The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

July 2Not a Climb

Fame is a fickle food / Upon a shifting plate, / Whose table once a / Guest, but not / The second time, is set. / Whose crumbs the crows inspect, / And with ironic caw / Flap past it to the Farmer's corn; / Men eat of it and die.

Emily Dickinson—The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (1890)

In the climb to achieve some level of entrepreneurial fame, it's easy to fall into the trap of equating success with monetary, material, or social follower achievements.

Perhaps the real issue here is to first explore why we climb at all. If it is to achieve some accomplishment that we are certain will bring us happiness, then we may be doomed at the outset.

Happiness achieved in this manner never sticks—you never arrive at the summit, to stay with the climbing metaphor, you lurch on to one false peak after another, and along the way—you probably saw this coming—you miss the dazzling display of columbine and fireweed, the ruffling of Aspen leaves, and the young bull elk grazing in the meadow just off to your right.

Plenty of people will try to tell you how to get to the top of the mountain and why you must, but what we could all use is some advice on how to come back down. How to be grateful for the amazing things we've already achieved and the amazing people who have helped us along the way and those we have yet to meet who will do the same. (Thirty-two percent of Mount Everest and K2 [the second-highest mountain after Everest] fatalities occur during the descent.) ...