Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

This week I have been in Colorado and I must say each time I visit I wonder why we don’t live here. The weather, the natural beauty and the people are all spectacular.

The venue for the conference I am attending is breathtaking as well. I have been blessed to visit the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs once before and it is more spectacular today than it was my first time.

As is typical for the conference, they have quality keynote speakers, this year we heard Erik Weihenmayer speak. He is the blind climber who successfully climbed all seven highest peaks on the globe and took up white water kayaking as an encore. He is articulate, engaging and quite funny. Before he started to speak, he could be seen getting used to the venue with his dog and some of his team members escorting him around. He is a regular guy, no pomp, no circumstance…just a(n overgrown) boy and his dog.

I had a chance to read his first book, The Adversity Advantage and for the long time blog reader, you know I was moved by this book years ago. But to have the highlights shared with the benefit of crystal clear pictures, video and a choked up speaker gave me goosebumps no less than five times during his nearly two hour presentation.

I won’t do it justice but I’d like to capture a few thoughts he shared. First the blog title, as you might imagine, he breaks people down into three categories; quitters, campers and climbers. He said, especially when faced with adversity, it is much easier to become one of the first two. He cited his own experience losing his eyesight before junior high and watching television in the waning days, face pressed up to the tube watching a news story where a young man named Terry Fox, who lost his leg to cancer decided to run across Canada with a prosthetic leg (a far cry from where these appliances have come today). Terry used his loss as potent rocket fuel to raise awareness. His face illustrated exhaustion and exhilaration at the same time. Terry was climbing his personal mountain of challenges and inspired Erik to “climb” as well.

There were so many valuable points Erik made while he was on stage but I’ll select one that he left us with…build a world class rope team. You can imagine that climbing blind requires dependence on people around you. Climbing at all requires that. When things go wrong, the whole Team can get pulled down and if you don’t dig in and support each other, the whole Team can die. Powerful metaphor easily visualized.

Select your Team carefully. Seek to build trust. You need a relentless trust in yourself and the people in your life.

I don’t believe there is a single person who hasn’t faced adversity in their lives. It isn’t a question of whether it will happen, the only question is how you react to it. Erik, big E as his climbing partner calls him, chooses to embrace the adversity. He says he doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to flourish.

How about you?

Have a blessed weekend!