Almost 20 years ago I participated in a climb on Mt. Whitney in the winter. Mt. Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48 of the United States, at 14,505 feet, and it is a pretty straightforward climb in the summer. But when you climb it in the winter and add the snow, the inaccessibility of the roads to the higher parking lots, and the weather, it becomes a more formidable beast.

So we had heavy backpacks. I think mine was 55 lbs. And we were doing part of it on snowshoes. Awkward but doable. Somewhere during the climbing on the second day, I started not to feel well. I was coming down with a head cold and my right ear was bothering me. But we were somewhere between 10,000 feet and our next camp at 12,000 feet and there was nothing to do but keep moving. After all, there wasn’t just a couch nearby to collapse onto.

I was thinking of this climb the other day when I had a headache while I was working. I was trying to write a presentation and every sentence was a struggle. And instead of taking a rest, I was slogging it out like I was climbing Mt. Whitney. It was the image that popped into my head of trudging through snow with a heavy backpack that made me sigh and take a rest.

Sometimes I need to be reminded that a heads-down, toughing-it-out approach isn’t the right way to go. Here are some other examples.

Sacred Time

The first thing I do in the morning – before starting my to-do, making breakfast, taking care of anyone else – is to sit and meditate. It creates a calm before starting my day that seems to make everything else I tackle easier, or at least more fluid. It reminds me of the Zen Buddhist saying,

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday – unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”

Stop the Hurry

When I’m in a hurry to get out of the door and I accidentally dump the contents of my purse all over. Or there’s a child whose sock doesn’t fit or shoe won’t tie and everything feels urgent, the best thing that works for me is to stop. Just come to a complete halt. By settling the feelings with a word or a breath until the world (or at least my head) stops spinning, it somehow makes the rest go faster. And when I don’t, I usually find that I just make more messes along the way. This brings to mind the Finnish Proverb:

“God did not create hurry.”

There are times my climbing experience benefits me in ways that I never expected. In this case, the reminder to leave the slogging to the mountains.

You can find me on Instagram and Twitter @wynneleon

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My other projects include my personal blog and my book about my journey to find what fueled my dad’s indelible spark and twinkle can be found on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith.

(featured photo from Pexels)