Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Bookish Weapon Number 69

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Cameron Hanes runs up mountains to train himself to be the best bowhunter in the world. He likes to hunt far away from the typical hunting grounds in places that are hard to reach unless you’re in his kind of physical shape.

His book “Endure” captures his story which is a great one and one that continues. I was drawn to the title, because I though my word for this year was “endure.” There was one other box with the same name, but Cam’s subtitle included the words “keep hammering” and that spoke to me.

Focus

The thing that stood out for me right away was the intense focus this man has put on one thing, hunting. Maybe two. Hunting and training to hunt.

To some, running 100 mile races might seem over the top, but not for Hanes. He knows they give him the edge he needs to be a successful hunter year after year. It all provides meaning and purpose to his life.

Learn From Cameron

There are lots of excellent lessons in this book like how not to let your critics get to you. How to learn from others and how to “burst through the bonds of low expectations.”

He stresses the importance of believing in yourself and being obsessed with improvement. He thinks that obsession in successful people is not because they think they are great, but because they really think they are not that great at all and need to improve!

Get Used to Being Uncomfortable

This book is about what I have learned to be expansive discipline which is putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. They induce growth. Cam says that “My good friend Misery and I have become real close over the years.

Now remember this not about being yourself up for the sake of beating yourself up. Hanes has a purpose and a mission. Getting used to being uncomfortable helps him hit the mark time and time again.

Greatness

Cameron Hanes believes in you and me. He says, “The good news is I believe each and every one of us is capable of greatness in something. He continues, by saying, “Your bowhunting is out there. I promise. It will open doors for yours well. But be warned: when you become obsessed, it takes over your life. This obsessive approach works for me.”

What’s it going to take. You might have guessed it. Hard work or as Cam says, “…damn hard work.”

Your Body

Frankly I can’t say it better than Cameron Hanes, “Your body gives what you ask of it. Don’t ask much and it won’t give you much. Ask a lot and it will give you a lot. I haven’t found my limit yet, but I am trying.”
This book is very inspirational especially for those who want to strengthen themselves. He talks about putting his body through the wringer. However, he might disagree with me when I say you do need some rest from time to time. Even then your main focus must be to “keep hammering!”

Go Hiking And You Won’t Regret It

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Actually, there was one hike that I regret. Maybe it wasn’t so much the hike itself, but the fall I took.

It was on a hike up to Camp Muir on Rainier.

Camp Muir

If you haven’t done this hike, I do recommend it in spite of my fall. It begins at 5000 ft in the Paradise parking lot. If you arrive early you can get a paring space. For some distance the the trail is a steep cement walkway built for tourists. Then it converts to a combination of manmade trail and natural.

After about two miles you will come to Pebble Creek. Crossing Pebble Creek can be interesting. One year the rocks had a thin coating of ice on them. I watched a couple hikers take the plunge into the creek and I barely made it across myself. After Pebble Creek you will be into the snow even in August most years. Then on to Camp Muir just another two miles away. You will think those two miles are a hundred or at least fifty.

Going Up

After leaving Pebble Creek you climb a steep area of snow. This is where I fell, but more on that later. From there it just goes up. You may run into a crevasse or two on the way up depending on the snow melt, but they are small.

It gets steeper as you climb but there is a trail. Actually, there are several trails made by climbers in the snow. If you go on a clear day it is pretty easy to determine which one to take and you always want to go on a clear day. Once you can see Camp Muir it is still about a half hour away at my pace.

Coming Down

Coming back down the mountain can be fun. If the condition of the snow is right there are long slides you can take. It is called Glissading. Do not do it if the snow has frozen into ice. You will go way too fast. But if conditions are right it is a lot of fun.

Typically I will jog down. Be sure to keep your weight forward and place your heel first into the snow.

The Fall

On that particular hike, I was wearing Yaktracks instead of Microspikes. Don’t do that. When the snow is just ice the Yaktraks just don’t give you enough traction.

