One Step at a Time: Climbing Kilimanjaro

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro wasn't on Michelle's bucket list. It started with a simple "yes" to a friend's question and became a year-long journey of training, setbacks, self-doubt, 60-mile-an-hour winds, and one unforgettable summit.

In this episode, Michelle shares the story of climbing Kili—from recovering after COVID and learning the meaning of pole pole ("slowly, slowly") to sleeping in a flipped tent and standing on Uhuru Peak in a whiteout. Along the way, she uncovers timeless lessons about resilience, focusing on the next step, celebrating progress, adapting when plans fall apart, and staying committed to the work instead of obsessing over the outcome.

Because the biggest goals aren't reached all at once. They're reached one next step at a time.

Connect with Michelle:

Website: michellegruening.com
Instagram: @michellegruening
LinkedIn: Michelle Gruening

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey y'all, and welcome to This Is Nothing New, the podcast where we drop the trends, get back to the basics, and uncover those lessons hiding in everyday life. I'm your host, Michelle Grooning, and I'm curious, have you ever set a goal so massive that you had no idea where to start? That was kind of my experience when I decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, which I will affectionately call Killy moving forward, was not something I ever had on my bucket list or as part of my lifelong goals. It was something I knew existed in a beautiful country called Tanzania, but it was never something I really had in my sights until a very good friend came up to me and asked me one day, would you and Danny, my husband, would you and Danny be interested in climbing Mount Kilimanjara with me? And my immediate full-body gut response was, yeah, absolutely. When are we going? That is as much thought as I put into this massive goal. But it was something that I just felt so deeply that I knew it was my next big challenge. And so after we, you know, after I told Danny, hey, I signed you up to climb the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, he was on board, by the way. We kind of had this moment where we're like, oh shit, okay. Um we're committing to this. We're putting quite a lot of money into this process. Oh, where do we start? And that's one of the things that comes with these really massive goals that we set is the outcome is clear, but then we don't know how to get there. So for us, I just brought it back to what can I do right now today? How can I start? And that is where our training began. And it wasn't just a physical body training, it was mental. Because Killie is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical challenge. And so the actual physical training was going great. We had our training schedule planned out. You know, we were climbing for elevation some days, distance for others, we weighted down our packs on others. We had the momentum. We were motivated to continue to get out there for those training hikes every weekend, super locked into our physical preparation. And if y'all remember back to the last episode where we talked about goal setting, it's all about those small steps, the things you can do right now. Because I was super clear on what the main goal was to summit Kelly. But just having the goal set doesn't get me any closer to it. So now we were doing the work. We were doing the work of the training, and we were, we were rocking it. We were about six months out, really locked into our program. And then we both got COVID and essentially were benched for two weeks. That is like the last thing that you want to happen when you are training for a massive goal. Even if it's not a physical goal, it could be anything. When you get sick, which is something that of course can always happen, but it's not something we're ever necessarily prepared for, it can be a really big hit on your mindset, on your motivation, on your optimism. And it took a toll on me. It was around this time that my my mental training was really tested. Because after I got sick, I started to slide into this mindset of what some people would call negative visualization. Essentially, what I was doing was visualizing myself failing. I was asking myself, what if I get sick on the mountain? What if I get altitude sickness? What if I'm not strong enough? And I kept having this vision of me having to turn around and my entire team progressing forward. And now a lot of y'all know I'm a coach. I help people elevate their mindset. I help people get out of these spiraling thoughts. And yet I still fell into the same trap. And now I'm not going to tell you it was just a quick flip of the switch for me to get turned back around, but I knew that if I continue to allow myself to stay in that negative head space, it was going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure when it came to climbing the mountain. So I had to flip it to the positive. And so after we were healing from COVID and we started recovering, I was certainly not motivated, but I had to get optimistic that I could get back to where I was in my training and then progress past it. And so the cycle started with optimism. A lot of times we can think that we are waiting for motivation to come first before we take any action. But motivation isn't a