Always at Bottom - What a Trek to Mount Everest’s Base Camp Taught Me About Success

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company, I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life Always at Bottom There's a saying in the personal development world that says new level, new devil, or different level, different devil. And what that means with regard to success is that we always, at least I have in the past, would think of success as this place where once you get there, once you've achieved it, it's kind of like smooth sailing. But if you ask anyone who has achieved his success in a certain level, while there may be some certainty in regards to how they were able to deal with certain tasks, there's often a new set of challenges as a result of getting to that new level. There was a question in the book that I'm reading, there was a question, says Lewis Howes would ask the people he was interviewing how they felt in terms of self love and self confidence and they would give a rating. Then he would say, okay, well how did you feel weeks before that happened? And they would often score it even higher. What happened was that success actually made them a little bit less certain. When you look in the grand scheme of life, it's that the comfort in all of this that I'm saying is that you're always beginning, there's always that next step instead of thinking that once you get there, you would have made it and it's all going to be easy. It takes the stress off of taking those steps, taking that first step, because you can't progress unless you actually start to take action towards the thing that it is you want. So let's start. Let's just dissect success for a moment. What is one thing that you want that you just haven't been taking action towards? Next question is just think about what is it that has been holding you back? Why haven't you taken the action? Usually it's going to be some kind of fear. Most likely, maybe fear of what others may think as a Result of you going down this new path or doing something that you know is going to light you up. Then lastly, what if doing this thing was just like another step in that there was never any final destination. There was never any success that you had to achieve. It was just a matter of taking another step. The growth, the journey of it. Many years ago, I want to say, maybe it was about 2000, I think 16, I had the calling to go to Nepal to hike Mount Everest's base camp. On my way to to. Actually, before I even booked the trip, I got excited. And I'd been hemming and haw about this trip for quite a bit until I was speaking with a friend. She's like, just booking out. Book it now. And like, you know, because if she was egging me on, I went in line, I bought the ticket, and I was like, yes, okay, I'm going. That night I was like, what the fuck did I do? Like, what? What did I do? I started getting really, really scared and nervous laying in my bed. I started having these visions and fantasies about what would happen if. And I don't even know if this is even possible, if an oxygen bubble or something like that looks in my blood and I died. It just shows. Kind of like when you think of something you're afraid of, you usually go right to the extreme. So when I was thinking about all the things that can go wrong, it literally scared the crap out of me. But I had this rule that you never cancel a trip. In one time in my entire life, have I ever canceled the trip. Because mainly it was because my father kind of constantly calling me and saying, hey, cancel this, cancel this, cancel this. I was going to go to Istanbul, Turkey. And while it's a safe place and I've been there that particular trip, I had like this gut feeling that something was off. And I was going to disregard that feeling just because I had this mentality, well, I never cancel a trip. Sometimes you gotta cancel a trip. So back to Nepal. So I was doing the trek to Mount Everest Base camp, and it was a long and arduous trek. Sometimes hiking for what I believe was like eight hours. When we would get to these tea houses, we would, you know, we would literally engorge ourselves with food because you, you couldn't put on weight there, you couldn't maintain any kind of calories. You were burning it off so easily from the hiking and the terrain. When we got to Everest's base camp, it was a celebration. We were there. It was first of all what I expected to see. As the result of getting to Mount Everest, Base Camp and what I saw was completely two different things. It was just kind of like, this is Base Camp, and there was, like, you know, a few tents in the background over there, but that was it. And they had some flags, some prayer flags, so it was cool. And. And on that journey, the journey was literally the experience, right? Getting to Base Camp was nothing. Once you're there, you're like, all right, this is it. All right, I guess. Let's go back down. When we arrived that one of the mornings we summited, I'm saying it correctly. Kalipatar, which is a small mountain, if you want to even call it a mountain, right next to it. But it adds another. I don't even know how many feet in altitude. So it brings you up, like, maybe, like. I don't know if it's like, 500ft higher or whatever. Whatever. It's maybe a thousand feet high. I'm not really sure. One thing I do know is that the journey taught me a lot about success and about life and how when you think. Think that you're at the end, all of a sudden a new mountain appears ahead of you. So that morning, I woke up with a bunch of other people, the people who chose to go on this trek from the group. And we're going there. It's night. We have our headlamps on, and we're trekking up this mountain. I remember hiking up and thinking so