Episode Transcript

Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Hope you’re doing well hope life is treating you guys well. Well, anyways, everybody, I want to jump straight into this. And I’m going to start with a story.

A few friends of mine, and I, we were planning a hiking trip. And for some of the guys, this was going to be the first time they’d ever been hiking. And we plan to just, it was just a simple two day trip up a trail. And it was a pretty steep climb because we’re gonna camp out on the mountain top. And it was a short trail, I think like two miles, two and a half miles. I mean, it was not a lot, but the elevation was a pretty big climb. And there was a lot of steep elevation. And so anyways, we packed our packs, and everything was extra heavy, because we are carrying steaks up there. And you know, it wasn’t a far climb. So we packed heavy, we were not packing light. And it was not a it was not a marathon, if you would say so we were just looking at it as like, cool. You know, we’re going to be done.

And so anyways, we got to almost the top of the mountain and one of the guys was really struggling to get up the rest of the way. And I’m talking about we were less than a quarter mile away from the top. And at the time, he didn’t know it. And we didn’t know it because we were we we had never done this trail before or had done it enough to be familiar with where exactly we were, we are close enough to the top because we knew that we were there and saw view and had a beautiful view of where we are standing. But we weren’t at the site. And one of the friends came down and started to take his backpack. And I stopped him I said hey, don’t take his pack. Just wait, because he started taking it off of them. And I looked at him and I said, Hey, bro, listen, if they if he takes your backpack, you’re so close to the top that you’re going to regret not finishing. What do you want to do? If you push through and accomplish, you’re going to be very proud of yourself that you did something very hard. And that was very hard for you. And then he looked at me as like, Alright, I’ll do it. And so he kept walking up and literally got to the top. And now we talk about that story all the time, because he was willing to shoulder his own burden. And he had teammates around him. But he got to the top of the mountain.

And I’m saying this story. And I want to talk about the story because we talk about a lot in business, Andrew and I do because he was on the trip with me and with us. And we often talks about not taking each other’s packs, there’s burdens that we have to bear in business and in life, and they’re ours to bear. And it is very harmful when we get somebody to take them from us or when we try to get people to take them from us because we never actually really accomplish What we are supposed to accomplish What we said we would do. So as a result, our self belief goes downhill, our self confidence goes downhill and our interdependence goes downhill. I talked to that friend who almost almost had his pack taken off, and we talk a lot. And he talks about how it was one of the best things that he ever did for himself was saying, No, I’m going to finish this. His self belief went through the roof, his self confidence went through the roof.

And I want to say this that most things in life that you are proud of, that I’m proud of that people are proud of, are very hard things that we have accomplished personally and hard can be different for every person. Everybody’s got a different set of circumstances. But I went through something that was very difficult. And I went through something that was very hard for me to accomplish. But I didn’t quit and I made it. I may not have come in first, I may not have been the best guy to ever do this. But it does not matter. I didn’t quit and I’m proud of myself for not quitting. And I’m proud of myself overcoming. And I think that this is so important. Our mentor did this our business mentor did this for us when he started mentoring us. He never told us exactly What to do. And he never took our pack from us. He let our burdens be our burdens. And he gave us guidelines along the way up the trail. He was next to us through a lot of our journey and walking through a lot of journey and is still is next to us today. Because we still stay in communications. He’s one of our best friends. But he never took our pack from us. And as a result, we never feel like we cheated, or that we were lesser because we were mooching or enabling or being able from some other person.

And I’m saying this because oftentimes when things get really hard, we tend to look to other people to fix us, or to tell us the right answer so we don’t quit. And you’re the only person who can’t do that. You have to decide if you’re going to get to the top of the mountain or not. And there’s people next to you. But if you let them take your pack, it’s just going to hurt you in the long run. If it’s going to hurt your character, it’s going to hurt your confidence. And so I’m just saying this as you’re on your journey, don’t quit. And don’t let anybody else take your pack. And I’m not saying don’t get help, but rely on somebody else to get you to the top of the hill. It’s not where you’re going to want to be in the next five or 10 years. You look back and you’ll regret not doing that. So or you’ll regret doing that.

And so Anyways, guys, I’m way over. I’ll catch you later. Peace.