I've come to the conclusion...

I've come to the conclusion that lessons are everywhere.  We all know that mistakes teach us things.  Every single one of them.  We touch a hot burner and we learn to- not touch the hot burner.  Those are easy- you don't need me to write an entire blog post about learning lessons from our mistakes.  I think something we often forget is that there are lessons elsewhere.  When we accomplish something we pat ourselves a job well done and move on.  Few people reflect on the accomplishment and figure out what went right.  That's lesson #1 from me today.  Also! According to David Foster Wallace here we can find lessons in the mundane-ness of life.. it's just up to us to show up and pay attention.  I highly suggest that you take the 22 minutes to listen to that David Foster Wallace YouTube video when you get the chance, it'll change your life.  Here's the link again, just in case :)
This post isn't really about finding lessons in mistakes, successes, or the mundane-ness of life.  What it's really about is finding lessons in my favorite place to find them: action sports, and how they can relate to our everyday life.

Commitment issues:
As I get better at climbing, I'm finding myself on more difficult routes.  What makes one climbing route more difficult than another can be as simple as the distance between hand holds.  For the holds that are just out of reach, the talent is in your ability to shift your body position and, more importantly- your commitment to the move. Instead of just standing up on one leg and reaching for the hold, you have to actively push, fully extending your opposite leg and watch your hand grab the hold.  It's almost like jumping to the next hold (which some people actually do.. I'm not there, yet) Especially with bouldering though, full extension of a limb can be scary. If your hand doesn't make it to the hold- you're falling off the wall.  Fear of commitment to a move.  Or a line.  Or to another person comes from us needing to have an out. If we don't commit fully, if we don't put in everything we have, every ounce of effort we could possibly put forward.. we can avoid the grueling pain of potential failure. If we miss the climbing hold, or crash on our decent, or get our hearts broken, it was because of our lack of commitment- not because we weren't good enough. Our brains are hard wired for loss aversion.. so much so that we miss the opportunity for pleasure because of it. Our instincts tell us that potential pain from loss out weighs potential pleasure from gain.  So we hold back.  We don't push off that leg.  We don't get aggressive on a steep decent.  We don't give ourselves over completely to another person. We get scared to fully commit to the move.  And what's funny is, this lack of commitment is usually what ends up destroying us in the end.  If we can muster up the courage, which Brene Brown doesn't define as bravery, but instead as 'speaking from the heart', to push off with everything we have and reach for that hold, we are more likely to get it.  And you know what, if we don't at least we can walk away with a sense of full effort.

Gripping to tightly:
When we get scared our natural impulse is to hold on tighter. To our handlebars, to the climbing wall, to the people that we think are leaving us. The only thing that we ever get from this, though, is fatigue. Hands turn into claws that need to be peeled from handlebars, forearms get so pumped full of blood that fingers fall off the wall, and your broken heart ends up hurting even more than if you had just let them walk out in the first place.  We fatigue our bodies and minds by holding on too tightly to the things that we think we can't live without. What's funny though, is that you can absorb high impact for longer with a loose grip, have fewer falls from the rock by treating your holds like eggshells, and improve the quality of people you surround yourself with by letting those who are not serving you walk out.  When I notice that I'm over gripping on the wall, I pause and sit back.  I rely on my harness and belyer to hold me up while I release the bad energy from my forearms and let them rest.  When I notice it on my bike and I come into an easier section, I lift my pinkies off the bars.  When I notice that I'm holding too tightly to people in my life I ask myself are the people and things that you surround yourself with actively improving your experience? If not, let them go and say 'see you another time'- commonly the over gripping is what is driving them away in the first place.  So grasp lightly on your climbing holds, let go of your pinkies when you're riding through the easy stuff, and cherish the meaningful relationships in your life.

Search mode and send mode:
On avalanche beacons there are two different modes: search mode and send mode. Send mode we use for the times that we are skiing and search mode comes in when someone gets caught up in an avalanche and we need to find them. Scary right? We find a similar concept on mountain biking shocks: they're open for flying downhill and locked out when you are climbing up.  Not as scary as search mode, but locking out your shocks means that the fun is over and it's time to work again. Locking out your shocks and putting your beacon into search mode can seem daunting, even scary but they are necessary to a balanced and fulfilled adventure (read; life). If we spend our entire lives in send mode, flying down the hill as fast as we can, we never have time to stop and get the work done. Our lives become a 'plug and play' and we spend the entirety of it just barely in control. Don't forget to stop every so often, flip into search, lock out your shocks, and collect some information about yourself. 

Overcorrection:

When we do make a mistake our natural instinct is to correct in the opposite direction.  When our car skids we turn the wheel the opposite direction, when you end up off balance on your bike you shift your weight to stay upright, when you narrowly miss a tree while skiing through the glades you react quickly to avoid the next one.  Correction is fine.  Necessary even.  If we OVER correct, however, we end up imbalanced in the other direction and fall any way. Sometimes we use this over correction as a way to punish ourselves for our initial mistake. Eating a pint of ice cream in a single sitting means we're only eating salad for the next 2 weeks and going to the gym every day.  Dating someone who is emotionally unavailable is over corrected to someone who is wayyy to available. Stand to long at the top of a biking aspect and talk yourself into the fear of it.  Try it anyway, and end up on your face.

It's best to avoid correction in the first place, so I'm working on learning the difference between fear and danger. Turn toward fear and away from danger.  Fear may require a correction, danger will almost always result in over correction.  Be assertive with the course that you are going to take, the things that you need, and accept that you've made a mistake when you do. Mistakes are what makes you human, learn from them and course correct from there.

Trusting your body
Trusting your body and mind to make the right decisions for you in time of panic or crisis is SO hard.  But, I also think, at least for me, so essential.  Growing up I learned very quickly how to suppress my own self trust and for a while.. that worked for me.  When I would come across a problem on the mountain bike trail that I didn't trust I could handle I would slam on the brakes.  This actually put me into bigger trouble more often than not.  No bike is ever going to land correctly and no biker is going to be safe when the wheels are stuck in place.  Chances are, you're going over the handle bars and landing flat on your face.  Instead I've been actively trusting that my body knows what to do on the trails, and crossing that over, that my mind knows what to do with my decisions.  Not every aspect of the trail HAS to go perfectly- today my ride was far from perfect.  But, (and this is an ultimate career goal of mine) by trusting our bodies to take us where it needs to go and tell us what it needs to tell us, we can switch the necessity of taking care of it into a desire. For me- trusting that I've put in enough hours on the bike and that my intuition is going to tell me what line to take, erases SOME of the fear associated with throwing myself down a mountainside at the fastest possible speed I can. Building that trust in my body has also enhanced the trust that I have in my mind and the decisions that I'm making. Yes, I do want to eat mostly vegetables and continue to ride my bike until I'm 110. Yes, the friends that I surround myself with are meaningful. Yes, the career field I've chosen is important. 

When something happens and we break the trust we have with our bodies (trauma, aging, injury, illness) that mistrust is where the questions in our mind come from. Should I take this job or that? Is this the right person for me? Are my friends well intentioned? AM I CAPABLE? Capable of lifting this weight? Biking that line? Climbing that route? Cooking that dinner? Providing for myself and my family?

By slowing down, being patient with our wants and needs, committing to things that scare us, and trusting ourselves to handle it- we increase the trust we have with both our minds and bodies.  And I think that's an important life lesson.