Several years ago, a friend of mine went to climb Kilimanjaro with her then boyfriend. She was in her early forties, about 5 feet tall, and about 100 pounds. He was 6’3” tall and probably 250 pounds. Because she had climbing experience and he didn’t, she’d did as much as she could to help him prepare.
She worked out with him.
She helped him with his nutrition and travel plans.
She scheduled training hikes as often as he could.
I haven’t climbed Kilimanjaro. But I understand that it’s a fascinating climb because it goes through five different climatic zones as you climb from the base to the top at 19,340 feet. Climbers start out in African bushland and then end up in frigid conditions for the last portion.
My friend, her boyfriend, and the rest of the group reached their highest camp at about 18,000 feet. And when they unrolled their respective sleeping bags, it became clear the boyfriend’s bag no longer fit him. He’d had it since his early 20’s and hadn’t tried it out before packing it. His strategy to leave it unzipped worked at the lower elevations, but it was awfully cold higher up. In the middle of the night, he started clamoring for my friend to lie on top of him to keep him warm.
No One Can Climb Your Mountains For You
I love this story because it reminds me of two key things. First, no one can climb your mountains for you. In retrospect, one of the problems started long before my friend and her boyfriend left the US. It turned out he’d been working out on the treadmill. But he’d been exaggerating his work out times and also had been hanging on to the rails of the treadmill most of the time. It meant that he was really struggling as they climbed and his exhaustion made everything worse.
So this was a systems problem. Not doing everything possible to set up the conditions for success.
What Do You Do When Things Get Hard?
And the second key thing this story brings up for me is a question about when things get hard. When you face a moment in life that you are unprepared for, what do you do? Get inventive (wear your parka to bed), suffer in silence, or expect someone else to jump in to fix it?
I know I’ve done all three. The worst results have come when I expect someone else to fix it because I end up feeling disempowered. The best is when I get inventive because it sparks some creative troubleshooting.
In the end, the boyfriend made it to the top. Nothing dramatic happened. He didn’t lose a limb because his sleeping bag didn’t fit. But I don’t think he ever climbed a mountain again.
Which is okay, because his example to do everything possible to prepare and get inventive when things go wrong lives on.
I’ve published a related post on my personal blog: Waiting For the Big Answers
Please check out these other items of interest:
More about Wynne Leon and her story-telling journey
Workshop about creativity jump start that I delivered with Dr. Vicki Atkinson
Speaking and workshops on leadership through creativity to build resilient teams
Podcast about the how and why of creativity
Articles and corporate creativity resources
Corporate evaluate your team needs for creativity
Individual creativity survey for individuals
My book about my journey to find what fueled my dad’s indelible spark and twinkle can be found on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith.
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter @wynneleon
(featured photo from Pexels)