EVEREST LESSONS: WHY

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Now you can imagine, if you don’t have deep WHY for climbing this mountain, what kind of torture would it be to debate every day “Is it worth it?”

You have to want to climb because you are truly passionate about mountains. Passion can help make those pains just part of the journey; Passion can help make those suffering just the norm of an expedition life; Passion can help you focus on experiencing the mountain instead of worrying about the outcome.

But Everest is more than just a mountain.

You have to want to climb this mountain beyond just your love for climbing. You need an even deeper why.

Only with a deep why, can you willingly give up the comfort of home and love of family in exchange for two months of suffering;

Only with a deep why, can you courageously make each step despite the fear;

Only with a deep why, can you keep moving forward even when all the odds are against you.

For me, I started this journey because I believed that an ordinary person can climb Everest and achieve extraordinary goals.

I’m on this mountain not only for my own dream, but also for those ordinary people, who believed that because they hadn’t achieved anything outstanding yet, they never would. I wanted to do my best to show everyone what’s possible for them.

For each of us, our why is unique to ourselves and to each situation. It can change over time. The deeper you can answer the why, the more motivation you will get when facing a big challenge.

How does this lesson apply to today?

Passion is more than something we need when we pursue big goals.

It’s the foundation for our happiness in everyday life, especially in times of big challenges.

The deeper you can answer the why, the more motivation you will get.

When you are doing things you are passionate about, you feel ever more energetic every day, your heart is filled with joy, and you appreciate all the possibilities life presents.

When you are living with a deep why, you find it easier to stay focused on a daily basis, you see setbacks as normal steps on your journey, you see obstacles as opportunities for growth.

When you are living every day with passion rooted in deep why, the world is so beautiful, your life is so fulfilling, you light up the world around you.

When you are thriving, every dream is possible!

 

Read previous lesson: EVEREST LESSONS: HOW  

Everest Lessons: HOW

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This famous quote from Nietzsche is the absolute foundation if you want to be successful in any hard endeavoring.

To avoid making it an abstract philosophical discussion, let me share with you the “how” one has to bear on Mount Everest, the “how” that caused one-third of climbers to quit before the summit push … not for just a few days or weeks, but every day for 2 months!

First, the pain of breathing the thin air. If you have ever been to Denver, the mile-high city, or have hiked on Mount Rainier, you may have a sense of what I am talking about. And Everest basecamp is more than 3 miles above sea level, or 3000 feet higher than the summit of Mount Rainier. Can you imagine how much thinner is the air up there? And you live there for almost two months? The pain of constant coughs and headache, of clearing your nose of bloody secretions every few minutes. This is what you experience every day and night when you remain healthy.

On top of that comes the almost unavoidable sickness. Your immune system is seriously weakened at high altitudes. Two months is long enough to allow even the healthiest person to catch some bugs at one point or another, and the severity is magnified 100 times at high altitudes. A simple cold can develop into fatal pulmonary edema or cerebral edema overnight.

Halfway through the expedition, I had a serious lung infection and was sent down the mountain to a village for 5 days. I was lucky to be able to make a full recovery just in time.

Then, exhaustion. Every climbing day is long, you’re more tired than you’ve ever been in your life, but the altitude and the uncomfortable camping conditions make it hard to sleep, and your own cough constantly interrupts your rest.

Next, Do you know the temperature on glaciers can swing between freezing cold and torching 100F within just a few minutes? How do you possibly dress properly? How awful is it to suffer terrible sunburn and frostbite at the same time! And both cold and heat drain your energy.

And of course, the fear of being caught in an avalanche is with you all the time.

Then there’s the psychological pressure. You constantly see other climbers who are stronger, faster. No matter how confident you are on day one, you begin to question if you are good enough. And not to say if you happen to be one of the weakest and the slowest ones.

And, everyone climbs on their own schedule. While you are trying to focus your mind on your summit push, others might be celebrating and packing up to go.

Even if you can endure all the suffering for two months, a monster avalanche could destroy the climbing route and end the climbing season prematurely; or the storm never relents and you don’t ever get a weather window to attempt the summit.

Why would you bother to climb this mountain when the odds are so against you?

And then you know what, it only takes a couple of days to fly back to your safe warm home; in just a couple of days, you can be in the arms of your loved ones. That option is always on your mind. Every single day, it makes you ask yourself “Should I stay or should I go?”

Now you can imagine, if you don’t have a deep WHY for climbing this mountain, what kind of torture would it be to debate every day “Is it worth it?”

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What does it take to climb Everest?

