November 2011

I am totally fascinated by mountain climbing. I have never climbed a mountain, and I don’t intend to. I once went skiing in Vail, Colorado and fainted at 8,000 feet, half way from the bathroom to my bed. If I couldn’t handle that altitude I certainly couldn’t manage basecamp—at Mount Everest all preparation is done at 16,000 feet, with the summit looming 31,000 feet above.

My time at Vail was one of the most humiliating experiences I’ve had as an adult. I couldn’t adjust to the altitude, I could barely breath, couldn’t drink (got the worst headaches), found myself crying on the slopes as I tried to navigate my way down runs I had no business being on. I was traveling with a male friend (just a friend) who was ready to hit all the back bowls (wide, cistern-like expanses, very steep but open) and thought I should go too. I promised to meet him at lunchtime (after we’d had our respective morning runs, him on the black, me on the blue) and go, but after a few nasty spills with icicles forming in my hair I went back to the room to curl up, watch the movie Titanic and have yet another good cry.

Earlier that day I was forced to have a man and his two 6 year-old daughters escort me down the mountain. When I mentioned I was meant to be hitting the back bowls the kindly gentleman looked at me in horror and forbade me to do any such thing. So why do I love books about mountain climbing and what does my trip to Vaile have to do with risk?

Well, there’s a lot more on this in my upcoming book, but for now here’s my thoughts… We are all of us fascinated by people who are willing to take enormous risks, like mountain climbers (in my case). There is a part of us that secretly believes given the right situation we too could do such bold things. But then we are often faced with the simplest risk, in my case skiing a fairly innocuous mountain, and we realize we’re not really up for it (I was humiliated, but I did go back out the next day). Given our aspirations and our failures are we going to give up?

I find mountain climbing thrilling because failure means death. Most of us won’t die from making a bad judgment. I like reading about risk takers that are willing to take the ultimate risk, but do you know which one usually wins? Yes, obviously, the person that is well prepared. But guess who else usually wins, the one that is willing to turn back, even when they can see their goal, because it is TOO risky. Are they giving up? Nope, they know they’ll try again. And that is what a SMART risk taker is, someone who weighs the facts, makes a move, maybe fails but tries again.