World famous mountain climber Catherine Destivelle celebrates carrots AND mountains
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development, Change management & wellness, Training & development
Can you imagine dangling from a few thousand meters up a mountain, alone, in the middle of winter? Catherine Destivelle can. She’s one of the “most adventurous and exciting female climbers in the world today.”
When I saw her speak at the W.I.N. conference in Paris I was struck by how her laser attention to detail (a common quality of Carrot Life Lenses™, 1 of 8 lenses into how we see the world) allows her to climb mountains (Mountain Life Lens™ being the opposite of a Carrot Life Lens™). The attention she pays to the smallest of details has likely saved her life on more than one occasion.
I enjoyed hearing Catherine’s stories because her Carrot Life Lens™ qualities allowed her to climb mountains. Literally. In the language of the lenses, Carrot Life Lenses™ and Mountain Life Lenses™ lie at different ends of the same continuum.
We’re often forced into boxes that narrow our choices and limit our growth. We’re encouraged to live along straight lines with nary a curve. B always follows A. 1,2,3. Society slaps dichotomous thinking on the back with a hearty ‘yes’.
Instead we should resist this easy, seductive thinking and way of being.
Rather than ‘either / or,’ ‘black / white,’ or ‘yes / no,’ Catherine is a case of ‘and’.
Yes, and, both. Step up, climb up.
Celebrate the carrot. Celebrate the mountain.
Tags: carrot lens, catherine destivelle, either or thinking, life lenses, mountain lens, W.I.N.
October 26th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Wow, what an inspiration. Thanks for the intro to a Carrot!
October 27th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Thanks for your comment Julie. I personally loved how you clarified about where we were meeting yesterday- very carrot of you. For others reading this post, Julie & I had arranged to meet and she told me the meeting place was near Cambie and 16th. She later emailed to say she’d driven by the place that day and it was actually closer to 17th. Carrot carrot carrot. Love it.
As for Catherine- her flexibility, stamina and humble attitude were something to behold. Very calm and matter of fact. She talked also about the difference between difficulty and risk; if something was difficult that was entirely different than it being dangerous. She was very matter of fact about scaling these soaring mountains. Very impressive!
November 10th, 2010 at 9:04 am
[…] that we call life, coming up with original ideas and implementing them can seem like scaling a Catherine Destivelle size mountain. It doesn’t have to be that way […]