Activity to Improve Your Writing? Write!

This is an age old question panning across activities from rock climbing to developing study and thinking skills. Maybe even running a course of entrepreneuring. I took up climbing for health purposes, rediscovering my life, and a need to have some niche in my life that I could grow, see gains, and express a need for progress. It was quite independently competitive.

I compete only with my own past. Many times I have to pull myself back to the mantra. I always win and lose so it is a paradigm and transcends a definition of a traditional sense of failure which is welcome. It redefines failure as a red "F" for Flag to only do something differently. This if followed eliminates the paradigm "Do the same thing expecting different results." defines "insanity." There is no other definition for insanity. Simply follow the path; Different thing equals different result. Save time from not needing a shrink, ... well, at least a little anyway.

So the most admired climber I knew personally had moved out of state where bigger and better crags were, although I still had some contact, meeting at climbing areas et c. He said it simply, "To improve your climbing, ... climb." With the deepest commitment it boiled down to that. I had already taken to pull-ups on moldings at doors in my home on commercials watching television in the early day. The TV was left behind, a waste of time and a threat to an active life. I got to fifty, seventy, one hundred, later to one hand, first right, then left and about five years later I with the right circumstances a right hand index finger was "pulled off." Okay bordering on braggers' rights. How does this apply to writing?

This applies to writing and any other activity, a meaningful activity that from a perspective of training yourself you advance to an "executive thinking skill" with a perspective as if a student would see why a teacher does what he/she does. And similarly as an employee takes on the employer's viewpoint.

You take on the responsibilty of the position of one above and gain new insights. It is progress. Back to the "Climb to climb" mindset.I took the advice cum grano salus, with a grain of salt and decided I would buy it after trying it. My "loophole" was I would include all activities I did as related to climbing. Any meaningful activity especially with a need for deep focus, fore thought, direction, possibility for progress, above the status quo, et cetera.

This worked for climbing very well and I distanced myself from a status quo level. I was transcending. (Oh, yes. Meditation counts too.) This opened up the new terra firma I took on a bridge to other experiences.

After six years like a sabbatical I realised while ascending, (ass-ending) a route in North Carolina called Rats Ass, a relatively wonderful climb, obscure and challenging and a respectable grade of difficulty I would benefit, make gains to take a year off from climbing. I for one did not want to be another "@#%%^" that made a climbing magazine by falling to my death. And I realized, The skills I learned to succeed in climbing were more universal, like my mentor had hinted at. The skills would work more so in other areas, where they would be to my benefit as others more and more, being less self-centered for my tastes, contributing to society, ... and more later. Tell me what you want/need? Thanks. TE