The warrior’s way
Last month I went to Spain for an outdoor climbing trip and it was wonderful. I took with me some great technical skills for sports climbing, but more importantly, absorbed some mental tools that will help me tackle challenges and mental blocks in both climbing and in life. The main one being the Warrior’s Way, a skill that teaches us how to fall while rock climbing. It’s a set of exercises, mental and physical that teaches us how to fall in areas along the climb that makes us most uncomfortable and scared. And I learned that falling, is also a skill. We need to learn to fall well as much as we need to learn to climb well.
In climbing, part of the Warrior’s Way is to ask oneself, is this part of the climb making me uncomfortable or scared? If the answer is yes, this is where you start practicing falling. You choose to keep falling in that area until it becomes not scary, familiar, and you know what to expect. It’s brilliant. Once you have practiced falling in the area that freaks you out, you know it’s not that bad. You have practiced falling safely so you are not panicking and grabbing at the rope or doing something dangerous because you stopped breathing deeply and thinking calmly. If you are falling safely, you are not falling when you are climbing “badly” and then actually more likely to fall in a way that is unsafe and really hurt yourself.
It's like in life. It’s learning how to fail and fast, so you can grow from it. If you think about it, we avoid or try and rush past things that make us uncomfortable or scared. We are afraid to fail, make mistakes, feel pain, rejection, disappointment, etc. But when we just face that unpleasant feeling, really let it go through us, it’s uncomfortable for a period, then it passes. Instead of holding on to it, letting it fester, or suffering through it multiple times because we are playing it over in our minds.
This trip to Spain has been inspirational, challenging, and fun. It has given me many different gifts and I will carry the Warrior’s Way lessons with me when I tackle the bumps in life and remember to practice falling, as that is a mental skill that needs to be practiced as much as other skills we have in our toolbox.