Climb the mountains

How high is your mountain? I mused about this not too long ago while watching my young ones clamber on rocks at the beach. My instinct was to caution them, "Be careful", "I wouldn't do that" as they jumped from one slippery surface to the next wobbly one and tried to reach higher and higher. There weren't any accidents, and to be honest most times when they play like this, there aren't any.

We tend to see mountains as obstacles and shifting them or avoiding them as progress. We should all be climbing more, playing for the odds of ascending versus the remote chance of falling. We should all be stacking our own boulders higher - one experience, one relationship, one discovery, one aspiration at a time. The more we stack, the more stable the mountain gets, the higher we will go, the more surefooted and confident we will become, the further we will see, and the more possibilities we will contemplate. I am glad the kids ignored me and convinced me to leave the stable but flat lowland behind, and climb too.

As an institution, a leader, a professional, do you romanticize the flat land or look for ways to climb higher? Do you climb on unsteady rocks? Do you stack them high? Which boulder will you move into place today? How high a mountain are you willing to build?

#realwintips