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Be Bold Like the Buffalo.
These are challenging times we’re in. If you’re like me, you’re taking stock of your life and reflecting on changes you need, or would like to make to your life. I’d love to help!
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“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”
Howdy!
These were the words of a family friend, and former neighbor Bruce Thoren. He had said it years ago when our families were sharing a llama hiking adventure and there were one million mosquitoes (per hour) swarming around us.
I’ve never forgotten the wonderful adventure or the quote.
I’m a voracious reader and an avid quote collector. I never forget quotes that inspire and impact me. You’re going to read a few of them in this post.
For almost a decade now, I’ve reserved Fridays for long solo hikes or snowshoe or ski outings. Unless I’m traveling or injured or under the gun with work deadlines or call volume, I have honored this standing date. These solo treks are so valuable to me. They provide me with time for contemplation, brainstorming, and sorting out emotional or mental challenges I’m having. Of course, they also provide for improved fitness and endurance, which are important to me given my personal interests, and the fact I need to stay in top shape to lead clients on Epic Adventures.
The reason I’m writing about this today is that it’s Friday. I had plans to skate ski this morning. I had limited time compared to normal so I planned to ski in town at the golf course.
It was –5 degrees. Oh, how I did not want to ski! I didn’t want to even leave the house when I learned the temperature. (Sometimes, in this day and age, I think we can have too much information. This morning it may have been helpful for me not be able to know the actual temperature. But I digress… )
In addition to having to confront subzero temps, I was feeling stiff and sore from a workout I did on Wednesday. The thought of going out and doing one of the most physical activities there is to do, and to do it in subzero temperatures, with stiff and sore muscles, well, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly eager. But then, as if right on cue, I caught myself saying to myself, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”
And with that, I was in the car headed to ski. (Thanks Bruce.)
By the way, one benefit of subzero temperatures is you will likely get to enjoy first tracks, and you’ll probably have the trails all to yourself. This morning I enjoyed both, thank you. 🙂
My skis barely glided on the squeaky corduroy. My face was frozen, and I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes or ears. The clouds were unusual and looked as if they had a blurry outline to them. I couldn’t discern if my vision was blurry due to the tears in my eyes from the frigid cold, or if the clouds actually looked like they had a blurry outline. (See photo.)
Cool cloud formation during subzero temperatures this morning.
Eventually, and thankfully, the sun came out. It wasn’t any warmer, but the bright sun’s presence lifted me psychologically. And I got a heck of a workout in.
By the way, no one ever regrets that they did what they said would do. And no one ever regrets working out. It’s good to remember these things when we are struggling to keep our personal health commitments.
I can’t tell you how many Fridays during the last 10 years that the weather and/or trail conditions were unfavorable, but the number is significant.
Of course, I prefer blue skies. Nothing says possibility like blue skies. As an adventurer and an adventure guide, I love a favorable forecast and blue skies, and thanks to living in Lander, Wyoming, I get those things often. But there are still plenty of times when I don’t.
It has been during the many Fridays of unfavorable, unpredictable and uncomfortable conditions when I have experienced some of the best training of my life. And I’m not talking about the physical training.
Due to so much training in unfavorable conditions, I have more experience with uncertainty and adversity. The emotions one experiences when in uncertainty or adversity, regardless of the context, are the same. So going out and having to weather the elements, make decisions, mitigate risk, and manage our morale in uncertain and/or adverse conditions, while somehow remaining optimistic, provides great practice and training for all aspects of one’s life.
A handful of years ago, I led a co-ed Mt. Whitney Epic Adventure. I never worked so hard, by myself or while leading a group, to climb a mountain while never actually climbing it.
The morning we embarked on our expedition, as we left for the trailhead, one of the guides I was partnering with to provide the Mt. Whitney Epic Adventure, told us: “Let us remember: The journey is for the soul. The summit is for the ego.”
I thought to myself, What a fantastic quote, and I’d still like to get us a summit…
The weather forecast warned us of an incoming storm, but it was hard to believe the forecast given the conditions on our first day. During our hike to the first camp, we enjoyed clear, blue skies and warm, bright sunshine. However, weather forecasters were correct. By Day 2, we experienced freezing temperatures, and a windchill of –13, and during the night, our tents were buried by snow. When we woke up the next morning, small icicles were hanging from our tent’s interior.
One of the members of the expedition, who is a dear friend, had a migraine due to the dramatic shift in weather from the sunny and blue sky one day to the aforementioned adverse conditions. And if that wasn’t enough, her contacts actually stuck to her eyeballs during the night of the storm. (Excuse my language but this dear friend is a total badass.)
A photo from my 2014 Epic Mt. Whitney expedition, the mountain climbing expedition where we didn’t climb a mountain.
We made the best of it, but in the end, we didn’t come close to climbing Mt. Whitney.
