When I first committed to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, I felt excited, and motivated. I had one main goal: Summit the mountain.

That goal gave me purpose. It helped me improve my fitness, learn about what to pack, and impacted how I’ve spent my time. I’ve walked for hours with a weighted pack, broke in new hiking boots, studied breathing techniques, and tested gear for different climates.

I was preparing, diligently, consistently, and maybe… a little too intensely.

Somewhere along the way, that clear goal quietly shifted into something else. It stopped being an aspiration and started feeling like a measurement. Instead of feeling like an exciting new experience, it started to feel like a test of my strength, resilience, and even my worth. I started to think about scenarios of not summiting. What if I didn’t summit? Would all this effort be wasted? Would it mean I wasn’t focused enough, fit enough, tough enough? Would it mean I wasn’t enough?

I knew rationally that these things weren’t true, but I saw I had started to confuse the achievement of this goal with my value. Also, my experience of the preparation had shifted from a positive challenge to a tense task.

When Preparation Becomes Control

There’s a fine line between being ready versus trying to control the outcome. Preparation is wise, responsible, and necessary but it can also become armor. I found myself trying to predict every variable, every type of weather, and every possible discomfort not so I could better adapt in the moment but so I could guarantee the result I wanted.

Spoiler Alert! You can’t guarantee a summit. No amount of planning gives a person control over weather, or the body’s response to high altitude.

It’s More Than One Goal

In trying so hard to ensure success, I was forgetting about curiosity, presence, and joy. I’d started to overlook everything else that the experience of being in Africa is offering:

• The awe of seeing landscapes I’ve never encountered.
• The challenge of doing something I’ve never done.
• The new people I’ll travel with and the people I’ll meet during the trip.
• The opportunity to do the volunteer work we are doing in Tanzania before we even get on the mountain.
• The chance to make new memories with the childhood friend traveling with me.

I almost missed the full picture. I became so focused on only one part I wasn’t considering the rest. The goal to summit still matters but now it sits in context of a wider view and the mindset I’ve decided to bring with me is “aim high and stay open”. I plan to discover, learn, be present and see what happens. I want to take it all in.

This shift in perspective has helped me remain committed and focused, but without the tightness. It still encourages my best effort without attaching my value to the outcome. I haven’t yet stepped on the mountain, and I’ve already learned three things:

• Goals can drive us however they don’t have to define us and when they start to define us, they drain us.
• Preparation is powerful but when it becomes an attempt to control, it shrinks capacity for learning, adapting, and enjoying.
• Achievement can be meaningful but it’s not the only meaning and it doesn’t define my worth.

To help me remember this perspective, I’m tucking this poem below into my pack and when I lace up my hiking books, I’ll be there for all of it.

As you journey through life,
choose your destinations well
but do not hurry there.

You will arrive soon enough.

Wander the back roads and forgotten paths
Keeping your destinations in your heart,
like a fixed point of a compass.

Seek out new voices, strange sights,
and ideas foreign to your own.

Such things are riches for the soul.

And, if, upon arrival,
you find that your destination
is not exactly as you dreamed,
do not be disappointed.

Think of all you would have missed
but for the journey there,
and know that the true worth
of your travels is not in where
you come to be at journey’s end,
but in who you come to be
along the way.

(Author Unknown)