catalyst, motivation is a result. And it all starts with optimism. So getting that optimistic perspective back top of mind was a very big turning point for me because I had spent like a month in that negative space. And once I realized, wow, this is a really bad place to be, Michelle, it's up to you to pull yourself out of it. I pulled myself out of it. I got back optimistic. I got focused on the goal and I got focused on what I could control right there in that moment, which was starting slow and rebuilding my strength. And getting through that mental challenge during the training set me up for success when I experienced the same challenge on the mountain. Because once we got to Tanzania and this first day of the trek had arrived, our incredible guide, Abu, shout out Abu, if you're listening, told us that we were going to take an approach called pole, which is Swahili for slowly, slowly. And man were they not exaggerating. That pole pole pace, slow, consistent, intentional, measured, at times felt like we were literally dragging our feet. It was so slow. But we I had to remind myself in that moment when we were going poly polo that we cannot rush our goals. You know, everyone wants to set a goal and achieve it the next day. Set a goal and achieve it the next day. But goals don't move that fast. If they do move that fast, it's just a task that you can check off. But a long-term goal can't be rushed. It has to be approached intentionally and thoughtfully. And that pole pole pace is the reason I summoned. Spoiler alert, I made it to the top. I didn't rush it. The same way I didn't rush my recovery and rebuilding my strength after I got sick during training. I could not rush climbing this mountain. And so the pole pace became a way of life for the seven days that we were on the mountain. Another really amazing thing that our guides did is we set the goal, which was to stand on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. We reviewed the entire trek once. On day one, our guides reviewed every single day the elevation we would gain, the camp names we were going to, and how far the tracks were each day. We reviewed the entire thing once. And then after that, our guide Abu told us moving forward, we will only speak about the day that we are currently on. Meaning, if it was day three, we were only talking about day three. Day six was summit day, but that was three days away. We didn't need to focus on day six. We needed to focus on where we are now, the next step in the day we were in. And that turned out to be such a gift because you can see uh Uhudur Peak, which is the summit of Kilimanjaro, from a distance starting on day two. And if we only locked in on that mountain starting on day two, it would have been like, oh my God, how are we ever going to reach the top of that? It seems so far away, it seems so tall. You see how that can start getting you into a negative space. So moving forward, we were just like, there's the goal. Nice. I see it. Now I'm refocusing on what I can do right now. And that paired with the poly pulley pace kept us moving forward. Along this trek, we camped. It was seven days total. So we spent six nights on the mountain. And as we were climbing up the mountain, our incredible porters, like literally fly up this mountain. They are doing the same hikes as us, except they're carrying triple the weight. They are the unsung heroes of the Kilimanjaro experience. Every single porter and guide, they're just amazing. I could do a whole episode on them. Maybe I will one day. But one of the things that kept us going was building in celebration. On our second day, we got to our camp, Shearer Cave camp, which was actually my favorite camp of the whole trek. And after we rested a little bit, we went on another hike, which was an um a hike to continue to get us acclimated to the elevation game. And when we came back, we were greeted with a beautiful display of celebration. And that clip was specifically from the Kilimanjaro song, which talks about all of the camps along the way and how to keep focused and to do it with love. And that celebration is something that sits so clearly in my mind. And it was a reminder that even though we were on day two, we could still celebrate our progress. That's where these the benchmarks and the checkpoints are come into such a high level of importance when we're working towards our goals. Not only are we reaching those benchmarks, but we're celebrating them. We are celebrating that progress every time we reach a milestone. It's about loving the process and enjoying the journey. Throughout this hike, for the first couple of days, we were always going up, which made sense because the summit of Kilimanjaro was up. So we kept moving up. But once we got to day three, we started doing something called hiking high and sleeping low. And what that meant is we would hike a couple thousand feet of elevation up, have lunch at that high elevation, and then hike back down. Almost the same amount of elevation. And they say to trust the process. And like, of course, I trusted Abu and my guides. They're the experienced ones. I had literally never set foot on this mountain, but I was starting to get a little doubtful because, like I said, the summit was up. Why were we going down? It felt like we were undoing all of the progress that we had made that day. But the lesson to