Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Bookish Weapon Number Sixty

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Mel Robbins is so inspiring and “real.” Her latest book sure is a “bookish weapon” for you all. It is called “The High Five Habit.”

What makes the “High Five Habit,” so special? I’m going to break it down for you.

Simple But Powerful

What Mel wants us all to do when we get up in the morning is high five ourselves in the mirror. That is pretty simple. We all know how to high five someone. Mel acknowledges that it will feel a little strange at first ( I will attest to that). However, once you get rolling all is well.

As you are standing in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eyes, set an intention for the day and then say out loud several possible things depending on your situation. For example, maybe you are afraid of an upcoming speech you need to give and you say, “I’m afraid and I have got this,” or “You can handle this. I know you can.” So you get the idea. The book gives more examples. After only four days I noticed a difference in how I felt about myself. Mel says it is because our mind knows that a high five is a positive congratulation and you are giving it to yourself. It works on you! It changes how you see yourself.

Controlling Negative Self Talk

There are other books that discuss this in detail as well, but I really liked Mel’s approach. When a negative thought appears in your head you say, “I’m not thinking about that.” Then you replace that thought with something positive. You are checking your mental filter.

As Mel points out that, “It’s dead simple, but if you are an over thinker, a worrier, a catastrophizer, paralyzed by fears, or struggling with anxiety, this is a life changing. Keep interrupting those negative thoughts every time they pop up during the day. Then as I mentioned above, you replace the thought with something positive and Mel gives you a whole list of Matras to choose from or find your own. Here is a sample from her list: “I deserve to feel good today.” “I have my own back.” “This is teaching me something I need to know.”

Obstacles and Opportunity

This part of the book was a great reminder for me that obstacles can mean opportunity. Mel tells a story about a Uber driver she met with a dream and how she helped him. She points out that “…there are two kinds of people: People who see obstacles and people who see opportunity.” She points out that the “high five attitude is action oriented and sees opportunity.”

What are the practical steps? If you say to yourself, “Now is not the right time for my dreams,” Mel says to flip it to, “If I put in the work I can make it happen.” She advises us to set a deadline. Then write all this down! If you write it down it is a signal that it is important to you. Ok, you got it? Then get Mel’s book. There is a lot more in it!

Go Hiking But Don’t Try To Be Jack Reacher

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If Jack Reacher were climbing a mountain my guess is he would be sure he never climbed the same one again. That might be a good philosophy for some, but I am against it.

Going up the same mountain over and over has some real advantages. You get to know the trail well which helps me a lot because I hike in the dark. Then I can pick a mountain that is safe in the snow and not prone to avalanches.

On the Other Hand

However, Jack Reacher walks a lot and doesn’t seem to mind it much. He could certainly handle climbing a mountain. When you are big it is a little more difficult because you are carrying so much weight. A former NFL friend of mine told me each one of his legs weight 100 pounds. So that might be tough on Reacher, but I think he would like the scenery.

Most likely he would find something that didn’t look quite right on the trail and soon and himself involved in some kind of crime. It would probably involve all of the mountains in the area so he would have to climb them. Otherwise I don’t think he would.

A Mountain In Every Book

You could say that solving whatever crime or nefarious plot is kind of like climbing a mountain. Of course there are so many things in life that are like climbing a mountain.

Reacher needs to climb these mental mountains his his stories. Just like real mountains, sometimes they are average size and sometimes they are huge. Sometimes they require no technical ability and sometimes they do. You need to be prepared.

Be Yourself

It is probably best not to try to be a Jack Reacher on a mountain. You will enjoy yourself more if you just be yourself. Don’t try to be like your hero, even if he or she are not Jack Reacher. I really don’t think Jack would be much of a mountain climber.

If you are yourself in life and on mountains you learn from your mistakes and not be trying to figure out why something didn’t work out after you copied exactly what someone else did.