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5/27/2010

Everest Summit – summary written on May 27, 2010

 

It has been a few days since the summit, but I’m still trying to digest the fact that I just climbed Everest. Was it hard?

It depends. If you have read the previous blog “Why Everest is hard” and after two months of suffering through pain, you are still healthy/strong, determined, and positive, then maybe Everest is not that hard for you.

When I set the goal to climb Everest a few years ago, I saw it as a goal reachable by anyone. After training hard, I have finally achieved my goal! Now it feels surreal that I have just climbed Everest!

So, what does it takes to climb Everest? My thoughts…

  • Positive Attitude
  • High Pain Tolerance
  • Strong will/desire
  • Fitness/strength

You should be well above average in all four, and be in the top 10% in at least two categories. When my life slows down, I shall start writing more about Everest and will also post more pictures! So stay tuned…

How can you stay motivated?

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How do I motivate myself through so many years of arduous training and during the hardest time of my climbs?

It is a question I get often.

It’s the same question I pondered again and again on mountain tops and in my everyday life.

The answer is simple.

It’s what we are all looking for everywhere every day, without being aware of it, something we all seek in each and every endeavor, and is a major factor in every choice we make.

Something so pervasive, it hides in plain sight.

So what is it?

Excitement! 

The power of excitement is what moves everyone forward, is what had brought me to the mountaintops.

Excitement is what makes performers irresistible, conversations compelling, relationships lasting, and work a calling.

We all need to find excitement in our work, life and relationship to take ourselves and our team to the top.

So instead of beating yourself up for not being motivated, look for what truly excites you.

If you are still struggling with discovering what truly excites you, or if you find yourself such a long way off from having the life you dream of, let’s have a conversation!

There’s no magic program.

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I went to my coach David Memont (you can read the original post here) hoping for a magic training program that would make me strong and fast enough to climb Everest climb.

One month later, I complained that my body composition didn’t change much (I was still too fat) despite my training “hard”. I thought that I need a more “effective” program.

David asked me to show him my training log.

It turned out, while I thought I was following his program “diligently”, I was using weights much lighter than what I was capable of. I couldn’t imagine myself doing more.

David pointed out, that my weakness was not due to a limitation in my physical abilities, but a lack of mental strength.

I came to David to get a stronger body.

He helped me achieve that as well as something much more valuable.

I became a stronger person.

How was able to do that?

There was no magic program.

Instead his coaching empowered me to become who I needed to be.

That’s how I reached Everest.

I would love to show you how to reach the peaks of success too.

I’m offering a free 1 hour coaching session to show you how to get started.

Don’t miss this opportunity, book your session with me today and together let’s head for the top.

 

Everest Lessons: How did it start?

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Before I dive into the lessons I learned from Everest, first of all, how did the whole thing start?

The credit goes to the documentary movie “Touching the Void”.

It was my first winter in Boston. As a fresh MBA graduate, I was working a 12-hours-a-day corporate job and focused on my career track only. For a book nerd growing up in Beijing, mountaineering was totally “other-worldly”. In fact, I was so scared of the brutal cold that, before that movie, I had not even ventured the 4-blocks walk from my home in Back Bay to the Charles River.

I never knew humans can be that strong! I wondered, is “mountaineer” some kind of special specie, a superhuman? Can an ordinary person like me ever do something like that?

I became curious!

I went to the library and borrowed as many documentaries on mountaineering as I can – there’s no streaming Netflix yet. And guess what, Everest is the one standing out most on that shelf.

After a weekend-long movie binge, I discovered, mountaineers are just normal human beings! Many of them had normal jobs outside the mountains, many of them didn’t stand like a giant, and most of them look like a normal person! That discovery got me excited. I concluded, a “normal” person can become a mountaineer, an ordinary person can climb Everest!

June 2004, I audaciously declared Mount Everest as my dream, despite the fact that I had not even seen a trail map in my life yet! To be completely honest, I didn’t really expect to climb Everest one day. I was just hoping, by shooting at the moon, at least I could motivate myself to start running and going to the gym!

I’m glad I didn’t stop at running and going to the gym. My curiosity led me to taking classes in climbing, camping, and more and more … before I knew it, all my life outside the office is centered on mountains.

Mountaineering became my passion.

Mountains taught me to be humble, to be respectful, to always be a learner, to always put in the best effort. There’s no handicap or excuses, you just have to train hard and get stronger. There’s no short cut or privilege, only honest and consistent effort will pay off. There’s no taking for granted, you have to earn each step.

March 2010, when I was really making my first step hiking towards the Everest Base Camp, I felt as if I had been in my dream. Six years before, when I started my daydream, I never have expected, one day, I would really set my foot on Everest.

