“Mr. Daniel, you need to appreciate the mountain you’re standing on right now!”
Sharing one of my favorite podcast excerpts today. This one is worth diving into together.
I’ll link the full pod at the end, but the excerpt is a story about climbing a mountain by Daniel Priestley. Take a listen before you read, 1:37:22 - 1:40:37.
Daniel Priestley is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker with a background in startups. He co-founded Dent Global, an accelerator that helps entrepreneurs scale.
He’s a combo of entrepreneurship self-help (+) deep understanding of personal branding, psychology, and value creation. And a great storyteller.
Cliffnotes
On a trip to Bali, Daniel starts a mountain climb at midnight (wondering why they are starting in the middle of the night). Wearing tiny headlamps to light the way, they climb all night and summit at 6 AM. He realizes they were climbing through the night to catch the sunrise from the top.
The sun rises, lighting up Bali and the surrounding ocean. On the horizon, Daniel points out another mountain.
Daniel fires off a series of questions to the guide, “Is it on the same island? How long does it take to get there? How long does it take to climb? Is it higher or lower? How much is it? Can I book through you?”
The guide put his arm around him and says, “Mr. Daniel, you need to appreciate the mountain you’re standing on right now!”
When you’re standing on the mountain, you see everything but that mountain. You can’t see it because you’re too close to it. All you can see are the other mountains on the horizon.
These faraway peaks represent the things you’re not doing, that you cannot imagine attempting. Others are already so far ahead of you and on those summits.
But in this farcast glance is a blind spot: your current mountain of value. Your story, your background, your network, your friends, your loved ones, your interests, your flaws, your relatability.
Climbing
Beginnings seldom feel significant in the moment. I often don’t realize I’m experiencing a beginning until looking back on it. Most journeys worth going on become inadvertently worthwhile, and seem to start unassumingly. One foot in front of the other.
It’s hard to articulate the premeditation of it all at the outset. I make 5-year plans to rebel against the chaos of becoming. And to feel agency in the right to carve a path instead of being a passenger to the predetermined.
Time moves forward, one foot in front of the other. I don’t have a choice. The beauty is that looking back, the drumbeat has led me up a mountain of my own, one that exists as a direct product of my unique lived experience.
Now, I have choices.
Choosing
Choosing to see the mountain I’m standing on. This requires seeing my value clearly, and allowing some self-recognition and kinder self-talk. And in doing so, I’ve become more aware of the opportunity cost of descending the current mountain, too.
It’s only very recently that I made a small step in this right direction. Even as I climbed at an unsustainable pace, I spent years looking up at the 360° vista of taller peaks around me, feeling terrible. I still often feel intimidated, insecure, and incapable of feeling proud of this mountain. But on the other side, allowing myself a small pat on the back for reaching a local peak has brought incredible focus. I’m now able to see a choice, rather than an obligation.
Choosing to stay on this mountain. Feeling fulfilled with the life I’ve built has been a very slow-going learning process. In my case, I don’t think I can “find” it reaching some objective level of success, rather I have to learn it.
This is helping me reframe those surrounding mountain ranges as choices. It’s not that I can’t climb other mountains, but I can choose not to. I’m allowed to choose that. Maybe those mountains “aren’t for me” and I get to decide.
The hardest part is convincing myself wholly that I am choosing, rather than admitting defeat. And this comes back to self-talk. For decades, my internal mode-push has been “you are worthless if you can’t even do this” or “how are you so fucking stupid that you can’t get that” or “xyz person is outdoing you in every way stop being so mediocre” etc.
Without acknowledging my ability, unlearning that is hard.
Choosing to descend. Was the point to enjoy the view, or the climb itself? I struggle to answer this (even though the “right” answer seems obvious), which has in and of itself led to a small breakthrough.
The reason it’s tough to answer, is because I’ve spent the majority of my life so far maximizing on a single vector: career and money. I don’t regret this. My view was that in the (hopefully) rapidly closing window before I get married, have children, and consequently, important responsibilities beyond myself, now is the time to max this out. Push as hard as possible now, because there will come a day in the not-so-distant future when I can’t. Climb through the night so I don’t miss the sunrise, if you will.
That may be a fine answer, but it’s one of these things where I have overpowering intuition that in my heart of hearts, on my last day on Earth, I will think of the climb more than the view. Despite knowing that, why can’t I descend this mountain?
Seeing
Late last year, I was getting uneasy lingering at the local maximum. It also started feeling dangerous: time was passing but I wasn’t growing. Oxygen runs low if that goes on too long.
I vented this uneasiness on my career, and tormented myself for not throwing everything out to chase the next rung of the ladder as I had for years. Maybe I ran out of sauce. If I descend this mountain, I won't even recover to this initial height.
The insight may be that mountains come in different types. There are career and money mountains, family mountains, health mountains, sense-of-meaning mountains, understanding-self mountains. There is joy in climbing any of them, which requires descending this one.
For now, maybe before I climb again, I can stroll for a bit. And discover the quiet details that are lost to speed.
I’ve poured the time I reclaimed from work into long solo walks, more music, and recently, writing. These essays are my small way of endeavoring to understand myself more.
There is inherent joy in just choosing to do that; an intentional change in direction.
Full podcast [here], thank you Steven Bartlett and Daniel Priestley.