Bookish Weapon Number Fifty-Nine

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Normally I comment on non-fiction books, but I am a true fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books and have read every one of them. They are page turners so I thought I would let you know what you are missing. Are they bookish weapons? Sure, maybe you can get lethal like Reacher.

If I already wrote about the Reacher books (I don’t think I did) that’s ok, because they are so good. The genre is Crime Thriller, but I never paid much attention to that. I thought of them as Spy Novels for a long time.

Story

All of these books including, “The Sentinel” have a story formula that hooks you. Jack Reacher is traveling about the country, stops in a town or an area and promptly gets involved in some nefarious circumstance. Then he uses his skills as a former military police officer to figure out what’s going on.

It isn’t quite like the “hero’s journey” because in the hero’s journey the hero gets thrust into an adventure and has to acquire skills to get through it or at least that is how I understand it. Reacher already has all the skins he needs and then some.

Reacher

One of the things that makes Reacher’s character so appealing is his bigger the life persona. He is (unique Tom Cruise) huge. Very tall with big hands that cover someones face easily. He knows al sorts of fighting moves the allow him to subdue any antagonist easily. If the bad guys are untrained he can usually handle up to five at a time. He always gives them the option of not fighting and tells them they can avoid the hospital.

Jack isn’t just a big neanderthal either. He knows what time it is without looking at a clock and picks up clues easily. I have not read one of his books where he hasn’t solved the mystery or crime.

He travels across the country on a military pension. Never washes his clothes. He buys new ones when they get dirty. Usually he meets a woman and eventually finds himself involved until it is time to move on again.

The Sentinel

As I said, I have read all of Reachers books. One comes out every fall. This one was one of the most recent. I suppose I should say something about it, but it is like all the others except this one he wrote with his son, Andrew Child. It ends almost the same as all the others. He is hitchhiking and someone stops for him and in this case tells him he is going to Nashville. So he has this conversation with himself. Let me quote”

“He had just left Nashville, and he had a rule. Never go back. It rarely ends well. But he had been making a few exceptions recently. They had all worked out ok.”

Go Hiking, Take My Course And Skip the Line

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Actually, that heading should read “Go Hiking Early, Take My Course and Skip The Line.” Early on the trail helps you avoid people. They are in front of you and you don’t want that.

The earlier you get to the trail head, the better. I say at least an hour and a half before sunrise. Then if you add to that the knowledge you gain from taking my hiking course you will be skipping the line, but time.

Take the course by going here: https://bmontgome.mastermind.com/masterminds/25439

Get Ahead and Stay Ahead

In the book Altucher talks about Micro skills. You need Micro skills in hiking too. Like knowing how to tie your shoelaces so they don’t come loose and you end up fast on your face. You can learn about those kinds of things in my course.

James discusses doing lots of experiments which is great when you are considering a business idea, but you don’t want to be experimenting with your body on the trail. You can avoid that by learning what to do from someone who has been doing it for thirty years and is still at at seventy-six.

Hiking Multiplication and Division

In the book, “Skip the Line,” Altucher talks about idea multiplication and division. Here let’s consider hiking multiplication and division. What is hiking multiplication? It is when you have taken my course and are hiking multiple times a month or a week. Division is when you don’t take my course and you are only liking half of what you wanted to.

He does talk about one other thing when it comes to ideas and that is idea sex. I am not going to get into that when discussing hiking, ok?

Bookish Weapon Number Fifty-Eight

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James Altucher is one of my favorite authors. he wrote “Choose Yourself,” which was fantastic. If I have not reviewed that book I will. “Skip The Line,” is equally good.

Altucher has lost money and made money as he always reminds readers. We can learn from his mistakes and he is not shy about discussing what he has done wrong in the past.

The 10,000 Experiments Rule

You all have heard or read that you need to spend 10,000 hours doing something to become the best at it or master it. James says you should do 10,000 experiments. He says before you know something is a good idea you need to run an experiment. Enough ideas and enough experiments and some things are going to work.

