The Tool To Make You (And Everyone You Lead) Push Harder

The Tool To Make You (And Everyone You Lead) Push Harder

Half a mile from the summit of Hermits Peak, a famous mountain for locals in Northern New Mexico, most of my group quit.

We’d been climbing for hours, and the mountain had taken everything it was going to take. Our legs burning, backs aching, water bottles running dry, the kind of tired that settles into your bones instead of just your muscles. I’d hiked this trail before, so while their bodies were running on fumes, my mind was doing math theirs couldn’t do: we’re close, we’re so close, this is nothing compared to what we’ve already climbed.

I told them. I promised them. But the trees engulfed every word. I could see the defeat and resignation in their body language, their refusal to look me in the eye. They had given in to the struggle. That internal battle we all face when we come up against something hard, and our minds start negotiating with us on why we should quit.

We were wrapped in a canopy so thick it turned the mountain into a maze with no map, no clearing, no glimpse of sky to prove the summit existed at all. My promise was just a voice in the dark to them, real to me, because I’d stood at that summit before and knew the shape of the truth. To them, it was a story they hadn’t lived yet, and exhausted bodies don’t negotiate with stories.

So one by one, half the group sat down and called it good enough, turning back half a mile from the top of the mountain they’d come to climb. I kept walking, half the group still with me, through the same trail and trees that had just convinced the other half to turn back.

When we finally broke through the treeline and the summit opened up in front of us, the feeling wasn’t triumph—it was disbelief. At how close they’d actually been, at how a half mile, twenty minutes of an uphill battle, had been standing between them and the whole reason they’d driven out to that mountain in the first place.

Mental Lesson: The Goal Gradient Effect

Psychologists have a name for what should have happened on that trail. It’s called the goal gradient effect, and it’s one of the oldest findings in the study of motivation. Clark Hull documented it in the 1930s, watching rats run mazes and noticed that they sped up, tails practically on fire, the closer they got to the food waiting at the end. Decades later, researchers found the same pattern among people carrying coffee shop loyalty cards, who began buying more often the closer they came to earning a free drink.

This shows that proximity to a goal increases effort. The closer we can sense we are, the harder we’re willing to push.

Sense is the hinge the whole thing swings on.

My group had proximity. They just didn’t have a way to feel it. I could hand them the fact—half a mile, twenty to thirty minutes left—but a fact isn’t the same currency as a belief, and belief was the only thing that was going to move their legs. The canopy stood between them and the sight line that would have turned my promise into their own conviction. No amount of coaching from the outside can substitute for a mind that’s resigned to its own proof.

This is the fork where finishers and quitters split. Half the group turned back, half the group trudged on. Call it mental strength, resilience, stubbornness, belief. When you can’t see the finish line for yourself, do you still have the conviction to keep going?

I’ve told teams before that it’s hard to summit a mountain once, and harder to do it again the next year with a target on their back. The half-mile mentality is the same climb in miniature—the mountain doesn’t get easier because you’ve stood at the top before—it just asks you to trust the shape of a summit you can’t see right now.

“Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.”

—H. Ross Perot

The one-yard line and the half-mile are the same piece of ground wearing different names. Close enough to touch. Covered by just enough canopy to make people forget how close they really are.

Next Rep

Looking back at that trail, I know what I'd do differently as a leader. I spent that climb trying to pass my confidence to my team instead of helping them build their own. Motivation was never mine to give—it lives in the person doing the climbing, not in the person walking beside them promising it's almost over. My job wasn't to convince them the summit was close. It was to walk the parts of the trail I already knew and mark them in ways they could trust with their own eyes—a checkpoint here, a small proof there, instead of one big promise saved for the end.

For coaches and leaders, that's the real insight buried in this trail. The job was never to motivate anyone. Motivation is internal, and no amount of borrowed conviction can plant it there. The job is to illuminate the path. To walk it first, or walk it again, and leave markers behind that let the people following trust their own legs instead of someone else's word. We don't control the tree line. We don't control when the summit opens up for the people we lead. We control our own response while we move through it, and we control whether our presence on that climb makes the ground beneath someone's feet feel more solid.

If you're the one leading, the challenge is to stop trying to motivate the people behind you and start illuminating the path instead. Walk the part of the trail you already know. Leave a marker they can trust with their own eyes.

If you're the one climbing, the challenge is to find the mile you've been tempted to call good enough and take it anyway, without needing the canopy to break open first. Where in your training, your season, or your work is your mind currently negotiating against a commitment you made back when there was no pain in front of you yet? Can you keep moving through ground you can't see the end of, powered by nothing but your own conviction?

Final Buzzer

The goal gradient effect is a tool to build with.

A big goal six to twelve months out is too far off to grasp. You can build your own proof of progress and give yourself something to hold onto now. Break a season into weekly checkpoints. Use a training log to make progress visible before the results are. Celebrate small wins genuinely so that your mind registers them as real proof.

Coaches and leaders can build that same proximity for a team. A long season, a rebuilding year, a group climbing back from a losing streak, whatever the stretch is, set markers along the way that the team can see and touch. Name the specific ground already covered and the small wins along the way. Point out the growth you see from a month ago or a year ago, but be specific with it, and let that stand as the evidence.

The canopy breaks open faster when you build checkpoints along the trail.

Challenging you head-on and always in your corner,

​— Coach VJ

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This is the work I bring into locker rooms, boardrooms, and team environments.

If you’re looking to bring a mental performance message on confidence, pressure, and belief to your team or organization, you can connect with me here.

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