Day 2 of executing my competence-confidence-competence plan.
In the morning, I tucked in a quickie hike up to see Natural Bridge – it was so close, on the same road as the via ferrata, how could I not?!?! It’s one of Kentucky’s beloved landmarks and I finally got to see it – Mother Nature has a way about her, for sure!!
Then, it was time to hit the rocks!! I scooted up the road. SE Moutain Guides was quiet (I love going places during the week – I get to avoid all the weekend crowds!! Yes!!) I geared up and headed for the wall. The plan was to revisit sections #1, #2 and #3 as a way of solidifying my competence-confidence gains from the previous day, before I scooted back down the road towards home.
I crawled up the hill to the base of the via ferrata route. And, that’s when I realized, omg!! I forgot to grab my gloves and really didn’t relish the idea of hoofing it all the way back down to the car to get them.
So, I went ahead and climbed without them. I quickly regretted the decision. My nails were scraping on the rocks, and it felt icky. The loose dirt and stones felt slippery beneath my fingers. The rebar was chewing up my hands. The sweat on my hands and fingers made my grip on the rungs feel tenous. It was far too many extra things to fret about in addition to what I had already planned on for my push for the day. Not having those gloves on really threw me!! It made me far more anxious, and threw me outside of my “comfortably-uncomfortable” range.
It’s curious how you come to rely on certain conditions remaining constant when you’re stretching your comfort zone – the whole approach to competence-confidence revolves around changing up what you’re working on ONLY a little bit at a time. Otherwise, you’re forced to attend to far too many things, and you throw yourself back out of your comfort zone.
This points to the necessity of only modifying things slightly as you stretch your comfort zone. Cool thing… even though I was pretty wiped from a morning speed hike, what felt like straight uphill, to finally see Natural Bridge, I still felt 50% more comfortable hitting the rocks on those first three sections than I had felt the day before!
And this is the strategy – keep reworking what you’ve already done, keep as many things constant as possible, stretching slightly, over and over again, until it becomes your new normal, before reaching out comfortably-uncomfortable yet once again towards your next challenge.
Continue Reading: Via Ferrata, Day 2 continued: Stretching
Smarter-Not-Harder U 