How To Overcome Any Challenge and Obstacle In Life?
Alpinists’ and mountain climbers’ approach to conquering challenges and obstacles.
When we’re faced with any challenge or obstacle in life, it might seem like a big mountain in front of us that we have to climb to overcome. So have do you deal with it? How do you approach the mountain, climb it, and yield it to you?
In this newsletter, I’ll present to you the alpinists’ and mountain climbers’ approach to conquering challenges and obstacles.
The mountain is a metaphor for great challenges and difficulties in life. We all experience them in our life: whether that’s in our personal lives, relationships, health, business, etc.
To say it’s challenging would be the least. Sometimes it’s daunting and overwhelming. You feel like it will take you an enormous amount of time and effort or that you’ll never be able to make it.
But you can approach the mountain like the alpinist do.
Mountain climbers always start at the base camp - at the foot of the mountain. Most of them and confident that they’ll be able to do it: they’ve succumbed an intensive physical and mental preparations before the ascent and they’ve reached other mountain peaks before.
But among them, there are always a few - or many - that haven’t done it before. They are overwhelmed and doubt if they can achieve it.
Despite this fact, they stare the peak right into its eye and start the ascent.
They start walking and climbing. Slowly and steadily, step by step, not thinking about how much time and distance is still ahead of them.
After much struggle and work, they reach the first camp, where they stop for a while, rest, adapt to the altitude, and regain their strength.
After that, they restart the ascent until they reach the next camp, where they again stop for a while, rest, adapt to that altitude and regain their strength before continuing. They repeat the process until they hopefully - if everything aligns - reach the peak and conquer the mountain.
This metaphor came to me last night before going to sleep and it shifted my beliefs about challenges and obstacles.
It helped me realize that big challenges and obstacles in life that seem overwhelming and unattainable, can be accomplished by small and continuous steps towards or through it.
But the crucial lesson here is adaptation: you have to stop or even take a step back after a certain time and the path taken, or even periodically. Continuing and pushing forward for too long is the path towards burnout.
There’s a reason why for every athlete's periotisation and physical preparation there are planned off days and deload weeks: the body must adapt to the progressive overload of stimulus to become stronger, before being exposed to more and greater stimulus.
That’s also the reason why we sleep 6-8 hours a day: so our body and mind can recover and refill their batteries before starting a new busy day and accomplish new things.
How to overcome any challenge and obstacle in life using alpinists’ and mountain climbers’s approach.
Start in case camp, at the bottom of the mountain, totally overwhelmed because you have never achieved this before.
Begin walking and climbing: slowly and steadily, step by step, without thinking about how much time and distance is still ahead of you.
When you reach the first camp, stop for a while, rest, adapt to the altitude, and regain your strength.
Repeat points 2 and 3 until you reach the top.
While you’re climbing the mountain, it’s also crucial to find ways to maintain the hope and motivation to continue and that you can do it.
There are many ways and it’s up to you which one you choose. Whether it’s visualizing that you have reached the top. Reminding yourself that not to alone, that they’re others before you that have already succeeded. Or that you make yourself believe that you will succeed. Or enjoying the journey to the top.
Whatever it is, the goal is to help yourself keep going. There will come times when you’ll feel like giving up and quitting, but those motivations will help you stay on the path and keep going.
Before you start the climb…
Before you decide to take on the challenge of triumphing the mountain, also take into consideration this:
Every quest has a price that has to be paid. Maybe the price of conquering the mountain is too high. Maybe the quest is too risky. Maybe the potential dangers outweigh the results.
If the challenge is worth take on or not, depends on the type of challenge and obstacle. If the challenge you have of health related - let's say you're trying to lose 50kg (100lbs.) of weight or beat burnout - that’s a quest worth taking.
If the obstacle is a business endeavour - if you're trying to build your dream company - that will require a lot of time and energy from you and will also cause you unexpected and unimaginable stress.
The greater the challenge, the greater the gift and satisfaction - but also the greater the potential risk to your health and well-being.
Choose carefully and watch out for warning signs.
If you watched the movie Everest, the alpinists on the quest of conquering the mountain, experienced a lot of warning signs, but they chose to ignore them and reach the peak of the mountain anyway. This resulted in many death and casualities that could had been avoided.
