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Go Hiking and Get Your Life Back

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

So you ask me, “How does that work?” Well, if you have been reading these odes to the mountains you will understand that is the easiest task. All it takes is a few hikes and your life changes.

How does it change? First, you go hiking. Before you went hiking you were so distracted by emails, Instagram, Tik Tok, and even Microsoft teams that you had lost your life. It had disappeared into the electronic Matrix. Once you get on the trails things settle down.

The Matrix

You might think that when you are looking at your phone instead of looking at the person across from you that you have your life firmly in hand. Or you are supposed to be exercising but you are sitting on a bench at the gym staring at your phone.

Your mind is in a Matrix composed of all the lures of the electronic universe. You have to escape it to see it for what it is, an addiction so heinous that it will grind you up and spit you out into a pile of wasted lives.

Busyness

Oh, you say that you have your phone under control and you are in charge of it. But you are going from one meeting to another, rushing from one office to another, catching a plane, a lunch date, or grabbing a bite on the run. You have lost your life in the busyness of it.

How long has it been since you had time, even ten minutes to sit and think? A long time I imagine.

The Solution

The best solution is to go hiking! Put your phone in your pack and only take it out to take a picture when you get to the top of a mountain. If you need to take a picture before you reach the top then you still need to keep it in your pack. Make it hard to get at.

Then you hiking, with trees surrounding you and the odor of pine needles or will strawberries wafting up to you. The breeze is on your face. You relax as you push yourself forward. You become one with nature. You get your life back.

A Little More

Maybe a quote from one of Eldredge’s other books, Epic. He says, “We have grown dull towards this world in which we live; we have forgotten that it is not normal or scientific in any sense of the word. It is fantastic. It is a fairy tale through and through. Really now. Elephants? Caterpillars? Snow? At what point did you lose your wonder at it all?” “Perhaps we come upon a waterfall, clouds have made a rainbow in a circle around the sun…”

Go hiking, experience it all (maybe not Elephants), and get your life back!

Go Hiking and Do Some Rethinking

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

Hiking is a time when you can think about all sorts of things you have been putting off. Be honest. It is hard to find the time to just think.

So when you go into the mountains make sure you bring your brain along with you. It can be a great companion and you may learn all sorts of things.

Rethink Your Life

You can rethink anything, not just positive thinking discussed in the book. You can rethink your whole life. Have you thought about your life lately? Most people don’t think about their loge as whole until they are a little older, but it can be useful at any age.

Maybe during the first couple of miles, you think about your childhood. Then the next couple miles your teen years. Then the next couple your twenties and thirties. When you get to the top, you’re probably just starting to reach your forties unless of course you are much younger and have not reached that age yet. If you are older like me it will take all the way up and all the way down to get through your life.

Rethink Your Health

Are you doing everything you can to stay healthy and fit? Are you using any technology to help you? Did you know that according to Kelly McGonigal, “The average daily step count required to induce feelings of anxiety and depression and decrease satisfaction with life is 5,649 the typical American takes 4,774 steps per day.” Brian Johnson quoted that the other day. So are you using a Fitbit, Garmin, Suunto, or something else to track your steps? Why not?

How are you and sugar doing? Maybe with you, it isn’t sugar but chips or something salty. Quitting sugar was the biggest contributor to me dropping lots of body fat over the last year. You can climb a lot of mountains but if you are packing the sugar away it won’t help you much.

Rethink Anything

You get the idea. Use that hiking time to think about anything you want. Maybe it is your relationship or lack of one. Maybe it is your job or lack of one.

What a blessing it is to be so close to nature and able to use it to help you connect with yourself. So go hiking and rethink some things.

Go Hiking Because The Discipline Will Equal Freedom

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

Hiking every weekend takes discipline. There are some weekends when I would rather stay home in bed. However, once I am on the trail I feel completely free.

That makes sense. Once you take action you set things in motion and it changes your brain.

Before

This is the time when it feels better to stay in bed. It is when you need to use Jocko’s “Binary Code.” Yes or No! Get out of bed or don’t get out of bed. If you are disciplined you will get out of bed. Your mind will tell you it’s cold, it will be wet, you will be miserable. Not only that but your knees are hurting and you should probably rest them.

It doesn’t end there. If you are old like me then your mind really has become good at messing with you. If the little adversary in my mind is feeling particularly strong it might tell me I’m too old to go hiking. It might ask me why someone my age is doing something that only younger people should do.

During

The battle doesn’t end just because you were able to get out of bed and get ready. No. You get to the trailhead and it is pouring down rain or snow. You sit in your car and the mind starts asking those questions again. What do you think your thing to prove? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you think you are? Why would a reasonable person go get wet on purpose?

But you overcome that. You turn off that part of your mind. You get out of the car, put your pack on your back and move! It is slightly easier now. You have taken another action. But it is hard at first. Just getting going, but it gets easier and easier mentally.

