What does Progress mean to me....

As women in this day and age; ambition, drive and progress are things we pretty much crave - whether it is in our work or personal lives. Accountants are especially guilty of this; if life were a balance sheet, we often need to see a positive change year over year, an increase, a profit, an addition to your own personal net worth. We very badly feel we need something to show for. Another candle on the birthday cake, another year has passed – am I in the same spot as I was a year before?

And I guess this is where the crisis comes in – call it mid-life, quarter-life crisis or more like a “any point in life-crisis”. An evaluation of year-over-year snap-shot of one’s personal net worth at any point in time can even bring a seemingly confident “Devil Wears Prada” biaach-type career woman to her knees.

But a very wise woman, whom I had the pleasure of listening to at the recent Power of Women conference in Vancouver, said something with regards to progress that I will never forget. Alison Levine, one of the most outstanding women in the world in my books, overcame her own personal tragedies and physical challenges to climb almost all of the tallest mountain peaks in the world. As a professional climber, she mentioned that people often have the misconception that climbing is a linear process. Climbers don’t move from Base Camp to Camp 1, to Camp 2, to Camp 3, to Camp 4 and then the Summit in that order.

Everyone knows that the air becomes thinner the higher you go. This is why jet aircraft are pressurised, and why Alpine mountaineers become breathless as they climb. So in layman’s terms, it is imperative to gain height slowly (acclimatization) and be prepared to lose height quickly at the first sign of real sickness which can be as mild as nausea, hacking cough, stomach problems, etc to more severe problems like the build up of fluid in the brain.

What this means is that climbers, in order to acclimatization, need to start at Base Camp, proceed very slowly to Camp 1, spend the night there, and come back down to Base Camp. Spend a couple of nights at Base Camp, move to Camp 1, spend a couple of nights there, move to Camp 2, and then back to Camp 1 and Base Camp. This can be disheartening since more time is spend coming down or moving in the direction OPPOSITE to the Summit. But it is necessary and it is progress. Every time the climbers make it to a camp and altitude higher than they have been before, even when they are descending to Base Camp, they have made huge progress in terms of acclimatization.

So – what did Alison teach me that day – progress is not correlated with the direction one is moving at all. Sometimes we need to take a couple of steps back to move forward. Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but it was like a light-bulb went off in my head. I think I even got emotional for a bit. There have been quite a few years when I was hard on myself for I thought I was not making much progress professionally and personally. I thought I was as stagnant as the waters the Singapore Health Inspectors warn can breed mosquitoes! I felt I had to work harder, longer, late into the night to succeed. I needed a significant accomplishment every single year. Damn – I thought I had drive, goals, dreams and ambitions and not enough time! I don’t think there was a single instance I actually gave myself a pat on the back for a job well-done, whether it was an MBA, buying my first place or scoring an office in downtown Vancouver with a name plate that glorified the Nanwani name.

But thanks to Alison, and to all the teachers and mentors before her, I have learnt that life is really about smelling the roses. Another wise person once told me that on your deathbed, the last thing you ever regret is not working longer hours or finishing up more projects. One often regrets the vacations left untaken, the experiences and risks missed, and the people we didn’t take the time to appreciate or say “I love you” too. So why not do all those things right now so that we live life without any regrets. We leave the world saying “Whoo hoo! What a journey!” And that will be the beautiful view because we would have finally reached the Summit of our lives.