Reflections from taking on a big climbing goal
How to make journeys towards big goals feel good ✨
On the first day of 2023 I achieved a big goal I’d set for myself in climbing.
I climbed a route, in Spain, that was a big step up from anything I’d climbed before. I had trained specifically for this route and given a lot of my time and energy towards it over the winter months. For most of you that don’t climb - the important thing you need to know is that this was a goal that mattered to me and I had a 50:50 chance of achieving it. (If you’re a climber, and craving more details, it was a 7b sport route with quite powerful moves and there’s a picture below!)
Achieving the goal felt amazing. I felt all of the emotions, and I’m so happy and grateful that things went my way and I got to experience that moment. But I felt like I’d achieved something before I climbed the route: I made the journey towards this goal feel positive and engaging and enjoyable. I trained really hard for this route, but I made the training fun and it didn’t take over my life. I failed on the route many many times, but I finished the day focusing on what had gone well. I tried super hard on each try, but I still had the time and headspace to support other people on their climbs too.
Below I’ve reflected on how and why that journey felt good, and started to explore how these learnings from a climbing goal can map into our work lives.
Go for the big challenge, but keep it in perspective
My past experience of going for big goals has often felt unbalanced - all in and big sacrifices.
When I stepped up into the CPO role at Monzo, it felt like the singular focus in my life. I regularly missed running club because I was working late, I’d be thinking about work at dinner with friends, I’d be thinking about work when babysitting my niece and nephew, I’d be talking about work with my family. It was all consuming. I sacrificed time, energy, and sleep towards this challenge.
The all consuming goals are an experience. You might want that all consuming experience, where your goal takes over every waking moment. But for me, it was important with this goal not to sacrifice everything else in my life. I leant into the training and fully accepted the challenge. But I found a way for it to work around other things going on in my life: growing my business, eating too much cheese at Christmas, running, spending time with friends and family.
This climb and this goal didn’t dominate my time - both before the trip, and on the trip itself. Having other things to focus on, that remained the same whatever the outcome of my climbing, was so important for me keeping perspective.
With a big challenge that we take on, how can we draw boundaries around that goal and be clear about what we need to keep doing to keep that challenge in perspective? What does success look like for the journey, not just for the overall outcome of the goal?
Recognise progress, each time you “fail”
Trying any hard climb confronts you with failure, time after time. Failure in climbing is when you try the climb from the bottom to the top and aren’t able to link all the moves - you fall off or you have a rest on the rope. This trip after every time I tried (and failed) I’d come down and call out what I’d make progress on. Maybe I linked something together a tiny bit better, maybe I felt a bit more comfortable and less scared.
I moved away from the blanket statements of failure and success, to focusing on how much closer I was to success than the time before. I was able to celebrate every step of the journey, not just the final step. Before I’d even sent I knew that I’d climbed better than I ever had done before.
Any big goal is going to involve a lot of failure, times that you try to achieve the outcome you want, but it doesn't happen. You can either think of these as a string of failures, or you can take a moment to extract the learning and the progress.
So if you apply for a job, and you don’t get the job, what went well? Maybe it’s something as small as celebrating the fact you went for a job that you really cared about. Maybe you got great feedback from the process. Or maybe you learnt something about yourself from that process.
If you’re going through fundraising, and you come back from another meeting that didn’t go your way, what progress can you take away? Maybe the fact you even got a call with investors is progress. Maybe you felt really comfortable pitching your company, much more than the last pitch.
Failure will always sting, especially when you care about the goal and the outcome, but how can we take a moment to call out the progress and the learnings? Taking a moment to do this feels better and allows us to make more progress quicker.
Get inspired by others, but focus on your own journey
In so many things in life it’s easy to compare yourself to where someone else is. For this climb, Pete and I were both working on the same climb. He made progress so much quicker than me at figuring out the moves. I had a choice. I could get excited for Pete, get inspired by seeing someone else make progress or I could get into a comparative state where his success had to fight for space with mine.
The same goes with work, there will always be that person that feels like they’re on fire and achieving everything. They might raise funding super quickly, they might get a promotion quickly, their startup might look like it’s an absolute rocket ship.
I’ve had moments where I’ve let other people's success add pressure to my own journey. With this climb, I found a way to switch off from my own journey and fully focus on supporting Pete and our friends on their own goals and challenges. It felt liberating, to fully celebrate others' success, without comparing it to mine.
Then when it came to my turn to climb, I reminded myself to stick to my own journey and own experience. It might look slower or different or more up and down. But I focused on my own journey in those moments, not others.
With most of these things, it’s not a zero sum game. There’s space for us all to achieve at the same time. When it comes to work, how can we fully support and celebrate other people’s success? How can we get inspired by people, rather than their success adding pressure to our own journey?
Closing thoughts
If I’d achieved the climb or not, the months and days and hours leading up to that attempt would have been the exact same. I’ve realised that for me, that journey to the goal matters almost as much as achieving the goal itself. Especially when you set yourself a big goal that you may or may not hit. The journey needs to feel good.
The three learnings I’m taking forward from this experience are:
Go for the big challenge, but keep it in perspective
Recognise progress each time you “fail”
Get inspired by others, but focus on your own journey
I feel like I’m still processing this more than some of my other posts. I’d love your reflections and comments. ❤️