Beta

There are some metaphors that I would like to share from my life as a climber because I have found them particularly useful when applied to the actions of our daily life as well as to the pursuit of the Dream of the Week.


Josh Simoneaux crushing Scarface at Smith Rock

The first metaphor is about finding your "beta."

Beta is a term we use in climbing to describe information about a route.

I am a sport climber, and I boulder  for strength training, so what beta means to me is: something secret, something that I am missing about a particular problem, perhaps a subtle movement I never even considered.

What's great about beta is that everyone usually has their own way of doing something. Not everyone can do the same move the same way, you may have to do it your way. However, sometimes there's no choice—you have to do it a specific way or you're not going get it. You want to find someone with whom you can share your secret information, your way, your beta.

If you are working on a particularly challenging project, having someone to share the burden, helping to figure out the sequence, helps both of you save energy. It also increases the chances that both of you will succeed.

Apply this concept to life and to your Dream of the Week, and find someone you can work out the beta with. I mean it!

If you are not in the habit of asking for help, get over it—now. Don't let ego get in the way. If you are trying to prove that you can do it alone, you probably can.  But why the hell would you want to? You know you'll need help, so get in the habit of asking for it sooner rather than later.

It took me a long time to learn to ask for help. In one instance, I spent an entire year living in a shit-hole, because I felt that I had to prove that I could make it on my own. Well, I couldn't. I needed help, so I called my mother and she got me home. (Thanks, mom, for saving me.) Great lesson, but you can save yourself a lot of pain if you learn this one quickly—don't be afraid to ask for help, ask for beta.

I love to spray beta. I can't help it. In the climbing gym, I can only take so much, watching guys fall over and over again, before I crack. I have to go up to them and show them how to do the move. I admire their persistence, but man ... (they should be asking for beta).

Most are open to my suggestions, although sometimes some people are put off, perhaps thinking, "Leave me alone ..."  And that's fine, they can take the beta or leave it.

Befriend that guy that loves to spray beta. He may be a happy dumb bastard, but he's loyal, and will help you find a way through your particular challenge. 

In climbing there are three kinds of people you want to climb with: someone stronger than you—they will push you to be stronger; someone that climbs at the same level—(even better if they are a beta match) you will encourage each other, help each other, and a little friendly competition never hurt; and someone that doesn't climb as hard as you—this will make you feel good about yourself because you can send in their face ... but also because you can push them to be a stronger climber.

Find these three people in real life for anything that you want to do, for your Dream of the Week.

It's all about these secret ways of moving through life's challenges, sharing this information, because we all see things differently and approach them from different angles.

It's all about finding your way. It's all about beta.

Keep Goin'

We’re heading into winter, which can be a tough time of year. I struggle with the increased darkness, and find myself tired by 8 o'clock. When there is no sun, it can be difficult to find the motivation to go out and DO.

Once you’ve committed some time to doing what you wanted to do, how do you keep it up? Here are some basic tips that I use to maintain motivation on Dreams of the Week.

·         You have to make it fun. If it’s not fun, you won’t want to do it.

http://www.verticalworld.com/?page_id=823

This is why I prefer to go to a climbing gym rather than a traditional gym that has weights and machines. Climbing is a fun and challenging activity, where strength and fitness are byproducts. I go to have a good time, but still get a great workout.  Check out Vertical World, America's First Climbing Gym.


·         Don’t give yourself an out. This requires that you understand yourself enough that you

I use to ride my bicycle to work every day, but slowly I started using more and more creative excuses to get out of it, "I'm tired," "It's too dark," "It's too wet," "My legs are sore," "I already biked 3 times this week — that's good enough, right?" Eventually the excuses mounted up so much that I stopped riding.

You have to watch yourself — we can talk ourselves out of just about anything, even things we like doing. Find the root causes of this. It might be that you will want to change your Dream of the Week, that's okay — I do it all the time — or it may be that you need to dig in your heels and ride it out. Know thy self.

·         Once you pick a schedule, stick to it.

My wife has gone for a walk every day for the last 3 months, which has been one of the most impressive feats of discipline I have ever witnessed. (Go ahead, try it! See if you can do it in the autumn in Washington.) There have been many opportunities when she could have used any number of excuses (like I had above), but didn’t.

Just the other week we had a nightmare of a night. I took her to the ER because her entire arm was tingling in a bad way, and then after a couple hours of sleep we had to take our dog to the emergency animal hospital because he had a cluster of seizures. She could have used this as an excuse not to walk, but she didn't. That's hardcore. She's badass.

For her, it was important to walk every day and so she started with a daily walk of less than half a mile, but the thing was to do it, to make it part of her day. She did the half mile walk for three weeks before she was sure that she was committed to the schedule she had chosen. She knew that if she found an excuse to take one day off, she would use it as leverage to take more days off, like I had with the biking. She knows herself very well. (And is currently at 2 miles every morning.)

Check out The Walking Site for additional information

Similarly, my undergrad writing professor would sit down to write for a minimum of five minutes every day. If he wrote for longer than that, great. But if all he could manage was five minutes, he had met his requirement for the day.

