Climbing other people’s mountains
Exploring the pursuit of career over your own inner challenges
Yesterday, I caught up with Nirish and Josie who ran the end of year retro I attended last week. We recorded our conversation as an unstructured retro of the retro for a future Design Feeling podcast.
Amongst the technology challenges, my low mood and some sharing that I might later regret, there was a beautiful metaphor of climbing mountains that Nirish brought into the conversation.
Since he did that, we extended the metaphor several times in the show and it’s been sitting with me since.
Metaphors are often easier to connect to than the logic of our thoughts. At least I find them that way.
From memory, Nirish was describing the challenge of climbing mountains and how one can instead be focused on walking down pleasant paths, going along rivers. Rather than struggling up tricky terrain. False peak after false peak. Taking an easier, more calm route, rather than making it harder on ourselves.
It reminded me of my leadership journey and a little sketch I made several years ago for an article I wrote in Lyon on design leadership.
In our conversation, I was reminded of my own experience and that of many of the people I coach and talk to. I, and they, have often pursued tangible progression. Ever increasing salaries. Ever inflated titles. And ever increasing responsibility, accountability and hopefully power. Or at least influence. All in the name of that ‘progression’.
They often call this the career ladder. And I often question where the ladder leads to.
Having been on this mountain of leadership and career ‘progression’ for many years, it has been really hard to step off it and watch others climb higher than I got.
Although, like a real mountain, people get to the top or what they feel like the top, and then either wonder if they should continue, or if they should climb down again. Maybe they stay for a bit. Soak in the achievement. And wonder ‘was it worth it?’
A mountain climb in Snowdonia last year
Last year, some friends from uni got together to climb Snowdon, in North Wales. I was very glad that my Peloton usage had made me limber enough to not struggle too much and the pleasant weather was a privilege given some of the photos I’ve seen of others’ attempts.
I had reluctantly agreed to go. They were my mates after all. Each a good laugh. And they each were people that meant a lot to me. But I didn’t really want to climb a mountain. I’d done that in my youth. But it wasn’t something I felt fit enough for or had any interest in doing as an activity.
It wasn’t my mountain to climb.
Things weren’t helped by an intense evening of heavy conversation that meant I may have had anywhere between 30 and 60 mins of sleep if any.
Limited time at the top and then a challenging descent
We got to the top pretty quickly. Took some beautiful photos. Had some lunch. I was amazed I could do it. And then we walked down again.
The walking down difficult in a different way. More pressure on my knees. More people. More chance of slipping. Sometimes it’s not much easier coming down as it is going up.
I may have felt some sense of pride. But I knew I didn’t want to do it. Or at least do it again.
A clear realisation
The biggest gift to me of that trip was that realisation I didn’t want to do that kind of activity again with them. Not in the near term. I’d rather go clubbing with them. It’s how I knew them. Not doing strenuous healthy activities. But doing strenuous, unhealthy and hedonistic ones.
I realised, it wasn’t my mountain to climb. It was someone else’s.
Getting off the money mountain
When we reflected on the metaphor of the mountain in our retro of retro conversation, I talked about how over the past couple of years my kids have got into cars.
It was partly my fault. When we did a California trip a couple of years back, I got them to count Teslas as a game to keep them engaged rather than bored and moaning while we spent much of the trip driving.
Now they have a keen eye for different car brands and models. Occasionally they’ll say something like, can we get a Lamborghini?
‘No, unfortunately not. That is probably not part of our future now.’ I’d say.
‘We could just sell the house’ one would respond.
‘Well we could, but then we’d have nowhere to live’ I would reason (plus, we still don’t have that sort of equity in the house).
‘But we’d have a Lamborghini. Maybe you could earn more money’.
Great. Maybe I could.
Seeing people around me with their nice houses, nice cars, well thought out pension plans, paid-off mortgages does often bring me a bit of sadness. And then I catch myself.
I chose a different path.
One where I could be more fulfilled on the journey through life. Where progress might be felt and not measured.
Measured not by titles, bank balances, nice cars, and flashy dinners.
Felt through my own personal progress. The impact on others. Tackling interesting and complex challenges.
My own mountains. My own paths.
This is a scary place to explore. Following your own path, and going off-piste is vulnerable. It’s risky. Unclear.
Following others’ paths and climbing the mountains that others climb is more comforting. Familiar. There is more obvious support. An acceptance by society.
But the tricky thing, I think you’ll realise if you haven’t already, is that you have many of your own metaphorical mountains to climb. These are often hidden from view. Distant on the horizon. Luckily, social media is putting more focus on them
To find yourself and your deal with your identity. Dealing with your own personal and professional challenges. Your own mental health. Your own physical health. Your relationship to relationships.
Dealing with whatever those mountains are and other peoples’ mountains might just be a little too much, or way too much, to handle.
So, I wonder whose mountains are you climbing? What will happen when you get to the top? How will you come down?
And which of your mountains are you putting off until you get to the summit of your career mountain and get the view across the valley?
The gift of the failing metaphor
And let’s challenge the mountain metaphor a little, as helpful though it could be initially.
The truth probably lies in our ability to tackle multiple challenges at the same time. Or at least switch between them. It’s not one mountain or another in serial, but in parallel. Like emotions, and feelings. And some of them are infinite journeys, not quests you conquer in a day, week, month or year.
The infinite journeys are the more interesting anyhow. Especially when they are your own and not someone else’s.
There’s that saying that goes something like this:
The best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago, but the second best time is today.
So how can you start to tackle the more meaningful challenges in your life? Not just someone else’s.
And how can you start today?
And if not today, maybe tomorrow.
