This post is not about money or personal finance - this is my pursuit of my personal excellence and a note to say that I will be away for next few weeks!
Humans are a little crazy. I’m no different.
Their wants and needs are even crazier. And I’m one among that too!
Humans also want to feel like they matter - to something, to someone, in some way.
And I’m no different there either.
For most of my life, I didn’t think too deeply about things like “personal excellence.” Life was moving in its usual rhythm - work, responsibilities, raising kids, doing what needed to be done.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted.
I once read a line that stayed with me:
Every person lives two lives. The second begins the moment we realise we only have one.
That line landed differently as I get older.
A few years ago, I couldn’t imagine putting myself through something like this to Mt. Everest Base Camp - training, preparing, and trying to push my physical and mental limits. But here I am now, chasing something that feels strangely important to me.
In my own small way, I’m trying to scale new heights.
Quite literally.
It’s not a path many people around me are walking. And in many ways, that’s what makes it interesting.
What I’m discovering though is that this journey has very little to do with mountains.
It has a lot more to do with the mind.
On every climb there comes a moment when the body starts negotiating. It says things like “this is enough” or “maybe we can stop here.”
And that’s when something else takes over.
The mind quietly asks a different question:
Can we take just one more step?
Not the whole mountain. Just the next step.
And then maybe one more after that.
I’m still learning where the line is between the physical battle and the mental one are.
Perhaps they’re the same thing or may be they’re different.
Through all of this, there is someone I feel deeply grateful for - my wife.
When I started waking up early to train, she supported me. When Sunday mornings became my routine for climbing the nearby mountain, she took care of the kids so I could go.
Even the little things mattered.
When she went grocery shopping, she would come back with the food she knew would help me stay on track.
It’s easy for me to stand here and talk about the effort I’m putting in. But the truth is, most of this would not have been possible without her.
She is the quiet, unsung hero of this journey.
And it wasn’t always easy for her either.
She had her doubts.
She worried about whether this was the right thing for me to do, especially knowing I live with high blood pressure.
She worried about the risks.
But she also understood something important about me.
If I decided to pursue something deeply, she wanted to support me.
And she did - not just with encouragement, but by carrying a lot of the responsibilities at home with our two amazing boys while I chased this challenge. And in discovering myself.
That kind of support is easy to overlook, but it means everything.
This journey has already taught me more than I expected.
It has taught me patience.
It has taught me humility.
And it has reminded me that the biggest battles are often the quiet ones we fight inside ourselves.
Losing my sister changed the way I see life.
It made me realise how fragile everything can be.
We often assume we have time.
Time to try things.
Time to chase dreams.
Time to become the person I imagine I could be.
But life doesn’t always work like that.
Sometimes the reminder comes in ways we never expect.
And when it does, it leaves us with a simple question:
If there is something you truly want to try, why not try it now?
For all as Elon Musk says - Success is one of the possible outcomes.
But when I imagine myself at 60 or 70, looking back at this stage of life, I know one thing very clearly.
I don’t want to sit there wondering what might have happened if I had tried.
So here I am.
Trying.
Trying to see what happens when the mind and body move in the same direction.
Trying to take one more step when the voice inside says stop.
Trying to pursue my own small version of personal excellence.
Where it leads, I honestly don’t know.
But I do know this.
I’m grateful for the chance to try.
And that, in itself, feels like a pretty good place to start.