Flashback to when I attempted to climb a live volcano.
A 102-year-old man just summited Mount Fuji, making him the oldest person to do it. His 70-year-old daughter accompanied him the whole way.
Reading this, I, a spry 58, felt slightly called out.
When asked how he made it, Kokichi Akuzawa said it beautifully: his friends encouraged him when he wanted to quit, and it was everyone else’s strength that carried him to the summit.
I know both sides of that coin.
A couple of years ago, I attempted Cotopaxi in Ecuador — a live volcano at 19,000 feet — complete with crampons, an ice axe, and a gas mask for the poisonous fumes near the top.
Unlike Kokichi, I didn’t summit.
Partly because 48.9% of me wanted to quit the entire way up.
Mostly because my guide — who was supposed to be in my corner — decided unilaterally to turn us back, then scampered down the mountain without us, leaving my climbing partner Ron and me to pick our way down through the darkness alone.
Kokichi didn’t have a guide, but he did have several people with him. More importantly, he had people who wanted him to make it.
… I had a guy who left me stranded halfway up a volcano.
The mountain doesn’t care how ready you feel. What matters is who’s climbing with you.
Kokichi also said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about: “We were all on an equal footing and moved forward together.”
Move forward together … Sounds a little like breathe together, doesn’t it?
If you’ve been following along this week, you’ll know that’s where the word “conspiracy” comes from, and the doors to The Conspiracy are now open.
The meaningful work you’re doing — something personal, or professional, or emerging — it’s your mountain.
And it doesn’t get easier just because you want it badly enough.
When you have the right people on your climb, who are invested in their own climb as much as yours, the summit becomes possible.
You don’t have to trudge or scramble through the hard parts alone.
We have 300+ brilliant, generous people who will be beside you on the hard parts of the climb and will be there waving the celebratory flag when you make it to the top.
Doors to The Conspiracy are only open until next Wednesday.
