Perspective is Everything

SPOILER ALERT

It’s day 2 of Alone, Australia 2023 (new on Netflix), and 3 people have already gone home. One due to illness, two by their own choice. 

On night one it rained, soaking the camps of all 10 contestants, and dousing their fires and the surrounding areas. For most of the contestants it was just an unfortunate way to start a very difficult challenge. After getting setup on day 1, night 1, they had to spend day 2 starting over. Not a good use of energy or time when calories are limited and day light is always working against you. But for most of them after a moment of acknowledging their wet clothes, grieving their lost fire, and assessing what they needed to do to fix their shelter, they got to work. But that wasn’t the case for the two contestants who would tap out less than 24 hours after being dropped off.

For them it was all too much. A fatal blow they never saw themselves recovering from.

We (my fiancé and I) watched in amazement as they unraveled and let their fears take hold of them, paralyzed from being able to doing anything constructive. They paced around in circles talking to themselves about how bad the situation was. They mumbled repeatedly about how with everything wet they’d never get another fire started. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, at every other camp fires were being re-started, or not used at all. One guy chose to forgo the use of a fire until it got colder. He and a couple of other contestants caught rain water to drink so they wouldn’t have to boil any.

At one point the female contestant who would go home made a half-hearted attempt at starting another fire. And when it didn’t work out, she broke down and started counting the minutes until she would call for extraction. She looked around at the beautiful dense forest surrounding her with it’s trees covered in a rich green moss, and said “it’s so dark in here, I need to get out.”

Both contestants that left got picked up with pictures of their families in their hands. They had spent the whole morning of day 2 grasping at those photos. They used them as part of their rationalization to leave. They had a great life back home. Children and spouses they loved and missed. They told themselves that they could go. That they had nothing to prove.

But having something to prove and challenging yourself is precisely the reason that you sign up for this show in the first place. You know that you are going to be alone, separated from all of civilizations, including your family and loved ones, and that you’re going to have to fight to survive in a harsh environment with limited resources. That is the show that all 10 participants signed up for. The only difference is perspective.

It’s clear to me that the two people that went home on day 2 were checked out before they even got there. They just needed an excuse to hang on to so they could convince themselves that it was ok to leave. They entered the competition with that mentality. And when the rain came it was a blessing from god. They could pack it in. The rain literally and figuratively extinguished their fire. 

Instead of looking past it and realizing that it was only day 2 and they had time to course correct, they allowed it to occupy permanent residence in their head. They dwelled on it until it got so big that they couldn’t overcome it. All of the fears and anxieties they had before the show swelled in their brain like a balloon. Until there was no room for anything else.

And while these two people spent their mornings unravelling and complaining about their mis-fortune, 8 other contestants at 8 other camps in the exact same situation, went about their day assessing what they needed to do to survive and acting on it. Rebuilding shelters. Hanging wet clothes to dry. Building fishing poles and nets.

It’s an amazing example of the power of perspective and mental fortitude. And how important it is to be able to push through if you want to achieve the goals you set for yourself. How you prepare mentally is just as important, if not more important, as how you prepare physically. 

A few years ago a friend and I set out to summit a mountain together. Our first 14er. The day before we were set to go he said to me, “what if we don’t make it to the top?’ I turned to him and said “what other choice do we have?” 

Perspective is everything.

The Effort to Course Correct is Worth It

A lot of times it feels like it’s impossible to correct a problem. But that is almost never the case. You can always fix a mistake or correct a bad situation. You don’t have to live with a bad decision. It might feel like it’s more work than it’s worth, or like the relief you will get from course correcting won’t be worth it. But in my experience it always is. Nothing is ever as bad as we make it seem in our head. 

The effort required to change is often a fraction of what we think it will be. The sense of relief is 10x what we anticipate it to be. We downplay how much better it’s going to feel if we act on what we want. And we downplay the misery we’re currently feeling so that we can convince ourselves not to do the hard thing.

There’s simple stuff like when you’re lying on the couch watching TV and would like another pillow to prop you up, or a blanket to take the edge off. But you don’t want to move. It feels like too much effort to get up and walk into the other room. So instead you lay there not as comfortable as you could be. In your mind the benefit of being more comfortable isn’t outweighed by the effort to get there.