Plus James points out that experiments, like his idea for a “Going Steady” app can be easy to set up and do, there is little downside, there’s huge potential upside, it’s never been done before, and you are learning something new. So he says, “There are only two possible results: you either learn something…or the experiment succeeds. There is no failure. He goes on to talk about Galileo’s famous experiment that changed the world.

Then he says that “Conducting 10,000 experiments, or even far fewer, can lead to great knowledge and great success, and it’s the quickest way to skip the line to the top of a profession with as little downside as possible.”

Building Microskills

Altucher talks a lot abut micro skills. It is all one word in his book. It is one of the tools he says you need to get the idea of doing 10,000 experiments going. Most of the book is about these tools. He says you need to stand out. To be the only one like you. To build your unique perspective ad you need these tools to do that.

An example of micro skills is writing. It isn’t jut one skill. You need to be able to tell a story, understand language play, character development, etc. You get the idea.

Who Are You? Why Are You? Why Now?

This is a chapter in the book that I really liked. One of the things he says is that we all will have more than one purpose in our lifetimes and that “obsession is the first clue toward finding your purpose.” He says to look on your phone and see what pictures you’re taking. I take pictures of mountain scenery! Hmm…

He advises to find out what you are scared of because “fear is a compass.” And he goes on, “Without that fear, you know that you are just repeating what others have done before you. That’s why instinctively, you know it’s safe.” That’s good advice!

Learn Idea Calculus

Again, that is the title of a chapter. James is very big on ideas. He recommends writing down 10 ideas a day, every day. So idea calculus includes idea subtraction, idea multiplication, idea division, idea sex (yes, it is very powerful) and idea subsets. This last one is breaking down ideas into parts within parts.

He says, “Many people don’t understand that execution is a spectrum. You can be bad or good. The way you get good at execution is to having good execution ideas. The way to get good at execution ideas is to exercise your idea muscle. When you have an idea there are many possible ways to execute on that idea. It’s like opening a mystical third eye: you can see all the possible futures and choose the bet one. And how do you know which one I best? You guessed it: by experimenting.”

There is so much more in this book! Please read it. You will be glad you did.

Go Hiking But First Take My Course – Attacking Mountains At Any Age

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If you want to be a hiking warrior, then it is time for you to take my hiking course. If you are a beginner and want to learn the basics in a fun way, plus avoid a lot of mistakes (ones I have made), then let’s go! If you are a little older and would like to get into the mountains but you have some challenges then I can help. Go to the course:

https://bmontgome.mastermind.com/masterminds/25439

In the course I give you the basics and discuss how you can prevent injuries. If you have bad knees I talk about how to get around that. There is always a way. Maybe you say, I climbed this one mountain in record time when I was 18 years old, but now you are 50 and all you talk about is when you were 18. You can do it again! Don’t stop living just because you are a little older.

Training

You will learn how to train for hiking. What I do and don’t do. If a 76 year old man can keep himself on the trail for 30 years think how much you can learn and how much pain you can avoid!

Did you think you could just go climb mountains every week without training? No! You need to get in shape and stay in shape.

Mindset

This section of the course is worth the price by itself, because it will give you tools to help you achieve goals you set in every area of life. Find out what your “why “ is in every area of life. Learn the motivation formula so you can get yourself to do what you say you want to do.

Mindset is so important if you set a path to climb mountains once a week, three times a week or even once a month.

Diet and Nutrition

I don’t have a diet for you, but I call this section “The Chocolate Bar Diet and Nutrition Plan.” I tell you up front it is really not a diet but my philosophy about diet. I also give you some recommendations for supplements.

However, twenty years ago I weighed 214 pounds and I dropped that weight and kept it off. I am 165 now so I know something about this area. As I say in my book, “Attacking Adversity,” diet and exercise are strategies one and two for getting through any adversity. Simple? Yes, but not easy! Don’t stay on the SAD (Standard American Diet).

Click on the link above and take my course. You will be glad you did!