Tag Archives: Blogging

On my recent trip to Utah, a vacation with Stefan’s family and son, we took a hike through the beautiful Capitol Reef, a few hours south of Salt Lake City. The whole family drove down for a night of camping and a day hike. I had never been hiking in the mountains like that, and I knew it would be an opportunity to experience an immense amount of beauty, enjoy the majesty of the mountains; as well as to hike and climb, get the kind of exercise and sunshine that make me feel good about myself, beautiful and healthy.

But I could not keep my head in the game at all. In the car on the way to the site, we passed through mountains, by waterfalls, by fields and little towns — I should have been awed and taking pictures and notes the whole time.

Instead, I was writing blog posts in my head, thinking about my next marketing move, figuring out who I needed to contact for interviews, running through a mental to-do list for my clients, and trying to figure out the best strategy for filling the audiences for my upcoming book tour.

As we walked the path through the mountains of red rock, climbed up walls and crawled into caverns, surrounded by two brothers competing for the highest cliff, their parents enjoying the serenity, and a 7-year-old chattering away as around ever bend was a new discovery, I considered how I might share this experience with my readers. Blog post titles ran through my head. Lessons formed bullet points in my mind. I took pictures of sheer mountainsides and bright skies and imagined where they would fit into an article, how I might caption them on Twitter.

I was failing at that hike. And I KNEW it.

It’s supposed to be a transcendental experience, a chance to lose myself in the majesty of nature and the satisfaction of a good workout. If a blog post is going to come out of it, it should be something like “What the Mountains Revealed to Me” — not “The Results of the Strategizing I Did While Hiking”. I just couldn’t lose myself. My mind wouldn’t stop THINKING.

Plus, I kind of didn’t want it to.

That was my biggest obstacle. I knew that I should be taking the opportunity to quiet my mind and be present — but all I WANTED was to work on my Next Big Thing. I didn’t want to let go of it for a second, lest I get behind, lose interest, or miss a vital idea.

Then, it started to rain.

Shortly after we turned back to return to camp, rain clouds that seemed to be only above us (we could see sunshine over the mountains!) slowly built to a downpour.

Finally, in the chilly summer rain, I was able to crawl out of my head. For the 20 minutes that we walked through the downpour, splashing red mud onto my calves, sliding on rocks underfoot, heavy drops streaming down my face, weighing down the only shorts I had to wear for two days … I forgot about my blog posts, let go of my next manuscript, stopped planning, scheduling, scheming, obsessing.

I was just PRESENT.

The 7-year-old whined beside me, “I just want to be in the car!” and I replied without slowing my stride, “The only way to get there is to keep moving.”

Aha! My Revelation.

The only way to get there is to keep moving.

Nothing you do will stop the rain, dry your clothes, clear your vision, or clean the mud from your legs. Nothing you say will make you warmer or close the distance between you and the car. You’ve never done this before, and the rain is making it a little extra difficult. But you know your goal, and you know exactly how to reach it. If you let your fear and discomfort and wishes-for-something-more keep you from moving, you’ll just be stuck in the rain in the middle of the mountains.

Your only choice is to keep moving forward. The process is deceptively simple, and the reward is unbelievably satisfying.

Have you ever struggled to get outside of your head? What snaps you back to the moment?

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Image credit: Hey! I took that photo myself. Could you please ask before you use it?