When I reached the area just above Pebble Creek I was slowly making my way down a steep area when I slipped and slid a hundred yards down into the jagged rocks. I cut my head and legs. Fortunately, an EMT was on his way up the mountain and he bandaged me up and told me to go to a hospital within eight hours. I did.

Bookish Weapon Number Sixty-Eight

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Daniel H. Pink has written a book called, “The Power of Regret.” If you are like me, I bet you didn’t think there was anything good about regret. I think we are right if regret is isolated.

Pink argues that you can use regret to make your future and present life better. That made sense to me. Frank Sinatra acknowledged regret in “My Way,” He sang that he had a few, but they didn’t seem to bother him much. Maybe he knew what Pink has discovered.

Studies

For those of you who are data lovers, Pink has more than enough studies and experiments to satisfy you.

One I thought was particularly interesting had to do with Optimizers and Satisfiers. Researchers fund that people who maximized for everything were less happy and had significantly more depression that the ones that satisfied themselves. An optimizer had to have the very best choice. The satisfiers were just that. The maximizers had more sensitivity to regret.

Foundation Regrets

Pink tells us there are four primary types of regrets and the first one is foundation regret. These are major regrets. Not making good financial decisions. For example, not saving enough for retirement which is just overspending and under saving.

It could be in the realm of education. Maybe you don’t go for the advanced degree or you left school early. It could also involve your health. Maybe you haven’t taken are of yourself.

Boldness Regrets

These are the chances we never took. Pink says, “What haunts us is the inaction itself.” You had a chance to travel the world, but you turned it down. Maybe you didn’t even enter that contest. You know, the one that could have shined a light on your talent.

One of my own regrets in this area was not taking a promotion early in my sales career. It involved moving to another state and I convinced myself it was better for my family if I said no.

Moral Regrets

You cheated on your spouse. You cheated on a test. As Pink says, …”the realm in which they occur…is less significant than the act itself.

The other thing we do is rationalize these moral infractions so we don’t always notice them right away. It might be years later before they grab us around the neck.

Connection Regrets

Pink says, “Our actions give our lives direction. But other people give those lives purpose. A massive number of human regrets stem from our failure to recognize and honor this principle.

Personally, I can include divorce here. Maybe you just never pursued the woman you really loved. I suppose the could be a boldness regret, but connection as well.

Regret Optimization Framework

As I mentioned above Pink’s book helps you use regret to get better. This framework helps you do that. Pink explains, “The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. But anticipating regrets outside these four categories is usually not worthwhile.” (Boldness mine)

So ask yourself if you are dealing with one of the big four. If you are not then “satisfice.”This is the word Pink uses to describer the actions of satisfiers mentioned above.

Get the book for all the other goodness!

Go Hiking And Be A Hero On A Mission

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How many of you use a Garmin or a Whoop or a Fitbit or and Oura Ring to track everything? Two out of the three track you steps, all track your sleep, and two your recovery from exercise. Everything! So you can look at the in the morning and get a good idea about how much you can push yourself that day.

Last Sunday morning my “devices” all said I was a mess. Now I could have used that as an excuse to skip the hike altogether or maybe just “stroll” up the mountain. However, if you are depleted and you push yourself the upside is that it can improve fitness.

Hero

Still, what do you do? I decided to take on the challenge and push myself like never before (at least not recently) and I beat my recent records to the top. After all, I was a Hero on a mission. A mission to get to the top of the mountain.

Did I mention how much my legs hurt when I was running the trail? They hurt! But the challenge was exciting and getting to the top of a mountain is meaningful.

No Trekking Poles

I recommend everyone uses trekking poles, especially when they come down a mountain, because it will save your knees long term. In fact my knees were so bad in the past that I could not get down a mountain without them.

However, one of the devices mentioned above does not count your steps correctly when you use trekking poles. So Decided that I would climb up and down without them. The difference in number of steps was 15,000!!. Yeah, kinda nuts.

Do It Again

When I would make a sale in the past one of my favorite sales managers would tell me, “Good job. Now do it again.” It is the same when you climb mountains. You may have done a good job this week, but now it is your responsibility to keep executing.

