Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of documenting one's journey to success to remember the key moments and lessons learned.

Abstract

The path to success is likened to climbing a mountain, where the ascent involves risks, learning, and perseverance. As one reaches the summit of success, the specifics of the journey can become blurred, making it crucial to record the progress. The article suggests documenting these experiences publicly, sharing both triumphs and setbacks to provide an authentic account of what it takes to succeed. This practice not only preserves the memory of the climb but also serves as a resource for others and a reminder of the resilience required when faced with opposition and doubt.

Opinions

Success is akin to reaching the summit of a mountain after a long and challenging climb.
The journey to success involves learning from mistakes, taking risks, and trying new things.
Once successful, individuals often forget the intricate details and key moments of their journey.
Documenting the success journey publicly offers transparency and allows others to learn from one's experiences.
Sharing the full spectrum of the journey, including criticism and support, makes the success story more relatable and trustworthy.
Recording the path to success serves as a motivational tool to persevere through tough times and silences naysayers.
The documentation becomes a valuable resource for reflection and for guiding others on their own paths to success.

Document Success on the Way Up So You Don’t Forget

You will never pass this way again

Success is the thing you’ve wanted for so long and now that you have it it’s hard to remember how you got where you are. It tastes like fresh mountain air in the early morning. You feel the brisk air in your core as you breathe it in. It’s invigorating and smells clean and pure.

The journey toward success is like climbing a mountain. You wander around the base for a while, looking, inspecting what the climb looks like, and after a while, you decide to start climbing.

You stumble, you fall, but ever so slowly, you are moving upward. And, upward feels good. You learn skills about what works and what doesn’t work.

You take risks and try new things.

Sometimes you look around and see how far you’ve climbed, but often, you keep looking up because nothing matters until you’ve reached the top. The drive for success keeps you climbing higher and higher. When you get to the summit you smile and relish in the journey of hard work and sweat.

You enjoy the payoff of the success you’ve always wanted.

You’ve also taken on new pressures. Anxiety builds as new questions come to mind:

How do I stay on top?
What if I fall?
How did I get here in the first place?

Now at the top, you realize that you have achieved something worthwhile. Others ask how you got where you are.

To them, you’re an overnight success…

… because they can’t see the time you’ve invested and the work you put in to get to where you are.

You have arrived, but, by now, you’ve forgotten what it took to get here. You try your best to reflect on your journey, but it all jumbles together. The specifics, even the key moments, are forgotten.

You must document your success on the way up, for it can never be recreated.

You’ll forget the little things that made all the difference.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but looking back means looking down and that climb was daunting. You can’t figure out how to get down, much less what it took to get here unless you begin the climb all over again.

You may remember the last few months, the major milestones, but your memory is shortsighted and the intricacies of the small things you did to stand out escape you.

How and why did you pivot?
When did you try something new?
What did you do to stand out as unique?

You have to rethink the journey that made you a success, but all the details are fuzzy.

When you have to rethink the climb up, you forget the small details that got you where you are.

What do you do? Looking down causes vertigo. Starting again is impossible.

If only there was another way!

Another way

Document your progress on the way up so you can remember all the details of your journey.

Do it publicly.

When you’ve discovered what works, write it down, not in a place you will always remember, because, if you are anything like me, all important things go in the underwear drawer. Record your progress in a place, you will never forget — write it out in the open for all to see.

If you write about your journey on the way up — sharing what worked and what didn’t work, being open and transparent. You want to provide a trustworthy documentation of every little detail it took to be a success.

Part of the journey is gaining followers and critics. People will find you relatable if you share some of both the guts and the glory of the process. Share how the critics said you didn’t know what you were talking about and how the applause of your followers caused you to find the passion to keep going when you wanted to quit. Document how your solutions solved the pain of your audience.

You’ll never forget the pain of the naysayers along the way who say:

That will never work.

He or she is a fraud.

When you hear those words you must stay the course because you will know you are on the right track. Let your opposition be the motivation to keep going when it gets tough — and it will get tough.

When you’ve documented the path on the way up, you’ll have the side benefits of other tools and offerings at the plateaus where you pause to rest and re-evaluate, to rethink your ongoing course of action.

Once you get where you are going, you can never go back to where you have been, so document the painstaking journey of your success on the way up.

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