Often times it is the fear of failure that keeps us from taking the leap, whether that’s taking a chance with a new relationship, starting a new business, or taking an idea from brain to bank.
Ten years ago, I attended a self-improvement seminar in the mountains of northern California. The week-long agenda included outdoor exercises designed to challenge your fears. One challenge was to climb an old, 50-foot-high wooden telephone pole equipped with metal brackets as footholds.
The objective was to reach the highest point of the pole, stand on the very top with nothing to hold onto, stand there for a full minute while the pole swayed side-to-side in the wind, and then leap out and grab the steel bar of a trapeze 10 feet out. Having spent my youth climbing trees and leaping off riverbank cliffs 30 feet above the water, I thought the challenge was no big deal.
As I watched others climb toward the top of the pole and then stop just short of the last step, I began to wonder if it was as easy as it looked. I realized that as I reached the top of the pole, where there was nothing to grab hold of to pull myself up, I would have to climb the last 14 inches with sheer muscle and grit, and quickly bring my other foot up for balance.
I watched as one, and then another climber got stuck before making that final step. One woman sat on the topmost rung for over an hour trying to muster up her courage to go on. Shouts of encouragement echoed from below. Still, she couldn’t make herself move. Finally, she climbed back down the pole… defeated.
Several others got just as far, only to fail and climb back down.
Then it was my turn.
Geared up in a hard hat and harness attached to a wire as a safety device, I started climbing. It felt easy until I was about midway and the pole began to sway in the wind. The farther up I went, the more it rocked back and forth.
Gripping the metal rungs even harder, I kept climbing.
Finally, I was on the last rung… the place where others had been and had stopped and then turned back. I vowed I would not do that. I sat with my foot on the last rung for about a minute, and then I counted to three. 1…2…3… and made myself lift my left foot up onto the top of the pole. I was almost there.
I paused. I realized I would have to use every ounce of muscle and grit to finish the climb and get my other foot onto the top of the pole. With nothing to hold on to. Just me up there… depending on just me.
And then it also occurred to me that the worst thing that could happen was that I‘d fall and have to climb back up and try it again.
So, I put all of my weight on my left foot and lifted my right onto the top of the swaying pole. I stood there amazed I hadn’t fallen. I basked in the glory of it all for a few minutes, taking in the glorious landscape that I could see for miles around me.
“Waaaaaaah hooooooo!!” I shouted.
And then I took the big leap for the trapeze bar.
Oh, what a feeling of success that was!
Don’t be the person who climbs back down. Don’t sit there clinging to the footholds deciding if you’re going to take the last step. Decide before you climb that you’ll go all out and not quit until you make it. Keep going while you have the momentum of climbing up rung by rung. One “rung victory” at a time. The last step is part of the momentum you already have. Take it! Do it! 1… 2… 3… Go!
Then you’ll be standing on the very top spreading your arms out wide, taking in the incredible beauty of having made it and shouting, “Waaaaaaah hooooooo!!”
