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Why You Need to ‘Climb a Mountain’ and How
You’re soft, and you know it. So here’s a 9-step guide to getting out of your comfort zone for sheer exhilaration and improved well-being.
For two years I’ve been trying to climb a nearby mountain. Well, a hill actually, but a very steep one. On my mountain bike. At my age! Monthly I’ve tried and failed at what would’ve been a cinch in my 20s. But I never faced this particular mountain back then. It’s new to me. And this therefore unprecedented quest has been incredibly invigorating.
It’s also taken me way out of my comfort zone.
And as with any worthwhile challenge in life, the prospect of succeeding at something hard promises short-term elation and a long-lasting sense of capability and possibility. That, of course, is why we climb mountains — real or otherwise. Or why we used to, anyway.
Modern society has engineered movement out of our lives by removing age-old motivational stressors, argues Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self.
While our ancestors spent serious time and energy finding food and shelter and avoiding deadly creatures lurking in the bushes, nowadays food is delivered to our doorsteps and anxieties are often fueled by imagined threats, like the latest social media post we stew over on our umpteenth doomscroll of the day.
“We need to start reintroducing some metaphorical tigers back into our life,” Easter argues, “so we can start to see that these things that we worry about and have so much anxiety over right now, they’re not real threats to our safety, and we have an outsize fear of them.”
We’ve also become physically soft. For the majority of Americans, any physical activity that feels like effort is deemed uncomfortable. Exercise? Yeah, right.
“Today most of us live at 72 degrees, experiencing weather only during the two minutes it…
