How to let go of failure and jump into your fall

i

stared straight ahead refusing to look

up at a wall

that loomed above me

something gripped my stomach like a

block of concrete

my hands were sweating and i could hear

my heartbeat

ringing in my ears my body

was frozen i couldn’t go on any longer

and it’s not that i couldn’t physically

go on but

mentally i flat out refused

but i hadn’t quite admitted that to

myself yet

the thought of losing all of this

progress

just didn’t quite appeal to me and yet i

was stuck

in this moment too scared to go on but

too scared to let go i was facing

this inevitable fall

now this might sound a little strange

coming from someone who spends

a lot of time in the vertical world

as a professional rock climber i’ve

often found myself

roped into walls that are thousands of

feet high

in places like yosemite california

or the andean mountains in peru

i’ve also been unroped on climbs up to

50 feet high

in places like bishop california but

also

australia south africa and brazil

in each one of these places for each one

of these climbs the goal is always the

same

just get to the top and in climbing

across the board

the goal is to get to the top but there

is a slight difference between

climbing a wall and climbing say a big

mountain like everest

if you’re gunning for everest you want

to try and choose the easiest way

possible because

no matter which way you choose it’s

going to be a long

hard slog but when you’re climbing a

wall

climbers tend to choose the hardest way

on purpose

even though there’s almost certainly an

easier way of the back

people are always coming up to us and

saying

you know there’s stairs around the

corner right you can just

walk to the top but despite this

climbers choose the hardest way because

to some degree

we seek out that failure

we know we’re going to fall we expect it

and we know that it’s going to be scary

which makes sense right a fear of

falling is a natural human instinct

but it’s also a skill that can be

trained and practiced

if you just take a few small falls at

first go into some bigger ones

and learn that when you fall you’ll be

okay

but despite knowing this climbers

most climbers do not practice falling

we’re so focused on the top and since

climbing is part of the deal anyways

we’d rather concentrate on the positive

of moving upwards

versus the negative of falling backwards

we figure we’ll just

deal with the fall as it happens

but now visualize with me for a second

close your eyes

and imagine you’re holding on to

something

really tight you’ve worked hard to get

there

but your body is getting tired

and you feel yourself weighed down

and there’s a growing anxiety in your

chest because

you know that fall is coming and because

you know the fall is coming

a fear bubbles up that makes you hold on

even tighter that fear

keeps you there for a little bit longer

but it’s not enough to keep you going

and when this happens to climbers on the

wall we have strategies to manage this

fear

we take a deep breath relax our body

lower our heart rates and reconnect our

mind to ourselves

and regain enough strength to keep going

but these strategies don’t work every

single time

and at some point we’re going to have to

take the fall and in climbing

and really life in general there’s this

idea that progress

is linear and that in order to be

successful you have to keep going up and

you have to make it to the top

and when you fall you fail

so what happens when you’re scared of

that failure

and you avoid it at all costs

i found myself thinking about all of

this a little subconsciously maybe

as i stared at my own wall the one that

was so big

i couldn’t bring myself to look up at it

all i could do was look straight ahead

at the features in front of me the

dimples of concrete painted over in

white

this big scary wall was my dorm room at

the university of rhode island

it was spring of 2010

and i was halfway through freshman year

facing a round of midterms i had not

studied for

notes and textbooks piled up behind me

the stairs i could conceivably use to

just walk on out of this situation

but i chose the harder way and i kept

staring at this wall

beating myself up thinking about what i

should be doing

in that moment i should be studying

i should be pushing through i should be

sticking out this whole college thing

because

that’s what you’re supposed to do right

but something didn’t feel right to me

i had hit this wall figuratively and

literally

where i could not go on any longer

but dropping out of school was the

failure

and the fall that i didn’t want to face

now over the course of my climbing

career i’ve stood on top of hundreds of

climbs

and experienced hundreds of successes

and for each one of those successes i’ve

taken a thousand falls

and a thousand failures at this point

i’ve learned that after i let go and as

i’m falling i position my body in

mid-air

so that when i land i can minimize the

force of impact

i also know that even though i’ll land

farther from where i started

it’s better than staying in one place

and wasting energy

the minute you let go even though you’re

moving backwards

at least you’re moving towards another

chance to try again

so when i let go of school in 2010

i was scared i had been holding on to

something so

tight something that i wasn’t fully

committed to

but the minute that i did let go i

positioned my body

i positioned myself in the general

direction

of something that gave me purpose and

made me happy

i tried something different for a while

i went climbing for years

and faced the very real fear of falling

again

and again and after a while

i returned to school to face that same

exact fear

in a slightly different context and from

a different perspective

now this spring of 2021

i will graduate from the university of

colorado here in boulder

for me going back to school was not a

failure redeemed but just an opportunity

revisited i wanted to take the lessons i

had learned from climbing

and apply them in a totally new

environment

but you don’t need 20 years of climbing

experience

to figure out how to fall everyone

has the ability to let go

and try again it might feel a little

uncomfortable at first

which is fine now is the perfect time to

practice

so i challenge you to think of something

you’ve been holding on to

something that’s weighing you down maybe

a decision

that gives you a little bit of anxiety

in your chest when you think about it

i ask you to take a deep breath

relax your body and imagine

what it might be like to let go

and take that fall to jump into it even

trust yourself to move in whatever

direction that may be

because wherever you land you can always

look up

and try again