Several years ago, there was a billboard featuring Erik Weihenmayer. The billboard read, “Climbed Everest. Blind. Vision – Pass it On”. Erik is the first blind person to reach the 29,035 foot summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
I would like to tell you a little bit about Erik and use his story to talk about the importance of vision in your business as you emerge from the chaos resulting from the COVID-19 shutdown from Brian Souza’s book Become Who You Were Born to Be:
“When Erik Weihenmayer was six months old, doctors learned that he had retinoschisis, an eye disorder that would slowly destroy his retinas. He grew up knowing he didn’t have long to see the world, and by the age of thirteen, he was totally blind.”—p.105
How would you respond to such a crisis? Would you draw inward, setting limits on what you could accomplish in the future or would you push outward looking for new ways to accomplish your dreams?
Erik is one who chose to expand his horizons and look for new ways to accomplish his dreams. As Souza says: “Today, Erik has broken through boundaries few people—let alone those who are blind—would even dare to approach. He’s a marathon runner, skydiver, long-distance biker, skier, scuba diver, and member of the college wrestling Hall of fame. More amazing yet, he’s accomplished climbing the three highest mountains in the world [including his summit of Mount Everest].”
“‘All my life,’ he wrote in his book Touch the Top of the World, ‘fear of failure has nearly paralyzed me.’ The operative word is nearly.”
“Even as a boy when his sight was ebbing, he rebelled against falling into the trap of retreat and self-pity. He would go with his friends to a forty-foot cliff, below which owed a shallow stream with only one small deep spot. Miss that spot and you could be killed. But in what would later become one of his signature habits, he faced down his fears and went for it.”
“Failure, as Weihenmayer sees it, is a learning opportunity, not a disgrace. Once, for instance, while scaling Washington’s Mount Rainier, a warm-up for the Everest ascent, he had to set up a tent on a freezing snow field. When he took off his glove so he could feel the tent pole, sharp splinters of ice sliced into his hand. It went numb, and when it regained feeling, the pain was so intense he almost vomited. His teammates had to finish putting up the tent for him.”
“Stung by this setback, he resolved to turn it to his advantage. Back home in Phoenix’s hundred-degree heat, he put on his thick winter gloves and practiced setting up his tent again and again. Today, he can do it faster than any of his sighted comrades.”
“Unlike Weihenmayer, many people are afraid to even attempt to achieve their lifelong dreams and thus become emotionally paralyzed, daring neither to succeed nor to fail. They may exist in this world, but they’re not really living. They’re surviving, not thriving. But, as Weihenmayer’s father put it after his son’s Everest climb, ‘A meaningful life is all about taking constructive risks, whether you succeed or not.’
“Erik Weihenmayer has proven that no matter how outlandish it may seem, any dream is possible.”—Brian Souza, Become Who You Were Born to Be, pp. 105-107.
What about you? Do you allow yourself to dream bigger or have you shut down your dream factory? Hearing about Erik Weihenmayer has hopefully inspired you to begin dreaming again. You should imagine what you could do or accomplish in your life if you had no limitations and begin dreaming again. Successful people in every walk of life dream big dreams.
The one thing you need more than any other in your life is vision. None of us sees far enough, clearly enough, or soon enough.
Don’t get so caught up in focusing on the present that your future is out of focus. The biggest difference between those who have vision and those who don’t is that the person with vision thinks about and prepares for their future, while the person who lacks vision lives each day as it comes. Vision is the ability to see, but it is also the ability to imagine what others cannot see. Shortsightedness is caused when we are more interested in what is going on in the present than we are in looking to the future. The proverb “where there is no vision, the people perish” is still true today. In order to succeed long-term in business, you must develop the ability to project your plans and dreams for the future beyond your present situation. Those who have vision that motivates them to take action have used their imaginations to picture their distant goals so large in their conscious mind that they seem even more important than the goals of the present.
Don’t be shortsighted. Look to the future. Have vision. Learn to dream again. Leonard Lauder (president of Estee Lauder) probably said it best: “We were a tiny company, but I dreamed someday of being able to run a large company….I came to realize that fantasizing, projecting yourself into a successful situation is the most powerful means there is of achieving personal goals. That is what an athlete does when he kicks a field goal with three seconds on the clock, and 80,000 people in the stands and 30 million people watching. As the kicker begins to move he automatically makes the thousand tiny adjustment necessary to achieve the mental picture he has formed in his mind so many times: the picture of himself kicking the winning field goal.”
Don’t be someone who has the ability to see, but has no vision. Fight for your dreams. Focus on the future and you will see great things you can achieve and do in your business and in your life.