While I was–we all were–disappointed that we couldn’t stand on the top of Mt. Whitney, I developed my leadership more in that single experience than I did on any previous expedition. And there had been many previous expeditions.
By the way, success is a curious thing, isn’t it? It’s interesting that we consider an expedition where we stand on the summit a success, and one where we don’t as not a success. Of course, I know better, but you get the point. We attach success to our hopes and expectations, which if you think about it, is limiting because anything less than that is then automatically considered not a success (failure).
For the record, I would not wish to relive the snowy and cold and exceptionally challenging Mt. Whitney expedition. But I would not trade the experience for anything. The hard experience developed me further as a leader. I still reflect on things I learned, and things I’d do differently as a leader, thanks to that challenging experience when the conditions were so unfavorable. I learned a lot from the guides, and their leadership styles amidst adverse conditions. I learned a lot about managing the risks, and morale, of a challenging expedition.
My previous Mt. Whitney expedition had gone exactly as planned. We had perfect weather every day and enjoyed a long celebration on the mountain’s summit. It was an incredible experience, but did it develop me as a person or a leader? Probably not very much.
The journey is for the soul. The summit is for the ego.
I know it’s cliche, but life is a journey. If we are too focused on our dreams and the end goals–”the summit”–we risk missing out on the experiences of life, the numerous small things that add up to make a good and unforgettable life.
Another favorite quote is from Josh Waitzkin. Waitzkin is an American chess player, martial arts competitor, and author. As a child, he was recognized as a prodigy and won the U.S. Junior Chess championship in 1993 and 1994. The film, Searching for Bobby Fischer, is based on Waitzkin’s early life. (If you haven’t read his book, The Art of Learning, I highly recommend it.)
Waitzkin said something in a conversation with Tim Ferriss over a year ago that I recall often. Waitzkin was explaining about the earliest years of his son Jack’s life, and how “bad” weather could have so easily negatively impacted them if they had let it.
“One of the biggest mistakes that I observed in the first year or two of Jack’s life that I observed with parents is that they have this language around weather; weather being good or bad. Whenever it was raining, they’d be like, It’s bad weather. You’d hear moms, babysitters, dads talk about if it’s bad weather, we can’t go out or if it’s good weather, we can go out. So that means that somehow we’re externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time… I don’t think we’ve missed one storm… Rain or snow, going outside and romping in it. We developed this language around how beautiful it was. So now whenever there’s a rainy day, Jack says, ‘Look, Da-Da. It’s such a beautiful rainy day.’ And we go out and we play in it.”
I love that story and the important lesson it captures. It does a beautiful job of making the point I’m trying to make with this blog post, which is, the weather is only bad if we decide it is. Or, our life sucks only if we say it does. (Or, suck it up, buttercup. Or, any day outside beats doing laundry. Or, life isn’t perfect. Etc. :))
I’m almost done here, but I have one more thing I just can’t resist sharing.
I once interviewed my friend, and one of Lander’s beloved human beings, Debra East. I was interviewing Debra about her fitness goals and training program. I captured the interview at the swimming pool, right after Debra’s morning swim workout. During the interview, Debra remarked, “I’m not training for any event other than my life.”
Those words of Debra’s are among my favorites of all time.
Hopefully, we are all “training” for our life. Life is, after all, our most important event. And because life is uncertain and full of good times and bad, hardships and celebrations, we ought to look at the hardships, losses, and setbacks not as a bad thing, but as important training.
Why do we so often let ourselves off the hook? We decide we’re going to do something but then when the opportunity comes to do it if the conditions aren’t perfect, we let ourselves off the hook. Even worse, when we let ourselves off the hook, we probably tell ourselves, It’s not that I’m not going to do it. I’m just not going to do it today.
It can be dangerous to think that way because when we are quick to let ourselves off the hook from our commitments, days, or weeks, months, years–a life–can go by and we didn’t do the thing we wanted or needed to do and we can no longer do it.
We ought to wake up each day, and, regardless of what life delivers us, take what we get, learn from it, and not throw a fit.
Thank you so much for stopping by, and for giving of your time to read my thoughts. I appreciate it so much.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)
I have always loved this quote. I’m blogging about it today because I have been thinking a lot about “scary” and fear. I think if fear is present in our life, it means we’re pushing our boundaries. It means we’re not playing it safe. This is how we grow and become more. This is how we discover and live our best, most epic life — by daring to leave our comfort zone so we may confront our fears.
I have a challenge for anyone who reads this and is game: Today, when you have a decision to make, instead of choosing to take the familiar/logical/easy/certain/”safe” route, I dare you to go off-trail — to choose a new/different/uncertain way.
I would love to hear if you try this, and what you discovered as a result of doing it.
Thank you for reading — and thank you in advance, for sharing.
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