Making progress in life/business and climbing Mount Everest

Earlier this year I attended the Chick-fil-A Leadercast event in Atlanta. I’ve written a couple posts about that event, including To be at your best you have to be in the right position. It’s a phenomenal event and if you can attend the next one, I suggest you do.

There was a presentation at the event in May that has stuck with me ever since I heard it. And the presenter’s story has made me think a lot about the reality of making big changes, both in business and in life.

Alison Levine is one of those people that you really only believe are in made-for-tv movies. The things she has accomplished seem unattainable by mere mortals. Check this short bio on her out:

Alison Levine is an adventurer, explorer and mountaineer. She has climbed the highest peak on every continent, served as the team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, and skied across the Arctic Circle to the geographic North Pole. In January 2008 she made history as the first American to complete a 600-mile traverse from west Antarctica to the South Pole following the route of legendary explorer Reinhold Messner. Levine completed this arduous journey on skis while hauling 150 pounds of her gear and supplies in a sled harnessed to her waist.

Impressive, no?

One of the amazing views from a summit that Alison Levine conquered

When I was able to hear her speak she talked about her journey to the top of one of the higher altitude mountains that she faced (I wish I could remember specifically which mountain). I didn’t realize this, but apparently the hardest part about climbing these summits is allowing your body adjust to the lack of oxygen. In fact, her website is called, “Oxygen not included”.

When you get to the base, you don’t just climb up the mountain. You actually climb up to a certain altitude, then you climb all the way back down. Then you start again and climb past the first spot…then back down. You do this many times in order to let you body adjust otherwise you’re liable to die from altitude sickness.

As she described how hard she worked to get to that point to then have to climb up and down the same path for several days so her body could adjust, I could hear the frustration in her voice.  She could see the top, knew that she could get there in several hours time, but had to go back down the mountain to seemingly start all over again.

What’s stayed with me since I heard her story is how similarly this correlates to the process we went through when we started our company in 1998. Those first three or four years we constantly felt like we’d take two steps forward only to take one step back. Make progress in this area, that area breaks. Hire great new team members, a few of your other ones leave.

But we stayed the course and kept making the incremental improvements and we dealt with the setbacks, very much the way that Alison must have felt as she progressed up those mountains.

Life can be very much the same way. It’s happened to me just recently, where in the past three weeks we have adopted a little girl from China only to come home from that trip and have to put our 13-year old dog to sleep. She was my college roommate and my wife and my first “child”.

But you go on and keep in mind that things continue to get better, you stay positive and keep making progress, because its all a journey and your outlook is what makes all the difference.