First the dream

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

(Page 7 of 8)

Who you are is not nearly as important as who you aspire to become. It is critical for the dream to come first, before you are daunted by the analysis of what it will take to achieve your end, before you decide whether it can be done, because the dream itself has so much power to pull you beyond where you think you can go. Do not limit your future by basing it on the past, projecting what you can do based on what you have done. Your goal is to be not just better than you were, but as good as you can ultimately become.

If you were asked to project a challenging mountain on the line of your Lifelong Ascent, a mountain you had every reason to climb because you would gain from it things that you value, what would that mountain look like? How big would it be? How difficult and sustained the climbing? How long would you have it take to climb this mountain? A week? A year? Twenty years? Would you measure your endurance before you chose the size? Would you take into account your skill before you assigned the difficulty?

If you and I were like most people, we would add ourselves up to see what we were capable of, consider how much we were willing to commit, how many resources we had to contribute, design our mountain to accommodate those factors, then take off 5 percent to improve our chances of success. It might be an imposing mountain lofty, admirable, even award-winning. It would certainly be climbable, because we envisioned it that way.

But if we placed our self-designed mountain next to a truly ultimate mountain, one we couldn't see the top of because it stretched into the clouds, one whose uncertainties could not be planned for, where the route was unknown and the rewards uncountable, the two would not be at all comparable. Instead of 5 percent below, our real ultimate mountain might be 500 percent beyond what we know we can do. Is it also climbable?

I ask the question to point to the difference between a goal and a dream. A dream is a mountain larger than we know we can climb. While goals are the mind's answer to destination, dreams answer to the heart, that belief that imagination can take us to wondrous places. Goals ask for action; dreams provide direction. Trango Tower was a dream for me, because I did not know if it could be climbed. That motivated me toward the goal of becoming good enough so I could climb it. A mountain half the size would make me only half the climber, for a dream that is close to your present capacity will not draw you nearly as far as one that has not been limited by what you know you can do.

As Thoreau pointed out, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them." Whenever you can, you should base your goals on dreams, because the feel of a goal tied to a dream is entirely different from a goal without a dream you are pulled instead of pushed. A dream is the motivational force that makes your destination worth going to. Even if the goal at hand is not your actual dream, if it moves you toward a dream on the horizon beyond, it can share the same lift.

The factors that limit your aspirations can also limit your dreams. Your past can be a limiting factor if you allow it to be. The past can be a real danger to the expansiveness of dreams because we so often look at where we have come from before we allow ourselves to imagine where we might go: "That is what I have done, therefore this is what I can do." When we gauge our future potential based solely on past accomplishments, we always choose a mountain smaller than we could actually climb.

The weight of the past can sometimes pin us in place it took so much to get this far on the ascent that we cannot imagine climbing higher. Past failures, past effort, setbacks, disappointments when we can't leave that weight behind, it is too much to carry on. If the past weighs you down, empty it out of your backpack and make a fresh start. The reason that youth can dream so big is because it has so little past to hold it back.

In the present, a sense of arrival can limit dreaming. We win awards, and that suggests we must have accomplished all our dreams. We get rewards and assume we are already on top. Why go any higher when you are already a dizzying ways up? Because where you are is not where you can go.

I was asked by a very successful company to speak on this subject, because the CEO was concerned that his employees were too complacent. This company was the best in the world at what they did, and they had no close competition. Why, everybody asked, should they attempt to climb a bigger mountain, with all its risk and difficulty, when one the same size as last year's mountain was obviously climbable, and they would still be best in the world? "Why isn't a little better than others good enough?" they wanted to know. Better than others, I reminded them, is not as good as you can ultimately become. In freeing yourself from comparison with others, you are no longer tethered to their limits.

Even the future can put limits on dreaming when you don't believe in it if you think the hand you've been dealt is the only one you have to play with, if you don't encourage yourself to reshuffle the deck, if you are convinced there isn't enough time left to win at the game. To continue to aspire you must find the direction that will gain you what you value, and dream about great mountains that could take you there. It doesn't matter whether others find value in your dream, or how many different dreams you pursue through life. But it is essential that the dream comes first, because it represents not what is likely, or even probable, but what might be possible.

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.