Or you know you don’t want to eat out again. That if you cooked at home you would feel better and it would help kickstart the lifestyle change you’ve been thinking about. But cooking tonight requires going to the store, prepping food, making a mess, cleaning up that mess, and it’s already late. So instead you order out one more time. You don’t feel bad necessarily, but you don’t feel as good as you would had you made a home cooked meal. You’ve convinced yourself it’s not that bad.

Then there’s the more complicated bigger items, like figuring out where to live. Something I went through in the last 2 years.

By my second full year living in Los Angeles I knew I didn’t want to live there long term. But I also didn’t know where I wanted to live, and the idea of trying to figure it out, throwing a dart at a map, spinning a globe, fatigued me. It seemed like it would take forever, and in those moments living in Los Angles seemed like a fine option. But I was never fully comfortable there and I knew I had to go. I couldn’t bury the feeling.

So at the end of 2022 my girlfriend (now fiancé) and I put all of our stuff in storage, left LA, and embarked on a 3 month road-trip to find a place to live. We drove from Los Angeles, to Massachusetts, down to Florida, and back up again. When we didn’t find a place we liked, we moved in with her parents for the spring and summer. By the time fall came around we were toying with moving to Colorado. It checked a lot of boxes for us, and plus we had no other ideas. 

Around the same time, coincidentally or not, our friend told us about someone he knew who was looking for renters in the Denver area. We took it as a sign of fate, and jumped on it. By the end of October we were driving to Colorado with a small Uhaul in tow full of belongings from the east coast. Almost a full year after leaving LA, November 1, 2023, we were now living in Colorado.

But the home we were renting was temporary. We had 6 months to find something long term. So we spent our first few months driving all over Colorado looking at different areas and homes to potentially live in. After driving across the whole state and back, twice, we concluded that we wanted to be close to Denver. At first we tried to buy a house, but I was basically denied a mortgage because I didn’t have any non investment income. So we looked for rentals, and luckily found a place we love. 

On June 1, 2024 we officially moved in and got right to work making it feel like home. With one problem. Most of our things, furniture, books, dishes, more clothes, exercise equipment, was still in storage in LA. So at the end of May I had to fly to LA to meet movers who would empty our storage bin and drive everything to our new home.

I flew to LA, stayed with a friend, met the movers, then flew back to Colorado to pack up and move the rest of our stuff, all in time to meet the movers arriving with our stuff from California.

Packing up our apartment in LA, putting everything into storage, driving around the country searching for a place to move, living with my in-laws for 6 months, driving to Colorado, searching for a place to live there, flying back to LA to get our stuff from storage, flying back to Colorado to move the stuff we already had with us, was a lot of fucking effort and time spent over an 18-month period to land where we are now. But all of it was worth it and I’d do it all again, because I’m infinitely happier than I ever was in Los Angeles. 

There were times when I was in LA that I thought I’d just suck it up and deal with being there. But lucky for me I’m incapable of silencing my desires. I’m so happy I listened to that voice that said get out, and followed through on my decision. It was more work than I ever anticipated, but not more than was worth it to be happy. The relief I feel now about living somewhere I love is 10x what I expected. The path of resistance always leads to better outcomes.

The Behavior of Change

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Be careful of thinking its just the way you are

When I was working I used to wake up at 5 am so that I could be at the gym by 5:30 am when they opened. I wanted to get my workout in, shower, and be sitting at my desk no later than 8 am with my breakfast. I prided myself on being one of the first ones in the office. When I started training for my first Ironman I woke up at 4 am to meet my team for training.

After following this routine for 10 years I had convinced myself that I was someone that needed to work out first thing. And in some ways I did. Because when I didn’t, my mood suffered and my days were chaotic. Schizophrenic even. My mind couldn’t focus. I had become so programmed to that routine, and believed so deeply that I needed to workout that early.

In 2018 I left my job, and despite not having a job to get to, a desk to fill, I continued waking up at 5 am - 6 am just to workout. It’s been six years since I’ve held a formal 9 - 5 office job, but it’s only been recently that I’ve been working on de-programming myself. For a couple of years I’ve realized that I’d prefer to sleep in and spend my mornings writing and reading with a cup of coffee. And that I feel so much better when I workout in the afternoon. But I was so resistant to changing because I feared that if I did, my days would be ruined. 

I’m just someone that needs to start my day with a workout. I can’t miss it. And that belief kept me from doing what actually wanted to do. It kept me from listening to my intuition telling me “that’s not us.”

