🪵 Climbing a mountain

Hey everyone, 

Hope your Thursday is just lovely whether you’re Thinking in Mexico City, Chicago, New York City or Rome!

Thanks for reading 🤪🪵

Roots 🌱 

Something from me

Cold take: I love the mountains. I grew up close to the Adirondacks in New York where I had the privilege to spend the majority of my early years in life. Think 0-16 years old. Time in the mountains provides a source of awe (important), a mark of humility, and a sense of relief. It’s fundamentally grounding whether you’re hiking, skiing or taking a psychedelic waltz. Mountains also provide one of the most basic forms of a challenge or obstacle. And both imprints of the mountains stick with you as you grow up. 

Last week, a couple of the lads and I had a group facetime going that landed on the topic of the mountains we create for ourselves. For each of us, the self-imposed mountains take varying forms. Whether it's bad habits, negative self-talk or challenges created to fulfill some external pressure of ourselves, each of us has something we’re working to overcome or climb. 

The voice inside us that pushes to climb the mountain also creates a pressure that feels heavy. It's the same voice that our club soccer coach tells us in our youth, “to keep pushing” or to “suck it up.” It’s inherently self-sabotage, it’s particularly acute with dudes and it minimizes our inner-selves. It’s the same voice that tells us to stay surface level with our thoughts and our emotions. Rather than look inward to understand why we want to climb the mountain, we just see the mountain as the next thing to conquer or overcome (gutturally grunts like a man) perhaps without considering why.

In a lot of ways, I have high expectations of myself. And I have a lot of hope for myself! However sometimes that self-expectation manifests as a mountain that I have to overcome rather than understand. Said differently, the mountains I create for myself give rise to both growth-oriented action and negative self-talk. Think something along the lines of “I’m not good enough” and all the derivatives of that. 

Often, it's easier to overcome a challenge than to turn inwards and learn more about ourselves. For dudes, that pressure presents itself in so many ways that as the challenges pile up, they become futile. We lose sight of why we are challenging ourselves in the first place and the challenge turns into angst, stress, maybe even anger. 

I think it's important to call this out because we’re allllllways going to have mountains. We are always going to have things we need to overcome. And ironically it's easier to face the mountain than to face ourselves. It might even seem impossible to do the work to look inward! And that’s okay. It starts with the question and then giving ourselves permission to be gentle with our own expectations.

To bring the metaphorical mountains to a potentially cringe place, I’ll end with a comparison to backcountry skiing. Before you head into the backcountry to climb a mountain, you always stop at the base to check the signal from your beacon so that others can find you and you can find others in case of an avalanche. It's a moment to pause and consider the journey you’re about to embark on. A moment of self care! Personally I think I can bring intention to checking in with my beacon (read: myself) before heading up the next mountain.

(Too cringe? 🙂)

Trunk 🪵 

How we grow

On how the landscape of therapy could be improved in this moment: 

This resonated. An hour a week is a great start but that is an asynchronous timeline. It may even serve as a crutch in some scenarios. As we become more open as a society with things happening inside us, I imagine plenty of ways in which we all improve our ability to support one another. 

It honestly gives me a good amount of hope for the future. Although the world seems to be in such a upside down way, thinking about the number of people becoming more aware of themselves today versus 10, 20, 40 years ago leads me to thinking about a positive future externality. 

Who knows what that will actually translate to. But some more awareness and empathy might go a long way in ourselves, our communities, our towns, and so on.

Branches 🌲 

Something from you

Appreciate the warm responses to last week’s Log that centered a decent amount on dating as a dude:

People be Thinking on this Log. Thanks all :) 

Leaves 🍃 

Something to leave you with

• Gallup | Meta - The Global State of Social Connections

  • Guesses for which (surveyed) country feels most socially connected?? (It’s Mongolia)

• Spotify - Why is Everyone Acting Like a Victim?

  • Rob Henderson is a psychologist, US Air Force veteran, and author of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.

  • Good listen on what the friendship paradox is, how we can fix the mate deprivation problem, what green flags most women look for in men, the relationship between social media and hostility, why people reason more wisely about others’ problems rather than their own

• NYT - A Hairy Truth About Your Sense of Touch

  • Make some noise for physical touch amirite??

The goal of this blog is to learn a ton and to help others do the same.

Your feedback is always welcome, and if there’s a topic that you want to hear more about, please contact me or fill out this quick survey!

• Twitter: twitter.com/gregmilnarik

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I’m stoked to have you here and talk soon!

Greg

Wind 🌬️ 

What I’m listening to

Anyone ever seen these guys live? Are they as good as they sound? Four minute mark onwards…Heavens! 🥴 

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