Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking Because The Discipline Will Equal Freedom

by Leave a Comment

Hiking every weekend takes discipline. There are some weekends when I would rather stay home in bed. However, once I am on the trail I feel completely free.

That makes sense. Once you take action you set things in motion and it changes your brain.

Before

This is the time when it feels better to stay in bed. It is when you need to use Jocko’s “Binary Code.” Yes or No! Get out of bed or don’t get out of bed. If you are disciplined you will get out of bed. Your mind will tell you it’s cold, it will be wet, you will be miserable. Not only that but your knees are hurting and you should probably rest them.

It doesn’t end there. If you are old like me then your mind really has become good at messing with you. If the little adversary in my mind is feeling particularly strong it might tell me I’m too old to go hiking. It might ask me why someone my age is doing something that only younger people should do.

During

The battle doesn’t end just because you were able to get out of bed and get ready. No. You get to the trailhead and it is pouring down rain or snow. You sit in your car and the mind starts asking those questions again. What do you think your thing to prove? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you think you are? Why would a reasonable person go get wet on purpose?

But you overcome that. You turn off that part of your mind. You get out of the car, put your pack on your back and move! It is slightly easier now. You have taken another action. But it is hard at first. Just getting going, but it gets easier and easier mentally.

After

No matter how convinced you were you had no business climbing a mountain that day, when it is all over and you jog your last 100 yards down the trail, you have such a feeling of accomplishment and freedom it is hard to describe.

After you have changed back into your street shoes, taken off your pack, and settled into the driver’s seat the sensation hits you that you have done more by 8:00 AM than most people will do all day. So be disciplined about it and go regularly in the rain and in the snow.

Go Hiking Because Everything Is Spiritual

by Leave a Comment

Go hiking!
It’s spiritual
Why? Because everything is spiritual.

When you are climbing a mountain you can’t help but notice all the living things around you. That obviously makes you think of God. Well, it does me.

God is in nature
So you should be too
What’s holding you back?

It really doesn’t matter if you hike early or late. I know, that speaks against my mantra, but there are advantages to a late start. You could see a sunset. The lighting is different so your photos will be different. Maybe even better.

How

Put your boots on.
Get your trekking poles.
Take the ten essentials.

It is also important to be sure you have the right trail pass for a particular hike. Check the weather, the distance, and know-how long it will take you to finish. Take two of everything. “Two is one and one is none.”

How can preparing for a hike be spiritual? You know about Brother Lawrence, the monk that connected with God when he washed the dishes. You can connect anytime you do anything!

Be Consistent

Go hiking on a consistent basis.
Every day.
Every week.
Or every other week
Or every third week.
Be consistent.

When you are consistent it will become a habit. Hiking will be like brushing your teeth. It will be something you do all the time and it will become part of your identity. Why? Because anything we do over and over becomes part of our identity. How about that!

Take A Break

Your body needs a break.
Your mind needs a break.
Breaks are good for the soul.
They are spiritual!!

How long a break you take depends on how spiritual you are feeling. Now, I am not talking about a rest break when you are climbing a mountain. Those are forbidden! I am talking about taking a break from hiking altogether. I take five months off every year just to make sure I am ready for the next season and feeling spiritual about it.

What do you do after your break?
Once again, Go Hiking!

Go Hiking And Think Like A Monk

by Leave a Comment

It happens all the time! Meditation during a hike. Maybe it is the steady cadence of my feet on the trail or the breathing. Who knows but getting into a meditative state on the trail is not a hard thing to do.

A friend said I breathed like a stove pipe. That was when I was treating through my mouth. Now I breathe only through my nose. It is supposed to be better for you so why not? I am not so sure it helps with meditation. I think the stove pipe method is better.

Automatic

So what I am saying is that hiking automatically helps you think like a monk. You are in nature. It is silent except for your beating heart and steady breath. You can feel the breeze on your face or smell the woods or hear the wind in the trees. I like to focus on my feet hitting the trail.

However, as I said, you really don’t have to do anything and you are meditating. Automatic. Nature gently pushes you into a meditative state.

Practice

A monk will tell you that they consider meditation a “practice.” Hiking is a practice too. You need to practice it consistently over and over again. Then you go deeper. Deeper experiences in the forest. Deeper revelations. More silence. The “experts” will put a finer touch on it and say it is “perfect practice” the will get you where you want to go.

I am not so sure it needs to be perfect, at least not in the beginning. You can learn from your imperfect practice so the next time it might be more perfect.

Will You Be a Monk If You Go Hiking?

Of course not!. How could you be a monk? You need to go to a monastery someplace for a while to get that official title. However, you might be at least “a little like” a monk when you hike. Certainly, you could think like one for a short time and much more so than if you just drive to work every day or sit at home working remotely and never get out into nature.

So go hiking and think like a monk!

Go Hiking and Change Your Personality

by Leave a Comment

Well, it could happen! Especially if you have not done any serious hiking before. Maybe you have just been a “nature walker.” Now you are enjoying the scenery but also maximizing the exercise. It could have a significant impact on who you are.