After

No matter how convinced you were you had no business climbing a mountain that day, when it is all over and you jog your last 100 yards down the trail, you have such a feeling of accomplishment and freedom it is hard to describe.

After you have changed back into your street shoes, taken off your pack, and settled into the driver’s seat the sensation hits you that you have done more by 8:00 AM than most people will do all day. So be disciplined about it and go regularly in the rain and in the snow.

Go Hiking Because Everything Is Spiritual

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

Go hiking!
It’s spiritual
Why? Because everything is spiritual.

When you are climbing a mountain you can’t help but notice all the living things around you. That obviously makes you think of God. Well, it does me.

God is in nature
So you should be too
What’s holding you back?

It really doesn’t matter if you hike early or late. I know, that speaks against my mantra, but there are advantages to a late start. You could see a sunset. The lighting is different so your photos will be different. Maybe even better.

How

Put your boots on.
Get your trekking poles.
Take the ten essentials.

It is also important to be sure you have the right trail pass for a particular hike. Check the weather, the distance, and know-how long it will take you to finish. Take two of everything. “Two is one and one is none.”

How can preparing for a hike be spiritual? You know about Brother Lawrence, the monk that connected with God when he washed the dishes. You can connect anytime you do anything!

Be Consistent

Go hiking on a consistent basis.
Every day.
Every week.
Or every other week
Or every third week.
Be consistent.

When you are consistent it will become a habit. Hiking will be like brushing your teeth. It will be something you do all the time and it will become part of your identity. Why? Because anything we do over and over becomes part of our identity. How about that!

Take A Break

Your body needs a break.
Your mind needs a break.
Breaks are good for the soul.
They are spiritual!!

How long a break you take depends on how spiritual you are feeling. Now, I am not talking about a rest break when you are climbing a mountain. Those are forbidden! I am talking about taking a break from hiking altogether. I take five months off every year just to make sure I am ready for the next season and feeling spiritual about it.

What do you do after your break?
Once again, Go Hiking!

Go Hiking And Think Like A Monk

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

It happens all the time! Meditation during a hike. Maybe it is the steady cadence of my feet on the trail or the breathing. Who knows but getting into a meditative state on the trail is not a hard thing to do.

A friend said I breathed like a stove pipe. That was when I was treating through my mouth. Now I breathe only through my nose. It is supposed to be better for you so why not? I am not so sure it helps with meditation. I think the stove pipe method is better.

Automatic

So what I am saying is that hiking automatically helps you think like a monk. You are in nature. It is silent except for your beating heart and steady breath. You can feel the breeze on your face or smell the woods or hear the wind in the trees. I like to focus on my feet hitting the trail.

However, as I said, you really don’t have to do anything and you are meditating. Automatic. Nature gently pushes you into a meditative state.

Practice

A monk will tell you that they consider meditation a “practice.” Hiking is a practice too. You need to practice it consistently over and over again. Then you go deeper. Deeper experiences in the forest. Deeper revelations. More silence. The “experts” will put a finer touch on it and say it is “perfect practice” the will get you where you want to go.

I am not so sure it needs to be perfect, at least not in the beginning. You can learn from your imperfect practice so the next time it might be more perfect.

Will You Be a Monk If You Go Hiking?

Of course not!. How could you be a monk? You need to go to a monastery someplace for a while to get that official title. However, you might be at least “a little like” a monk when you hike. Certainly, you could think like one for a short time and much more so than if you just drive to work every day or sit at home working remotely and never get out into nature.

So go hiking and think like a monk!

Go Hiking and Change Your Personality

Go Hiking, Keep Moving Forward

Well, it could happen! Especially if you have not done any serious hiking before. Maybe you have just been a “nature walker.” Now you are enjoying the scenery but also maximizing the exercise. It could have a significant impact on who you are.

So let’s break it down shall we and see if there might be something to this. At the very least it could mean a positive change in the right direction.

Preparation

When you take on a serious week after week hiking schedule there needs to be some preparation. You need to prepare for the season and then every week get prepared for that week’s hike. If you were the kind of person who sort of lets things happen, having to prepare will change you. It might even bleed into your everyday activities.

After preparing for hiking becomes ingrained as a habit you may find yourself arriving early for meetings because you had thought through how long to would take you to get there and possible anomalies that might slow you down.

The Top Is the Target

If you are not into goal setting before you start hiring regularly, hiking could be just the thing you need to get you started.

Getting to the top is the payoff on any hike. How fast you get there is also a payoff especially if you beat your former time. So you always have two goals. First to make it to the top and then to get there in record time.

Doing this every week makes it easier to set a sales goal or meet a deadline at work. If you are always looking for a “new” top to conquer maybe you will start a company and change the world.

Did It Change?

Let’s say you have been hiking all summer, week in and week out. Have you changed? Sure you have. You can’t do that without changing. Now you are fitter. You are used to being prepared for everything. You are never late. Your whole personality changed for the better.