How to Climb Mountains
Or, how to achieve anything. Inspired by Paulo Coehlo.
I’ve been musing recently about the power of action (see my May Letter!) I love Tony Robbins for his motivational enthusiasms, saying things like ‘Don’t should all over yourself” as in those things we half-heartedly say I ‘should’ do, rather than I must! I recognise too that I can spend an interminable amount of time preparing, researching, mood-boarding and list-making. And very good at it I am too! But it’s all utterly moot unless it’s converted into action. Nothing actually happens (or changes) until you take a first step. Into the void. Into the unknown. Into possibility. So easy to write, but as I look around me, and consider my own experience, I see how hard it is for many of us to do.
And I’m not sure it’s fear that holds us back. Not fear of change (often we know that the something has to happen). Not even fear of the doing (again, we know, deep within, that we have the capacity). I think perhaps it’s more the overwhelm of the potential upheaval, the dealing, the additional, the pushing beyond. Do you know what I mean? It’s just that life can already be quite exhausting, and yet the cruel irony is that often we must garner all of our resources to leap that final hurdle in order to make it to the longed for ‘better’ or calm on the other side.
So here, inspired by something that Paulo Coehlo, author of The Alchemist, wrote in a book of his thoughts and reflections (I used his headings), is an 8-step way to make that action leap a little easier on, and for, yourself…
First, choose the mountain you want to climb
This is how I justify all my mood-boarding etc… I want to be sure that when I finally rev up to make that leap, that I’m going in the right direction. And this is the bit that I think many of us struggle with. That said, I do know people who have life-maps for