Lessons from the mountains part 4 – From a Hobby to a Habit

It is mid-winter here in the PNW which means it’s time to start planning and preparing for the summer climb season.

You need a good 4-6 month to prepare for a climb, after all it's a mountain…

Today, in this blog post I want to share with you how I prepare and the steps I take leading towards the actual climb.

It's a mental thing

More art than science, getting ready for an expedition to summit a mountain is mostly reflected in my mental readiness, probably 80% mental readiness and 20% physical readiness.

I'll leave the physical preparation to another post and focus on how I prepare mentally.

It's all about managing risks and managing your fear!

How?

I try to detach the fear from the risk, I often think that the scarier something is, the higher the risk it is. But I find that to be wrong. Want an example: you're not afraid to drive a car, but that's a pretty risky action, on the other hand, you might be afraid to give a public talk, but that my friend is not risky at all…

Relationship with fear

Instead of spending time trying to fight the fear, I put my energy into increasing the chances of success which then translates to less fear.

And I do that through practice.

I practice being in these scary situations, practice what can go wrong, practice my reactions to it, and I build muscle memory around it all.

I also visualize it all, sure, it's fun to visualize yourself on the top of a mountain, but I also visualize many other elements before that moment, such as what happens if it starts to snow, and then continues to snow hard, what happens if there is a full whiteout, what happens if it's icy, what happens If I get a headache from the altitude, what happens if I fall, what happens if my team member needs help.

Finally, I embrace the fact that risk exists, and I might (and probably will) feel afraid. So, when I am out there on the mountain, and I feel scared, I ask myself 3 key questions:

• How likely I am to fall trying to pass that obstacle?
• What will happen to me if I fall? will I get injured?
• And the most important question is: how honest did I answer the first 2 questions?

Fear is all about the preparation and being honest with yourself.

Habits

I recently read a book by James Clear called "Atomic Habits", which I highly recommend. It taught me critical lessons that I can apply both at work as a software engineer manager, and when preparing for a climbing project.

Take action:

James Clear talks in his book about moving away from avoiding taking actions because "I need to learn more" into "The Best way to learn is to take action."

Throughout my career, my best learning came "on the job", meaning, if I wanted to learn a new skill, the best way for me was to associate it with a task or a delivery I needed to achieve, and not by learning "on the side" and in isolation with my deliverables.

The same goes with mountaineering, you learn by practicing "on the job" or in other words outside - during hikes, mini-climbs, and basically putting yourself in the situation that you will face during the actual climb.

Continuous improvement:

The book also talks about continuous improvement which is a dedication to making small changes and improvements every day, with the expectation that those small improvements will add up to something significant over time.

James Clear lays out the math of Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long run.

I wish I can practice outside every day, but I try do my best to hike and run multiple times every week. Preparing, is more than that to me, I read about mountaineering with their success stories and setbacks, and I try to convince my family to watch a climbing movie every now and then :-) It all helps me prepare mentally and I feel I get better at it each day.

Focus on the system, not immediate goals:

Of course, I want to summit and to stand on the top of the mountain, but instead of focusing on that end goal, I try to focus on the process and the journey towards it, in "Atomic Habits" language, it's the system, where “Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”???????????

Focusing on the goal and the end result can lead to negative thoughts of "I'm not good enough yet". So instead, I commit to a "system", a process that keeps me in the here and now, a process that helps me improve every day.

Many people that run marathons (so I heard) talk about the "Yo-Yo effect" that once you reach your goal, you ask yourself now what? It's a momentary change after all. The same goes for a mountain summit.

But when you commit to the system, it becomes a habit and your identity, and that keeps you moving to achieve more. A cycle of endless improvements.

Goals are tricky and can suggest that you control everything, but you don't, especially on a mountain…

Having a system is what matters, and committing to the process is what makes the difference.

The Learning zone:

Goldilocks walks into the forest and finds a bear cabin with three bowls of porridge, one is too hot, one too cold, and one is just right.

It's very hard to know what is "just right" on a mountain. If you do too little, you don't get the gains, if you push yourself too much, you burn out and risk yourself. You need to be in the zone of "Just right."

One way I go about it is a retrospect, after I finish a hike or climb, I rate it (1-10) which is a combo of how I felt during the exercise, the complexity, and the danger:

• 1-3 is the comfort zone.
• 4-7 is the learning zone.
• 8-10 is the dangerous zone.

"Just right" for me is the learning zone where I push myself out of my comfort zone just a bit each time, it's also what prevents me from going into the danger zone. I use this tool often when planning or when making a decision on the mountain, and this is where most of my learning moments occur.

Look up The Goldilocks Rule which states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are on the edge of their current abilities.

Success:

Summit or not, success for me is the journey, with its experiences, learnings and improvements along the way. The mountains teach me about myself and who I really am, not some imaginary image of myself, but the raw me, with my flaws, my fears, and my successes. The mountains teach me how to deal with these ups and down and it reminds me that we are not perfect, and that it's ok.

And if I do summit, it's all a result of these small and consistent increments and my long journey.

And that my friends, give me joy.

What's next?

It is just so awesome and beautiful out there; winter is such an amazing period and I can't wait to go out again and prep for more climbs.

I'm lining up a few ideas with some surprise guests joining me.

Happy to hear your thoughts on this and learn about your systems and how you manage your fear and risk!

If you haven't read the previous posts, check out these expeditions and some lessons learnt from them:

Part 1- Mt Baker Expedition

Part 2 - Mt Rainer Expedition

Part 3 - Mt Adams Expedition

See you on the trails.

#Mountaineering #Leadership