Climb Your Everest

No matter what kind of Everest you’re facing, you can have more opportunities in your life.

To surprise yourself, to be proud of yourself, to recognize how deep your reserves go, how you can go about achieving goals, and to see how strong you are and what you're capable of. 

A few things were made very clear to me during my 29029 endurance event (which I talked about in detail last week), when I climbed the equivalent of Everest through 8 ascents of Whistler Mountain.

Those five things are what I want to share from my Everest experience. Things that changed my perspective on how I want to spend my time on earth, the decisions I want to make, and the things I want to accomplish.

I want to encourage and inspire you to find the Everest in your own life and know that it’s possible for you to climb it.

It’s scary to try achieving goals

We’re always so worried about failing and disappointing ourselves that we end up holding ourselves back. We're scared of what it will mean about us if we can't do it, or if we try something and find out, “Oh, I don't have what it takes.”

But disappointment is a big part of life. And we’ll never fully avoid it.

As the founder of 29029, Jesse Itzler said, try looking for opportunities instead of avoiding disappointment. When we put ourselves out there to do our best and let the chips fall where they may, then if we have to be disappointed, at least we'll be disappointed knowing that we poured our soul and our effort into it.

Climbing your Everest happens one step at a time

When you look around your life, one little step doesn't look like anything. It looks unimportant compared to your Everest and how much further you have to go. 

All those steps add up and they are all necessary. Every single one of them matters, and every single one of them will take you closer to your goal. 

When those motivational people talk about your limitless possibility, it feels so important and so huge. But really, limitless possibility is just created a tiny, insignificant, seemingly unimportant step at a time. All those little steps together, all those little tiny possibilities add up to your limitless possibility. 

When you’re facing all the different versions of yourself telling you that you can’t do it and your obstacles are too huge to overcome… focus on just the next step. And then the next.

Loving the low points is essential

This is really hard to do. It sounds kind of cliché, but the depths are just as valuable as the highs. The high at the end of 29029 was only made possible because it was so difficult in the middle.

If it had been easy, it wouldn't have been victorious.

If you think about your emotional experience on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the heartbreak, 1 being the deepest, darkest, loneliest, hardest moments, and 10 being the triumphs, the celebrations, the victories, the highest highs… 

The tens can’t exist without the ones. They’re inseparably connected. So often, we're trying to live in the tens, and it just can't work. I’ve found that the ones are where the good stuff is. It's where you meet yourself. 

You’ll Learn:

• What you’ll need (even more than training and preparation) for achieving goals
• The real importance of the thoughts you think about yourself
• Why criticism and doubt have a place your human experience 
• How allowing for disappointment and pain expands your capacity for joy and triumph

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello podcast universe, welcome to episode 180 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I am so happy to be here with you today. I am doing a follow up episode to my 29029 experience. In this episode, I'm going to talk about some of like the big seismic life changing shifts that I had and that I think will help you and bless you in your life. So yeah, it's kind of a continuation of the things that I talked about last week and hopefully share a few more insights, a few more of the things that happened on that event.

So, if you haven't listened to last week's episode and you're missing some of the details today, as I, I go to talk about these things, you can always go back and and listen to that one. So, just in case you don't know that this endurance event is called 29029. And the point of it is that you're going to hike the equivalent of Mt. Everest in 36 hours. In my case, I did it on Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, Canada, and you you climb Whistler Mountain eight times. We started at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning, and my event I finished 35 hours later on Saturday at 5 p.m.. So, if you're wondering what that is like physically, emotionally, mentally, I would just say shockingly hard. It was definitely harder than anything that I've ever done and harder than I anticipate it being for me. I trained for about nine months.

For the first three months, I was just trying to get in condition to be able to even hike at a 30% incline. And then the last six months I was trying to like, increase my distance and my speed with that. And I felt really ready as I went into the event. And I had an ascent planned and almost from the first moment, like nothing went according to plan, and I was shocked at like how much grit and determination and guts the event really, really took. It was so much harder than I thought it would be and required so much more of me than I ever could have imagined. But I also figured out from doing it that I was stronger and stronger than I ever thought I was.