many, like, very, very frequently thinking that I was at the top. So we're climbing over rocks. Some people are saying, you know what? This is way too much. They were feeling the altitude, and they retracted. They pulled back and went back to the. To the. The tea house we were staying at. Others kept going. You know, I was like, I have got to see this thing. I can't wait to see the sunrise over Mount Everest. So I was going up there, and then there was a couple guys I'd met from Australia. They were ready to pull back, and they saw this American passing them, and they were like, no, screw this. And they all kind of, like, muster up the energy, and they all went up and started following me. And the funny thing was, every time there would be a. Like, you see, I would see the top of the hill or the. Wherever I was climbing, I'm like, oh, my God, Thank God. I am almost there. The moment I would reach the peak there, all of a sudden, another look, like a mountain would appear right in front of it. I'm like, how is this even possible? I literally just Summoned this. Now there's another one. And it happened several times until, you know, until the last one. The last one was I was like, how am I ever going to get up this thing? And I remember going up there and my body was telling me, turn back, turn back, turn back. But then I remembered I was remembering things that my parents had said, my sister, about this trip and how it wasn't safe and all this other things, all these doubts they were putting my mind. And when I was there, when I was ready to turn back, they started playing in my mind, right? Because I'd planned the trip for I don't even know how long. So they had plenty of time to input all these messages in my head. And I remember going up there and I said, these are not my beliefs. These are not my beliefs. And I started chanting that as I was climbing up the mountain near the summit, I literally was crying because I was so emotional from this. These are not my beliefs. I am going to get to the top of this. So I summited this mountain and there were the three Australian guys who were there, and they told me the story. Like, listen, if you didn't push forward, we wouldn't have pushed forward. So thank you for inspiring us. And why do I tell you this story? Because I tell you this because it's so easy to get lost in that end goal thinking that, right? Well, you know what? Let me just endure all this shit, all the pain, because I know one day when I get to that spot, it's going to be worth it. And then I could relax, then it's all going to be over. But that's a lie. When you get to that spot, the last thing you want to do is you want to look back and say, well, is this all there is? I did this entire journey, spent all this time, and this is all I've got. So it allows you to look at the journey as a whole, as the journey, be in the experience, as opposed to just getting to that end goal. The other reason I tell you this is because it's easy not to start. Because you're afraid that, one, the journey is too long, and then secondly, that you may be criticized or you may not do it right. But if you have any kind of calling to fulfill, any kind of mission, something meaningful to you, you've already got it inside of you. It doesn't matter where you start. Because when you recognize that every single step is a growth process and the step itself is the success, all of a sudden it takes the heavy weight off your. Not like you know, instead of trekking up with a 50 pound sack on my back, now I just dropped the weight. And you start to enjoy the process of becoming as opposed to just waiting until you're at that destination. It's easy to forget this stuff, right? People who achieve, you're listening to this, chances are you are an achiever because you're listening to this and you want to kind of till the soil of your mind just to be. To get more enjoyment, to do the things that you're passionate about, to achieve more, to do more, to become more. And it's so easy to get lost, and I speak for myself, it's easy to get lost in all the little details. I mean, I'm sorry, not even the details that get lost in the big picture. Because you're so fixated on this that you forget that this is the moment that you're here to enjoy and that this is the only moment that every single step forward is a step in the right direction. When I think of the journey, even this podcast I'm creating, my one life course that I'm going to be launching September 4th, and you know, I could look at it and say, well, all right, September 4th, oh my God, I cannot wait until I've launched this thing, right? I could look at it, but I would be doing a great disservice for myself. And when I look at the most fulfilling aspects of this entire journey, it's all the little learnings that I'm getting along the way. As I'm going through this entire process, I'm redoing it again for myself so I can just have a better awareness as to the journey I'm going to take others through as a result of doing that. It's just I'm recognizing the growth in the steps, not just trying to get to that destination. So how do we, how does this relate to your life? Wouldn't you agree that life is more than your work? Life is more than the day to day stuff. Life is more than, you know, whatever is going on politically, whatever is going on with the climate change, right? There's more to it than the day to day. If you allow yourself to get caught up in those emotions, the distractions, pretty soon now you're, you know, you're on a path, you don't even know where you are and you've lost all ambition to actually take a step towards a life that you will find meaningful and fulfilling. I was around some friends and they were talking about, I think, China building