My dear friend and I have a hobby of climbing the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado.  First let’s keep it real – we are hiking and crawling up these peaks but not doing “climbing” with ropes – yikes!!

We have had all of our children accomplish at least one 14er except his youngest daughter, my goddaughter Kathrine, who is 11 years old.  So on July 13th, we set out for our climb with three experienced climbers ages 66, 51, and 45, and with our newest climber. It is quite an impressive experience to watch the process of nervousness and self doubt turn into happiness and accomplishment.

What we quickly learned is we had to make short and attainable goals because

the sight of the summit seemed just to ominous and big to obtain for young Kathrine.  With each step the peak, even though it got closer, seemed larger and more distant.  Our goal now became spots 50 to 100 yards away to focus on the obtainable and in doing so she was comfortable clipping off the smaller chunks.  Kathrine’s self doubt and anxiety came to a head when we were at the base of the last climb about 1500 vertical feet to go: switchbacks, rocks, snow, and ice. Panic started to set in but a person descending told her how wonderful she was doing, to go slow, and keep her head down, which was everything we were telling her but an expert is anyone outside the home :).  So now we changed our tactic to forgetting about the peak and focusing on how many different varieties of mountain wild flowers we could spot before we summited.

Her breath got better, we walked slowly, she kept her head down to look for flowers, and before you knew it, we were summiting.  She never showed any signs physically of wavering until her mind had doubt.  Once she got OUT of her MIND she was physically unstoppable.

Our health is very similar to this journey. When we put out energy toward healing we get just that, but sometimes it takes shortening our goals to get the momentum in our favor.  Sometimes we need to put our head down and just move forward slowly with little steps to get going.  Sometimes all you need to do is get out of your mind so you get out of the way of your healing.

So set your health goals, then shorten them up so they are more achievable and start counting the flowers. We got to 45!

Yours in health,

Dr. Dan