You probably need to have things under control. The feeling of being in control may be healthy in a limited way. There is a point in which you may be what is known as a control freak in the psychology slang.
Take a moment and think about how much are you trying to control everything around you. About if you are trying to control things that are out of your influence power or even to other people. Sometimes, a control freak may also try to control other people’s life as a part of their own life and are part of the “everything” they want under control. That leads to have little to none trust in others.
Everyone wants to have some degree of control, as we use to be always afraid of uncertainty, but by putting attention on it, we can deal with it. Release control and surrender.
Control is rooted in fear
It is fear of what can happen if you are not in control. Fear of the unknown or fear of failure for instance. If you are trying to micromanage everything in your life is because you are probably in search for certainty and security.
Obviously, a certain degree of control is needed, considering always the safety basics for instance. The important thing is to know the difference between what we can control and what we can’t.
As you probably already know, manage fear is a huge part of the climbing practice. So, let’s go through it and see what can we learn from it.
Stop living in the future
Trying to control is living in the future. It is living in a way we are attached to a specific outcome. But, surprise! You don’t know everything. You can’t. You don’t know what is best in every moment, in every situation.
When you are looking to fulfill an expectation of a future outcome you are living in the future, which means you are not in the present moment, you are missing a lot of possibilities that are right in front of you by not allowing them to happen.
Switch your thoughts to a trust attitude in which you know you are going to be ok no matter the circumstances. It is called faith. That’s surrender.
How does it apply to climbing?
You may have some expectations in your climbing. Like sending a route in x attempts, not falling in an “easy” route, how your partner has to talk to you (or not talk at all), or simply about grab the next grip. But not everything is in your control, no matter how much we try. A lot of things can happen and we have to learn how to be ok with every situation that arise during our climb.
If something doesn’t work for some reason, you better think it’s the best thing that has to happen. Have faith. It is a complicated concept, but it always works.
Perhaps you failed a project to have the opportunity to improve, realizing that you were not prepared for such a challenge and saving yourself the suffering of trying to tackle more difficult climbs without being sufficiently prepared to face them.
Or your failure may make you try other projects for a while, leading you to discover new beautiful climbing spots and nice people.
Go with the flow. When you focus too much on controlling everything, on meeting your expectations, you are only seeing a part of the whole picture, a page from the entire book.
Surrender to the rock is responding to the challenges the rock provides with no expectations, with no resistance, doing what is necessary at the right moment, not like when you are trying a movement again and again just to discover in the 100th trial you were doing it wrong.