Beyond the Summit By Todd Skinner

You are a product of your mountains: each mountain you climb will challenge you, and the more challenging the mountain, the more you have to gain.
True success means more than standing on the summit – it’s by how much farther what you’ve gained will allow you to go in the future.
Choose the path of greatest gain – for maximum gain, we must seek ultimate mountains
First: the dream. Do not limit your future by basing it on the past.
Assume the sensational; pursue the impossible.
When you journey off the map, how you think is more important than what you know.
Define your mission – know where you are going so you can move forward and also measure your progress.
If you leave the summit out of your equation, you will drift off course.
Measure your progress from the summit, not the base.
Carry a photo of the mountain as seen from the plains – when you lose perspective, you will remember how far you’ve come.
The mountain doesn’t give a damn about your resume.
Without hunger, both skill and experience remain at base camp: you need passion.
There is nothing more dangerous than a moderate mountain (you will underestimate it and you will not be a high achiever)
Only they ultimate mountain can forge an ultimate team.
The only guidebook to the mountain is the one YOU will write.
The best plan is the one that works.
If you are not afraid, you probably chose too easy a mountain.
The specter of the mountain can loom larger than the mountain itself.
What you do not know, the mountain will teach you.
To succeed you have to be willing to risk failure.
You cannot lower the mountain; you must raise yourself.
Living with difficulties makes you at home in the extreme.
The more unyielding the mountain is, the more flexible the leadership model must become.
Decisions are made in answer to the mountain. Share leadership.
Falling is not failing. If nothing else, failing teaches you in a dramatic way how NOT to climb that particular piece of rock.
Always fall toward the summit. Analyze what went wrong and right in the attempt; acquire knowledge and skill from this analysis; apply that acquisition to a new attempt.
You cannot dodge a rock until it falls – don’t let your fear stop you – you need to react at each point to the TRUE environment you are faced with, not an imagined one.
There will ALWAYS be storms on a mountain – plan on what-ifs. You won’t be comfortable, but you’ll stay alive.
If your focus remains on the summit, you can go left or right or even down in order to eventually arrive there. Don’t compromise your destination for the sake of position. Where you are on a mountain means nothing in comparison to where you are going.
It’s not the severity or duration, but how you weather a storm that counts. To still reach the summit, you must react in a way that best preserves your effectiveness to climb when the storm ends.
Momentum is a state of mind – if your thought are all about going up, and your plans are about going up, and all discussion and internal thinking are about going up, then you can be immobilized and still be going up.
The greatest gain on a mountain is not from the first 90 percent, but finishing the last 10.
Don’t ask if reaching the summit is possible, ask if it is impossible. See how rarely you answer yes.
Improvisation and adaptability, in the end, can be your most valuable resources. Be willing to stretch the resources you have, modify what you can fit into the gaps, and go without what isn’t essential in order to continue the climb.
Each mountain is made up of rope lengths, and each rope length is made up of single steps.
If you can take one step, you can take one more.
The summit is made up of all the shoulders you stand upon. Remember your mentors and teachers.
At the summit, you will recognize how far you have come. The transformation isn’t the summit, but the journey
The summit may be the end of the climb,but it isn’t the end of your ascent. Don’t let one goal end your ambition. You have a new level of skill, performance, and belief – and that calls for a new application.
Look beyond the summit to envision where you can go. Of the nameless, unclimbed mountains all around you, only the most formidable will stand out against the transformed line of your ascent.