Fear of the Unkown

The more I gain experience in rock climbing the more it serves as a metafor for the challanges of life. I was out climbing yesterday and the rain forced us to climb at a wall I handn't been on before because it was one of the few dry walls. We only did a couple of climbs, but thinking back to it now, the lesson I learned from it is how the fear of the unkown plays into a situation that should otherwise be comfortable.

You see, all winter, I train to climb better. For the grades that we were climbing yesterday, I was more than skilled enough, more than strong enough. Even now, when I think back to the climbs, I remember the moves as being easy. However, that wasn't the case when I was in the middle of the climbs. There were several spots where I wasn't sure what to do, and had to work through it, with a significant amount of fear nagging at me. It wasn't that the moves were necessarily hard, it was what came after the move was made.

When you're in the middle of a climb, quite often you can't see more than a move or two ahead of where you are. If you haven't been on the climb before, the stuff you can't see is pure unknown. If you work through what you can see, there is no comfort that the next series of moves are going to unfold. That reality changes the way the climb is approached. You're timid, you're fearful and it causes hesitation.

Isn't real life the same way? The next step past the one we're taking is never guaranteed. I think that causes the same timidness, the same fearfulness and the same hesitation that I experienced yesterday. Wouldn't it be great to know excactly what lies ahead? We wouldn't have to waste time with fear and hesitation. We could just forge forward with an unending confidence that our actions would breed success. But, alas, life is not like that, we have to deal with the unknown.

I think there is a way to deal with this, if we just stop to realize what we're scared of. If I think back to the climb, the fear was of failing. There would have been some consequences to that. A few scrapes maybe, perhaps a bruise, but most likely nothing more. I don't think that was the fear though. The fear was purely of failure, period. But, what's wrong with failure?

I've been hesitating getting on harder routes for the same reason, but I've started to break down that barrier. I've started to understand that failure is a teacher. You can fail, and then learn from it. If you look at failure that way, it's an increadibly powerful tool because you can take what you learn and, get this, 'try again'. Now, and this is out there, if you try again, and use what you leared to succeed, did you still fail?

For me, the answer is NO. Failure no longer exists. It's just part of the process. This is still kind of new to me, but as far as the climbing goes, I'm learning that if I can embrace failure as part of the process of learning, I feel more comfortable getting on a climb that is at or above my limit. If I can keep doing that, I can realize success on these climbs, which will move my limit. Failure is an invaluable part of that process. Limits aren't exceeded without failure.

Now, if I could take that out of climbing and apply it everyday, what would that look like??