And I think I told you a few weeks ago about being really worried that I would like there would come a moment when I would have to dig deep and there would be nothing there to dig to, right? Like, I would turn around and find out, Oh, there's nothing left like that's as far as I go. But I found out that there are very deep reserves there, and I surprised myself by what I was capable of. I surprised myself by what I was able and willing to endure. And I want you to have an experience like that, not necessarily 29029 in particular, but I just want you to have more opportunities in your own life to surprise yourself, to blow your own mind, to be proud of yourself, to recognize how deep your reserves go, how strong you really are, what you're really capable of.

And I want to encourage you and inspire you to find your own Everest that you want to climb in your own life. And so today, I just want to talk about the five things that I learned that are life changing, things that like have changed my perspective on on on how I want to spend my life and and and the decisions that I want to make and the things that I want to do. And the five things that I learned climbing my Everest as an encouragement to you as a help to you as you go to climb yours.

So, the first thing that I want to say is that like, it is so awesome to put yourself in extraordinary situations and require big things of yourself. So I know that it's scary. I know that it's scary to like, dare to believe things about yourself. I know that it's scary to, like, try things, right? Like, we are always so worried about disappointing ourselves and we're so worried, in fact, that we're going to disappoint ourselves, that we're going to let ourselves down, that we're going to fail, that we end up holding ourselves back.

And we're so scared about what it's going to mean about us or the truth about us if we fail or if we can't do it, or if we try something and find out, Oh, we don't have what it takes, like we're so scared about like getting to that place that that we don't try at all. We just, we just don't even make an effort. And like when the event was over, there are several people who have who've done this event multiple times. My brother is one of them. I did this event with my brother. This was his third time doing it and somebody was like, Oh, are you going to do it again? And like my first thought was like, Oh no, I can't do it again, because if I fail, then, like it will mean that this one was a fluke, right? Like, I just have to, like, take my winnings and run.

Like I can't try anything else ever again. Hey, like, it's just so interesting that we're, like, so scared of disappointing ourselves. We're so scared of failing that that we won't even try. So I want to share with you something that Jesse Ensler said when we were there. So this whole event is created by Jesse Ensler and Colin O'brady. And as he was speaking to us, he he just talked about that like disappointment is a big part of life. And we need to just stop trying so hard to avoid it that it's just a part of life.

And it's not it's not the end of the world. Right. And he said, instead, what we really need to be doing is start looking for opportunities to put ourselves out there, to do our best, let the chips fall where they may. And if we have to be disappointed, then at least we're going to be disappointed knowing that we tried. At least we're going to be disappointed knowing that we poured our soul and our effort into it. And I there was a point on Saturday where I thought the clock might beat me where I was.

I was going to be close, but just not quite enough. And that, like all my effort and all my training and all of that was going to be in vain. My brain was just telling me, like, if you don't make it, then all of that was for nothing, right? But that was never true. Like it was just all ever about like the effort that I was going to put into it. And I knew that I was going to pour my soul into it and I was going to give it everything I had. And if the clock beat me, then so be it. But I was not going to give up until I had until I had done that.

And I decided that if I was going to be disappointed, I was going to be disappointed on the mountain and not at the bottom, that if I was going to be disappointed in that clock, was going to run out, it was going to run out when I was ascending and not when I was resting, not when I was at the bottom. And I really want to just encourage you to to consider that to stop, like disappointing yourself ahead of time and put yourself into extraordinary situations, require big things of yourselves and risk the disappointment.

Like disappointments are going to happen. Like things don't go according to plan. So much did not go according to my plan when I did this event. But like, you got to give yourself a chance to try. You got to give yourself a chance to try and be disappointed rather than just be like, generally disappointed ahead of time that that that we never even made an attempt. So another thing that that Jessie talked about when we were at the event is he said several times like time is undefeated, no one beats time. The clock is always going and like your life is ticking by, you are not going to beat time.

And he said, the only thing that beats time is when you do things that time can't take away that they they can't that time can't take away from you because they belong to you, because they're on your life resume. And I really want you to think about that, like the time is going to go one way or the other. It is undefeated. You won't be here forever. And but the only way that you beat it is that you do something with the time that you've been given. You do something with your with your life resume.

