Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking and Get Beyond Order

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How do you get beyond order when you go hiking? Simple, as Jordan B. Peterson has said, nature is chaos. You can’t get much further from order than that.

Getting into the wild is, well, wild! As I write this I am planing a hike in a place known for lots of bears. When you’re out there in the woods, the bears and the cougars are the dragons in your world.

Lions, Tigers, Bears and Dragons

Here in North America there arena’t many lions or tigers unless you include Texas. Texas is the exception. I was going to say you wouldn’t find any real dragons in North America but when I think about Texas I am not so sure. After all doesn’t Tim Kennedy live in Texas?

Yes, I am digressing a bit. It happens when I talk about dragons. Peterson often tells a story of a dragon under a bed somewhere. He says we should kill the dragon when it’s small before it gets so big it can eat you. Good idea for sure. But with bears in the woods you actually want to stay away from the little ones because mom is usually close by.

Whistling In the Dark

It isn’t really dark when I hike before sunrise because I wear a headlamp. I tell myself that the bright light will scare the Sasquatches, bears and cougars away. So I Googled that and it says,
“Bears aren’t typically scared of bright lights because bears naturally have no negative association with bright light and don’t see it as a threat.” So much for that theory. I really wished I hadn’t looked for the information.

What’s left? Whistling! Noise does scare bears away. I am not so sure about cougars. I don’t think anything scares a cougar. If it’s hungry it just wants to eat you. I am not going to Google for an answer. Cougars scare me more than bears.

So go hiking, face real danger and then come home and the little dragon under your bed will seem like nothing.

Go Hiking and Control The Chatter

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In the adjacent book review I left one important thing out that is brought up in the book. The importance of getting into “nature” to help you take control of the Chatter. The author discusses enjoying a sunrise as “soft fascination” as opposed to voluntary attention. Voluntary attention can be exhausted. He says nature draws our involuntary attention because it is “rife with soft fascinations.”

There were studies done on this that the author discusses and you can read the book if you need more proof. One is mentioned below. Nature reduces rumination. Isn’t the amazing?

Climb a Mountain and Control the Chatter

Just climbing a mountain helps you to keep rumination at bay. Less negative chatter enters your mind when you hike. I knew it made a difference but I had never seen anything to validate my view.

One of the things I find myself doing while hiking is repeating mantras. It keeps me going and is like a meditation. Then when the sun comes up it is so awe inspiring.

Studies

One study that was done in 2016 had one group of people watch a video of streets with no trees and another watch one with trees. The ones that were exposed to the “most views of nature showed a 60 percent increase in their ability to recover from the stress…”

So if you can watch a video and chill out then getting out in the woods will be even better! Now there is no excuse to not get our in nature.

Conclusion

The author says, “Collectively the findings demonstrate that nature provides humans with a tool for caring for our inner voice from the outside in, and the longer we are exposed to nature, the more our health improves.”

Go hiking!

Go Hiking And Experience Fearvana

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Akshay Nanavati is a mountaineer and what I would consider extreme sport enthusiast. He goes all over the world looking for challenges. The little mountains I climb are mole hills to him. Still, you don’t have to be a mountaineer to experience Fearvana. You can just go hiking.

Let me clarify that. It is especially true if you are in your seventies like me when getting in and out of the shower is a daily risk. So climbing even a small mountain with bad knees and other ailments is a real Fearvana experience.

Ice and Snow

It is a real Fearvana experience when you are hiring in snow and ice. There is plenty of danger and you need to focus. You get nervous and scared just before a steep section and then you make it – Fearvana!

Coming down is really much more difficult in the snow. Once I tried it without the proper Microspike traction and fell. It was a good lesson. I don’t forget my Microspikes any more and if I did I would not venture up the mountain, because as Akshay says, “the mountain is in charge.”

Fearvana

Ok, what is Fearvana? I explained it in my review of his book but this former Marine describes it as being scared and then performing anyway and succeeding. You embrace the fear! It is your friend. Struggle is your friend.

One of the things I do before I climb a mountain is focus on the difficulty of the trail. The struggle. Not the top. The summit will be there but you need to be attentive to every part of the trail. Akshay says a couple things about this. First he says, ‘The next time you face a challenge, smile and ask yourself, “What is fun about this? How can I make this enjoyable.”’ Second, he stresses the importance of visualization by saying, “Visualizing the process of struggle, as opposed to the outcome on the other side of it, better prepares you to overcome the struggle.”

Flow

Can you go hiking and experience flow? I say you can. Maybe you need to make it a little harder consistently, but maybe not. Akshay quotes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who is the expert on flow. He called it “optimal experience.” He defines it as a state “in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”

Akshay takes it a bit further.He says, “…success demands a real struggle to the point of questioning the very endeavor to which we commit ourselves, even if only for a moment.” So can climbing a small mountain get you into flow? Well, every Saturday I question whether I want to climb a mountain the next day even though I am committed. So yes, I think so! Go Hiking!

