Today is the last day of the month, and as January rolls into February, I am finding myself pulled back into the New Year mindset. The beginning of the year is the most hopeful time of the year. It’s when we tend to feel a blaze of optimism that we can turn ourselves into happier and more successful people. I love New Year’s resolutions and the energy and enthusiasm that propel us to dream big, set goals and believe we can achieve them. Expecting great things to happen is such a wonderful feeling, and hope is contagious. This year, however, I actually gave myself permission to free myself of big lofty goals to be able to uncover new possibilities and options. The wear and tear of the past eighteen months of starting a new business called for a change of strategy. I started 2018 with no big, lofty goals other than to fully enjoy the journey of self-discovery. For the first time in my life, I made a conscious choice to just let things unfold and trust that what I am looking for will naturally find me. I decided to keep pursuing the path of my choice but in a gentler way to let things happen rather than try to make them happen, to try and attract opportunities rather than actively chase them. Instead of attempting to forcefully create change by defining specific outcomes, I resolved to just keep on doing all that is possible with the means that I have and let the universe do her thing, trusting that the best is yet to come. And yet, I feel the universe did send me a message. Searching Netflix for a movie to watch on the treadmill, I came across The Climb, or in French L’Ascension. The film is based on the true story of Nadir Dendoune who climbed Mount Everest and reached the summit without any prior climbing experience and no preparation to speak of (other than falsifying his documentation claiming he’d climbed both Mont Blanc and Kilimanjaro.) I enjoyed the movie even though it’s not a very good movie because watching it challenged me to reflect on goal- setting and my definition of what is truly possible. To comprehend what an incredible achievement this was, check out Everest statistics. I wish I could read Dendoune’s book about his experience: "Un tocard sur le toit du monde", I believe roughly translates to A Loser on Top of the World (pardon my French.) The book is available on Amazon, but only in French. Since I can’t read the book, I can only draw on my imagination to try and grasp Dendoune’s tale of adventure and let it open my mind and inspire my soul to new possibilities. No worries, I am not setting out to Nepal to climb Mount Everest any time soon, or ever, but I am left feeling that perhaps I need to push myself to be more daring when it comes to my goals for the coming year. Dendoune’s amazing triumph is proof that the impossible can become possible, that in imagining something we can achieve it. Like a Nike ad, how do we make the impossible happen? We just do it! Our outcomes are empowered or limited by what we believe – whether we think we can or cannot, we are right. The concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy has merited many studies, analyses, interpretations, and discussions. The limits of what we define as possible can be re-defined by pushing ourselves beyond them into the realm of the impossible. But how can we extend our own limits to achieve things we haven’t yet realized we are capable of? I believe that optimism is at the heart of the matter, the emotional capability to maintain a sense of hopefulness (as opposed to feeling powerless and helpless) determines our ability to push beyond the circumstances and what we are normally capable of. Moreover, great achievements have more to them than just creating the right mindset for success. Staying motivated to keep taking consistent action requires clarity about what we want, what is deeply meaningful to us. I believe that “mind over matter,” the willpower to persist and follow through with what we set out to accomplish, correlates to the value we assign to the goal we pursue, the “why” of our endeavor. When our goal is personally meaningful; i.e.; authentic to our values, we are likely to pull out all the stops to achieve it. So, what is my lesson learned from The Climb? To look deep inside and not short myself of the chance to find the change that I really want to make this year. My “why” may not resonate for anyone else, but as long as something is really important and truly motivational to me, it would allow me to keep making intentional choices to keep going and power through challenges, to push myself a little harder, dig deeper and give more. What is your mountain to climb in 2018?
