3 Biggest Mistakes of a Journey

Prof. N Vaidyanathan teaches entrepreneurship at several ivy-league business schools globally including Princeton, NUS and IIMs. Her company CARMa mentors startups. She shared her experiences recently in a forum and I felt moved by the truth behind her statements. Irrespective of whether you tread the entrepreneurship journey or not, what she said summarized the facts true to any journey, true to anyone’s life. This post is inspired by her discussions.

It was her first trekking experience. She had never climbed a mountain before. But when hundreds of others can do it, I too can – this spirit had made her signup for the adventure trip. And the trip was unique with people from diverse regions and work backgrounds had signed up for their bit of the fun and adventure this trip promised. As a result, she had landed up in this group with people of different age-groups as well. Cutting the story short, their guide told them that this is the first mountain they had to climb and it is like a rehearsal so that only people who are ok after this short climb can climb a higher mountain the next day. The total time up-slope was about 4 hours.

She shares her thoughts. When she started to climb, she was all excited and it felt great. Hanging on from a great height, slowly setting the feet and then taking a shake and resting on a higher position, step by step. The adrenalin kept on pumping energy into her. And she continued climbing. And she was very careful in putting her feet stably, as per the instructions of the guide. And she was actually doing it right until she committed those 3 disastrous blunders.

Learning - Benchmarking all the time serves nothing.

It was just about an hour when she felt that she is getting tired and finding it increasingly difficult to continue climbing. The first biggest mistake she committed was she looked up!! And she saw her fellow members in the adventure trekking group are ahead at far greater height than her! And that made her sad and even more vulnerable.

Learning- Resist temptation to tell yourself that you are doing better.

And then she committed the second blunder. She looked down! When she did, she realized that there was no one behind her. She was the laggard in the group and this feeling of being the last one in the group grappled her with apprehension. This feeling of being the last one hurts and now her feet came to a stop, her hands lacked the grip and she was almost ready to give up climbing!

Learning - Stop trying to know the future

And that is when she committed the third mistake, or rather a crime. She asked the guide.. How much more left? The guide replied 75% more distance is left. This shattered her. Just the fact that only 1/4th of the painstaking climbing is over and still 3 times the torture is left made her transfixed. She was there with her group totally above her, she was the last one and to reach somewhere, she had to climb up or down. Climbing down was easy but it was a difficult decision to make.

Focus. Focus. Focus...on the small step you are taking.

She closed her eyes. Held on to the rope tightly and thought of the latest strategy. She decided that she would not look at the top or the bottom, nor she would be worried how much more distance is left but she would focus on one step at a time, work at her own sweet pace and climb slowly up. And she did exactly that. They reached the top of the mountain. And then the guide on the way back to the camp asked her – There are two ways, one is less steep but takes a bit more time. Other takes lesser time and is too steep. Which one would you like to go.

“Of course, the steeper one!” She smiled.

Exact same three things can be applied to our daily lives and into things we do. Rather than focusing on the present and going one step at a time, we focus on too many things in the future and get worried. We also get worried by looking at our past and also looking at our peer group. We even make our own lives miserable by asking others about us. We are a funny race of people. Staying focused on fewer things ensures that we are inching towards our goal, consistently.

What do you think? You would work better if you knew the end-result or you would stop working if you knew the end-results?

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