Cognitive Boning Therapy

Some of my friends have been experiencing motivational lulls. One such person sent me a message to ask how I managed to maintain my own enthusiasm, and I started to reply, but then Doylo posted about his own apathy, and I thought it might be of interest to a wider audience, so here follows some of my philosophy on the subject :

Climbing, although fun is not all there is to life. It can appear to be, and perhaps it will be for a few years, but ultimately it doesnt fill all the gaps. If you always eat cake, then cake ceases to become a treat. So dont always eat cake. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If I always appear psyched when I am climbing its because I dont always get to go whenever I want to, so that when I do its a treat - of course I'm in a good mood!

If you do feel down in the dumps about it all, dont sweat it, just go and do something else for a bit. Part of climbing and climbing hard teaches us not to lie down and accept defeat, to battle on when the chips appear to be down and the quest hopeless, so your instinct is to push on even when you dont really feel like trying, but... there's a difference between going and training when its cold and rainy and you cant be bothered to making yourself try to be psyched for something that you arent really bothered about. Your heart wont be in it, and at your limit it needs to be to summon the force to do the deed.

Goals are important to maintaining psyche levels, and goals should be achievable, stretching and measurable. For instance, me saying that I want to do Voyager would certainly be stretching, and measurable, but perhaps not acheivable. If I said I wanted to do the Green Traverse then this would certainly be acheivable but its not a stretch. You get the picture. When I went to swiss before xmas I wanted to do three things, and I set my heart on them - I studied the videos on the interweb and watched what others had done and then when I got there thats what I did. I had a goal, I trained specifically and I was lucky and it paid off.

If you feel uninspired, a trip is a great thing to give you something to get excited about, but sometimes the lull runs deeper and maybe you need to walk away and do something else for a bit. If its true love then you'll be back!

(am full of cold and havent been climbing since before xmas)