Making Extraordinary Success Happen: One Hop At A Time

Have you heard of the name Don Bennett? Well, Don Bennett was the first amputee to climb Mount Rainier, fourteen thousand four hundred and ten feet on one leg and two crutches. When Don was asked how he made it to the top, he said, “One hop at a time.”

One step at a time is how most extraordinary things you want to have in your life are accomplished. As much as you deeply desire that tempting golden carrot dangling in front of you, you cannot simply leap to the top of a mountain. You can only get there by taking it one step at a time, or in Don’s case, one hop at a time.

In order to understand what we want to do to successfully reach our goals, it’s useful to first take a look back over the past year to see what’s happened in our lives.  For many people I’ve talked to, there have been issues with lost jobs, pay cuts and people needing to move somewhere else to get a job.  People are unmotivated and unengaged because they are having difficult times and they’re not sure if they are will keep their job and their standard of living.  People have complained about collecting money from clients; there have been budget cuts and not enough people to handle all the projects.  People are spread thin and they under a great deal of stress because they are working long hours during the day and are unable to muster the energy to do all the things that they want to do. So think about your twelve past months.  Have any of the things that I’ve mentioned affected you?

We sometimes find ourselves paralyzed by the mere scale of these challenges and changes that we’ve had to endure over the last year.  People complain that it just seems just too overwhelming.  I contacted my girlfriend, Alice, last week and said, “Hey, let’s get together for lunch or maybe coffee,” She said, “I have to get back to you at the end of April.”

Now I know that Alice has a lot of challenges going on in her life. Alice not happy with her job plus she’s trying to take care of her aging parents and she’s putting many things on hold because she’s just trying to survive.

These challenges can seem overwhelming and challenge us in keeping moving forward.  But so is looking up the top of a mountain like Don was doing when he was challenged to hop up the mountain. But that’s why Don would tell himself, “Just one foot at a time.  Anybody can hop from here to there.” And so he did, fourteen thousand four hundred and ten times.