Climb The Hill

Hey team. So here we are again.

I wanted to share with you a quote that I actually generated. It came out of a time when I was in the United States Marine Corps. I don’t know how many of you have ever done land navigation. I talk about this in our leadership class, and it’s kind of a leadership principle about direction, finding direction, and getting off course.

There are times in life when we get off course. We drift. We have a natural tendency to sometimes take our eyes off the compass and what is helping us focus. I’ve had that happen many times in my life and still do from time to time because it is a natural principle: if you aren’t continuing to focus and pay attention to the direction you’re going, or if you somehow get off course because you did your math wrong, which can happen, you can end up walking in the wrong direction for many miles.

Sometimes, when we realize we’re going in the wrong direction, backtracking is hard to do. So it’s really important for us to be able to reorient ourselves. Land navigation has principles around that.

The way you do that is you climb to a high point. You find on your map two other noticeable, recognizable points of interest that you can see, and then you shoot back to yourself and find your position. Then you can find yourself on the map and re-shoot a new azimuth, looking for the direction you were trying to get to, and get to those coordinates. That’s the way you do it.

So when you find yourself off course in life, don’t curse the compass. Just climb the hill. When you find yourself off course, don’t get mad or down and say, “Oh, I did the math wrong,” or, “It’s Joe’s fault.” We get so blamy. The guy holding the compass, or the guy that maybe helped us do the math.

End result is, you’re still lost. You’re still lost, and you’re not getting out of this until you climb the hill. You’ve got to climb the hill and get to the place where you can reference where you’re standing right now. Saying, “I’m royally blanked,” is not right. That’s a feeling. That is not a fact unless you let it continue to be. It’s just a feeling.

So, how do you factually get yourself out of the problem? Climb the hill. Reorient yourself. Get in the right direction and fix yourself. Nobody else is going to be there for you. Nobody’s going to just do it for you. You can’t just put your hand out and say, “Come on, please help me.” You’ve got to get going yourself.

If you’re a leader, if you’re just marching down this road yourself, I don’t know what your situation is. But I do know that the only way out of any situation is to climb the hill.

Climb the hill. Reorient yourself. Re-shoot your azimuth. Get headed in the right direction. Stay focused on your mission and get to your destination. You can do this. And you can do this with your team. You can do this with the community or family that you have. The people you’re leading, the people you’re with.

You can do this together. You can do this for yourself and your own personal goals. Maybe you fell off your diet, maybe you fell off the wagon. Maybe you fell or got on the wagon. I don’t know how that phrase goes. But my point is that no matter what’s going on in your life, all you have to do is climb the hill.

All you have to do is climb that hill, reorient yourself, and get going in the right direction. You can do this. But it requires effort. It requires a little self-discipline. It requires those kinds of things.

Sitting and wallowing in the valley, twiddling your thumbs, being pissed off, pacing back and forth, yelling at yourself, calling yourself names, or cursing the world or the compass—none of that gets you to your destination.

So don’t stay where you’re at. Climb the hill. You can get there. You can do this. I believe in you.

We’ve done it as a company, and we’re doing it today. We are climbing the hill. We are re-shooting, and we are headed in the right direction because we have a great team. Great men and women. We’re not infallible. We do make mistakes. We have failures in our lives. Whether it be individually or collectively as a team, as a company, as a community, or as a nation. We can fix this. We just have to make sure we’re going in the right direction.

So make sure you’re going in the right direction by climbing that hill. Do that today.

God bless you. You guys have a wonderful week. I’ll see you next week. And remember: let’s be valuable because nothing less will do.

Climb that hill.