remember there is that growth is not linear. Sometimes it can feel like you're going backwards. It can feel like you're losing progress. But those moments are preparing you for what is next. And every time we slept low, we had given ourselves a chance to recalibrate, to rest, and to strengthen our lungs so that we could continue pushing forward in the challenge the next day. Rest is just as important as consistent action when it comes to reaching our goals. If you don't rest along the way, you're going to burn yourself out, you're going to get stuck in the hustle cycle, and we're going to lose enjoyment of the process. So that rest, that sleeping low, was such an imperative part of the process. Now we went to Tanzania in their alleged dry season. But as we arrived at the camp, which was on day four, the camp we spent the night at, there was a storm brewing on the summit of Kilimanjaro. And we could see it, but remember, we were only focused on the day we were in. So we were trying not to worry about the storm on the summit because summit day was two days away. So we were staying locked in. But that night, as Danny and I got snuggled into our tent, we were sitting there trying to fall asleep and failing because that storm that was on that peak was creating massive gusts of wind. And if you have ever tried to sleep in a tent when it's windy, you know that that's basically impossible. So as we're laying there trying to go to sleep, we hear a massive tear of fabric. A tear of fabric is not a good sound when you are sleeping in a tent on the side of a mountain. So we can see part of the tent like flapping in the wind from the moonlight. So we get out of the tent, we get around to the back, and we realize, oh, thank God it's only the rainfly. It wasn't like the actual tent. And then a few things happened all at once. We realized it was just the rain fly. A massive gust of wind pummeled into us. And then it took our entire tent straight up in the air and flipped it over. And it was in that moment that we realized we didn't zip the front. And then chaos began. We were trying to catch our tent from flying off the side of the mountain. We were hollering for our guides and our porters to come out and help us, which they eventually did. And we realized that there was no way we were getting that tent back up that night. Just wasn't happening. So they took all of our stuff out of the tent and we got to bunk with our teammates Kim and Katie for the night. So four people, four 90-liter duffel bags, four day packs, four bodies in one tent for the night. That was not in the cards. That's not something a pre-mortem could have prepared us for exactly. But we were prepared for the unexpected and for the unknown. What could have become a truly miserable, terrible moment turned out to be one of the times I remember the most clearly of our hike because it was just so wild. And we were all laying there side by side in a row, trying to sleep as the tent just threatened to collapse in on us. And you know what? We made it work. That was one of those challenges where we could choose our attitude. And we chose the attitude of humor, of relief that we actually had a place to sleep that night. And we chose to just chalk it up to Mount Kilimanjaro, doing whatever she pleases. And she was creating quite a storm. That turned out to be only one of the few major challenges that we would be experiencing in the next couple of days, because that wind never got softer. It only increased in strength. So the next day, when we arrived to base camp, our rain fly was taped to our tent with questionable um efficacy. Our everything was covered in dirt. My optimism was starting to wane just a little bit. And because we were only one day from the summit, I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm starting to think about that final goal. I am starting to think about the summit. So we got, you know, maybe a few hours of sleep before our wake-up call at midnight so that we could reach the summit for around sunrise. And as the wind continued to climb in strength and the air temperature continued to drop, we were sitting there kind of getting our morning briefing and getting our vitals checked and making sure we were all feeling strong to get to the summit. Our guide Abu comes in and we're like, okay, great. Abu's gonna give us some encouragement. He's he's gonna tell us, like, it's okay. It'll it'll go down. He comes in and he says, I'm not going to lie to you. This is terrible. Just terrible. Which is like the perfect pump up speech that you need before you embark on like the next 12 hours of grueling physical exertion. But there was a bit of like relief to his honesty because after he said like the conditions were really terrible, he reminded us that we were all strong and we would achieve our dream of standing on a Hooter Peak. And so we got ourselves together. We got in a huddle, kind of like a pregame huddle, and we were swaying back and forth. We were chanting this chant that was non-stop to the top, non-stop to the top, that our guides were leading us in. So we got ourselves pumped, which was funny because I we got ourselves really like high energized, and then we hit that pole-a-pole pace. I'm not complaining about poly poly. It was literally the only way we reached the top. But as we started climbing, all of these things that we