The Chomolungma

File under Meet Yourself

33 years ago today, famed mountain climber Reinhold Messner summited Mount Everest (Chomolungma in Tibet and Sagarmatha to you Nepalese out there) with his climbing partner Peter Habeler. Although certainly not the first to conquer Everest, it was the first ascent done without supplemental oxygen. A feat most at that time thought impossible. Messner is generally thought to be the greatest climber of all time, having set many other firsts including the first to climb Everest solo, and the first to summit all 14 of the peaks over 8,000 meters (greater than 26,246 feet).

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That “greatness” is certainly, in part, a result of single-minded focus and perseverance. But probably more importantly it came as a result of time and opportunity.

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Messner grew up in Northern Italy with the Alps as his backyard. He summited his first mountain with his father at the age of 5 and by the time he was 20 he was thought to be one of the best European climbers. Messner immersed himself in exploration and outdoor activities from an early age, amassing hour upon hour of practice and experience. Messner spent day and night in the mountains and was furthermore encouraged by his family to pursue his passion. Messner’s ability to spend that much time doing what he loved enabled him to achieve “greatness” more so than any desire he may have had to be great.

Few of us are going to be climbing Everest anytime soon, but the concept applies to our individual drive for success. We typically have intent and willingness but we often dismiss the importance of our environment and our available time as having anything to do with our success. We have jobs that prevent us from working out early in the morning, we have families that prevent us from working more, sleeping more, or playing more golf, or we surround ourselves with those who find a particular success unimportant. None of which are bad, they just happen to be examples of how we prioritize our lives and create environments that make certain successes extremely difficult. And yet we often don’t understand why we didn’t achieve our goals and blame ourselves.

Now what if Messner had grown up in Iowa? Would he be the greatest climber as we know him now? We’ll never know, but I would argue that the odds would be stacked against him, just as the odds are stacked against us when we can’t ensure an environment conducive to success.

We’ll look at this more in the next post, including the 10,000 hour threshold concept

Song of the Day

In honor of an album titled “Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner”, the song of the day is Ben Folds Five’s “Mess”.