You do things that time can't take away. And I really want to just like, encourage you to, like, look around your life and see where am I holding back because I'm scared I'm going to be disappointed. What am I not trying because I'm scared of failure or rejection or. Or. Yeah, just plain old disappointment. And. And can I just, like, set that aside and decide, like, to pour my whole soul into it and to recognize, like, listen, I'm going for it. And if disappointment is going to be a part of that, like I'm up for it as long as I'm putting my all into it.

Okay, number two, I learned that you climb your Everest one step at a time. Okay, So I know this is like sort of an old, stupid, trite thought, but it is so true. Like, on your way to Everest. It's just. It's just a lot of little steps. And when you look around your life, one little step doesn't look like anything. It looks like nothing. It looks like it's not important compared to like the Everest compared to how far you have to go. But all those steps add up and they are all necessary.

And I want you to think for a minute how many steps I took on that event. I, I don't know, because my watch died halfway through. I don't know how many steps I took. Right. But I do know that every single one of them mattered. And every single one of them took me close to my goal. And I also know that if I took any one of those steps away, I wouldn't have hit my goal. If I took any one single step away. I wouldn't have finished. Every single one of them mattered.

And I really want to encourage you to, like, stop discounting and diminishing and minimizing your little steps. They are all that matter. Like, I literally got to that top of that mountain one step at a time. And some of them took everything I had to make myself take it. But like, they all mattered. Every single one of them. I know you hear a lot. You hear like inspirational motivational people talk about your limitless possibility, right? And it feels so big and so important and so huge. And I want you to know that limitless possibility is just created a tiny, insignificant, seemingly unimportant step at a time. All those little steps together, all those little tiny possibilities add up to the limitless possibility. And like you were born for limitless possibility. But somehow that the limitlessness just becomes so overwhelming to our brain. And all you need to do is break it down into the very limited step in front of you and take that one every step you take towards what you want matters.

And I'll just remind you of what my brother told me. Like when I got done with that event, I was just like, Oh my gosh, that was seriously the hardest thing I've ever done. And I was teasing my brother. I'm just like, What the heck ever made you think that I could do that? Whatever made you think that I was capable of that? Like, you're crazy, right? And he said, April, anyone can do it, but not everyone does. If you just keep taking the steps, anyone can do. And that is so true.

Like, I know that I am not special. Like, I really think, like, if I can do that of literally anyone, can you just start taking one step after another and you keep chipping away, you know, be where your feet are. There were so many times on the mountain where I just had to come back to like this step, this moment. Take this one, be where your feet are. I can't think about the next climb. I can't think about the next aid station. I can't think about the next switchback. It's just this step, this one and then this one, and then this one. So, just break that all down your Everest is climbed one step at a time.

Okay, the third thing that I want you to remember as you go to climb the Everest in your life is that you are always the story that you tell about yourself, the thoughts that you think about yourself. They matter. They create the story and they create your possibility. So, while I was at the event, Colin O'brady spoke to us a couple of times and he retold the story about when he was crossing Antarctica. And that first day, first two days where he just like couldn't even move his sled and he just like sat there in the frozen tundra and cried frozen tears. And he just talked about like, how hard that was. And he said, you know, when he woke up and that second day is sitting there in the tent and he said, there I was in the tent with all the worst versions of me in that tent. And he said he sat there amongst all his doubts and all the parts of him that were like, you're not capable of this. You can't do this. What were you thinking? You're never going to be able to do this. Everybody's going to laugh at you. You're such a joke. All this preparation, all this time, all this money, all these investors like it's all for nothing. And he said all these versions of him with all these doubts were sitting there with him in that tent. And he said, like, each one of you are going to encounter the worst versions of you on this hill tomorrow, right on this mountain tomorrow, all these critical doubting versions of you are coming with you on that mountain. I was just like part of the human experience and it happens to all of us.

