By Justin Satterfield, CEO and Founder, Norwood
My colleague and friend Clayton Simons has an uncle who climbed every “fourteener” in Colorado. These are mountains with an elevation of 14,000 feet or greater.
There are 58 of them. Clayton and I plan to climb them all, too.
Earlier this month we knocked off four in a single day.
We spent two nights in the Colorado wilderness backpacking, camping, and climbing.
For a little while we felt like the smallest town celebrities. The passengers on the old steam train carrying us from Durango to Silverton couldn’t believe it when Clayton and I disembarked in the middle of nowhere with 40-pound backpacks and no civilization in sight.
Many took photos, perhaps to tell their friends they saw these two crazy guys who never came back from an ill-advised trip in the wilderness.
We did come back of course. Sore, tired, but elated. The first day we hiked 8 1/4 miles, 4200 feet of elevation, and set up camp in the basin above 12k feet. The following day, 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., we conquered four peaks. By 7:35 we crawled into our sleeping bags and fell asleep in our clothes.
There were a few hairy moments. Some leaps across chasms, a run-in with some mountain goats that looked nonthreatening but could have easily knocked us off the mountainside.
Why? Because it’s part of what makes for an interesting and meaningful life.
Being in nature, the beauty of it. But also the struggle, the mental fortitude that is required.
If all your accomplishments are tied to work, you need to ask yourself some questions.
What are you proud of?
What are you doing with the limited time that you have?
Paraphrasing former Navy Seal David Goggins, we knew it was going to be one long, hard, mother of a day. But how many inconsequential days do you let slip by in your life?
What is one hard day of struggle in comparison to doing something that you’re going to remember for the rest of your life?
As you’re getting closer to the top of a 14er, the air gets thinner. You’re literally getting less oxygen into your muscles. The fatigue sets in. It starts getting slower. You start to get into climbing vertical rock faces, stuff that’s little scarier.
But when you get to the top, it’s like, hell yeah. You get fired up for sure. We sure did.
When you push past what are seemingly limits, you’ve gotten stronger, tougher. There’s a mental resilience that’s baked into it. When you’re climbing, you’re not thinking about work problems, you’re focused on the task at hand. Something that captures your mind and takes you away from the business, but helps you bring focus back.
You’ve got to have that escape, to come back re-energized and ready to go.
But it’s not just about improving work performance.
Here in America, your identity is, “what do you do”?
I’d rather ask, what are you accomplishing outside of work?
Keep climbing.
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