“It’s steeper near the top,” Seth Godin writes in his chapter on Resistance.
This is not always true. I’ve crested many a summit ridge after a steep and arduous ascent to find a short, gentle walk to the top.
But I think I know what Godin means. So often, the deeper we move into a big project, whether it be a work-related start-up, a creative endeavor, an athletic goal, or a high mountain summit, the scarier it gets. This is especially true if we have a lot of skin in the game, a lot at risk, a lot on the line, our livelihood at stake. And if we have “burned the boats” and foreclosed a means of escape, sheer terror can set in.
The truth is this: the greater the fear, the higher the resistance; the starker the terror, the greater the temptation to turn around, give up, and go back.
The English theologian Thomas Fuller said, “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” Fuller wasn’t a climber. But he knew what he was talking about. Up high in the mountains, it is the darkest hour. And the coldest one too! It’s that hour when the feet feel like cement blocks; the hands like meat hanging on a hook. Fatigue is high. Morale is low.
It’s that hour when I am most vulnerable. When the warmth of my tent beckons, when thoughts of my sleeping bag call to me. It is that hour when I most feel the fear.
It is our lizard brain, as Godin calls it, that fuels that fear. Our lizard brain says: Abandon the fight; engage the flight; take the easy way out.
I wish I had a simple solution for this. But I don’t. I fight the lizard on every project, every run, every summit morning. The lizard always wants me to turn back. It always wants comfort. It always wants safety. It never wants change.
The only advice that I can offer is this: hold fast to the vision of success, hold fast to the vision of the dream. Take one step at a time. Don’t look down. Don’t look back.
Often the first step is the hardest. As momentum builds, our adrenaline kicks in and carries us through.
But deep in those projects that take weeks, months, or years, it is easy to get lost and disoriented, disheartened and discouraged. In the darkness of those pre-dawn hours, the lizard screams. It’s then that we need faith in ourselves. And a partner or coach who encourages and empowers us; and fellow travelers on the Journey to cheer us on.
Susan Jeffers says feel the fear and do it anyway. Tony Robbins says that the difference between success and failure can be just 2mm, perhaps a hundredth of a second.
Don’t stop. Push through. Stay the course.
The lizard brain says turn back: back to comfort, back to safety, back to what you know. The lizard brain says it will always be cold, it will always be dark.
The lizard lies.
The dawn always comes.
And oh the summit is so good.
