The Voice That Offers You the Exit
Last week before I left, I sat with my wife and told her something I hadn't said out loud to many people: I didn't think I could finish the 29029 challenge I was about to take on.
Seven and a half weeks earlier, a surgeon had been inside my knee. Torn meniscus, cartilage damage. I'd lost a big chunk of training and already canceled two other races that year. And the thing in front of me was 29,029 vertical feet, the height of Everest, thirteen trips up one brutal mountain at Snowbasin.
Thursday night I sat on a park bench at the base, stared up at that first pitch, and did quiet math on all the ways I might not make it. I did the same math during Friday's 5:30am warmup.
I'm the guy who tells people to get in the arena and compete - and I was guilty of standing at the bottom of a challenge with almost no confidence I could do the thing I'd flown there to do.
The doubt didn't leave when we started. It rode with me. Ascent one, ascent thirteen, the whole way.
For a long part of my life, I figured that doubting meant I was failing. I could have spent the climb treating the fact that I had doubt as the problem. It isn't
The real problem is when we obeying that doubt.
In 1987, a psychologist named Daniel Wegner sat people in a room with one instruction: do not think about a white bear. Say whatever comes to mind, just not that. They rang a bell every time the bear showed up.
It showed up constantly.
Then he told them to stop holding it back, and the bear came roaring in stronger than before. He called it ironic process. The harder you shove a thought down, the louder it gets.
Read that again if you've ever tried to white-knuckle past your own doubt.
You can't delete the voice. Fighting to silence it just hands it a megaphone. And that voice is exactly how drift sneaks in. It doesn't scream "quit." It offers a reasonable exit.
Blame the knee. You've done enough. The moment you sit down to weigh the offer, you've already lost.
So I quit trying to evict the doubt and let it ride shotgun. I just refused to let it drive.
The way I did that was simple. My friend Amanda Schaefer had texted me Thursday: when her doubt gets loud, she tells it, I don't negotiate with you.
I borrowed it. Climb after climb, out loud, sometimes with an expletive bolted on: I don't negotiate with you.
And I kept climbing.
This week, do it before you need it. Name the reasonable-sounding exit your voice offers when things get hard ("you're too busy," "start next week," "you've done enough").
Then write your one-sentence answer to it. Not a debate. A door you've already shut. Say it out loud the next time the voice opens its mouth.
The voice isn't going anywhere. Neither is the climb you've been talking yourself out of.
Stop negotiating. Start climbing.