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Alex Honnold climbed a 500+ metre skyscraper without ropes or safety equipment in under two hours.
And that raised a more uncomfortable question…
🤔What if the reason you don’t have the success you want is because you’re not the person required to achieve it yet?
Most people understand success as an image: money in the bank, an expensive car, luxury watches, branded clothes, visible status.
They build their lives chasing those symbols as if they were the final goal.
And that is where the problem begins.
Those who have truly achieved success know that none of this is the goal.
It is a consequence.
The result of a well-walked path, not the starting point.
When you confuse the outcome with the objective, you don’t just fail at the goal.
You fail at the journey.
You don’t understand which decisions to make, which habits to build, or what kind of person you need to become in order to sustain what you say you want.
Today, we see thousands of profiles on social media selling a false version of success.
Marketing specialists who know exactly how to trigger emotions by showing rented houses, borrowed cars, or watches that do not belong to them.
They don’t sell you a path.
They sell you an image.
And an image never prepares anyone for the journey.
Nor does it bring your dreams any closer to becoming reality.
Alex Honnold and the mistake almost everyone makes
On 25 January 2026, Alex Honnold climbed the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan.
Over 500 metres high.
No ropes.
No safety measures.
One mistake meant death.
It was not an act of bravery.
It was a logical consequence.
Alex did not get there by wanting it badly.
Not by visualising success.
Not by dreaming of fame or money.
👉 For years, his life was oriented towards becoming the person capable of doing it.
He trained his body.
His mind.
His spirit.
His tolerance for risk.
His habits.
His ability to concentrate under pressure.
If you had asked him years earlier whether he could climb a building like that, the answer would have been no.
Not because he didn’t want to.
But because he was not yet that person.
He was not born prepared.
He became capable through years of quiet, consistent construction.
His progress was not epic.
It was gradual.
First with safety on every climb.
Later, without it.
Step by step, level by level, becoming someone different.
He had a clear goal and gradually built the plan required to sustain it.
The Alex who began climbing professionally in 2004 was not the same person who climbed that building in 2026.
👉He did the necessary work.
He suffered.
He changed.
And he became the person he needed to be to achieve something extraordinary.
The money came afterwards.
The fame came afterwards.
It was never the goal.
The point almost no one wants to accept
The case of Alex Honnold makes one thing very clear: human beings are capable of extraordinary things, but only when they are prepared to sustain them. Destroying who they are, in order to become who they must be.
Wanting something badly is not enough.
Working hard is not always enough.
Talent guarantees nothing.
Success requires you to become someone different.
And the bigger and more exclusive the goal, the more radical that transformation must be.
There are goals that cannot be reached by adding more.
They are reached by dismantling who you already are and rebuilding yourself with clarity and judgement.
This is not motivation.
It is an uncomfortable reality.
That is why so many ambitious people end up frustrated.
Not because they lack value.
But because they are pursuing results their current identity is not prepared to sustain.
Determination, experience and real decisions
The mindset no one talks about is not positive thinking.
It is the ability to decide when there are no guarantees.
To hold pressure.
To execute without applause.
On demanding paths, there is no room for improvisation.
There is no margin for self-deception.
Alex Honnold could not fail that day.
But before getting there, he accumulated years of experience, mistakes and near-limit situations that shaped him.
👉 There was a radical personal reconstruction.
That day, he was not improvising.
He was executing from an already built identity.
That is what makes the difference.
A final reflection
I have seen this pattern repeat again and again in ambitious people.
Talent was there.
Effort too.
But something deeper was missing: internal preparation, clarity and structure.
The important question is not what goal you are pursuing. The real question is:
👉 Are you willing to become the person that goal demands?
Because until you answer that honestly, everything else is just an image.
