I have a slightly embarrassing story to share, and heaven knows I felt ashamed at the time it happened, but in retrospect, there was an important lesson in it that I wanted to share.

I have spent significant time in Japan as a member of the U.S. military. It’s an amazing country where you can feel like you’re in the 23rd Century one moment seeing the technology available in Tokyo or Yokohama, but then suddenly feel like it’s the 16th Century visiting a Shinto shrine or public garden in a more rural area.

Everybody knows Mount Fuji and it’s a must-see/must-climb for tourists. The reality is, you’re bussed almost all the way to the top and it’s just a small walk to the top so you can claim that you “climbed” the mountain. Those who live in Japan seem to prefer Mount Daisen. It’s an old volcano in the Tottori Prefecture (a prefecture is something of a cross between a county and a state in America) that is just over a mile high. Don’t worry, geologists estimate it hasn’t erupted in 20,000 years and shows no signs of it today.

I’d never climbed a mountain of that size before, but I was assured I needn’t be a technical climber and we wouldn’t be doing anything too dangerous. I didn’t want to hang off a cliff by my fingertips or rely on a rope to keep me from plummeting to my death. Once assured that wasn’t going to happen and that I shouldn’t have too much trouble, I decided to go on the hike.

There was a fair amount of snow when I went to climb it with many other hikers and guides. I should have recognized that I’m a guy born in Haiti, who despite now being a US citizen, has only lived in the southeast part of the United States. Sure it gets cold, but I have only lived in the kind of place that if it got any snow, a glaze shut down the entire city. The reality is, I have almost no experience walking in snow.

When you couple my lack of experience climbing mountains and my lack of experience simply walking in snow, that day was so much more than I bargained for. As somebody who has read self-improvement books for years, it didn’t take very long before a quote from motivational speaker Les Brown came flooding into my head: “When you go for a walk with someone, either they adjust to your pace or you adjust to theirs. Whose pace have you adjusted to?”

That came to me in the moment because I was having a rough go of it. I was not prepared to make the transition from “guy who spends his days on flat land at a military base” to “guy who climbs Mt. Daisen.” So, what happened? Everybody in front of me in my party and everybody behind me, in my party or not, had to slow down. They had to adjust to the guy who probably shouldn’t have been there on his own.

There were people there who encouraged me, and others who looked like they wanted to punch me in the face. As we slowly traversed upward, I saw other people along the mountain path who threw in the towel and it was something I thought about doing many times. Did I make it to the top? Did I stop, reflecting on the decisions I might have made differently if I knew how difficult it would be? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see in next week’s article.

These days, I’m not a mountain climber. I’m a transition coach who works mostly with people in the medical field looking to transition out of their career and onto a different path. We all need coaching and encouragement upon starting a new path. It helps to have a guide and know where you’re going, just like when you’re climbing a mountain.