So let’s break it down shall we and see if there might be something to this. At the very least it could mean a positive change in the right direction.

Preparation

When you take on a serious week after week hiking schedule there needs to be some preparation. You need to prepare for the season and then every week get prepared for that week’s hike. If you were the kind of person who sort of lets things happen, having to prepare will change you. It might even bleed into your everyday activities.

After preparing for hiking becomes ingrained as a habit you may find yourself arriving early for meetings because you had thought through how long to would take you to get there and possible anomalies that might slow you down.

The Top Is the Target

If you are not into goal setting before you start hiring regularly, hiking could be just the thing you need to get you started.

Getting to the top is the payoff on any hike. How fast you get there is also a payoff especially if you beat your former time. So you always have two goals. First to make it to the top and then to get there in record time.

Doing this every week makes it easier to set a sales goal or meet a deadline at work. If you are always looking for a “new” top to conquer maybe you will start a company and change the world.

Did It Change?

Let’s say you have been hiking all summer, week in and week out. Have you changed? Sure you have. You can’t do that without changing. Now you are fitter. You are used to being prepared for everything. You are never late. Your whole personality changed for the better.

Go Hiking And Love What Is!

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes I don’t feel like hiking. Like right now I am not looking forward to climbing anything this weekend. It sometimes takes me a few days to get psyched for it, especially after a particularly difficult climb the week before.

What I do is wait it out. Usually by the time hiking day arrives I am ready, but once in a while I’m not. Then what do I do? I go anyway.

Love What Is

It is a matter of accepting my state of mind and believing that it may change once I am underway. If it doesn’t the I love what is.

When you go hiking you do not always have to be ready for it. There are times when you just aren’t. Those times might include snow or rain or hot days.

An Example

This last weekend it was very hot. I climbed to Camp Muir once again. One of the big reasons I climb it is because it is very hard and I believe doing hard things is important. As I said it was hot with the temperature at Paradise at close to 70. Yes, I know that isn’t hot in other parts of the country and world. It was 5:30 AM and still dark.

As I climbed it got even hotter and then wind started to blow. That cooled things down. There is always a crosswind on the snowfields so you have to make sure you have something for your ears even in summer.

Then looking west I see a storm. Rain can be seen in the distance. You don’t want to be caught in a storm on Rainier. Even low visibility makes things difficult. As the storm moves towards me the sun is blocked and it gets cool very fast. I am still on my way up and a long way to go. People I spoke with on the way up said that this incoming storm surprised everyone. Fortunately, as the storm gets close to the mountain it splits in two and goes around the mountain.

So I make it to Camp Muir which showcases even more tents than usual. My guess is that nobody is using sleeping facilities due to close quarters and the pandemic situation.

Coming back down the mountain the snow is soft and that means two things. First, it is safe to Glissade and second, it is easy to fall when jogging. I fell five times, once where it was pretty steep and I started to slide but caught myself.

The good, the bad. Love what is and go hiking!

Go Hiking and Dream Big

by Leave a Comment

What if you have never hiked a mile in your life? So start dreaming, but don’t be a daydreamer. Take action. Walk outside your door and down to the end of the block. That’s it. It is a start.

Ok, what if you just hate the whole idea of hiking. Fine! You can still exercise. You can find something, anything to get the blood pumping.

Start Dreaming

It can start with dreaming. Planning what you are going to do. Got it down on paper. Pull out all the stops. Now use that dreaming to motivate yourself through what Tony Robbins calls the “Dickens Process.” Have you heard of it? Well, first you look at the present and ask yourself what you are missing out on and how exercise would help you. Then take yourself back into the past five or ten years and experience how not exercising has hurt you. Then take yourself into the future, five, ten, twenty years, and see how not exercising has hurt you. I am oversimplifying this process. The questions you ask yourself are critical, but it works.

Habit

If you want to make it a habit you need to have the motivation, the ability, and a prompt. That comes from one of the three big books on habits. I think it is BJ Fogg’s book.

Make the first exercise you do small. Really small. One pushup. Yes, just one. And after you do it celebrate! Really celebrate. No, not with a bag of fries or a bowl of ice cream. Jump up and down and shout. Feel it. Get excited. Over one push up? Yes! It will reinforce the habit. I like what Jordan Peterson says. He says to make it small enough that you would be willing to do it. Then you can add to it. Two pushups. Walk around the whole block.

Nutrition

Do this with your diet too. I make a lot of noise about exercise, but you can out eat your exercise no matter how much exercise you are doing. I used to run fifty to sixty miles a week, week after week, month after month. However, I ate peanut butter and toast every morning. Not one slice of toast, at least four. Not one tablespoon of peanut butter, but I had it slathered on the toast. I ate fast food too. So I stayed far fatter than I would have been if I paid any attention to diet.

And I hope you like to hike. If not just start small. Go hiking!