How Mountains are Made
There are a few ways mountains can be made, but we will focus on convergent boundaries formation. Many mountains are/were formed as a result of Earth’s tectonic plates colliding together. Earth’s crust is composed of large tectonic plates that move very very slowly. As the boundaries of two tectonic plates converge against each other, there is essentially a crumpling affect, much like when you crumple up paper, wherein the earth’s crust appeared flat prior to collision, but then raised up above the surrounding crust to form a mountain. Mountains may continue to “grow” if these tectonic plates continue to converge against each other. Mount Everest, currently the tallest mountain on Earth, continues to grow as the convergent boundaries are still actively colliding.
Mountains are a sight to behold. They look powerful and give you a sense of wonderment. So how do you go about making your own mountain in life?
Overcoming Opposing Forces
Your mountain is made when you can overcome the opposing forces in life. What are these opposing forces? Everything that contributes to you not making any progress towards your goals and desires. Some of these forces will be external obstacles that you will need to get by, but I believe a lot of the these opposing forces are self-imposed. These self-imposed forces are the limitations we put on ourselves. We don’t believe in ourselves or we look at the other “figurative” mountains we must climb over to even begin making our own.
Our mind likes to play tricks on us and for good reason. Living organisms evolved to survive. There have been many things that were deemed a threat to the individual organism’s survival, and adaptations to mitigate these threats were typically optimized for through natural selection. That’s a major reason why humans tend to be risk averse. When we perceive something as risky or as potentially negatively impacting our survival, we tend to avoid it. We need to break out and break down these obstacles and risks so we can accurately start to assess and address them individually rather than collectively.
We also like to conserve energy because for most of human existence, food was scarce and you couldn’t afford to exhaust all of your energy without securing more food. But mountains require a lot of energy to make, so we have to convince ourselves that conservation of our energy is unnecessary. And for most of the developed world, food is in abundance so we need to constantly remind ourselves that energy can be easily replenished.
You might already be in pursuit of making your mountain, but haven’t seen any results. So why does it seem that you are not getting anywhere?
Years in the Making
Mountains aren’t made overnight. It takes time, lots of time, in reality millions of years worth of time. We don’t have that time at our disposal but we can still create exponential growth. By using the simple but powerful concept of compounding, we can strategically start to build up our fortunes. Compounding is the process and results of interests from a principal amount being reinvested in order to generate their own additional earnings. This applied and repeated overtime has an exponential growth curve leading to massive value creation. The more time and resources you lend to compounding, the greater return, so apply compounding as early and often as possible to as many areas of your life as possible.
We are also fortunate to build off of the foundations set by people before us. Isaac Newton might have said it best, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Basically, let’s not recreate the wheel and let’s learn as much as possible from the people who came before us. It’s important to not only learn from your own experiences, but the experiences of others…with a small caveat. When you learn from the experiences of others, its always good to remain a little skeptical until you can actually verify. Knowing the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence is essential. Once we have taken the “Giants” baton though, lets run as far as we can before we pass it on to the next bearer.
It Also Takes Continuous Effort
It’s always ongoing…there are no days off…the world is dynamic and the opposing forces are constantly changing. Your effort must remain a constant force against the opposing forces. Once you stop, the opposing forces will overcome you. This is not to say, “don’t rest.” Rest is actually critical to the long term effort it will take to overcome the opposing forces, but it is to say, “DON’T GIVE UP!”
Continuous effort is also necessary to stop erosion. Erosion is the gradual decay and deterioration of something. A real life example of this are The Appalachian Mountains. They have been estimated to be the tallest mountains ever in the history of Earth, but there is no longer any converging forces allowing the mountains to grow anymore. Erosion is slowly shrinking these mountains that were once the tallest peaks on Earth.
One thing to note is that everything worthwhile is always hard but it will become easier. It’s not to say that the requirements become easier but how you handle yourself and the task at hand can become easier because you have figured out better ways to do things and can control your fears or negative emotions.
Climbers Beware
Once your mountain has been created, people will want to be at the summit with you. Make them earn the right by climbing it. No helicopter lifts to the top. Make sure they are doing it for the right reason, to enjoy the views with you, rather than exclaiming they are now “King of the Mountain!”
What I mean by this is that your success will ultimately lead to some specific risk factors. There have always been and will most likely always be advantageous individuals looking to capitalize on other peoples work or success. Call it riding on the coattails, or whatever you want, but it does happen and it can have a negative impact on what you’ve made.
So we’ve learned that mountains aren’t made overnight, but that doesn’t matter. All it takes is continuous effort against what we perceive as opposing forces to make noticeable gains in life. We must always keep at it and realize that although it still remains hard it will seem easier. We challenge you to start making your mountain today!
System Tinker 