WHEN WE INTERVIEWED DON BENNETT for our first book, he said something that we've never forgotten. Don is the first amputee to climb Mount Rainier. That's 14,410 feet on one leg and two crutches.
“How did you make it to the top?” we asked Don.
“One hop at a time,” was his instant reply.
One hop at a time. One hop at a time. One hop at a time.
When you think about it, that's how most extraordinary things are accomplished. As much as you might desire it, you simply cannot leap to the top of a mountain. You can only get there by taking it one step—or, as in Don's case—one hop at a time.
Yet we sometimes find ourselves simply paralyzed by the mere scale of the challenge. We are challenged to do more with less, adapt quickly to changing circumstances, innovate on the fly, deal with extreme uncertainty, and somehow still find time for our families and friends. Sometimes it all feels too overwhelming. But so does looking up to the top of a mountain when you are at the bottom. That's why Don would tell himself, as he looked just one foot ahead, “Anybody can hop from here to there.” And so he did—fourteen thousand four hundred ten times.
But Don had something else in mind when he looked up at the top of that mountain. Despite what you might have heard about why people climb mountains, it's not because they're there. When we asked Don why he wanted to be the first amputee to climb Mount ...
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