Find Your “Why”

Climbing is a silly thing. 

We invest substantial energy into simply moving our body from the ground to the top of something.  More often than not, we actually go out of our way to find the hardest way to accomplish what might otherwise be a fairly simple task.  To further complicate things, the objectives we choose and the restrictions we put on the process may also put us at risk for substantial bodily harm. 

Even if the act of climbing a specific mountain, wall, boulder, or series of plastic holds poses little danger in and of itself, the process of preparing ourselves to achieve our goal is fraught with additional risks including injury, anxiety, and the opportunity cost of investing our limited time in a pursuit that is arguably a complete waste of time.

So when’s the last time you asked yourself why? 

Layers of Meaning

Let’s start with the basics.  You could be doing something else.  This is not a survival activity.  Plenty of people lead wonderful lives without rock climbing.  So if you’re going to do the thing, you deserve to know why you’re doing it.  Simply put, climbing is optional, so if you’re going to do it, do it for a reason.  This is certainly an area of your life where you can afford the luxury of engaging with some focused intention.  

You probably have some basic reasons for showing up that are fairly easy to conjure up.  More than likely you enjoy the feeling of climbing, or it helps you feel confident, or it's a great release from other areas of your life.  Maybe you are drawn to the community or maybe you just love having a routine? 

These surface level “whys” are important to some degree.  Essentially, they get you to show up in the first place.  Yet, there’s layers of reason that lie below.  Those that are able to access these seem to not only perform better, but enjoy the experience far more than their peers.

Steven Pinker, Harvard professor and cognitive scientist says, “The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain’s highest-level goals.  Once triggered by an event, an emotion triggers the cascade of sub-goals, and sub-sub-goals that we call thinking and acting.” Essentially, our emotional life is the foundation for everything else we do in the world.

Those that are able to create coherent connections between their core emotions, personal missions, beliefs, and “whys” are able to work harder, smarter, and with more creativity by bringing their full self to bear. So if you want to leverage your full self and tap into your true potential as a climber, it’s essential that you get to the bottom of your motivations.  You need to REALLY understand why you’re showing up. 

The Five Whys

Finding your “why” is often easier said than done.  It certainly took me some time to figure out mine.  However, once you’ve figured it out, you have a powerful tool that can be put to use at just about every corner of your climbing practice.   

In his book, The Alter Ego Effect, Todd Herman presents the idea that our core motivator can generally be grouped into one of the following four categories, or is a blending of a few.  

• Trauma:  Pain, loss, etc. 

• Destiny:  Driven from a higher power.  Based in faith. 

• Altruism: Helping others or contributing to something greater than ourselves

• Self-Expression:  Curiosity about what’s possible or who we really are

Perhaps this list helps you start to get a sense for what might be at the core of your motivations?  If you’re anything like me, you may have looked at this and felt little resonance with any of them.  No biggy.  We’ve got some other tricks up our sleeves.

I was able to really unlock my core motivations for climbing by using the Five Whys, a technique developed by Sakichi Toyoda (also suggested by Herman in his book).  The idea is fairly simple.  You take a question like “why do I climb” and continue to ask “why?” until you get to the core of the matter.  You’ll likely find that after five iterations, quite a bit is unearthed. 

Let’s use my experience as an example.  

1. Why do I climb?  
   Because I love the feeling of challenging my body and seeing what it’s capable of

2. Why do I love the feeling of challenging my body and seeing what it’s capable of? 
   Because it feels like a powerful means of self exploration

3. Why does it feel like a powerful means of self exploration?
   Because the intensity of movement, thought and emotion are rare experiences.  

4. Why are the intensity of movement, thought and emotion rare experiences? 
   Because life is short.

5. Why is life short?
   Because I’m going to die some day and there’s nothing I can do about that

And there we have it.  Yes, my own mortality lies at the core of my motivations.  Essentially, I climb because life is short and I very much want to squeeze as much experience out of my time as I can.  Looking at those four categories above, I certainly fall predominantly into the self expression camp.  

I also know that there’s a bit of trauma driving my motivations ( a bit obvious from my Five Whys).  In 2009, I fell off the top of a tall boulder problem and severely broke my left leg.  By severe, I mean multiple compound fractures, significant blood loss, bone infection and 20 months on crutches.  Simply put, it sucked.  The experience also brought me face to face with my mortality.

Meaning Creates Energy

As Pinker suggests, our emotions our the foundation that all action is built upon.  Once you have a sense of the core motivations that drive your climbing experience you can go to work taking full advantage of intentionally centering them in your practice.

Let’s use my experience as an example to demonstrate.  

Remember, my driving motivator or my “why” is my mortality and life’s fleeting nature.  

“Why” drives your goals.  If you want to go after something big, you’re going to want to harness as much energy as you can. By aligning your goals with your bigger “why” you are not only aligning your work with things that actually matter to you, but also drawing from a pool of powerful energy.

For the past few years one of my main goals has been to climb as many 5.12 or harder routes as I can.  For me, the richness of my climbing experience is a combination of difficulty/challenge and volume of experience.  Simply put, I derive more meaning from climbing a lot of hard routes, rather than just one REALLY hard route or a lot of easy fun routes.

“Why” rekindles your fire when things aren’t going well.  No matter who you are, or how awesome your climbing practice is, you will have bad days. You might even have bad months. We all need something stable to fall back on when the going gets tough, and our “why” is just that thing.

Over the past 6 months I’ve had a number of heartbreaking failures on hard routes.  I’ve made some mistakes, had some bad luck, and at times just not harnessed the mojo to get up the projects when the time was ripe.  Whatever the case, I’ve kept at it, because I’ve reminded myself often that I’m just looking for rich experience, not necessarily success.  And the truth is, these “failures” have actually been very engaging.  I’ve also learned a ton about myself. 

“Why” centers you when it's time to perform.  Most of us get nervous before hard attempts, especially if we really care about our climbing performance. Fear and anxiety have a way of pulling our attention towards a limited set of ideas - mostly those associated with how things can/will go wrong. Our “why” likely has nothing to do with things going wrong. Our “why” most likely centers climbing as a practice that improves our lives, gives us strength, or creates joy. Tapping into these positive emotions can help stop anxiety in its tracks.

.I used to get terrible performance anxiety, but I’ve found that grounding myself in gratitude for the time I have and the opportunity to experience one of those beautiful fleeting moments really helps me relax and just climb.  

Your “why” may be similar to mine, or may be very different.  It doesn’t matter.  You can use your one-of-a-kind personal motivations to help create sustainable productive energy that will keep you moving towards goals and experiences that help give your climbing more meaning.