Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking and Dream Big

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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!

Bookish Weapon Number Forty-One

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“The Pleasure Prescription,” by Paul Pearsall, Ph.D. was written in 1996. It is still timely and I think a classic self-help book. So here we go.

Aloha vs Haole. Aloha besides meaning “Hi,” is the word for our seventh sense, the instinctive drive to do what is pleasurable and healthful. Haole means “without health.” The author says his book is about “rediscovering your sense of aloha.”

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

Pearsall says you can get enough exercise just by walking a few times a week. I disagree with this, but won’t belabor it. There are a lot of things in the book the make sense.

I liked this. “If you want to bring pleasure into your life, be a person who brings great pleasure into life – and into someone else’s life.” I agree! If you think you are adding to someone’s day even if it is just to make it a tiny bit more enjoyable then it will make your day too.

Relationships

One of the most impactful observations Pearsall makes is about relationships is drawn from the Polynesian culture. He quotes a Polynesian kahuna, “All bonds are forever. Divorce never annuls a relationship, and if you want to find joy, stay closely related to others and the world. The brain may think it has voided a commitment, but the heart does not think that way. Like a loving child, once it has loved, the heart loves forever, no matter what. You can never truly separate, even if you live a world away. It is a law of physics and a law of Polynesia. Once things join, they are transformed by their joining and are One forever.” That has stuck in my mind over the years and I think it is what really sets his book apart from the rest.

If you take the above statement to heart you will approach relationships with a far more serious and thoughtful mind. How many people are you One with that you thought were just a pause that refreshes? Think about that.

Urgency

Now here is something to consider. In the world of time management, they tell you to separate what is urgent from what is important and to know the difference. Pearsall discusses urgency in a different light. He calls it the “Urgency Response.” Some people are always under its spell. If you were raised in a violent home then you are constantly “ready.”

Pearsall says, “The urgency response is not just a psychological state, but also a physiological one. A state of prolonged urgency gradually kills us and threatens those around us by weakening our immune system, stressing our heart, and prematurely aging all of our bodies ’ systems.” Then he quotes Albert Camus who says, “If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

Balance is the key says, Pearsall. “Healthy balance and oscillation is the key to the pleasure prescription. Just as too much happiness too often and too long can cross over to psychotic delusion, chronic unhappiness and internal stress from perceived helplessness and lack of joy can cross over to serious clinical depression.” We need to keep the parasympathetic system balanced with the sympathetic. So go get the Nature Beat App and a chest strap so you can check yours every morning.

Pain and Loss

This book is a couple of hundred pages long and I have only taken a few ideas from it so please read it yourself. There is much more to learn between these pages.

However, there is one more quote from the kahuna on pain and suffering that I thought was excellent. “When you are dealing with pain, loss, and suffering, you must remember five things. Be patient, for this too shall pass. Stay connected, for relationships must be strong to make the passing possible. Be pleasant through your pain, for that will bring you the aloha you need to heal and give healing to others. Silence your self-pity and avoid self-blame, for you are only doing what we all must do. Most of all, keep giving your aloha. Don’t use your suffering, share it by opening up to others, teaching them what you are learning from your pain, and holding and comforting them to let them know that they too will be safe when it comes to their turn.”

Go Hiking And Live the Charged Life

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Book Titles really lend themselves to discussing hiking. I mean that if you are hiking then you are living the charged life. No doubt about it. So now you want to know why that might be, right?

Here is the deal. There are four ways hiking contributes to living a charged life. So here they are for your consideration.

Nature

Just being in nature rejuvenates the body and mind, but appreciating it is even more important. You need to love that tree and the sky and the wind. There will come a time when you won’t be able to feel the wind on your face. Think about that every time you feel a breeze. You will appreciate nature and life.

Consistently exposing yourself to the elements makes you stronger. You could even take a lesson fro Wim How, the “Ice Man” and go hiking with in shorts and no shirt when it is 30 degrees or colder. No, that is appreciating nature.

Energy

Any kind of exercise will provide you with more energy, but there is something about climbing a mountain that takes it to another level. Maybe it is that you feel you have accomplished something significant and no matter what the rest of your day holds you will have that spark to face it.

It doesn’t matter if your muscles are sore and tired. The energy is still there. It will fuel you throughout the rest of your day.

Purpose

You hear a lot about having a purpose these days. Every self-help book discusses it. I don’t think people have only one purpose, they have multiple. One purpose might be to provide for your family. Another to become physically healthy and fit. All of these keep you charged.

My favorite purpose is to make it to the top of a mountain every week. There is nothing like to keep you charged and focused.

In his book “Charged,” Brendon Burchard quotes Tom Robbins on purpose. Tom says, “Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve towards a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being.” A great way to get to that state is to climb a mountain every week. You get wiser, more liberated and definitely more luminous!

Challenge

There is nothing like a weekly climb up a mountain to stoke your need for a challenge. Even if you have climbed the same mountain a hundred times (and I have done that), it is still a challenge every time.

Challenge in life is seriously important. Think about the people that enter Spartan races. My guess is most of these people are extremely successful and live a comfortable life. They need adversity and challenges in their life so they go looking for it. At my age, a weekly climb up a mountain is plenty of challenge and I don’t have to pay an entrance fee.

Go Hiking And Don’t Hurry?

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No, it is not possible. When you are hiking, as I have said over and over again, you go to beat your personal fastest time to the top. There is just no other way. Is there?

