Sep 12, 2017
How can you really ever know
what your limits are unless you are constantly testing and
challenging them?
And when times are tough, how does one continue
to pour hope into people?
Mike Pierce, better known as “Antarctic Mike,” is a professional speaker who works with organizations that want to find, engage and keep the best-performing people.
And, boy, can he ever tell a story.
With a successful background in sales and recruitment, Mike had a long-held desire to speak professionally. In 2001, he came across a book called “Shackleton's Way,” which told the story of a team of 28 men trying to become the first group to attempt to cross the Antarctic on foot, back in 1914. They became stranded for over two years before finally returning home. As you’ll hear from Mike, that book and its contents had a profound effect on him and his life and career from that point forward.
In the time since, Mike became one of nine people to run the first ever Antarctic Ice Marathon and later became the first American to run the Antarctic 100K, a grueling 62 miles on an ice shelf 600 miles from the South Pole.
What I haven’t mentioned yet is
that Mike lives in Southern California. If you lived among the
swaying palm trees, would you challenge yourself to a) run a
marathon and b) do it in so harsh an environment as Antarctica? And
how would you even adequately prepare for change in environment
like that?
In
this episode, Mike addresses both why and how he did those things
in a very captivating fashion.
His flagship program, “Leading At 90 Below Zero,” connects the principles of Antarctic expedition history to the real world of finding, engaging and keeping great people in today's business world.
Mike shares all kinds of
incredible wisdom and experience in this extraordinary story. Here
are just three things that stood out to me:
- You've got to go - This is advice he received
and and talk, about actually going to the Antarctic and having the
experience first-hand. It's just like anything else, you can only
learn so much without actually going and doing
it.
- The
greatest threat? You’re carrying it with you - We live in a culture
that is quick to make excuses and point fingers. But I agree
wholeheartedly with Mike when he suggests that the greatest threat
to anything that you're looking to do retrieve are actually the
mental threats in your own mind.
- Difficulty is something to run toward - Among the many great things Mike says in this episode was “I thought difficulty with something you run toward.” Over and over again, you will hear Mike talk about not knowing what to do but just moving forward anyway, running toward difficulty. This is just like facing your fear. The way to dissolve the fear is to step into it and the way to make something difficult doable is to start doing it.