Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - MORNING MOTIVATION - Wake Up Early, Start Your Day Right!

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

“But man is not made for defeat… A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” - Ernest Hemingway

We're not looking for mountain tops. We may be unaware. We may forget, we may be misled, but in our hearts and souls we know we are not looking for mountain tops. What we're seeking is different. What we're seeking is the space between the top of the world and its baseline, the ceiling and the floor. Sure, we may trick ourselves into thinking. it's the top or the finale or the view. But as has been said before, if the goal were truly the top,

we wouldn't bother ourselves by climbing, we'd be dropped off at the top by helicopter. No, we aren't looking for mountain tops. What we want is undoubtedly the climb. We live for that climb. That immersion into life where we are alive, awake, that quest for purpose where humans are transformed and life adjusts to stop feeling like a standardized test and start feeling like a canvas waiting on a masterpiece. Simple? Yes, easy. No. It's Nietzsche and Frankl's meaning through suffering. It's Peterson's choosing your sacrifice.

Simon Sinek's finding your why. It's Gaghan's staying hard. Grover's becoming a cleaner. These aren't parts of the journey. They are the journey. Mountain tops are meaningful simply because they remind us that we could have said no and didn't. They allow us to remain conscious of our courage, what we overcame and who we became along the way. and the view it allows us to hold on to that realization just a little longer before setting out for new mountains to climb. But knowing the person embarking upon the next journey will be a little wiser, a little stronger, a little more polished. As Jim Rohn said, it's not success we're after.

It's what the pursuit makes us along the way. That's why Eckert Toley says the adrenaline-seeking pursuits such as a climb are so powerful, because we're forced to be in that moment. To understand what living is, we can't be pulled down by the past or diverted by the future. We are immersed in what matters.

Transformation happening in real time, because something can be made out of nothing. But mountaintops don't do that. Elevation through blood, sweat, and tears does that. Mountain tops are symbolic of what we become every time we pull ourselves a little higher. They stand for a million little yeses in a world of nose, just like the trophy, is nothing more than a celebration of trials and tribulations.

Hearing the crowd roar when you roll, rose to the occasion, finding ways to win when the odds were stacked against you, becoming more when it felt like there was nothing left. Don't let life trick you into thinking it was ever about the hardware or the trophy case. It's not. Any more than swimming on a beautiful day is about drying off. No, it's the middle. It's where we are forged from fire.

It's where we map our destinies. It's the game of life. So remember when you do feel tired or weak or lost or can't seem to find your reason to carry on, that you can't see it now because you are entrenched in the most meaningful of experiences. You are, in fact, at the heart of what you'll look back on and realize to find you, the center of transformation, of meaning. Remember that idea that if mountaintops were the goal, we wouldn't. climb, we would get dropped by helicopter. This journey, with all its ups and downs, his life at its

fullest, it's why you're here. It's why you must keep going. In a commencement speech, Ed Helms referenced his character from the office, Andrew Bernard, and his perhaps most defining quote, I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you've actually left them. Well, my friends, we are right now in the business of making good old days. Don't wait for any metaphorical mountain top to look back and realize how precious, how powerful, how perfect the ascent truly was.