I had come a long way! Starting from basic fitness foundation training through running and hiking, learning all the technical and safety skills, to gaining experience on bigger and bigger mountains, and gradually testing myself in more and more complicated situations.

Despite the obvious fact from day 1 that I was the smallest, the weakest, and the slowest on my team, I told myself: Being able to make that first step is a success by itself, regardless of the outcome.

Everyone has a different starting point and was gifted with different talents. Instead of worrying about how people would judge me or the slimness of my chance for the summit, I repeatedly told myself, every step higher on the mountain is a success, regardless of summiting or not.

Many people have argued that, just for the fact that I dared to attempt this mountain, I can’t call myself ordinary. However, if you have met me when I first started daydreaming about Everest, you would have laughed at me just like my old colleagues did. In fact, even years after I have climbed Everest, some of my high school classmates still thought I was joking when they first heard about it. They only remembered me as a book nerd who could barely pass PE tests in school.

Even today, after I have been training for so many years, I continue to feel humbled by the high performance standard of our mountaineering community in both my original home base of New England and my newly adopted home of PNW (Pacific North West). No matter how you may argue, I only feel comfortable calling myself an ordinary mountaineer.

However, like in many situations in life and career, our natural talent level is often not the most important deciding factor in one’s success – of course, there are some objectives in climbing, in life, and in business, that you simply can’t risk unless you have really high competencies – On Everest, the physical capability is not the most important factor.

A person with ordinary talent or ability but the extraordinary spirit and mental strength can achieve extraordinary goals.

Mental strength can be trained and learned. That’s the lessons I’m going to share in the next few weeks.

The most important lessons from Everest

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It’s that time of the year again … May always brings back the memory of Mount Everest.

This year is the 11th year anniversary of my Everest summit.

In 2004, inspired by the movie “Touching the Void”, I had this daydream of climbing Mount Everest. Yet, growing up an unathletic book nerd in Beijing, I never expected that I would really climb this mountain one day.

Six years later, when I finally started hiking towards Everest Base Camp, I was considered, by almost everyone on my team, the least likely person to succeed. I was the smallest, the weakest, and the slowest. Yet, among 4 women on my team, I was the only one who summited. Among our team of 25, only 16 made it to the summit.

By all means, Everest started as an impossible goal.

Since my return from Everest, I have always been asking myself, what are the most important lessons I learned on Everest?

In the next few weeks, I will share the most important lessons I learned on Everest, and how that helped me thrive today. I hope they would inspire you and help you thrive in your own life!

First, why do I climb mountains, or more specifically, Why Everest?

… stay tuned!

 

Getting My Courage Back

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Have you always wanted to make some big changes in your life, but were held back by fear? Be it moving to a new place, changing career track, or starting a new business. Even you know that’s what your heart calls for, but you just couldn’t muster the courage to take the leap of faith?

In fact, I have been living in such fear for a long time and it was not even about a big adventure at all. For the past several years, as much as I love Boston, my heart has been telling me that I need to move on with my life. The world is too big and I long for exploring the unknowns.

I moved to Boston in late 2003 and it took no time before I fell in love with the city, declaring it my favorite for so many reasons – four seasons, education, professional development, friends and social circles, positive influence, active lifestyle with all my favorite sports within easy reach, close to nature from mountains to oceans, diverse cultural scenes, great food, proud history, awesome sports teams … and on and on – the reasons can go on forever.

I thought, “This place has so many things to explore that I can live here for 10 years.”

But, as my 10 years “deadline” approached and I started to think about moving, I kept delaying my move, saying, “I’m going to move after this year.” I found myself wanting to stay longer for one reason or another: to be close to my friends, to enjoy my favorite season one more time, to finish an educational program I was taking, to complete a project I was volunteering for … the excuses go on and on.

Though, I realized what keeps me in Boston is not just my favorite things, but also my fears. The longer I stayed, the bigger the fear. Whenever I thought about a new place to move to, I caught myself thinking, “But they don’t have this …” and while some of the “don’t have”-s may be facts, some came from my fear of the unknown. I was trying to find excuses to stay in my comfort zone.

As an immigrant living in this country without family, friends are all I have. Having been a nomad for so many years while traveling and climbing around the world, I treasure the safety and stability of a “home.” Moving to a new place is scary. I will have to start from scratch again to find new friends, to tap into a new community, build a new home. Will I enjoy it as much as Boston? Will I be as happy as I was in Boston?