Go Hiking In Shorts, No Shirt When It Is Freezing

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No, I won’t do it. Wim Hof’s book is a great one and will inspire you to do what he says to a point. However, when he talks about climbing mountains wearing no pants or shirt I have little or no interest.

Cold showers are just fine. I might even do a cold plunge if the opportunity presented itself, but when I hike I don’t just want to be covered up, I need to be. This is true especially in the summer months when it would be warmer as supposedly easier. That’s because of my allergic reaction to Mosquito bites! Now I would be safer in the winter cold with snow and ice because they stay away then, but four or five hours in the cold doesn’t inspire me.

Training

Wim Hof trains people to climb in the cold. Maybe that is what I would need before was ready to give it a try on my own. I could fly over to his location and take his course. There are people here in the United States that teach his method as well. So that is a possibility.

The method includes three main things. Cold, breathing and mindset. I think I would need a huge change in mindset. I would need lots of practice in “setting my intention.”

Motivation

Hiking with almost no clothes in the cold would surely be out of my comfort zone. That is supposed to be a good thing. Get outside your comfort zone the self help folks tell you. Always be stretching yourself. Push your limits. Dream big and set goals to achieve them.

It all sounds very good, but hiking in the cold is not a dream of mine. I would need some more convincing. Hof says that after doing the breathing is the best time to “set your intention.” That intention might be to climb up a mountain with no shirt, but it won’t be mine. Not yet. My guess is you would need some in person training before you should even try to attempt something like that unless you like frost bite.

Go Hiking and Get Your Life Back

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So you ask me, “How does that work?” Well, if you have been reading these odes to the mountains you will understand that is the easiest task. All it takes is a few hikes and your life changes.

How does it change? First, you go hiking. Before you went hiking you were so distracted by emails, Instagram, Tik Tok, and even Microsoft teams that you had lost your life. It had disappeared into the electronic Matrix. Once you get on the trails things settle down.

The Matrix

You might think that when you are looking at your phone instead of looking at the person across from you that you have your life firmly in hand. Or you are supposed to be exercising but you are sitting on a bench at the gym staring at your phone.

Your mind is in a Matrix composed of all the lures of the electronic universe. You have to escape it to see it for what it is, an addiction so heinous that it will grind you up and spit you out into a pile of wasted lives.

Busyness

Oh, you say that you have your phone under control and you are in charge of it. But you are going from one meeting to another, rushing from one office to another, catching a plane, a lunch date, or grabbing a bite on the run. You have lost your life in the busyness of it.

How long has it been since you had time, even ten minutes to sit and think? A long time I imagine.

The Solution

The best solution is to go hiking! Put your phone in your pack and only take it out to take a picture when you get to the top of a mountain. If you need to take a picture before you reach the top then you still need to keep it in your pack. Make it hard to get at.

Then you hiking, with trees surrounding you and the odor of pine needles or will strawberries wafting up to you. The breeze is on your face. You relax as you push yourself forward. You become one with nature. You get your life back.

A Little More

Maybe a quote from one of Eldredge’s other books, Epic. He says, “We have grown dull towards this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is a fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all?” “Perhaps we come upon a waterfall, clouds have made a rainbow in a circle around the sun…”

Go hiking, experience it all (maybe not Elephants), and get your life back!

Go Hiking and Do Some Rethinking

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Hiking is a time when you can think about all sorts of things you have been putting off. Be honest. It is hard to find the time to just think.

So when you go into the mountains make sure you bring your brain along with you. It can be a great companion and you may learn all sorts of things.

Rethink Your Life

You can rethink anything, not just positive thinking discussed in the book. You can rethink your whole life. Have you thought about your life lately? Most people don’t think about their loge as whole until they are a little older, but it can be useful at any age.

Maybe during the first couple of miles, you think about your childhood. Then the next couple miles your teen years. Then the next couple your twenties and thirties. When you get to the top, you’re probably just starting to reach your forties unless of course you are much younger and have not reached that age yet. If you are older like me it will take all the way up and all the way down to get through your life.

Rethink Your Health

Are you doing everything you can to stay healthy and fit? Are you using any technology to help you? Did you know that according to Kelly McGonigal, “The average daily step count required to induce feelings of anxiety and depression and decrease satisfaction with life is 5,649 the typical American takes 4,774 steps per day.” Brian Johnson quoted that the other day. So are you using a Fitbit, Garmin, Suunto, or something else to track your steps? Why not?

How are you and sugar doing? Maybe with you, it isn’t sugar but chips or something salty. Quitting sugar was the biggest contributor to me dropping lots of body fat over the last year. You can climb a lot of mountains but if you are packing the sugar away it won’t help you much.

Rethink Anything

You get the idea. Use that hiking time to think about anything you want. Maybe it is your relationship or lack of one. Maybe it is your job or lack of one.

What a blessing it is to be so close to nature and able to use it to help you connect with yourself. So go hiking and rethink some things.