Staying Rad & Active: Wanting to Want It
Sometimes the mountains are calling and I must go. Other times, the mountains are calling, but I must NOT go, because it was after I just had a baby, was recovering from an injury, or maybe because we are in the midst of a global pandemic. But the mountains don’t understand. They keep calling and calling, and they are leaving messages and my voicemail is full, and then finally I just have to tell them, “Hey I’m just not that into you right now. It’s not you, it’s me.”
The mountains will be there waiting, no matter how many times you have to blow them off.
During those times when there’s been a break in my otherwise hot and heavy relationship with the mountains, sometimes it seems that getting back to that place of comfort and ease in our relationship is about as far away mentally and physically as the top of Everest during a global pandemic. I’ve had moments sitting on my couch with a tiny baby where I don’t even have the motivation to get up and fix a bowl of cereal, never mind the thought of bootpacking up a couloir to ski a rad line. At those times, my physical and mental dissonance with being at a place where I am comfortable in the mountains feels like that rad line might as well be on Mars.
Just drifting along, going with the flow.
After many interruptions in my mountain life over the past several years (either by choice or by life events), I have a little trick that I use to help me bridge that sometimes seemingly impossible gap of getting to where I want to be, mentally and physically. This can be a way of getting back into the realm of the gnar switch, although it only works If my gnar switch goals are truly in line with what’s right for me. It has certainly backfired when I’ve tried to force it (see this post for a cautionary tale), but clearly I wasn’t doing it properly. It’s more a way of holding hope and creating mental space for certain goals and dreams that may seem a world away, because deep down I have an inkling that I can get there.
The first thing I do, before even choosing the goal, is to honestly do absolutely nothing about it for a while. Wow, great advice. No but seriously, I mean I do nothing related to the goal, while I’m keeping up the semblance of a regular routine.
That means for right now, even though my interrupted goals might be ski-related and I can’t be skiing, I’m still planning to do the living room workouts, getting outdoors, the victory gardens, the whatever it takes to weather the onslaught of scary news and financial uncertainty and health dangers and the silly but real frustrations of attempting to write ONE DANG EMAIL while two children climb and cling and wail.
Alright, everyone out of the house! Let’s go get dirty before mom goes nuts.
But during the quiet-ish moments when I can actually formulate a thought, I might just sort of try to direct a few thoughts toward different potential goals or pipe dreams. It’s not really manifesting—it’s just pondering the goals and seeing what they “think” like. If the thoughts of that thing start sort of floating up on their own sometimes, unbidden, and they feel pretty sweet when I am thinking about them, then I might start giving them more thought. Or, if I trip on a root and fall on my face every time I’m thinking about that thing while out running or walking, I might start to think twice about it and shuffle it to the bottom of the pile. Like I might think it sounds shiny and exciting to take off on a sailboat trip to Antarctica for a month but as I fantasize how incredibly self-sufficient and tough that would make me, boom, trip, I’m suddenly down in the dirt. As I wipe the dust from my knees, I remember that I get seasick, that it would be longer than I would want to be away from my family, and that I actually don’t have a burning desire to do that right now, as crazy as that sounds. Okay, I think, then how about that double backflip I thought I could try at one time? Gosh I would feel SO rad if I did that. It would mean I for sure still have it! Boom, trip, back in the dirt. Alright, what if I settle for trying to ski some backcountry couloirs this season, if the conditions align? And I’m still running, no trip this time. This feels like a more worthy objective, because I would be doing it for me, for the love, and not for how cool or “worthy” it would make me. And once the truly worthy objective arises, I wait to see if it floats into my thoughts a few more times over the next little while. As I hone in on the objective, I’m learning more about my true self and settling in to who the ‘new normal’ me might be and what she might align with.
Once I have one or two things that I might want to accomplish that actually seem like they might be reasonable, I do a second round of nothing. What, more nothing?! This is a load of horsepoop!
It probably is, but bear with me a bit longer. Because actually this time the nothing is more purposeful nothing, and it makes all the difference. Again, I try to think about the goals, while now allowing myself to think about what it would take to put in the work and to actually make it happen. It’s a sort of curiosity-based thinking, of wondering how it might feel to pursue the goal. To be clear, I’m not imagining myself accomplishing the goal, or visualizing or manifesting. I’m thinking about wanting it. I’m wanting to want it.
It’s so easy when I’m on the couch healing, or feeling uneasy on my first day back on skis after a Big Life Event to feel frustrated that I’m not doing things I want to be doing, or not doing them at the same level. But this process of wanting to want it reminds me that I’m right in the perfect spot at THIS MOMENT; it eases my mind that the doors to those realms will open for me again when it’s the right time.
If I spend this time, however long it takes, just wanting to want something, I’ve also noticed that by the time I realize that I want it enough to actually start working towards it, that I’ve already subconsciously been laying the groundwork and putting out the feelers to make it happen, and the whole time it pretty much felt like doing nothing. It’s telling myself that I’m okay exactly where I’m at at the moment, doing my thing, even if that thing is worlds away from where I’d like to be. I’m subtly letting myself know that I WILL GET THERE. But I’m not putting pressure on myself as if it were an actual goal. So tricky!
Big hairy…goals.
A small example of this for me is a big mountain bike ride, a classic that I had always heard was a sufferfest. Everyone complained about how heinous it was while humble bragging how amazing it was at the same time, and so I began to think of it as a test piece of sorts. Could I hang? Did I even want to? For a long time I truly didn’t want to. I thought it sounded miserable and I knew I would be grumpy and probably cry and then be scared on the downhill after being so tired from the uphill. I was sort of embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even want to do it, because the “before” me would have jumped at that type of challenge. But I thought about it for a few years, keeping it neutral. It kept coming up, and I started to want to want it, and I did that for a while and last spring I was biking a lot, without an official goal in mind. Then one day someone invited us to do The Bike Ride, and I surprised myself by actually really wanting to do it. I was excited, and also nervous. But I mentally prepared myself, and I wanted to want to enjoy it, and then the day came and somehow I had fun for the whole thing, even the really sucky parts. And I didn’t cry once. The mind is beyond amazing and so powerful if given a chance.
I can sit around and think about things I would love to have or do or be, for as hard or as long as I can, but nothing happens. It feels pretty empty. too. But if I switch my thinking a tiny bit, like, figuring out why I’m thinking about wanting that thing and the motivation behind it, then I may trip on my face a few times but it eventually points me toward the right thing. Then I can try to get out of my own way and start really doing nothing about it.
