Healing Space | Your toughest challenges teach you something about which muscle to exercise

Breathe, discover, test your capacity, realign, restart, hydrate, move. You move at your pace and the mountain’s pace. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

On a recent trekking attempt, I ran into a start-up founder, a software developer and a student halfway up the trail to Triund. While this sounds like the beginning of a bad bar joke, I assure you it’s worse: it’s the start of a LinkedIn start-up founder style listicle, because why not, right? I was solo and on my maiden attempt. The founder was on his fifth or sixth and made it a point to return every year.  A few learnings from this hike:

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1. Climbing a mountain is a feat of mental stamina, not physical fitness.

I mean, yes of course, it’s about moving the body, very often vertically and through thick bramble and over narrow ledges, sometimes slippery and wet with rain, thousands of feet off the ground. However, as with running a marathon, even if you’re not in peak physical fitness, the mind can keep the body going long after the body wants to stop and sit down somewhere. Adrenaline, and the mind’s activation of it, is a survival mechanism. If you were lost in the wilderness, chances are your mind would keep you going until you got to safety long past you thought you could.

2. It is by taking on the tough challenges that you become experienced in conquering them.

The second is that while you really shouldn’t attempt such climbs if you’re not in some sort of basic capacity for movement, when you do, you realize the excuse you’ve been making of getting into shape in order to climb a mountain, is invalid. Trekking up the mountain is how you get in shape. It is not the result or an after-effect. Fit people don’t wait to be in optimal shape in order to take on the challenges. The challenges are how they exercise their fitness muscle. It is by taking on the tough challenges that you become experienced in conquering them. No one is fit before they get on the trail.

3. The higher you go, the greater the chances of storminess.

The third is that you have to prepare to get drenched. If you’re not ready for that, don’t climb. The higher you go, the closer to the snowline, the more likely micro-climate conditions will precipitate some sort of rainfall or storminess. Your raincoat will leak, feel suffocating, your shoes will get soaked, and if you’re only carrying an umbrella, it will upturn in the wind and prove useless in the gusts, or dangerously capable of causing imbalance to you on a ridge. You will need to drop your protective mechanism at some point. So when you take on a challenge, consider the possibility of your protective gear, no matter how well planned, failing. How will you go on when it does? When you go there, and what you have to go on are your bare hands, soaked feet, tired limbs and numb skin, you will have a greater respect for how sharp your mind has to be to pull you through the tough bits.

4. Don't look up.

The fourth is that they will tell you not to look down as you go up, but in fact, don’t look up. When you have an innocence about how far you have to travel, you can take each of the bends one step at a time. You take the bend you are on currently. You see where you are now. And you reassess. At each stage, you’re giving yourself the capacity to call yourself back and take yourself down, or push yourself further. You’re asking if you’re happy where you are in the moment and course-correcting either mentally or physically. Too many people falter on the ‘what if’s. What if they don’t get there, or fail, or don’t find a safe space halfway. If you want to climb the mountain, you are going to just have to start at some point.

5. Know when to stop.

Fifth, know when to stop. If you’re assessing correctly, you should know how far you can go realistically. This means you need to listen to your body, the signals, know how far you can push it, gauge your breathing, your need for reinforcements either in terms of vitamins, nutrition, rest, hydration, or support. You need to know the signs your body is giving you that it can’t go any further. And above all, you need to be willing to listen to what you’re hearing it say. Knowing your capacity and retreating and restarting are as vital as going on.

6. Collaboration and support come in a variety of surprising ways.

Sixth, you will meet people on the way whom you are not connected to but who are on your journey too. Stop and talk to them. Some have done this many times before, others do it every day, still others are newbies at it. Each of them comes with a fresh perspective and approach to what you’re doing. Collaboration and support come in a variety of surprising ways, from a tour guide who is telling you the road gets steeper as it goes higher, to a donkey pack shepherd who gives you a shortcut.

7. Turn the journey inwards.

Seventh, you don’t have to prove a point to anyone. If you’re climbing to the summit to post a selfie or win a competitive gamble, you’re wasting your effort. While that is why you may have started this journey, if that is also how you are ending it, you’d be better off not climbing. The climb is always about what it teaches you about yourself. What you discover you are capable of and your limitations. Turn the journey inwards.

8. You are not alone.

Eighth, take your loneliness to the mountains. The mountains have a great capacity for solitude, to share and carry it. The more you build barriers around yourself, in competition with, in pride against, in anger with, others, you will find yourself isolated. On the mountain you need to move in cohesion with others, or you can risk your life. You need to locate others, find a trail that others have carved before and will take after, to be safe. So even if people aren’t physically present all the time, you will find that the passages and its markers, left by other people, whether it’s a café or a water rest, or a fence, or a beaten path, remind you you are not alone.

9. You'll get there when you get there.

Ninth, stop a lot. You cannot complete an uphill journey on someone else’s deadline. You get there when you get there. Breathe, discover, test your capacity, realign, restart, hydrate, move. You move at your pace and the mountain’s pace.

10. Remember, you are interconnected and interdependent.

Tenth, respect the climate. Exactly because you do not walk alone, and you cannot walk without rest, you realize you are interconnected and interdependent. You are dependent on environmental factors that aid you or get in your way. Listen, observe and respect them. These have the capacity to set your pace. You cannot push against these obstacles mindlessly, but make best progress when your flow fits in with the flow of the mountain.