Great Escape Podcast episode 6 - A Little Escape on fear

Alex Hannold climbed the 3000 ft vertical rock face called El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in the USA. He did it on his own without ropes or any climbing aids - a technique called Free Solo. Is he mad? Probably but he said this:

"You face your fear because your goal demands it"

If your goal isn't demanding things of you that are stretching you is your goal really worthy of the name?

I've been thinking a lot recently about a film I watched the other day by a guy called Alex Honnold who is a free solo climber.
So basically that means he climbs really, really difficult rock faces without any ropes and on his own.
It was June 3rd 2017, he climbed El Capitan which is a 3,000-foot rock face in Yosemite Park in North America.
Most people take a couple of days to climb it with ropes and help.
He climbed it in just over three hours on his own, no ropes, no safety equipment, just straight up this rock face.
Now apart from the insanity of doing such a thing and I think the film covers that quite well in some of the comments from his friends and his girlfriend and the guys making the film about how... mad because once you're about
50-feet above the ground it's basically you come off your lethal and he's got another 2,950 feet to go.
So I don't wanna get into the insanity of this guy's mind.
But one of the things that really struck me was a comment he made.
And it was almost a throwaway comment as far as he was concerned.
"You face your fear because your goal demands it."
Now this has been really challenging to me because so often we sit in a situation that we don't particularly like or are uncomfortable or we complain about it.
A relationship or a job or whatever it is.
But we don't actually take any action to fix it.
Either changing our own attitudes or getting a new job or talking with our partner or just leaving the relationship we don't do any of those things.
And we could be not doing it for all sorts of reasons.
Fear of something different, but actually quite a lot of the time it's just laziness.
For me looking at launching some new aspects of the business.
There's this huge fear that if I do it it won't be well received or if I do it it won't be successful or if I might fail to do it as well as I want to do it.
And actually at that point suddenly I start to realise that the goal, the thing
I'm trying to achieve, the people I'm trying to help, the goals I have for my own life in terms of the outcomes I want, are they actually what I really want?
In which case the fear of not being able to achieve this thing is in the context of how much do I want the outcome that I say I want?
So next time I find myself grumbling about something
I'm gonna start thinking about whether the goal is not actually a goal that's worthy of the name.
A goal is something that's gonna stretch me.
A goal is something that's gonna push me forwards.
A goal is something that I want to aspire to rather than just quietly allow to drift off into the distance and never happen.
And at that point if it is a goal that I really want, if it is a goal that I aspire to, if it is financial goal, a relationship goal, a fitness goal, whatever it is, a skill that is worthy of the name, goal, if is worthy of being something to aspire to, then whatever fear that I might have about setting off and chasing that goal, pales into insignificance because as Alex said,
I have to face my fear because the goal demands it.
I hope you found that interesting and inspiring.
Please do share this podcast with anybody you think may be interested, may be stuck in a rut, may need help to move themselves forward from a situation that is unbearable or intolerable.
And if you know somebody with an inspiring story please do get in touch, if you wanna see other episodes of the podcast you can find them on iTunes,
Spotify, Stitcher, all the usual places.
But also on the website greatescapepodcast.com/episodes or just greatescapepodcast.com and sign up for the Six Steps to Freedom.
Hope that's helped, see you next time, looking forward to Saturday's episode.

The Great Escape titles music was created by Darren Reddick