It’s ironic to realize how much fear I have about moving, especially because I have been trying to encourage other people through my motivational speaking to overcome fear and pursue their dreams. I seemed to have less fear when I decided to go climb Everest than to move – how ridiculous!

Before I came to Boston, I had lived in China and all over the U.S. During those years, I was excited about each move and to explore new places; fear never crossed my mind. Now, I understand how other people felt when they made comments like, “You have so much courage to move to a new country.”

I wonder, “Why was I so ‘fearless’ before? How do I get back my courage?”

I thought back to the difference between when I was ‘young’ and now, and I noticed how my focus had shifted. When I was young, moving was exciting and my mind was focused on a new life in a new place. I wasn’t worried about the future because I believed I would figure out my way. Also, the need to move was initiated by external motives, such as going to school or changing jobs, it was a “no brainer” because the move was necessary and I didn’t have to initiate the decision process. The external motives took away the biggest hurdle, the fear.

As life goes on, when moving is not “required” by external circumstances, I have to take the initiative to make the change. That’s when I found myself spending more time worrying about losing what I have in my current comfortable life. That’s what was holding me back. To step out of my comfort zone, I have to look forward into the future and follow my heart. Just as many have said before, what people regret most in life is what they could have done but did not.

Maybe you have wanted to change your job or career track for a long time? Maybe you have always wanted to start your own business? We often see people finally make such changes when the job was eliminated or the industry was outdated; but, why only make such changes when you’re being “forced” to by external motives?

What are some changes you have wanted to make but haven’t yet? It’s hard to take the initiative, but when you look back, you will be happy that you tried.

What I learned from Skiing Everest in a Day

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Do you believe your daydreams can become a reality as soon as tomorrow?

 

Last week, I was skiing at Breckenridge in Colorado. At the end of the first day, I received from the resort an email with my “scorecard”. It said I skied 7,854 vertical feet on my first day – a small number for big skiers, but I was just happy to be back on the slope.

 

I’m not a big skier; in fact, when I first started learning to ski in 2009 – one year before my climbing trip to Mount Everest – I tore my ACL early in the season. It was quite a blow to my confidence, and it took me several years to regain it on the slope. Though I’m inspired by those images of skiers carving perfect turns shooting down from high peaks, I’m pretty satisfied for now with practicing basic techniques in protected territories.

 

On the second day, I worked hard and hit 18,033 vertical feet. I was excited.

 

I ski for fun, not for earning points, but those seemingly meaningless points actually did bring me some joy, just like those little gold stars given to kids in preschool. They acted as an interesting incentive for me to push a little harder each day. A few days later, I surpassed 20,000 feet, the equivalent of skiing down Mount Denali, the highest peak in North America. I began to daydream: How nice it would be to ski the equivalent of Mount Everest, 29,029 vertical feet?

 

That goal would require a performance improvement of almost 50%. While I thought it was a reasonable goal for future trips, I didn’t think it was possible this time.

 

On my second to last day in Breckenridge, I was skiing with some friends who are expert skiers. They pushed me to work harder than ever. At end of the day, I was exhausted but thrilled to discover that I skied 25,613 vertical feet!

 

Suddenly, skiing “Everest” was not as far-fetched as it was a few days ago.

 

I realized that while I was still skiing at my own comfortable pace, the only difference is time management. Instead of a long lunch break, we took short breaks from time to time and stayed higher up on the mountain to avoid the crowd. Most runs on the mountain are about 1,300 – 1,400 vertical feet, so I only need 3 more runs to reach my Everest goal.

 

However, squeezing in 3 more runs is not as easy as it sounds; it would require an extra hour of skiing. We had already managed our time very efficiently. We were on the first chair up the mountain and skied all the way until the mountain closed at 4pm.

 

That night, my mind was occupied with calculations of time. How could I squeeze in 3 more runs?

 

Avoiding crowds and lines would be critical, so I planned my route to focus on runs around two fast lifts higher up on the mountain. I needed to be even more efficient when taking breaks.

 

During my last day on the mountain, I was obsessed with time management. Every minute counted. At the same time, I was aware of the dangerous side effect when one’s mind is too focused on a goal. I repeatedly told myself to slow down, safety first! I picked the trails with the best snow and enjoyed the serene scenery with every turn.

 

Thanks to the new technology, I was able to check my progress in real time. I was on schedule, but I would be short by one run unless I could catch the last chair at 4pm.

 

During the last hour, it was as if I had the clocked dialed in my body. Even shaving off one minute or a half-minute from each run would make a difference. At 4pm, with my heart pounding, I flew through the gate to grab the last ride. Behind me, the worker pulled the line and shouted, “Closed!”