That’s just one example, but I havre many more throughout my life, as I’m sure you do.

I never believed I was the type of person to get married, until I met my girlfriend, who’s now my fiancé.

I never enjoyed the taste, texture, smell, or look of mushrooms, until I listened to a 3 hour podcast with mycology expert Paul Stamets, and I learned all about the health benefits of eating mushrooms.

There’s so many beliefs we tell ourselves that never allow us to get better. I can’t control my temper, I’m just an angry person. I can’t be happy, I’m just a depressed person. I can’t invest my money, I’m just not analytical. 

My grandmother used to always say “I’m just a scary person.” Her way of saying she was afraid of everything. Afraid of strangers. Afraid of being alone. Afraid that something would happen to her kids, her grandkids, her husband. When she was a child her mother passed away, and she was left with her father and step brother. I never met her father, but by all accounts he was a miserably and shitty fucking person who treated my grandmother like shit. And her brother, who suffered from seizures, was no better. Living in a house with these two was definitely scary. So it is no wonder why my grandmother was a “scary person.” She was raised to be.

I’m sure there is something in your life, a situation where you realized that the way you thought you were wasn’t true. Something changed that caused you to realize it. Maybe something happened at work. Or with your parents. Or while reading a book. Or on a trip to a new place. Maybe a podcast on mushrooms like me. It’s happened to all of us. Understand that that is true of almost everything you believe about yourself. That nothing about your behavior or actions is set in stone. That your habits and routines, your likes and silks, are all subject to change, and you can change them. 

My good buddy has the best saying. He’s a guy who’s competed in a handful of full distance triathlons (Ironmans). He and I cycled thousands of miles together all over California. Whenever someone says “I can’t do _____,” he says, “not with that attitude you can’t.” Believe you can and you will.

What do you believe about yourself that might not be true? What new information would make you believe change is possible? 

There’s No Way to Guarantee Success

But you can give yourself the best shot.

A few years ago a buddy invited me to attempt a summit of Mt. Rainier in Washinngton State. I said yes without hesitation. But I knew nothing about the adventure that lied ahead.

It turns out that at 14,410 ft Mt. Rainier is one of the highest mountains in the lower 48 states, is the most glaciated peak in the contiguous U.S., and it is therefore one of the more technically difficult to climb.

One of our guides said that she thinks it’s more challenging than Mt. Everest which stands at over 29,000 ft. I knew none of this.

When I agreed to join my assumption was that we would be doing something akin to the backpacking trip that my buddy and I had met on a couple of years earlier. That was a 7-day trek around Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia. I found out quickly that this trip would not be at all like that.

When you’re attempting to summit a mountain peak like Mt. Rainier there’s a lot you need to know. You need to understand how to walk in crampons over glacier crevasses. You need to know proper ice axe arrest technique to prevent yourself from falling off the mountain cliff, and dragging down everyone with you in the process. And you need to understand how to hike through glacier, ice, and rock while tethered to other people, with a pack on.

That’s the real life saving stuff, and speaks nothing to the challenge of hiking at elevation with 30 - 40 lbs on your back. Proper nutrition and hydration. Sleeping in a tent in freezing cold conditions. Pooping in a bag for two days while your privates are exposed to snow and the cold. 

This is all a long way of saying that success, getting to the peak, relies on a lot going right. And it relies heavily on having the proper mindset.

After the challenge in front of us became clear, my buddy and I were talking about it a couple of nights before over dinner. He said something to the effect of “do you think we’ll make it to the top?” To which I replied, “what other choice do we have?”

A few days later I was one of two people from the group who made it to the top. A lot had to go right. In addition to everything mentioned above I was lucky to be coming off a 6 week cycling challenge that put me in some of the best shape of my life. That challenge, along with a couple of years of endurance racing experience, had taught me about nutrition and hydration, and how to push past physical limitations.

But I can’t help but think that having the mindset of “what other choice do we have?” played the most important role for me. Climbing Mt. Rainier was one of the most challenging things I have ever done in my life, and there were many instances where I stopped and asked myself “what the fuck am I doing here?” But each time I made sure to follow it up with “getting to the top.”

It’s not that I didn’t have doubt, pains, fears, or concerns, because I had all of those in spades. But I never allowed them to take a permanent or even long term residence in my mind. All of these doubts and feelings were quickly cast aside by the positive thought of having no choice but making it to the top.