could have never prepared for started hitting us. The wind gusts were stronger. I think they were like 60 or 70 mile an hour wind gusts. They were strong enough to literally move me sideways on the side of the mountain. As we continued climbing, the icy rain or the sleet, I don't know, whichever one it is. I don't know the difference, started. And it was time to lock in. Because within maybe an hour, we were completely drenched. Thankfully, we had rain, rain and uh waterproof Gore-Tex layers on, but still we were wet and the temperature kept dropping. And we know what happens to water when it gets colder, it turns to ice. There was a layer of ice on my right side of the my body because that's the direction the wind was hitting me. And so as we were climbing, I had to think back to my preparation and to my training. And I had to figure out what was going to keep me moving forward. And throughout the Kilimanjaro hike, some mantras started coming to mind for me. And I'm not usually a words of affirmation kind of gal, but these mantras appeared in the moments that I needed them most. And I repeated them on Summit Night. Those mantras of I am strong. I am capable. I am prepared. I am relentless. And I will sum it. Over and over and over, I said those words out loud because it was so windy and loud, nobody could hear me, anyways. And I kept pushing forward. I was so locked into those mantras that I got into a deep flow state. So much so that when we took our first break, somebody asked how long we had been hiking. And I immediately thought, oh, why did you ask that? I don't want to know. I'm sure it's only been like two hours. Abu said, we've been hiking for five and a half hours. We only have a few more to go. My first thought was, did I black out? Is the altitude starting to affect me? Because I lost over three hours of conscious memory. But I was so locked into my flow state. I was so focused on the ultimate goal, but was locked into what I could control in that moment, which was my next step, the words I said to myself, the focus that I gave, the effort and my forward motion. A few hours later, we were standing just a few hundred feet from the summit. We reached this place called Stella Point, and the doubt started flooding in. And I didn't tell anybody that I was doubting myself because everyone else had their own burdens they were carrying. I wasn't going to put my doubt on somebody else to carry. So when our guide Abu came and sat down next to me while we were at Stella Point, and he said, Michelle, are you feeling strong enough to make it to Uhudur Peak? I tapped on my best smile and said, Yep, let's do this. And forward we went. About an hour later, I was standing on top of Mount Kilimanjaro with my entire team. We had made it to Uhutur Peak. 19,341 feet, y'all. And as I was training for this, I saw so many people's summit pictures of beautiful bluebird skies. They could see the glaciers and the ash pits, and sometimes even the curvature of the earth. They had massive smiles on their face. And I was wondering what our summit would be like. We arrived to the peak, couldn't see a damn thing. We were literally inside of a cloud. There was so much ice on the sign that's at the summit that you couldn't even read it. The wind was so strong that it had blown, they almost looked like pennant flags, blown sections of ice that they were sticking off the side of the sign. That's how cold it was and how strong the wind was. But we got to that peak. I shed some tears that quickly froze to the side of my face. We shared some special moments together, celebrating this massive goal that we had just achieved. We took all of our pictures. And then about 15 minutes later, we said, All right, y'all ready to go? I had spent a year preparing for that moment. And it was over almost as soon as it began. And that could have been super disappointing if the summit was the whole point. If reaching the summit was the only thing that mattered, standing up there for 15 minutes would have been a pretty big letdown, especially since we couldn't see anything. But I had to remind myself of the goal. The goal was to summit Kilimanjaro. The goal was not to summit Kilimanjaro in perfect conditions. And I had reached that goal. I was standing on the summit of Kilimanjaro. And more importantly, I had reinforced and affirmed the fact that I was someone who was capable of getting there. I didn't reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro because I was motivated every single day. I got there because I kept taking the next step. And when things didn't go according to plan, which was quite often, I adapted. And I controlled what I could control, which is my attitude and my effort. And I chose to continue to lean into the adventure of the whole thing instead of letting those challenges take me down. And so whatever mountain you are facing right now, whether you're in a mental slump or you're facing an unexpected storm, or it feels like you're going backwards, remember pole, slowly, slowly. We're not always going to see the end goal in every day. We have to focus on the day-to-day work. We can control our attitude. We can take the next right step. Remember that summit, that end goal, it's only a moment. But the person you are becoming day in and day out is what's going to last forever. So until next time, I'll catch y'all later.