Keep Going
May 2026
“What the mountains taught me about leadership is what they taught me about being a man; you don’t get to quit. The mountains can make it harder to quit, or more dangerous. So keep going. And keep going again the next time you want to quit. Be the man you imagined yourself being (or becoming) when you said you wanted this.-Mark Twight, Leadership
My concise leadership philosophy? Give. Everything.”
Mark Twight has been one of my earliest mentors, even if indirectly. I have followed his writing for a long time. Long enough to know that what he writes is usually stripped down to something brutally honest.
One thing I learned from his writings is that you do not get to quit. You do not have that luxury.
That sounds dramatic until life corners you somewhere uncomfortable and you realize quitting is not always an option. Sometimes there is no clean exit. Sometimes you just keep moving because the alternative is worse.
I learned that years ago on the Eiger North Face.
We went in underprepared. We had not researched conditions well enough. There was barely any snow that year, which made sections far more dangerous than expected. We also did not bring enough proper rock protection. Loose rock turned parts of the climb into a mess. At one point retreat became the only real option, but even getting out was dangerous. Every movement mattered. Every mistake carried consequences.
You keep going because you have to.
That lesson never really leaves you.
People talk constantly about wanting change. They want to become stronger, disciplined, resilient, capable, calm, harder to break, whatever.
Very few actually want the process required to become those things.
Because the process is ugly.
It will be fucking hard and, yes, uncomfortable. It will exhaust you mentally and physically, and it will force you to confront parts of yourself you have spent years hiding from.
Good.
That is part of it.
If you want to become different, you are going to have to do different things. Not talk about them. Actually do them.
Get up early when you do not want to. Train when you are tired. Work when your brain wants distraction. Stay calm when anger feels easier. Exercise restraint when every impulse tells you to go medieval on something.
It will hurt. It will scare you. It will suck.
So what? Deal with it.
People think discomfort and fear mean they are on the wrong path. Most of the time it means they finally stepped onto the right one.
And you are going to fail. A lot. Fall six times. Get up seven. Someone told me that once, and I can't remember who, but it's so true. Just keep going.
Failure is part of the process whether your ego likes it or not. You will embarrass yourself. Miscalculate. Freeze. Trust the wrong people. Lose opportunities. Sometimes you will break parts of yourself and spend years figuring out how to put them back together correctly.
Learn from it and keep moving.
The people who eventually become capable are usually not the most talented. They are the ones who stayed in the fight long enough to learn from their failures instead of becoming consumed by them. These are the ones who begin to know themselves.
And you need to know yourself honestly. Not the version you perform for other people. The real one. The one that has all the bullshit you know is there but never cared to speak out loud.
You need a recipe that shows you where you are right now and where you want to go. Again, look at Mark for that. His recipe is angry and it's true.
Then comes responsibility... That part belongs to you.
Nobody owes you anything. Get it? Life is not fair. Fucking deal with it. Complaining about it will not change a damn thing.
You cannot control the world or other people. Most of the time you barely control yourself. What you can control are the thoughts inside your head and the actions that follow them.
Start there.
Then keep going.