Did you go hiking last week? Did you beat your personal record to the top? Then do it again!

Bookish Weapon Number Sixty-Seven

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“Hero On A Mission,” is one of the better books I have re-read recently again and it was just published this year. It is a book about purpose and story. Your and my story!

Did you know you were involved in a story? Has your story lost your interest? These are questions the author asks of us and he gives excellent advice.

Our Stories

On a page even before the introduction Miller states, “I don’t think any of us should trust fate to write the story of our lives. Fate is a terrible writer.

We are all in stories and they have characters in them just like all stories. There is the victim, the villain, the hero and the guide. Do you recognize any of these in your life?

Control

In self help books you can read a lot about how you should focus on what you can control and ignore the rest. So how much can you control? Miller makes the argument that “…a human being has a ridiculous amount of personal agency. A person’s reaction to a set of circumstances dramatically affects how their story plays out.”

He goes on and says, “The character who becomes the victim believes they are helpless and acts out of that belief. The character who becomes the hero accepts their agency and rises up against their circumstances.” How does this speak to your life?

Accomplish Something Important

Miller says that what we all need to do is “…throw yourself into a story in which you try to accomplish something important.”

He goes on to say, “If we don’t want something, face our challenges, and try hard things, our life stories don’t work either.” You can just “dream up” a story for yourself and live “like a hero on a mission.” Miller says you have to sit and think about everything you have overcome in your life to realize your strength.

Want Something

The author says we need to want something! He says many have killed their desire and any story needs to be about a character who wants something.

He says, “When you define specific destination for your life, your story will begin to take shape and you’ll become more interested in your own life.” “Discipline is a good bit easier to come by if you have narrative traction in your life.” So he asks, “What is the thing you just have to do?

What If

I loved this little exercise. He says to ask yourself, “What if?” Simple, right? What if I sold everything and moved to Portugal? What if I quit my job? He says “what if” leads to adventure.

He uses what if questions when he writes books and gets stuck, but he says, “Asking What if can drive incredible change in your life and give you a terrific reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

Narrative

Miller says “narrative traction” is “the feeling that our personal story is so interesting we can’t turn away.” You could even join an existing mission!

Questions to ask yourself once you start to build your life plan include: “What will you build? What story will you join? What could your life look like one year, five years, and ten years from now?

So that’s the first half of the book. The second half is how to set up a plan for your life. Get the book and read it! There is so much more to learn!

Go Hiking And Become A Lion Tracker

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Wait, what? No, just kidding. No amount of hiking will make you a lion tracker, but when your hiking you can dream about tracking lions.

Of course in my area of the country, “lions” are cougars. If there is any tracking going on they will be tracking you, not the other way around.

The Last Hike

Actually, what I wanted to discuss was last weekend’s hike. It was so cold with snow all the way up the trail. The snow was soft so I didn’t need my Microspikes on the way up. However, I did use my Trekking poles which I usually don’t use going up hill.

The snow was deep as you got closer to the top and my toes were getting cold. Climbing over the rocks, my gloves got wet and then froze. It took me three hours to get to the top and usually only takes me 2 hrs 15 minutes on a good day.

Boots

I see people coming up the mountain when there is snow in their tennis shoes. Maybe they don’t care if they reach the top and just figure they will go as far as they can. That’s foolish in my opinion. Unless you’re a trail runner and then you are a different breed. I saw one with no water, no pack, no jacket. Just tights.

Get some boots!

Jackets and Umbrellas

Layers are the best, but at least wear a jacket. Two weeks ago I saw young man coming up the trail in his T-shirt. I asked him if he knew who Wim Hof was and I was sure he was a follower, but he didn’t know anything about the Ice Man.

You don’t need an umbrella, but I see people carrying them. One guy was ingenious. He devised a connection on his pack where he inserts the umbrella so he doesn’t have to hold it. I am not sure what might happen if he trips.

This Week’s Hike

Tomorrow morning is supposed to be cold and cloudy which could mean snow. You just never know. So be prepared people! It is hard to predict what a trail will be like until you are on it.

See you in the mountains!