Sincerely, Jacob

Flat Topped Mountains - Drakensberg, South Africa

Mountains can have flat tops.

Despite the fact that I saw the Drakensberg Mountains (Free State Province of South Africa) behind my hostel had flat tops, I presumed they were thin and rocky on top.

Three hours after we began our climb to Tugela Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world, we made it to the top of the mountains.

Stunned.

I was stunned.

I couldn’t believe how expansive the flat grassland on TOP of the mountain was. As far as you could see - hilly grasslands. Clearly there were mountains around, but it didn’t feel like you were on the top of them.

Of course, there is a river that feeds the tallest waterfall in the world. This river is on the top of the mountains!

Sadly, it was winter. Winter = no water in the waterfall or river. It was still incredible, but I will have to return for the water falling in the waterfall.

I now wonder what else is out there that I don’t expect. That’s just the thing though… I can’t imagine what I can’t imagine.

Guess I’ll keep traveling and report back.

Cancerous Grit - Where work ethic goes wrong

The sage, Chris Williamson, recently wrote a banger in his newsletter:

Reverse Region Beta Paradox

Being in an aggressively terrible working cadence or environment, but having such a tolerance for discomfort that you can endure it for a lifetime. Lower resilience, less stubborn people would snap and have to find a way to change -but not you, you're the David Goggins of working hard. Who's going to carry the workload? You are. Forever.

On the road to my path over the last few years, I’ve come to clearly see how shit I am at doing things I don’t want to do. Funny enough, my mom often remarked the same thing when I was a kid! There was a gap there that I forgot, but that fact has returned in force.

I can think of a couple of friends that I would describe as wrongly hitched work horses. These people are incredibly, unbelievably hardworking. Great… right? Wrong. What they possess in ability and determination, they lack in direction. They work at jobs they dislike for passionless reasons.

As far as I can see, there are two reasons people like that get into those situations. The first is what Chris says above - they believe in hard work (correctly), but lack judgement in where it should be applied. The second is that they probably don’t believe in themselves to achieve what they actually dream of. That is, assuming they still know what their dream is (unlikely).

In the short-term, low resilience for bullshit is troublesome. Inconsistency, lack of financial acceleration, outpaced by peers in societal measures. But in the long-term - it’s a primary driver of real success.

Sincerely,

Jacob

P.S. Yesterday I visited a country I didn’t plan to - Lesotho (you’re the first to know).