something in. I don't even Freaking know, because I don't watch the news like a military base in Cuba or some shit like that. And they're like, whoa, you know, like, why do anything? Why do anything? Now they're doing this and worrying about things that they cannot control. Here's the great thing about humans is that we will do whatever we need to do in order to survive, right? When you think of how some people live, they struggle to survive just because surviving is like the homeostasis. Growth is not something that happens by chance, it happens by choice. But you will survive, right? That's why so many people are living, because you do whatever you got to do in order not to die. So let's take that a step further. And how does that relate to just creating a life that you love? Like, what does it mean about success? You know, what is success? Let's even go there. What does success mean to you? Because that too is easy to get sucked in with other people, right? There's all these influences. Easy to think that like, success is the big house with the white picket fence and the Land Rover outside with five kids and a dog and maybe one cat, because you got to balance it out. What does success mean to you? And really, once you have that answer, say, all right, well, how can I start moving towards this vision and the vision of success? It's almost not enough to say, all right, well, what is it that accepts. Because every area of our life requires us to have clarity as to what it is that we're going for. And when you get very clear about that, now all of a sudden your decisions become clear. Whatever you're doing actually moves you towards or takes you away from where you want to go. So I know I threw a lot out there because I was talking about success and how realizing that success is the journey, success isn't the destination, it is the journey. And how when you realize that success is always. It's a never ending journey that may freak some people out, you realize there's nothing to be afraid of. You can start doing whatever it is you want to do without fearing what other people will people say something? Will you get criticism from others? Yes, without a doubt, right? Because anytime you're doing something different, anytime you're stepping out and doing something different from the norm, you make those people uncomfortable because you're like, oh, well, wow, they're doing this. What am I doing with my life? But here's the funny thing too. You also inspire a lot of people by going after what it is that is meaningful and makes you happy. Other People say, but, wow, they're really doing that. Well, I mean, if they can do it, then surely I can do it. And all of a sudden, now you make something that was once impossible for somebody, now it becomes possible because you showed them that there is a way to do it. And while they may look on TV and they may see these celebrity figures who've achieved. We'll use location freedom, right? That's one of mine. Location freedom, right, where they're able to travel anywhere in the world and work, and they're like, wow, that doesn't seem attainable. But Jimmy here, wow, Jimmy's my neighbor, and he's doing that now. He rents out his place and he's traveling around the world coaching people. Wow, that's. Oh, well. I mean, we both work together at the same company. If he can do it, then surely I can. Right? It just makes things possible. So that is all I wanted to give you guys today. Not all that is what I wanted to give you guys today. So let's do a recap. When you look at what it is you've been struggling at, why have you been struggling? What has been the fear that has been driving you? Likely it's probably because of what other people may say. And then what if you just take away success out of the equation, where it wasn't about success, but it was just about taking steps. Right. There was no pressure to get to a certain place by a certain time. It kind of goes counter to everything that I've been talking about in the past about life, visioning and giving yourself deadlines. Right? Deadlines help by just saying, okay, this is the goal. Let me aim at that target. And as long as I'm aiming at the target, I aim even if I undershoot or overshoot, but at least I'm making a progression towards that within a time frame. The opposite of that is saying, all right, let me move towards that target. Ah, but you know. You know, I don't have to do anything today, right? And all of a sudden now 50 years has gone by, hopefully not, and you're still in the same place. So looking at success and just realizing it's taking steps and not putting too much pressure on yourself to say, I have to be here, and the destination and putting fear in your mind. So there's a lot I just gave you. But I hope in some way the sharing of this experience from my summit to Kaeptar, as well as just defining what success means to you will help ground you in your own value set in your own meaning. Of success so that when you go outward in the world, you're no longer chasing the glittering gold and all these other things, but you have your own innate sense of what it means to be successful and what it is that you want out of life. So if you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. Hit that subscribe button. Share it with a friend. If you'd like to ask a question or comment, you can do so by visiting my website@www.donnierouse.com again www.d o n n y r a u s.com there. You can also sign up for my mailing list. When I release the One Life Blueprint course, it will be dropped there. So make sure you sign up if you don't want to miss a beat. And that is it. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Remember, you only get one life. Live it. God bless and I will see you again soon.