This quote from – Anatoli Boukreev – I have said it before, I don’t climb to set records. First, I’m not that great at it. 🤣 The primary reason that I climb outside, is because I love being outside. The secondary reason is that it is a badass skill. And the joy that I get when I climb well is hard to find elsewhere.
That being said, I definitely don’t always climb well! How do I deal with it when I don’t climb my best? Honestly, it can be hard. When I had my big hip, leg, and foot injury I couldn’t climb for months and waiting to heal was really hard on me. I finally made it into the gym and climbed a route very cautiously. It felt amazing. But after that initial happiness wore off, the pain came in with a vengeance. I was deeply depressed at the thought that I might never be able to enjoy this activity like I once had.
I couldn’t be more grateful to be back to climbing and feeling stronger again. And the setbacks and not so great climbs are quite a lot more tempered with the expreience of wondering if I ever would be able to again.
So how does one deal with a non-injury setback?
Do you know anyone who suffers from toxic positivity? Maybe you haven’t heard this expression and are wondering, “How can positivity possibly be toxic?” If you have a problem, you can go so far past seeing the bright side or silver lining that you end up on the other side. Where you don’t see anything as a lesson to learn, or area to be improved upon, or put any effort into your friendships and relationships because you don’t see the need. Do you know anyone like that?
On the other hand, you can go to the opposite end of the spectrum and see every stumbling block or setback as a reason to give up, to quit, to stop caring or trying.
I would like to think that most of the time I hit a place that is a happy medium. Finding the motivation to continue at something that you aren’t the best at can be hard, especially in this age of social media in which the majority of what you see online is shiny and bright and highlight reels. And let’s be honest, thinking about failing isn’t exactly fun. But I truly believe that if you can find the motivation to keep pursing difficult things, you’ll find it worthwhile. So in the spirit of finding a happy medium, I’m sharing a video in which I have failures and successes. Of course there are corny jokes, stop drop and yoga, lots of beautiful scenery, and pizza along the way.
At the end of one less successful climbing day, I was pretty frank about how I felt. Overall still a great day, I had fun and always enjoy being out in nature and climbing, and I touched my foot to my head in dancer for the first time! But I was disappointed in not being able to lead something that I felt I was capable of. Jump to the very end of day two and I was clearly more happy even though that day had bumps of its own.
When I was a kid I was a little bit obessed with watching figure skating. My parents got me a VHS that had of Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner on learning to figure skate. ( I think, this was a long time ago. lol) And someone said to one of the people who fell, something to the effect of, falling isn’t failing. If you aren’t falling once in a while, you aren’t trying. Now I never took figure sakting lessons, cracks me up to think of how many times I must have watched that tape. But I did know that I would be falling if I got the chance to try. But I had made my mind up to pick myself up and try again.
I choose to embrace the fact that I get bummed when things don’t go perfectly, but I also use that to motivate myself to keep growing. I hope that you can do the same! After all, if we were perfect at everything we didn’t, not only would that be pretty boring, but it would probably mean that we weren’t pushing ourselves to grow. What are your thoughts?
MoveMint Yoga 