Lessons Learned While Hiking

Life rarely goes the way we plan it and yet that’s part of the adventure. You get to choose if you spend time worrying about every possible deviation or going along for the ride bumps and all. 

I was raised to be over-prepared, you never knew what might come your way. If you took a 20-minute walk through a park, you better make sure you've got a full first aid kit and plenty of water. Because you never know what could befall you in those 20 minutes. You might fall down, you might get stuck standing in direct sunlight talking to your neighbor and then you’ll be soooo thirsty, you’ll need that whole bottle of water and probably some electrolytes too. So best to pack a couple bottles of gatorade and at least two granola bars because you’ll be hungry at some point.

That's what I thought it was to be prepared: overthink every possible scenario and bring more than you need.

When I was a kid every summer we’d go to Pinecrest, a mountain town with a lake, a small general store, and lots of cabins. That beautiful lake has a 3.5 mile hiking trail that as a kid, I hated hiking because it was an all day affair. I wouldn’t get to go swim in the lake or go to mini golf in a nearby town because the hike was the only activity we could fit in that day. 

Now flash forward many years, I'm grown, married, and my child is in elementary school and mostly self-sufficient. My husband usually hikes the whole lake trail every trip, either solo or with my brother. Somehow it only takes them 2 hours to go around the whole thing. My husband rarely takes water with him and that totally threw me for a loop. How can you go anywhere without a bottle of water, especially if you’re exerting yourself?!

When my daughter was about seven, the three of us decided to hike around the lake together for the first time. I was nervous, packed water and more granola bars that we could eat. The hike took half the time it took when I went with my parents as a kid!! AND I enjoyed the hike, it wasn't an arduous journey it was fun! To top it all off my daughter and I swam in the lake later that day. Again, unheard of in my childhood because there was only enough time for one activity in a day. Yet it was totally possible to do two things in the same day! 

When you get stuck in overthinking, analysis paralysis, or overpreparing, it can stop you from doing fun things.

You can be limiting yourself without even knowing it because that’s all you know! That’s not your fault. It’s a true fact that we don’t know what we don’t know. AND it’s possible to expand your knowledge in small, simple ways. 

Think bite sized expansion like wearing neon pink shoe laces when you swear neon pink is not your color and then getting complimented by 20 strangers as you walk down the street about how awesome your shoelaces look. That totally boosts your confidence to buy that neon pink scarf you’ve been secretly drooling over. And when you wear the scarf, your co-workers and your best friend say that neon pink is definitely your color. So now neon pink is a part of your wardrobe and you don’t even blink an eye when you put it on. It’s your new normal. 

Journaling Prompt: What’s something you overthink or over prepare for that you’d love to simplify? 

Fun side note, my joy this week was having an in-person lunch with some of the CommuniTea members (my weekly journaling group). We normally get together over zoom to share our weekly joys and do the journaling prompt together (you know that’s in this blog post). It was pure joy to eat and journal together IRL! 

There are a few spots open in CommuniTea if you want to journal with us, we meet Fridays at 4pm Pacific Time, ​learn more here​. 

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