Our lives are the accumulation of how we invest our time and energy on this planet. These moments are mostly made up of routines and habits and, if we are wise, a deliberate practice. Whether you read, write, paint, compose, move, run, play, garden, cook, or clean, it doesn’t really matter what you do, so long as you are doing something that has meaning to you.
My climbing practice is how I make sense of the world around me. My practice teaches me many things—discipline, routine, how to train, how to show up, how to focus. It gives me meaning. Climbing is what I seek mastery in, and a place in my life for continuous improvement. There is no limit to my potential as a climber, and my growth won’t end until I decide to stop.
Full disclosure: I don’t actually refer to my climbing as a practice. The only time I have heard “practice” used in this way is in writing books like, Bird by Bird and Writing Down the Bones. When I read books like these, I am amazed by how similar other practices are to my own climbing practice and the process in The Art of Dogging.
In books like Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and Don’t Quit your Day Job: What the Famous did that wasn’t, you begin to see patterns. All of the great thinkers and artists that we have admired throughout history have a key thing in common: they all had a practice, a routine that they stuck with. They did the exact same thing every day, every week, for years. Their work nourished their souls in some way, and gave them purpose and meaning.
We have images of what successful people look like, but don’t always get to look under the hood to see what goes into that kind of life. Once you discover the work habits of successful people, they seem incredibly boring and tedious, because they do the exact same things over and over and over and over. But when you have found your practice, you see it differently, because now, you GET to spend hours and hours doing the exact thing that you love doing.
The route every great master in their field takes is through practice. And happily, that is a route available to each and everyone us, should we choose to see it.