Well, maybe. You could slow down once in a while. How often? Say every three months take your time. No!

Rhythms

With hiking, you are going to follow the natural rhythms of life. You don’t need to purposely slow down. You will know when your body is overstressed or overly tired and adjust the day’s hike. Find a smaller mountain. Still, you want to go as fat as you are able.

Then there is the rhythm of the hike itself. Some areas are not as steep as others so you go faster. Then on the steep stretches, you naturally go a little slower.

Life

Life itself will slow you down on its own. You might get sick and need to cancel the hike. That is one reason why you never miss a hike because you are going to miss one for some reason anyway.

Consider the situation we are in now with both the State and National parks closed due to the Pandemic. Nothing you can do. No hikes.

Alternatives

How can there be an alternative to a hike? Nothing can replace it. True, but you can be creative when for reasons beyond your control you can’t hit the trails.

Design an “at home” training schedule for yourself. One that will help you go FASTER when you get back on the mountain.

Adapt

One of the things Navy Seals discuss is their ability to adapt to circumstances. So let’s say, like me, you live in a small apartment, you’re broke, and have no “home gym” equipment. What to do?

First, you can use that backpack for weight-bearing exercise. Fill it up with water bottles. It can get pretty heavy. Then progressively add a bottle every week. You can do light squats (better than air squats), curls, shoulder presses and even push-ups with the pack on your back. Do everything FAST!

Then use those big multi-gallon jugs of water to do Farmer carries. They have nice handles on them and they weigh about 50 pounds.

Make It Harder

When you design a workout for yourself keep in mind that a hike is four to five hours long. So make your workout at least three hours long. If your gym is closed you are doing daily workouts as well. Those should be at least an hour and a half. Do multiple rounds with Burpees, Mountain Climbers interspersed between shoulder presses or squats.

The idea is to make it harder than the gym workout. It won’t be harder than hiking but do your best.

Go Hiking Because You Matter

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That seems pretty logical, doesn’t it? Hiking adds to your life and is one more thing that helps you be the person you need to be for the world.

Stay Screwed Into The Socket

Brian Johnson of Optimize Me fame, reviews books and one author asked if we were the light bulb or the light. Light is the energy source of life. Another author he reviewed said we all just needed to keep ourselves screwed into the light socket. The was our job. Exercise helps do that and that is one reason hiking helps with it.

Another reason would be that no other place has more energy than nature. So you are tightly screwed into that socket when you are out there.

Death Again

Yes, this has been a subject of these posts from time to time, but bear with me because it is important. It is one of the reasons you do matter. If you were immortal then your life would not be as precious. But you are not so you have a unique fingerprint that you have placed on life.

Now, during this COVID-19 Pandemic, we are all reminded of death. They have locked down the hiking trails at the state parks. No hiking. That is a sort of death for me. It will be another month at least before they open again. Nothing can be taken for granted. So when you get a chance go hiking. It might be the last time you are able to for lots of reasons.

More Life

One of the reasons hiking became so important to me is that as I aged I realized that a person needs to remain vital and active as long as possible. Many folks in their 60s and 70s are retired, sitting around waiting for the grim reaper. You have to have interests that stoke your passions.

I am very fortunate that I am not retired. That I am working every day, exercising and hiking. It makes life feel full. Now if they would just open the trails again all would be well.

Go Hiking and Stop Doing That Sh*T

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This one is pretty straight forward. Instead of sitting around on your rear end get outdoors and go hiking. Stop doing that “sitting around sh*t.”

Many of us are sedentary. Unless you work at a physical job you are a sedentary person. I myself sit at a desk all day. Sure I exercise at the gym, but that doesn’t matter much. It is the constant sitting that takes its toll. So what should you do?

Go Hiking

Sure you should go hiking. If I could go hiking every single day I would. That would solve a lot of problems for me personally. I met a woman on the trail last week and she climbs a mountain multiple times a week. She was very fast. However, I can’t and you probably can’t do that. You can go hiking on the weekend so do it.

Hiking on the weekend will improve your cardio and your resting heart rate will drop. I am almost 75 and my resting heart rate is 46.

Stay Active All Day

In the meantime, between hikes when you’re sitting on your butt hour after hour you can do something. Get up every hour and do kettlebell swings. If you don’t have a kettlebell use one of those cloth grocery bags they give you at the store and fill it with five five-pound water bottles (1 liter). Then every hour, get up and do those swings. Do 15 reps at least. Maybe every half hour. That way you are active all day which is best.

Does this mean you can skip the gym? No, the gym is necessary for mental stability. It is your daily Zoloft. Yes, it has been proven that exercise is the same as taking anti-depression medication (without the side-effects). Can you get addicted to exercise? Sure! So what? It is much better than getting addicted to many other things. And you probably won’t.

Don’t do it

Remember, don’t do the sh*t that you know keeps you fat and sick. Don’t eat the cookies and the donuts and the cakes and the ice cream. If you don’t stop doing that sh*t it will set you on a path to Type II Diabetes or even worse. Experts on the Covid-19 pandemic say that people at major risk are those that are obese.

Maybe you are not a sugar eater. Maybe you like salt so you eat chips and frys. Maybe, you eat fast food. Well, stop doing that sh*t. Your body will thank you. Your future self will thank you and you should be looking out for your future self all the time.

And once again go hiking!