You’re Climbing Ladders. Are They Against the Right Walls?
by Bryan White
Blue Eagle Fitness & Nutrition
You’re climbing ladders in your life. But are those ladders against the right walls? It’s that time of year when you are thinking about your goals. At this point in life, you have the wisdom of knowing you can’t accomplish everything. You have to prioritize.
You are busy; that’s a fact we both know. You are accomplishing new things every day or week; we both know this as well. The real question is this, “Are you accomplishing the things you have PRIORITIZED?”
WALLS represent your life’s accomplishments. LADDERS represent all the steps we take toward that accomplishment. If we want to be a better parent (our WALL), rung one might be reading a bedtime story every night. Rung two might be eating dinner together as a family three nights a week. Rung three might be taking a weekend getaway on a camping trip with your kids.
What if you want to climb a wall of career success? Rung one might be agreeing with your boss to work on a new revenue-generating project. Rung two might be volunteering to write progress updates for senior leaders. Rung three might be working a few extra hours on Sunday nights to make faster progress.
The more you do, the higher you climb on your LADDER. And the higher you climb the ladder, the higher you go up the wall.
Where we run into problems is when our ladders are against the wrong walls. We want to be a dedicated parent, but we spend extra hours at work. Or we want career success at any cost, but we leave the office early most days to beat traffic. Are your ladders leaning against the right walls?
Almost all highly successful people have a coach. This coach helps people decide what walls they want to climb and then holds them accountable for climbing the right ladders. A business professional, who wants to climb a wall of being a better salesperson, needs to climb a ladder with rungs related to sales.
If you want to climb a wall of living a healthier life, you need a coach who will help you climb the right ladder. Your coach will help you figure out your first rung. Maybe you need to get 6+ hours of sleep every night. You might need to eat more vegetables. Perhaps you need to jog 15 minutes every day. It’s hard for us to see which wall we are against when we are just focused on not falling off the ladder. What makes a coach so valuable is their ability to see the whole wall and ladder, and best of all they hold the ladder for you.