In 1987, a terrified twelve-year-old boy in glasses, a parka, and a blue snowsuit attempted his first skiing trip. For months he’d dreaded the idea of skiing, but when his family moved to Colorado he decided to face his fear. By the end of his second day skiing, not only was he able to plant his pole and keep his core stable, he was speeding down intermediate runs, outdistanced all his new friends and challenged the more intimidating terrain at Mary Jane in the Winter Park Resort. It would become his favorite place to ski moguls. 

Soon this crush with the outdoors grew into a love affair: he scrambled around the Grand Canyon, climbed Denali, and in 1994 he climbed his first fourteener, Longs Peak—one of the fifty-nine mountains in Colorado higher than 14,000 feet. While attending Carnegie Mellon University, he took a summer job as a raft guide, where he tackled Class IV and Class V rapids and technical obstacles with names like “Graveyard” and “Raft-Ripper”. He survived a Grade 5 avalanche on Resolution Peak, and was chased by a ravenous black bear in the Tetons.

On April 26, 2003, with the siren call of adventure ringing in his ears, he found himself in the red-rock country of southern Utah. On what was to be an adventurous yet benign afternoon of rappelling—rewarded with a party near Goblin Valley State Park that evening—the young climber headed into Blue John Canyon. Lithely maneuvering a slot-canyon, he dangled from a chock-stone, ready to land on rounded rock and continue his way to the Grand Gallery. The chock-stone had other plans. The torque of his body dislodged the refrigerator-sized rock that fell and crushed his right hand against the canyon wall. 

After five days of entrapment, he had a life-saving epiphany: he could break his trapped arm and amputate it to find freedom. Using his multi-tool, a dull 2-inch knife and pliers, he amputated his arm in less than an hour. Using tubing from a CamelBak as a tourniquet, he climbed out of the slot canyon, rappelled down a 65-foot sheer wall, and hiked out of the canyon. After six miles of hiking, he was picked up by a helicopter and flown to a hospital in Moab, Utah.    

Today, that tenacious young man–who was terrified to ski yet kept facing his fears and overcoming adversity–is an American mountaineer (the first to climb all of the 59 ranked Colorado’s ‘fourteeners” solo in winter), a best-selling author, and a sought-after motivational speaker. 

His name is Aron Ralston.

What You Have Now is Enough

Weeks after the accident, park authorities retrieved Aron Ralston’s severed hand and forearm. Tom Brokaw reported that it took thirteen men, a winch and a hydraulic jack to move the boulder so that Ralston’s arm could be removed. 

If Ralston would’ve waited for the proper equipment or perfect conditions, he would not have survived. 

Yet how often do we wait for the “perfect circumstances” before we seek to free ourselves from bad habits, toxic relationships and unhealthy behavior.

We like to rationalize, or tell ourselves “rational lies”—that circumstances must be ideal before we move forward.  But those lies blind us to the reality of the abundance the Universe has already given us. If we look around, we will see that what we have is enough to start making hope and freedom a reality. 

• Rational Lie: I can only start my business once I get enough seed money 
• Abundant Reality: I will start smaller than anticipated and reinvest income into the business as it grows

• Rational Lie: I can only start working out at the gym once my schedule opens up
• Abundant Reality: I will get up earlier and go to the gym before the work-day begins

• Rational Lie: I can’t start my blog until I have the latest laptop
• Abundant Reality: I will start my blog on the computer I have now

• Rational Lie: I will repair the relationship with my sister once she apologizes
• Abundant Reality: I will forgive my sister and move forward with love, empathy and compassion 

Start Today

In his book, Ego is the Enemy, philosopher and best-selling author Ryan Holiday shares this valuable insight: 

“A few years ago, one of the founders of Google gave a talk in which he said the way he judges prospective companies and ideas is by asking them if they’re going to change the world. This is fine, except that’s not how Google started–Larry Page and Sergei Brin were [simply] two Stanford PhD’s working on their dissertation.”

You don’t need to change the world; you just need to change your world.

And if you start with what you have, you’ll soon realize you’re in good company.

Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen—co-founders of YouTube—weren’t trying to reinvent television; they were trying to share funny video clips. 

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn’t wait until they had a chic corporate office—instead they started Apple Inc. in a garage.

Peter Rahal worried that he’d need a sleek design, elite manufacturing & distribution, and a massive amount of capital to start selling his nutrition bar. Instead his father said, “You need to shut up and sell a thousand bars.” Peter did, and that is how he created RxBar, which Kellogg swooped up for $600 Million. 

Additionally, Peter Rahal impresses upon this idea: “Money doesn’t solve your problems, and you can mitigate your risk without it. Just make 10 bars. 1,000 bars, and then go sell it. Take that profit and go invest it, and it’s normal business. All great things start small, even though most entrepreneurs want something big right away.” 

Start small, because micro actions will lead to macro rewards.

We all start with nothing: no capital, no connections, no assets, no experience. The important thing is to take the step forward anyway—that is when you find yourself in good company: you find yourself walking with the people who succeed.

So start where you’re at.

Start with what you have.

And you will find that what you have right now is enough.