These kinds of habits are good to keep in mind as you consider adding a new routine (a Dream of the Week) to your life.

It's important to take time to really look at what has historically weakened your focus and look at ways to stop getting in your own way. Try setting little goals for yourself to get going and maintain motivation on your Dream of the Week. If all you have is five or twenty minutes a day, start there, and slowly build. Nurture it until it grows. Don't forget to make it fun.

Overcoming Obstacles

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciana13/2294908551/

I was driving home the other day when I heard this gal on the radio talk about her blog, New Dress a Day. She had lost her job and wanted to do something fun, so she set up a challenge for herself: "365 days. 365 items of clothing. 365 dollars." And although she still hasn't found full-time work, she  loves what she doing.

Do what you love, what you've always wanted to try. Start small. Because you never know where these things will lead you. The secret is to start.

I hear a lot of excuses, from myself and from other people, defending inaction. "If only I had more money I would ... ." You don't have to invest a lot of money into your Dream of the Week. Look at the example — $365 kept her busy creating for an entire year. Get creative, or scale down the pieces of your dream so that you aren't intimidated to take the first few steps.     

"If only I had more time, I would ... ." Why is it that we don't spend more time on the very things that we say we really want to do? Is it that you do not actually have enough time? Or is there something that you could give up?

I was working full time, in a graduate program, ran for office, took care my house and half acre yard, climbed in my spare time, and still managed to sleep a little and have fun — fueled by only a passion for my work and caffeine. If something is a priority, you can make it happen. I'm not saying this to one-up you, I am trying to show you that it can be done.

Maybe you don't watch that movie for the 20th time. I did have to stop watching TV, and stop drinking beer because it made me too sleepy. But by making small sacrifices you can fit in what really matters most.

Are you doing what you really want to be doing? Are you currently spending your time doing something that drains you and wastes time, rather than working on what you care about most dearly? If you investigate your own barriers, the excuses you make that help keep you stuck, are they real? Or are you creating them so that you can continue to ignore your dreams?

Identifying your own barriers is an important part of the process. I believe it is as important as identifying your dream of the week. Because once you've nailed down what you want to do and what's preventing you from starting, you can start to make the space in your life to start.

Consider talking to your friends or your family or a career counselor about what you want to do. Finding someone to support you and check in with you can help to both keep you accountable and push you to achieve more. I always find it a lot harder to have a productive session at the climbing gym when I am the only person there. But when a few of my buddies are there, we are able to push each other to climb harder and send routes that we might otherwise walk away from.

Tell me in the comments what your dreams are or how you are overcoming obstacles.

Fail Fast

So why aren’t you doing your Dream of the Week? 

My last post, Getting Started, sounded very basic, very simple; that’s because it is. It is my goal to break down every single excuse you have, so that by the end you have no choice but to just go out and f***ing do it, whatever your Dream of the Week may be.  

Why aren’t you doing your Dream of the Week? Think about it for a moment. Are you worried about failure? Success? The unknown? Money? I know that the list can be endless.

For the remainder of this post, I would like to discuss the concept of failure. 

Failure is great! Start thinking about it like that from now on. Don’t worry about sounding like an idiot, being publicly shamed, (though that is difficult to recover from), or any other concern attached to failure. Remember, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Don’t be afraid to fail. 

In the climbing world, when we're training we say “Go to failure.” We go until we literally fall off the climb. We are trying to destroy our muscles, so that they will rebuild themselves, so that we’ll get stronger.

It is imperative that you start viewing the world in such a manner.

"Fail fast" is a saying one of my professors, Christopher Allen, introduced me to recently. And I like it for the same reason. Get yourself out in the world, and keep learning, keep revising. Get up and try again and again. Try something new. In a sense, we are rapid prototyping our lives.

In the grand scheme of things, we don’t have that much time to waste doing things that we hate, and there are simply too many cool things to do. Which ones to choose? Try them all. Start small, you’ll figure out which ones you want to do.
 
This last year, I wanted to grow wheat. I mean, why not? I enjoy working hard, I like working outside, and quite frankly, I just wanted to see if I could do it. While I tend to want to go big or go home, sometimes it’s smarter to start small and keep it manageable your first time out, whatever it is you want to do. You don’t always have to jump in head first. It’s okay to test the water to see if you like it.

So I planted a 20 foot by 10 foot patch of wheat in my front yard. I figured I could handle that pretty easily. But in order to feed my desire for more, I also planted oats and barley in patches of the same size. Again, Why not, right? I had the space, and I was already growing the wheat, I may as well.
As it came to harvest time, the wheat did not perform well. It was a terrible spring, really cold and wet. But the oats and barley were amazing. We harvested them and I am now  officially a (small scale) grain farmer. 

I like this example because it shows that you don’t have to make a huge life change to do what you want to do. That you can fail fast, and be successful. Whatever your Dream of the Week is, just start by testing the water.

 

This is a photograph of me, sitting in front of my very successful barley. Thanks to Sadie Williams Photography for capturing the moment!