00:14:24:03 - 00:15:37:12
But he said, remember in those moments that we are the stories that we tell ourselves. We decide what stories we're going to entertain. We decide what comes into our mind and what stays and what we are going to believe. And they're on ice he just started yelling like, you are strong, you are capable. And he said, you know, you got to decide the voice you listen to. And for me on the mountain, like, there were moments where I was just so miserable, so discouraged, so tired, so in so much pain, so sick. And I just kept saying, April, you are strong, you are capable. And over and over and over, I told myself, I will not quit. I will not quit. And it was like, that is, you know, a little four words sentence that fit perfectly with my steps. I will not quit with every step and over and over and over. That is the story that I told myself. And even though my brain gave me plenty of doubts about whether or not that I could do it, I knew that I would not quit trying.

You heard me tell you, like how many doubts my brain had, how my brain told me, like, Whoa, maybe you're not capable of this. Maybe this is like, way beyond your capacity. But quitting for me was never an option. It never entered my mind to stop. Like I might not be capable of finishing in 36 hours, but I was not going to quit and I was not going to stop. So we are the stories that we tell about ourselves, and you got to believe in the end of the story. You got to believe that you can you got to believe that you are capable and that you are strong. This is a story that you've got to tell yourself, okay?

The fourth thing that I want to tell you on your way to your Everest is that you got to love the low parts, you got to cherish the low points. The depths are just as valuable as the highs, and I know this is really hard to do. It's really hard to say. It sounds kind of cliche, but like, I really thought a lot about this afterwards, especially that like. That high at the end was only made possible because it was so difficult in the middle and that if it had been easy, it wouldn't have been victorious, I wouldn't have felt the triumph, it just it's just not possible. And Colin O'brady talks about how, like, if you really think about your emotional experience on a scale from 1 to 10 and one being the heartbreak, one being the like, deepest, darkest, loneliest, hardest moments and ten being the highest, ten being the triumphs, the celebrations, the victories, the highest highs are the tens.

And he just talked about, listen, the tens are only there because there are ones, right? That they are inseparably connected. So many times in our lives, we're trying just to live in the tent and it just doesn't work. They're inseparably connected to the ones. And what I found, too, is like the ones is like where the good stuff is. It's where you meet yourself. It's where you meet God. And like, what I really cherish from that event, what I really learned in the lessons that are nearest and dearest to me, I learned in the lowest places and the feelings that I cherish the most, those highest highs are only made possible because of those ones. And most of us, we spend our spend our lives in the 4 to 6 range and we just kind of like, you know, we're just kind of like getting by like nothing's really bad and nothing's really great. And and we're always just like hedging against pain and disappointment and like, trying not to feel so bad. But when we try not to feel so bad, we're also limiting how good we can feel, how proud, how powerful, how capable that we can feel.

And like, really, the truth is, we want it to her. We want it. We want to suffer. We want it to be so hard because that's what makes a victory so great. And, you know, I know I've told you this 100 times if I told you once, but Courtney du Alter always is like in that pain cave in that place, in those ones. That's where we do the work. And that's what I found, is that like, Oh, this is where I really find out who I am. This is where I talk to God. This is where I, where I, where I meet myself. And, you know, when you hit those ones on your way to your Everest, we all will just know that like, you know, as Colin says, pat yourself on the back because you've opened the door to some tens there are some tens in your future. And what I find is that, like they aren't that far apart, like the ones on the on that event were not that far away from the tens. And I think that's so true in our in our own lives. Like, the darkest moments are not that far away from some of our highest highs.

I just want you to know, like, stop avoiding the lows. Stop avoiding the ones, stop avoiding all that heartbreak and pain, because that is what is going to make the triumph feel so good. And those depths are just as valuable as the highs, okay? The last thing that I want to say is to reach your Everest you are going to have to empty the tank. Okay, so what I mean by that, I when I learned, the biggest lesson I learned is that it didn't come down to the training. It didn't come down to the preparation. Yes, all of that was important, it was necessary, I needed the aerobic capacity that I developed. I needed the muscles that I developed. I needed to practice not quitting on that treadmill. But that training alone, the preparation, that was not going to be enough to get me to the top of Everest. Training wasn't ever going to be enough. It was always going to be what happened after that. It was always going to be about the guts and the grit and the deciding that was going to happen after after all that preparation was over.

