As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.

— Proverbs 23:7

I was pretty sure that I was going to pass out.  Or throw up. Or both.

This was no Marilyn Chambers moment.  It was more Linda Blair.

We were below Denali Pass at about 18,000′.  The day was clear and nearly windless.  I had been feeling strong. But as the terrain steepened along the Autobahn, my energy began to wane. And there was still a long way to go.

I knelt down to clip through our running belay. When I stood up, my head spun. My eyes wouldn’t focus. The steep slope began to undulate like the surface in a second-rate carnival house.

I willed myself to move forward.  My heart raced and my chest heaved.  I couldn’t catch my breath.  I wanted to sit down.  I wanted it all to stop. I wanted out.

I had hit The Wall.

I argued with myself.  My intellectual self said the smart thing would be to go down. The mountain will always be here. My emotions screamed, “how can you walk away again? It’s not likely you’ll come back.” And the voice of my father in the back of my head: “There are old mountaineers and bold mountaineers but few old, bold mountaineers.”  Did I really want to spend it all in this cold, barren place?

Just get to Denali Pass, I told myself.  It’s flat.  I can rest. I can decide to go down from there.

An hour later, I collapsed onto my pack, certain that the trip was done for me.

I sucked down two packages of Gu and gulped some water. I got hold of my breath and closed my eyes.

The Wall evaporated.

Suddenly, it was all possible again.

All of us know The Wall.  All of us have smashed up against it more than a few times: in our financial lives, emotional lives, relational lives. And countless other places.

Race car drivers know that when you focus on the wall, you’ll hit it.  “The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet the wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle,” writes Garth Stein in his passionate and loving story The Art Of Racing In The Rain.

But what happens when we do hit The Wall?

It’s easy to lay crumpled at the base of it.  I know.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time there.  It’s easy to turn around.  To decide that The Wall is too hard, too thick, too high.

But here’s the thing:  The Wall isn’t Real.  I’m not saying it doesn’t feel real.  It does. It hurts when you hit it.

But when you touch it, and know it, it dissolves.

Remember when the four-minute mile was thought to limit of human capacity? Now high school students can run four minute miles.  Records are constantly broken, new discoveries made. There is no limit to what we can accomplish and achieve.

Teachers of success principals know that the difference between failure and success is often one of simply showing up and persevering.  Darren Hardy uses the analogy of the hand pump on a well.  When you first start pumping, nothing comes out.  If you keep pumping, there may be a trickle even though you’re exerting a lot of effort. It’s tempting to give up.  But if you just pump a little more, just stay at it, just move beyond the frustration, beyond the discouragement, a steady stream flows out. In abundance.

Dozens of publishers rejected Jack Canfield’s Chick Soup for the Soul before it went on to become a meteoric success.  Lincoln lost election after election before becoming President.

Gandhi reminds us that “divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest.”

Tony Robbins teaches that when you are facing into life’s challenges and feel like you’re in the worst possible place, you really maybe only 2mm away from achieving your objective; that victory is near.

The difference between first and second place is often measured in fractions of a meter, hundredths of a second.

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by failing to attempt,” Shakespeare wrote.

Banish doubt.  Know abundance.

It is easy to get discouraged by The Wall, to give up, to turn back.  But in our true state, we are bathed in the knowing that we are the flow, that there is no green door – no wall – but only infinite possibility.  And Joy.