An Amazing Life Lesson From The Alps

Welcome to the Alps. I left Salzburg behind and started making my way deeper into the Austrian [music] Alps. And honestly, this was one of those drives where I kept thinking, "Okay, this view has to be the best one." [music] But then 5 minutes later, there was another one that was even crazier. The city slowly disappeared. The road started winding through these little Austrian villages and suddenly we were surrounded [music] by mountains in every possible direction. After a while, we pulled over to the side of the road and after a few cable cars up a mountain, voila, we were on top of the Alps. And standing up there looking out at the view, it's pretty hard not to just stop for a second and take it all in. I'm standing here in the Alps, one of the most breathtaking mountain ranges on planet Earth stretching across eight countries: France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Monaco, [music] and Liechtenstein. And the Alps cover more than 1,200 km [music] of Europe and every year well over 100 million visitors come here from all over the world and they come to ski through the world-famous resorts and they hike through valleys [music] that look pretty much unreal and they see turquoise lakes surrounded by giant peaks. They experience one of the most dramatic landscapes [music] on planet Earth. Now, here's something fascinating. The Alps are not just beautiful. They are a geological miracle. These mountains were actually created by a collision. Thousands of years ago, Africa was pushing north towards Europe. And when these two enormous [music] plates collided, the pressure was so powerful that the Earth itself folded upward. It's like imagine pushing two cars into each other slowly. >> [music] >> The metal bends and they rise upward. That is exactly what happened here. The pressure of Africa pushing into Europe was so [music] intense that it created arguably the most magnificent mountain range on Earth. The highest peak in the Alps, Mont Blanc, rises over 4,800 m into the sky, nearly 5 km above sea level. The Alps are home to thousands [music] of glaciers and hundreds of mountain peaks, some of the most famous natural landscapes in the entire [music] world. But maybe the most incredible thing about the Alps is this, they are proof that something can [music] become breathtakingly beautiful under pressure. And maybe that's [music] the lesson of the Alps, because sometimes we look at pressure in our life and think, "Why is this happening to me? Why is life pushing so hard? Why this challenge? Why this collision?" But maybe we've got it all wrong. Maybe the very pressure that feels like it's crushing you is actually carving you. Think about almost anyone [music] who has ever become great. Every professional athlete has a parent who woke them up before they wanted to and sent them off to practice [music] when all they wanted to do was sleep. Or a coach who refused to let them settle for good enough. Every musician had a annoying [music] teacher who stopped them in the middle of a performance and said, "Do it all over again." Every best-selling author has an annoying editor who crossed out entire pages they spent weeks writing [music] and told them to start over again. Every successful entrepreneur has heard the words, [music] "That idea will never work." and had to push through anyway. Every doctor survived years of sleepless nights [music] and impossible exams medical school. Relentless professors who demanded more than they they thought they had what to give. No Nobody just drifts into [music] greatness. Greatness is almost always pushed into existence. The Alps didn't become the Alps despite the collision, they became the [music] Alps because of it, because of the pressure and the resistance and the stretching. That's how you attain greatness, through the moments that force you to become someone you never would have thought you could [music] become on your own. Those moments in your life that feel like pressure aren't always signs that something is going wrong. [music] Sometimes they're the very tool Hashem is using to build something extraordinary because Hashem doesn't build people by making life easier. He builds them the same way he built the Alps, through pressure. The collisions in your [music] life aren't obstacles, the collisions are construction. They're not standing in your way, they are slowly turning you into a mountain.