It’s funny when I started this life coaching journey, every workshop and class I took talked about summiting mountains and navigating through life—all while I was actually climbing mountains. Then it hit. Hiking IS life, and life coaching is hiking. Brilliant!
So here we are. You have come to this post for hiking, life coaching, or both, or because you are bored and scrolling. I hope you stay for whatever reason.
These are my five biggest takeaways for working with my life coaches and hiking.
1. Clarity and defined goals: When you work with a life coach, they can ask you questions not just to figure out what your goals are but more profound questions about why you are blocked in achieving them—the “blind spots,” we call them. We can’t fix something until we know that it’s not working. And sometimes, we don’t know something isn’t working until someone asks us more questions about it.
When we relate this to mountains, we often work off a preset list of mountains that we want to climb, and we get a patch when we complete this list. We know where we are supposed to go, and each accomplished mountain brings us closer to a finish. Yay!
2. Accountability to ourselves: Your life coach isn’t your accountability partner. YOU are. They are there to support you and cheer you to the finish line, but ultimately, you are doing the work. The only way to achieve your goals is by holding yourself to new habits and keeping the end goals in mind.
Hiking accountability for me is this: I could be sitting around doing nothing from 4-9, or I could be climbing a mountain. That’s what has gotten me through for a couple of years. Now, it’s a little different. My schedule and responsibilities don’t fall in line that simply. However, I can hold myself accountable by having a list of things I know I need to do to prepare for the hike. I need to do things during the hike and the wrap-up of things after the actual hike. I have systems set in place. Bag prep. Hydration. The drudgery of getting off the mountain. Getting home safe and taking a shower and bath and REST. These are all carrots every single time and hold me accountable to the next step.
3. Self-confidence: Life coaching naturally dives deep into the spots that other modalities don’t, with a tremendous amount of grace. Life coaches are trained to see our clients as perfect, whole, and resourceful. We see every client as perfect as they are in that moment. When I am coached, I am reminded that to work, I also have to see myself as perfect, whole, and resourceful. Those concepts allow an underlying confidence that everything will work out. I know I am capable of doing hard things. I know I can get back up after something doesn’t work out. I know that I am worthy of success in whatever way I define that. I am confident in who I am because I have learned to be kind to myself.
Climbing mountains is hard. I have chosen to turn around multiple times because I am in tune with my body and my capabilities in different conditions. I know when to stop. I also know the different between “You should stop” and “Oh my god, I don’t think I can do that.” I have worked myself up from starting on less technical trails to climbing high peaks. I have built a foundation of strength (physically and mentally) to know I can do something. Is it hard? Fuck yeah it is. But I can do it! And if I can’t, I stop and come back to it another time KNOWING that I tried. That, is success. And that success gives me confidence.
4. Balance: Life coaching has helped prioritize what is truly important for me. My family and friends are the most important thing to me. But I wasn’t really sure the importance or hierarchy of things until I had a coach take me through an exercise called, “The Wheel of Life”. In that exercise, you are rating all aspects of your life. Home, work, hobbies, relationships. When I was able to see it in front of me and access where I was putting my energy, it allowed me to shift. I wanted more happiness in my home life. I made changes to accommodate that and now I have more balance between home, work, and hobbies. Though I have less time with my hobbies, I have more ability to be present in each of these aspects which creates more balance and less stress.
We also say it, “The mountains will be there.” When I started hiking, I NEEDED to be there and do it all of the time. But other things were getting neglected after awhile which created a lot of stress for me unknowingly. My needs changed. As I got the strength mentally and physically in the mountains, I was then able to maintain that in my life. I didn’t have to run off to the mountains as much because as I started putting more energy into my home life, it felt as good as the mountains did.
5. Self-Awareness: Life coaching has rocket shipped my self-awareness. I am more aware of my thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, leading to growth and I make better decisions. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes in this every single day. BUT I am aware of where I could do better and give myself grace when I go rogue. Now when something isn’t lining up the way I want it to, I can take a step back and see what I need to change to make something happen. Or, I assess and realize that what I was going for, wasn’t actually what I wanted. It was the feeling that it produced.
The mountains are epic in bringing self-awareness. You are physically and mentally changed sometimes the whole time whether it be technical climbing or longer distances. You are faced with things that you have never encountered before and you have to do hard things to move through it. I started strength training over a year ago because I knew that I was coming into bigger challenges and I needed more strength to get through them. I had the awareness that I could do these things, but I would need to adjust to execute them. And, like a few weeks ago, sometimes I totally lose my self awareness and throw myself down in the middle of a trail and cry. (Sorry Chelle!) I got back up. I called it a hard hike, and the next week I got back out there and climbed the second highest mountain in New York.
Whether you want life coaching or to climb mountains, or both, you have a friend in me! If you are interested in having a call, you can book your free Discovery Call here. If you don’t see time that works for your schedule, then send me a message and I’m happy to find time.
You ARE capable of more than you think. sometimes we just need a little nudge and a cheerleader to get through it!