My brother and his friends recently completed the Three Peaks Challenge which involves climbing the the three highest mountains in the UK over 24hr period. It’s no mean feat!

The boys did great, they completed the task and raised over £5000 for the Anthony Nolan Trust which I sure you will agree is a fantastic achievement.

I agreed to pick them up from Mount Snowdon after the last decent, though i didn’t bank on driving a mini bus full of very excited wives and girls friends – but that’s another story.

The luxury of today’s mod cons meant that we got regular updates and as we got close we learned that two of the lads had suffered set backs as they’re knees gave in after completing the second climb. They rest had gone on.

Here is the crazy thing, even though they had completed two of the highest peaks in the UK – over 6,500 ft – they still felt liked they’d failed.

Go figure that? Most people wouldn’t climb 1000 ft let alone 6500ft!

Isn’t it interesting that even after a such an achievement the focus goes on failure?

The group that went on to complete the third peak included my youngest brother. When he finally made it back, he talked about how he almost gave up after seeing the impact on his friends on the second mountain. So I asked him what kept him going and he told me that it was all about mental state. Even through his body was saying “no more” his mind and mental strength focusing on ‘why’ he was doing this carried him and the rest of the team through.

As one of my great teachers Steve Siebold says in his book ‘177 Mental Toughness secrets of the world class’

“When a performer begins to experience physical or emotional pain in the heat of the battle, the brain, whose primary role is self preservation, asks the question: “why must I suffer?”. The champion will answer the questions with the vision they have carefully constructed , and will continue to fight….”

Tags: achievement, five alive, mental focus, mental toughness, success, three peaks challenge

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