Mountaintop

By Ron Suber - ReWirement is not an alternative to retirement, but a phase of global exploration that can happen at any age.

In the last 240 days, my ReWirement journey has enabled me to meet more people from around the world, including...

  • A 23 year old Nigerian student,
  • A 27 year old Chilean hiker,
  • A 31 year old Australian rafting guide,
  • A 35 year old Spanish waiter,
  • A 48 year old Indian engineer,
  • A 56 year old English philosopher,
  • Two bikers from Aspen in their 60’s …and many more.

All are pivoting in one way or another, finding out professionally and personally not only “what they want to be when” but also how to live their best life in balance.

What are they balancing?

  • The necessity of work
  • The need for power
  • The lack of control
  • The draw of fame
  • The desire for adulation
  • The insistence on being right
  • The search for money, love, fun, happiness
  • And the embrace of finding one’s higher purpose

On day 231-237

While hiking through a forest in Patagonia, wading over volcanic ash for miles, kayaking around fjords amongst glaciers and jumping off cliffs into roaring rapids I found the space to contemplate more on three of the most common topics of conversation.

  • FEAR
  • APPEARANCE
  • ADAPTING

TOPIC 1 - Fear

Many along the journey have broached the topic of fear in their lives and often asked me to share my experience in overcoming it.

Few know that fear drove me to withdraw from the Prosper deal just days before we were going to invest with Sequoia in January of 2013.

The fear of failure, fear of change, fear of losing, fear of the unknown; all drove me to say no to the Prosper opportunity that I wanted and had worked so hard on with my business partners.

My courage came from a powerful email received along with some intense persuading. While I can’t repeat here the words in the prodding, I will share for the first time excerpts from the email received in early January 2013 from a very smart professional investor .

“After 40 years, we still have not found the perfect company nor struck the perfect deal. We have witnessed employees having fist fights in the CEO’s office, invested in some that had no revenue model….some that had no CEO. But every one of them did share something in common: a phenomenal market opportunity.

We have traded “deal points” for “market opportunity points”. When faced with a decision between optimizing for legal docs and optimizing for a market opportunity, we optimize for the market opportunity. If it’s there, the docs don’t have to be perfect.

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