A little while ago, we were out celebrating my husband’s birthday. Over the past couple of years, him and I have discovered that this is a new passion of ours. For those of you who don’t know what bouldering is, from my understanding, it’s pretty much like rock climbing but without the ropes and harnesses, the holds you grab onto can be a bunch of different kinds of shapes and sizes, and the courses aren’t as high (though they can get pretty crazy).
I’m not a know-it-all when it comes to climbing, but I’ve picked up on the fact that a good chunk of the time spent at the gym is staring at the route you’re about to take to figure out how you’re going to get to the top. While you’re waiting for your turn, you get to see how others do it as well.
On this particular trip to the bouldering gym, I was watching as a guy struggled to get past a certain point because the closest holds for him to grab were out of reach. Only a few seconds passed, but he was able to get through it and continue his climb by retracing his last few moves and making a couple of changes. Step by step, he was able to eventually make it to the top!
If I was rock climbing, I probably wouldn’t have learned as much of a lesson as I did from watching this guy. Since you’re not attached to anything when bouldering, it can be scary when you have no where to go. You can’t just let go and float to the ground or even risk a bigger jump than you’re used to since there’s nothing to catch you just in case you don’t make it.
In life, we get stuck. Bad things happen, we hit dead ends, and we don’t necessarily always feel secure. Retracing our steps such as going back to college or starting a new relationship may seem like the biggest headache and the last thing we’d want to do (we’ve already made it so far, right?). Time is precious and we don’t want to have to redo what we’ve already done. This experience of watching the guy at the gym this day as he worked through this difficult course can teach us what? For me, I see that sometimes it’s necessary to retrace our steps to not only protect ourselves but also get us to the end goal.
Is there anything in your life that could benefit from this view? Do you feel like your job isn’t the right path for you and you need to seek a different form of education to qualify for something else? Are you in a relationship that even though you’ve invested a lot into, is hurting more than helping you? I don’t blame you, these changes can be hard! But they at least deserve some thought. Stepping back and finding security could definitely be the key to help you go so much further than you thought you could have. It may not be easy, but the best things in life really don’t ever come easily:)
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