I’ve always wondered what its like to climb a mountain, with a world where everything has pretty much been explored. I wonder where the adventure is, where are the adventurers of our time? The lewis and Clarks. If I’ve never been somewhere i can just google map it, or watch a documentary about it. What does the man who conquers the mountain think about when he’s on top. Maybe he thinks about the climb down, maybe he thinks he should have prepared better for the venture. He could think all those things, but i don’t think that’s what’s on his mind. I believe the true adventurers only have one thing on their mind when they climb to the top of the mountain. He only thinks about the next mountain he’s going to climb.
As I find myself preparing for some new challenges coming my way, I realize I keep trying to go back to my old mountains. Maybe it’s because I’m comfortable there, its terrain I’ve already explored. It provides a struggle, but it’s not a true challenge. I don’t believe I’m the only person who does that, how many people do we know who keep going back to that ex-boyfriend, that addiction that’s bringing them down, there depression. Just like any storm in life, they come and they go. It’s not permanent, it’s not set in stone. It just a moment of your life. It may seem like you’ve been there forever, but I promise you. You overcame that problem a long time ago. Stop climbing back down the mountain and look ahead to the new one.
I struggled with my weight for a long time, up and down, up and down. I decided one day that i had enough of it. I wanted to feel good about myself, to like the man i saw in the mirror. So I started working out,eating healthy, the usual suspects of trying to lose weight. I did it, I lost all that weight and it felt great. As I look in the mirror today I still see the same man who overcame that mountain. Eating healthy, working out, Those are daily routines to me now. Sometimes its a struggle, but it’s never a challenge. I don’t think about my weight anymore because I climbed that mountain, I conquered it. Flag waving and all. I turned my attention to the next mountain instead of looking down.
Human beings strive to be challenged, i know sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. History tells us a different story, we see people who explored new land and claimed it as their own. They could have stopped there, no one would have blamed them. They chose to keep moving on, bask in your victory for a moment. But there’s always another challenge out there for you to overcome. Whenever I start a new video game I always start the difficulty on hard. I know in doing this im going to die a lot, get frustrated, hell sometimes ill feel like switching back to normal. I don’t want to settle for just getting by, I want to die sometimes, I want to get frustrated sometimes, I want to be pushed to my limits. It’s in those moments when you realize the only limits you have are the ones you put on yourself
When you wake up in the morning, set the difficulty to hard, look ahead to that new mountain in your life. Sure setting it easy is a guaranteed win every time. You lose a part of you every time you do that. Don’t set the bars low, don’t be scared to break a sweat, failing is an inevitable part of life. So why not fail at things you actually want to do. Take risks, apply for that new position, ask that person out. I don’t want to be on my deathbed telling my children about the one mountain I kept climbing up and down. I want to tell them about the different challenges each mountain presented to me. I want to tell them how I conquered it, how it kept me up late at night, the sweat and blood that dripped down my face. I want them to know that I made it to the top of each one, broken, bruised and sore. I want them to know that I never looked back down.
Random Thoughts 