And I have to tell you, it really shocked me. It really shocked me that it wasn't a matter of physical preparation, that it was a matter of mental willingness. And like, it came to a point where I just recognised like, oh, yeah, I'm going to have to empty the tank. They kept talking about that. I was like, I don't even know what that means, right? But it just meant that I was going to have to go to the edge of my capacity, my ability to the edge of everything I thought I was going to be able to do, and then I was going to have to go past that and I was going to have to keep going. And it just surprised me how you can't prepare for that, that there's just a moment where you're like, Oh, this is bigger than me. Now what? I'm going to keep going here or I'm going to quit, and you just get to decide what you're going to do.

Because, listen, nobody cares if you finish but you like honestly, nobody cares. Like, of course, people are cheering you on. But like, ultimately, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you finish decent and nobody cares, but you do. And it matters to you. It matters like. What you find out about you. And I got to the point where I was like, Listen, April, it doesn't matter. I've come too far to quit now. I've paid too high a price to quit now, and there's no way I'm going to give up now. I've trained too hard. I've come too far. I've done too many ascents. I've felt too bad to quit now. And like, I just there was just a moment where it just became a decision. And that decision is just like way beyond whatever, whatever training that you've done. Look, I really want you to know, like, how much respect I have for myself for finishing that. Like, I have so much respect for that girl who won and wore that red hat like, Yes, she is me, But it still kind of blows my mind. Like I used to imagine what it would be like to put that red hat on. I used to imagine that while I was training, I would sit on that treadmill and it would hurt and I would just like put her in my mind.

I could just see her in front of me, the girl in the red hat, right? And I used to imagine what that would be like. And listen, the truth is, it was nothing like I imagined because I thought, like, she would feel proud and capable and strong. And I didn't know that how she would feel would be, like, completely empty out and yet somehow stronger in that moment with nothing left than she ever had been before. Like, I didn't know what would be required of her. I used to look at her and think like, Oh, she's got it easy. She won the hat. Listen, she's. She's the toughest girl I know. Like, I didn't know what she was going to go through. I didn't know what would be required of her. I used to think like, oh, she'll just take it all in stride. She'll be so prepared to just be easy. She'll just take it in stride, should be so strong. That man will be easy. But it wasn't, it wasn't easy. But it didn't need to be. She was strong enough for it. And I used to really think about her that like, somehow she was beyond the pain.

Above the pain, like distance from the pain because she was so physically strong and so physically capable. The reality is that, like the truth was she had more capacity for pain than I ever knew. She was more familiar with pain than than I have ever been in my life. She was closer to it. She was more acquainted with it than I was. And her willingness to do that made me stronger. You know, I told David afterwards like I was wrong about everything in my life that I ever thought was hard. I have a new definition, right? And now I know, like I can handle it. Is this amazing? So at the beginning of the race, they kept talking about emptying the tank, and I was like, I don't even know what that means, right? I don't know the size of my tank. I don't know where my tank is. I don't know the edges of my tank. I don't know how much capacity it has, right? But I learned all of that at this event. And I learned that it doesn't really matter, right? There aren't any edges to any of our tanks. There's just always more. We can always give more. We can always do more.

We can always feel more. We can always take one more step. We're incredibly, incredibly capable. A million times more capable than we think we are. There are no limits to any of our tanks. There are only ever in our mind they don't actually exist. There's no such thing. They don't have tanks. We just have unlimited capacity to take one more step and to keep going and to and to feel feel bad and to continue forward. And and like, I want you to have an experience in your life where you know that for sure, where you see for yourself just how strong you really are. We have to give it everything you have and then you just keep going and that's where you're going to meet yourself. That's where you're going to meet God. That's where that's where all the good stuff is. And I want you to have that experience. So what is your Everest? Come see what you're capable of. Put yourself in an extraordinary situations that require big things of yourselves. Remember that you're going to get there one step at a time, and every single step matters.

You are the story that you tell about yourself. Tell a good one. On the way to your Everest, the low points are going to become just as valuable to you as the high points. And when you empty the tank, can you give it your all? You will shock yourself with who you are and what you're capable of. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at Aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever. As your coach, I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!