One question a day for five days. The first one opens here.
For people who’ve already tried the obvious things. One question a day for five days, out of the journal Andre Norman wrote in a solitary cell.
Each one is a real prompt from The Climb Journal with his note attached. Day one unlocks the moment you start. No card, no pep talk, and nothing gets sold to you inside the five days.
Start day one
First prompt unlocks here. No card, unsubscribe any time.
- Five promptsOne a day, by email
- Ten minutes a dayA journal, not a course
- Days 1, 6, 11, 24, 28One from each move
Day 1 · DECIDE
Leave with the mountain named.
What mountain are you actually facing? Write the polite name you’ve been giving it. Then write the true name next to it. The true one is the one you’re climbing.
“I was a professional blame game player. I never said it out loud to anybody, but I lived it every single day: rocks at my bus, a violent father, growing up poor, all of it true and all of it outside me. The day it turned was the day I asked a harder question: what hand did I play in this?”
His note on Day 1, printed whole
That’s day one. The other four follow, one a day.
The five
The Climb Journal
Five days. The mountain named. Your comeback started.
Five prompts, one from each move of the climb. Not the first five days: days 1, 6, 11, 24 and 28, so five days walk the whole shape of the thing.
Write the polite name you’ve been giving it. Then the true name.
Decide
If nobody could laugh at it, what would be on your list?
The List
The work you’d do if nobody would ever see it or clap for it.
Climb in the Dark
Name the summit. Now write what comes with it that you haven’t counted.
Summit
One person at the bottom of a mountain you’ve already climbed.
Go Back Down
Is this even your mountain?
Sessions 1 and 2
Most of the people Andre works with already made it. Then they stalled.
Some took a hit nobody knows about. Either way the winning version is the only one the room has, so there’s nowhere to put the rest of it.
“You cannot lie to yourself about who you are anymore. It’s all over. Who are you now?”
Start the five days if
- You look fine from the outside and the winning version is the only one the room has.
- You got further up than you expected, and what you built stopped working anyway.
- You’re carrying somebody else’s hard season and you’re out of ideas about what helps.
Use an easier door if
- You want a pep talk.
- You have an easier option you haven’t used yet.
- You want somebody to carry you up.
“If you have another option, use that option first. Use all your options up.”
Why this man
Session 2
Andre Norman didn’t write his own first list. His enemies did.
Andre Norman spent fourteen years inside, two and a half of them in solitary confinement. He now teaches this in boardrooms, in governments, and back inside the prison systems he came out of. Harvard fellow. 1,200 rooms across 25 countries.
“The crazy thing is they made my list. They told me all the things. When I went back to my cell, I had the list of all the things I needed to do.”
- What they saidWhat he booked
- High school dropoutGED
- ViolentAnger management
- CrazyMental health counseling
- Serving a long sentenceThe law library, then the appeal
He booked the opposite of every line on it and worked it for eight years before he had an outcome. That list is the method. These five questions are the first pass through it.
Rooms he has taught the method in
“My question of the day is, who can I help today. You get to determine if it’s you or not.”
Start day one
One prompt a day for five days. First one unlocks here. No card, unsubscribe any time.
Day one asks you to write the polite name you’ve been giving your mountain, and then the true one next to it. Ten minutes. Nothing gets sold to you in the five days.