" indistinct from all the others. No point is really higher than the next, no cliff section obviously outstanding. But the difficulty of the climbing is not uniform, because minute variations in the rock make some routes easier and some more difficult.

I can drive to the top of this wall, and walk down a goat path to the base. I then have the choice of finding the hardest route up the wall, or an easier route, or I could walk back up the goat path. All end at the same place, which is not some inaccessible mountaintop. I could, in actuality, not even get out of the car, because I am on top already and could congratulate myself for being parked there.

But one of the motivating aspirations of my Lifelong Ascent is to be the best rock climber I can possibly be. My day's expedition to climb the wall, without reference to that aspiration, might be deemed successful if I chose either the easier route or the goat path, because I would have gotten to the top. But neither would make me a better climber, and, additionally, I would have lost the opportunity for gain toward my ultimate goal. If I simply stay in the car, not only will I not get better, I will grow worse. If any system isn't challenged, it doesn't stay the same it atrophies. Every time I leave the ground, I am seeking nothing less than transformation, and the achievement of that goal most often lies on a path of great resistance.

Rock climbing, by any external definition, has no obvious practical value and might be considered foolish by some when risk is compared to gain. But what I value in climbing is that it asks for my best response on many fronts at once: physical strength, endurance, and flexibility; mental acuity in forethought, analysis, and problem solving; courage and tenacity of the spirit. I cannot gain an inch without applying these attributes, and I gain the most where the challenge is greatest.

When you are selecting your mountains, understand that you want to choose goals that not only move you in a direction you value, but move you maximally in that direction. With the choice of more or less challenging mountains, you must consider which will gain you the most success on your Lifelong Ascent.

We often base our choices on immediate gratification, what pleases or eases us at the moment. Without a more visionary framework to make choices, the moment is our only reference point. But those choices often affect us negatively in the future, sometimes catastrophically businesses that collapse in the long term because they sought to inflate their stock prices in the short term, people who sacrifice their health in the end by choosing what made life more pleasant in the meantime. But even the threat of future consequences is not enough to change the way we make choices.

We need to move our reference point away from the moment and project it out toward our Ultimate Potential. When you make a choice, you don't want to ask, "Will the future catch up to me?" but "Can I catch up to the future?" The value of recognizing your Lifelong Ascent is that it makes you believe in the future not a future of consequences, but a future of opportunity; not trying to avoid a negative, but to move toward a positive. When you envision who you could become, the light of that vision illuminates the path ahead and makes difficult choices easier because you can see where you could go.

To become remarkable people, we must see the extraordinary in ourselves and pursue the paths that lead us furthest toward our potential. Consistently striving to become more successful by choosing challenging mountains and climbing each to the summit leads to a Habit of Ascent. That is one in the list of essentials I have come to consider important to carry in your Personal Backpack. When ascent is a habit a natural response to meeting challenge with an upward spirit it is much easier to continue climbing. Obstacles are then mere detours, not dead ends; challenge is answered, not evaded.

I am grateful to my dad for teaching me a habit of ascent from the beginning, because habits learned early are the most enduring. While I spent the summers of my youth climbing and teaching survival, my winters were dedicated to skiing. My dad was an Olympic contender in downhill racing and became a ski instructor and racing coach so my older brother, younger sister, and I would have the same opportunity. He was insistent that every turn we made coming down the slope be a conscious attempt at improvement, and he stood there and watched, and analyzed, and demonstrated, and watched again, diligent and omnipresent, until the idea of continual improvement through disciplined practice became ingrained in all of us, and his actual presence was no longer needed.

And while the goal of the moment was to be better at each turn, the aspiration was the Olympic ideal of becoming best in the world, and it was from that summit back that we measured ourselves every day. When I went off to college, my passion turned from skiing to rock climbing, but what I gained from competitive skiing was a hunger for the pursuit of excellence, and the habit of striving to achieve success, which I could apply to any field of endeavor.

A habit of ascent is one of the keys to unlocking the door to opportunities. When you pursue rewarding mountains to their summits, each accomplishment becomes a foundation block that raises your belief in yourself. When you believe in your potential to become equal to a challenge, you expand the pool of options to choose from. You don't automatically say, "I can't do that because I've never done it," but instead "I've never done that but I have done all these other things, and success in one endeavor can be applied toward any endeavor." A habit of ascent also increases your skill, knowledge, and ability, which widens the playing field because you have more resources to pursue opportunities when they appear.

So when you ask which is the better path to take on this day, consider what you stand to gain from each alternative. To decide what you should do today, you must know where you want to go tomorrow, and where you would like to arrive a year from tomorrow. The step beyond where you are is fueled by the intent to take that step, and intent is generated by recognizing value in the ascent: reaching higher ground is always preceded by a passion for seeking higher ground.

Copyright © 2003 Todd Skinner. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

Todd Skinner, a Wyoming native, has established new climbs at the highest levels of difficulty in more than twenty-six countries. His experiences have been described in National Geographic and Life, and his expeditions to places as exotic as the Amazon and Timbuktu have been featured in nine documentaries. He is also a popular speaker at business events around the country.