 

I hit 30,336 feet on that last day! Without the last run, which was 1,466 vertical feet, I would have been 159 feet short of my “Everest goal.”
I didn’t mean to turn every run on the slope to a goal-chasing mission, nor did I mean to make every vacation day a “lesson” day; but sometimes, when it’s something to your nature, you simply couldn’t resist the call.

 

When your audacious daydream is connected to your heart, you simply couldn’t stop thinking about it, even when you couldn’t explain the connection and you didn’t ask for it. You are obsessed with making your daydream a reality. That’s the first fundamental difference between a pure daydream and a reachable goal.

 

“Audacious” is relevant. A goal that appears like a daydream to one person may be completely trivial for another. A big skier can easily hit 30,000 or 40,000 vertical feet on a regular basis, but for someone like me, who is still relatively new to the sport and whose previous regular range was only half of that, skiing “Everest” in a day was a big challenge.

 

It doesn’t matter how others may laugh at or brush aside your dream. Your dream is your own. However, just to want it, is not enough. A dream would remain a daydream if you do nothing about it.

 

When you can visualize your goal, you can reach it.

 

Visualization is more than just a wishful thinking, a beautiful imagination. It’s about focusing your mind, and thus your energy, on it. When you want it so much, you not only visualize the goal, you also visualize the path towards the goal. You map out each step and come up with a solution to each anticipated hurdle.

 

When you focus your mind on it, you naturally direct all your energy to the task. The action is the most important difference between a daydream and a reachable goal. The distance between a daydream and a reachable goal is only one step.

 

When you put your mind on it, make a plan, and focus all your energy on the action, a daydream becomes a realistic goal. Stop pushing them away and get started now!

 

Stop pushing them away and get started now!

Who Am I?

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Have you ever had the experience, when you are asked to introduce yourself and you stumble, unsure of what to say after saying your name and where you are from? Or worse, you are introduced by the host, and you wonder, “Is that who I am in other people’s eyes?”

 

In different social occasions, we are introduced in different ways. Most of the time, it is some kind of label, like which school you graduated from, which company you work for, your job title, or your most notable achievement. Though that’s much better than simply describing you by your appearance or your wealth, you sometimes probably still subconsciously think, “That’s not who I am.”

 

Not surprisingly, I’m often introduced as the first Chinese woman or the first Asian American who climbed Seven Summits and skied to both the North and the South poles. Almost every time, I can immediately sense that people visualize me as standing high up on a stool, expecting me to be perfect, or have super human capabilities. No matter if it’s sports-related activities or working on a professional or community project, people often say to me, “This must be too easy for you.” Just as Asians are expected to be good at math, I am expected to be a fast runner, speed hiker, and one who can achieve any goal. I appreciate their high expectations, especially when achieving goals, but I never felt I am who I am just because I climbed some mountains.

 

People know I have climbed Mount Everest, but not many know that I was the slowest and the weakest one on my team. I didn’t grow up an athletic kid, but a book nerd. Since I set my dream to climb Everest in 2004, I trained hard and improved a lot, but I was still nowhere near the level of a professional athlete.

 

On Everest, I was the least likely person anyone expected to succeed. In fact, all of the Sherpas, the Nepalese mountain guides, secretly betted that I would be the first one to quit.  Halfway through the two-month expedition, I fell sick, making my chances of succeeding even slimmer.

 

For me, the significance of climbing Mount Everest, lies not in the height or the fame of this mountain, but in how I persevered against all odds on this journey. I’m proud that I didn’t give up despite setback after setback; I’m proud that I kept a high spirit and didn’t let others’ low expectations put me down; I’m proud that I endured suffering with a positive attitude. It doesn’t matter which mountain I climbed, summit or not, I am proud of how I persevered when faced with obstacles.

 

It’s not the event or achievement that defines who we are, but who we are determines what we do during those events. What determines the outcome is not whether you are good or bad at it, but how you handle it when the going gets tough.

 

Though what you did creates a label in other people’s eyes, the spectator is not who you answer to ultimately. No matter success or failure, people will cast different judgment on you, but that does not change who you are. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone else but to yourself. You are the only one in this world whom you have to answer to in the end. No one may be there to witness what you are doing, but you will! You are the only one who lives with everything you did in your life.

 

The event, or what other people see, does not define who you are. Rather, how you did it identifies yourself and shows who you are. There might be a discrepancy between who you are in other’s eyes and in your own mind, but don’t be fooled by how other people compliment or criticize you. They may lift you up or put you down, but that can’t change who you are inside! You are the only one who ultimately defines who you are by how you do everything you do.