Notes on believing in yourself
In my climbing, as in my life, I’ve always strived not to delude myself in my abilities
If there’s one piece of advice I really kind of loathe, it’s this: just believe in yourself.
Anything is possible. You just have to set your sights on the goal. Make a vision board. See yourself doing the thing. Envision it in your head. Believe that it’s possible, and it will happen.
This kind of power of positive thinking stuff is—how shall I say—not for me.
And yet as rock climbing has exploded in popularity over the past 5-10 years, sometimes it seems a new generation of just believe-in-yourself thinkers has suddenly flooded the climbing gyms and shown up at the crags.
They’re the ones who are incessantly calling up to their friends who are on a climb, “you can do it!” when in fact they have no idea if their friend can do it, since they themselves have never been on the climb and probably just met this person at a Meetup.
Look, the facts are these: climbing up a hard, vertical rock formed by a million years of uncaring geology is not simply a matter of believing in yourself. Y’all are new here, so my advice is to maybe get to work on cultivating the very real strength, technique, focus, and mental toughness that it takes to climb, and climb hard and well and with grace—and then you can start to get back to relentless positive encouragement.
My friend Jordi is brilliant at straddling this ground. He’s great at paying attention to your climbing style and then suggesting a goal that is just enough to stretch your ability and make you a better climber. And, he is relentlessly stoked and encouraging about your capacity to try hard and do it. But the thing is Jordi knows you the climber and the climb he has suggested as a goal. His positivity is directly anchored to reality—it’s not bandied about as some all-purpose tool to magically generate results and good feelings.
One time not long ago I was climbing with someone new to Rumney (so they’d never been on the climb I was attempting, and they didn’t know anything about my climbing ability), and at the first sign of struggle on my part, they called up to me, “you can do it!” I stopped, hung on the rope, looked down at them, and in my best joking fun voice said, “you don’t know! You have no idea if I can do it!” They took it in the spirit I had intended, and we both laughed and continued on.
In my climbing, as in my life, I’ve always strived not to delude myself in my abilities, and there’s nothing less attractive to me than someone else deluding themselves about theirs.
When I don’t know if I can do something, that’s exactly what I tell myself: that I don’t know. And if I know for sure something is out of my depth—that a climb is way harder than I’m capable of this week, or this season—I don’t pretend that if only I just believed in myself that those facts would magically change.
And yet… so it was that I had all of this deeply engrained commitment to what I “know” about my own abilities suddenly challenged. The past few weekends I’ve been climbing with someone new, and far, far better climber than me. She was psyched to work on a climb called King Cobra, rated 5.13b. I’d never even been on a 13. My highest red point (climbing clean on lead with no falls) to date had been a 5.12a/b—and three years ago I hadn’t climbed anything harder than a 5.10c.
I’d come a long way, but still: getting to 12b, the next grade up, was proving difficult. I’d tried a few already this season and still hadn’t been able to send.
The plan for the day was to belay her on King Cobra, and then she would catch me on British Airways, a towering 12b arete a few climbs over. It’s long, with a cruxy compression move out to the arete and a looming pump factor on hard, crimpy moves at the top—moves I’d watched a much stronger climber than me twice fall on a few days earlier. Still, I felt like it was within reach if I could build some endurance and climb smooth.
Unfortunately, as we got to the crag and I looked up at the arete jutting from the beautiful black- and orange-streaked rock, I saw the whole top of the climb was soaked. Two days of rain earlier was still seeping down over the crimps on the upper slab section—there was no way I could hope to send.
I had to find another climb, and the only obvious candidate was directly next to King Cobra: a wickedly hard, technical, slanting traverse called Anaconda da Vida, rated 12d. The climb was two and a half grades higher than anything I’d ever climbed. Still: maybe I could try hard and hope to not embarrass myself. It was a beautiful October day after all, and I was out enjoying it, climbing and strong, healthy and alive.
That first day of trying, I had no belief. The aim was to sort out some moves and maybe build some finger strength, but mainly just to give her a good belay on King Cobra.
The second day, I got a little obsessed. Her stoke was rubbing off on me, and I put in more tries than I ordinarily would on something so out of my range. Also, I’d suddenly become very interested in the crux move, the hardest part of the climb. it was a balancy bump with the left hand to a terrible, oddly angled crimp on ridiculously tiny feet. The first four times I’d fallen trying to do it, but it was the fifth or sixth try when finally my left hand stuck, my feet held, and I was able to shift my body weight ever so slightly to set up for the next move.
Still, just being able to do the one hard move once did not mean the climb was within reach. After the slanting rail, there was a scary, heady lead up through a roof, and then a second roof. At the end of the second day, I couldn’t see how I could possibly have the endurance to string everything together. Maybe a section here or there, but not the whole thing. The climb was very, very hard.
On day three, I came out with another partner. He’d seen me climbing strong, but not this strong. He was encouraging about the progress I’d made on the crux, but also realistic about how hard the whole thing was. On my first go, I climbed through the difficult and tiring lower section but ran out of steam just before the crux move. I hung, rested, did the hard left bump to the crimp again, then worked up to the first roof.
Then, as I was moving up, something deep in my memory clicked—an image from the year before, of my friend, working the same climb—she had moved left just below the roof—a simple traverse, to a rest—a pause, to regain some strength before pulling through the upper sections. A break in the climb.
I stepped left, reached my hand around a blind corner, felt a juggy bulge of rock, and stepped over onto a deep, slightly slanted ledge. It was a mondo rest. Gigantic. What we call no-hands. I could more or less just stand there indefinitely. I could get it all back. All the strength and pump and effort expended on the lower traverse section, I could regain.
Suddenly, Anaconda wasn’t one, long endurance climb that I could never hope to string together; it was now broken into two sections, with a major rest in between.
Holy shit. Maybe I could do this.
There, midway up the climb, my belief did a 180. A full pivot. I definitely could not do it before—and now, I maybe could do it. I could maybe even do it today. I hadn’t believed in myself. Now, I wanted to fucking go for it.
On the next attempt, I climbed smooth. Focused, deep, my breath calm, everything in sync. I got passed the crux, finished the traverse, and then—just below the rest—my foot slipped. It was a heartbreaker. I’d fallen not because I’d been too tired, or because I couldn’t do a move, but just from a foot pop. It happens., but I was upset. I was upset because I was so close. I could feel it. Taste it. A 12d! It was within reach.
I lowered and rested for an hour. I had one more burn in me, one more attempt before my muscles quit and the light faded. This time was as before: my breathing smooth, all grace, all footwork, all commitment. My head fully in the game. I bumped to the crimp, shifted feet, leaned into the rail, got to the clipping jug after the crux. I breathed, calmed my heart rate, shook the pump from my forearms, and prepared for the last scary roof move before the rest: right foot up, reach to the crimp, over to the horn, to the side-pull, to the under-cling, clip the rope, step left, grab the jug, and I was there. Rest… keep it together, don’t fuck up, and send.
As I pulled the final roof, moved up the slab, and clipped the final chains, the endorphins rushed in. I let out a scream and all the emotions flowed.
I’d just done something that just a few days earlier I hadn’t thought was possible. I’d tried just to try, and now my entire framework for what I was capable of had shifted. Everything about my goals and physical limits were being recalibrated. And later, as I enjoyed a send beer with friends and smiled a wide smile, I had to wonder: what if I had just believed in myself from the start?