Cheryl Strayed on how to be resilient (#45)

The tactics Strayed used hiking the PCT alone can teach us about hanging in there when it's hard

At foot speed, the Sierra Nevada seemed just barely surmountable. I could always take another step. It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubted my abilities, only when I thought how far I had yet to go that I lost faith that I would get there.

Cheryl Strayed, Wild

Parallel to the Pacific Ocean, roughly 100 miles inland, there’s a 2600 mile hike called the Pacific Crest Trail—the PCT.

Starting just south of California’s southern coast, and ending in British Colombia, the PCT, along with The Great Divide and The Appalachian Trail, is part of what’s know as the US’s “Triple Crown” of hiking. Every summer, the trail is dotted with the few seasoned hikers and campers, daring to take on the tough terrains of the Sierra and Cascade foothills. With only the supplies on their backs, they trudge through the PCT for the thrill of adventure; to be in nature.

That was not Cheryl Strayed.

When Strayed took on the PCT in 1995, age 25, she was not a seasoned hiker, and nor was she there for a thrilling summer under the stars. She was there for something much deeper. Only she didn’t know what.

By that time, she’d already endured a hard life. She was molested by her grandfather at the age of 6 and abandoned by her father at 12. When Strayed, born Cheryl Nyland, later moved to Minnesota with her mom and step-father, the house had no electricity or indoor plumbing. When she was 20, her mom was suddenly diagnosed with lung cancer, and died months later. She then married to the wrong guy, did some heroin, and got divorced. That was rock bottom.

She decided she needed to do something drastic. So she changed her name to Strayed (purposely, for its symbolism), and decided to take an 1,100 mile hike along the PCT by herself, all for reasons she didn’t understand.

It wouldn’t be until months later, on the hike, that she began to figure out why she’d come. A decade and a half later, Strayed captured those lessons¹ in her best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

One of those lessons—on how to persevere in the midst of an unforgiving forrest—is the subject of today’s OGT.

On resilience: outside in and inside out

On her first few days of the hike, Strayed has a startling revelation: she had no idea what she was doing.

Her pack was enormous, weighing double the suggested weight. The straps tore into the skin of her shoulders. Her boots were a size too small and gnawed at her heels. She was alone. She was unprepared. And she was scared. That’s Day 1.

The book is the story of how she overcame it—the physical and the mental. She did it, almost meditatively.

First, by being here, now. From the outside, in.

I'd set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again. But the truth was, at least so far, I was consumed only with my most immediate and physical suffering.

This continued through the first third of the trail. Strayed realized that focusing on the task, and, for once, not in her head, freed her. And it allowed her to learn to like her surroundings.

I realized that in spite of my hardships, as I approached the end of my first leg of my journey, I’d begun to feel a blooming affection for the PCT. My backpack, heavy as it was, had come to feel like my almost animate companion. No longer was it the absurd VW Beetle I’d painfully hoisted.. a couple of weeks before. Now my backpack had a name.

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprisingly of all, that I could carry it. That I could bear the unbearable.

These realizations about my physical, material life couldn't help but spill over into the emotional and spiritual realm. That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding. It had begun to occur to me that perhaps it was okay that I hadn't spent my days on the trail pondering the sorrows of my life, that perhaps by being forced to focus on my physical sufferings some of my emotional suffering would fade away. By the end of that second week, I realized that since I’d begun my hike, I hadn’t shed a single tear.

Another thing that helped Strayed was to focus on the progress she’d made and the path in front of her, rather than the intimidating cliffs in the distance.

Unknowingly using what the psychologist Ayelet Fishbach calls the “glass half full” technique,² Strayed writes:

At foot speed, the Sierra Nevada seemed just barely surmountable. I could always take another step. It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubted my abilities, only when I thought how far I had yet to go that I lost faith that I would get there.

Another thing Strayed did was to make herself to stay alone— to face the fear.

Even when she would see other hikers on the trail, she would force a breakup. They weren’t, what she was there for, she decided. She was there for her.

Being near Tom and Doug at night kept me from having to say to myself I am not afraid whenever I heard a branch snap in the dark or the wind shook so fiercely it seemed something bad was about to happen. But I wasn't out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I'd come, I'd realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really -- all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me.

I couldn't do that while tagging along with someone else.

Finally, Strayed used self-talk. She talked her confidence into existence. She told herself she could do it, over and over, until she did.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave.

I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me?

The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

The OGT: Outside in and inside out

The Beatles used to talk to themselves.

According to John Lennon, when the band was feeling down, Lennon would yell at them, “where we going boys?!” And they’d say, “To the top, Johnny.” And he’d say “Where’s that, fellas?!” and they’d say, “To the Toppermost of the Poppermost.” And he’d say, “That’s right!” And then they’d take the stage.

I was struck by Strayed’s combination of tactics. The self-talk. The forcing herself to face the fear alone. Focusing on the present, and building her confidence with what she had already accomplished. She threw at the PCT any trick she had.

It wasn’t organized. It wasn’t how she drew it up. But it worked. And isn’t that basically the only way it ever works?

Seth Rogen said, “if you don’t quit, you might make it. And if you quit, you definitely won’t.”

What Strayed showed were all of the things you have to do instead.

1. Strayed took the hike in the mid 1990s, but the book wasn’t published until 17 years later in 2012.

2. In her book, Get it Done, Dr. Fishbach shows that if you’re a novice, or questioning your commitment to a long-term goal, it tends to be more motivating to focus on what you’ve already accomplished rather than thinking about what you have left to do. Conversely, if your long-term commitment is firm, or you’re an expert, focusing on what you have left to do is more likely to motivate you.