For climbers, 2015 has been a year of holding still and trusting where patience will lead us, of the Dawn Wall and its effect on climbing and how it is seen by the rest of the world, of sad departures in the likes of Dean Potter, Graham Hunt, Justin Griffin and Kayah Gaydish.聽
It has also been the year of new beginnings with the Ground Up Climbing Centre in Squamish and clean break ups with the Stawamus Chief鈥檚 calving off of 1,600 cubic metres of rock on April 19.聽
Yet, here we sit, overfed, eyes glazed over and stomach aching from an overabundance of wealth and opportunity, watching as a white winter season descends upon us these last December days.聽
How will you approach 2016? My mind is constantly swimming in climbing goals, destinations, ideas, training, routes, features, boulders, faces 鈥� possibilities. How will you change your life for the better? Will you approach it from a diet angle, curbing your drinking to help recovery, no more sweets or refined sugar, and shrinking your portions to hone in on when you鈥檙e satisfied but not stuffed? Will you take this a step further and experiment with a more rigid diet scheme like the Paleo concept, a scale in one hand for portion measuring and a protein shake in the other?聽
Maybe you鈥檝e climbed for decades but you鈥檙e feeling a new push to improve your climbing technique, like foot work or sequencing? It could be the mental game in climbing, where balancing perceived fear with real risk in falling terms is on your agenda? Maybe it鈥檚 a physical goal where you want to structure your climbing into more focused bouts of training, instead of just doing what you鈥檝e always done during the winter to stay fit?聽
If you鈥檙e reading this, chances are you鈥檙e climbing already or at least interested in climbing. With a new gym in town and a bouldering co-op as well, you鈥檙e poised at the edge of your seat, about to commit dollars, blood, sweat, muscle tissue, skin cells and many endorphins to the cause of improving your life by getting into climbing by whatever means available, whether professional or ad hoc.聽
But hold on. Stop. Take a moment and hear me out on something. When it comes to changes we want to make in ourselves, actually making them come to pass is the hardest part. Change can be a very difficult thing to enact for our brains, which love the status quo.聽
Here鈥檚 a little bit I鈥檝e been reading lately about the psychology of change and how it relates to climbing. You have a finite amount of will power available to you each day, from when you wake in the morning to when you fall asleep at night. As your day progresses, you use this up and once exhausted, you require sleep to rebuild it. Will power is easy to employ in the morning but becomes hard to muster in the evening. To borrow an analogy from my source, Steve Bechtel of Climbstrong.com, your rational brain is the rider on top of an emotional brain elephant. The rider must use small, careful changes to steer the heavy and unwieldy beast towards a goal. You鈥檝e got to shape the path for your emotional brain to have success. Remove the ingredients for shortbread from your house now that Christmas is over to prevent a moment of low-will power baking. Often, we decide to take on too large a change or undertake too many at once.聽
Interestingly, according to what I read, one change undertaken has an 85 per cent success rate, two changes and it drops to a 35 per cent chance of success and three falls to a less than 10 per cent chance of success.聽
With this in mind, put some thought into your first week of 2016. Don鈥檛 be that person who鈥檚 going to be a better listener to his friends, not drink booze, be less judgmental of others, meditate once a day, learn French, stretch nightly, go on a strict Paleo diet, drink more water, get more sleep, produce only one bag of garbage a week, improve your climbing grade stratospherically because this is the year and focus on the enjoyment of the process in the present and not the outcome.聽
Be thoughtful, be focused, be realistic this 2016.聽
Happy new year Squamish; it鈥檚 been a great 2015. 聽
