This week, I'm traveling throughout Europe, and at the moment of writing this, I'm in Switzerland. I started this newsletter series by talking about my journaling and how I started doing it to be more deliberate about my thought process, actions, and directions, and a recurring stabilizer I've found is the act of overcoming physical challenges.
I took the opportunity to lead my best friend through some of the paths and terrain of the Central Alps - some more frequented areas and some less. What stood out to me was a couple that turned back roughly 5 minutes away from Lake Bachalpsee (pictured in my first article). This was a hike of around 60 minutes from the trailhead - even though one said: "it's right around the corner", they ended up leaving and both wasted a vast majority of their effort with subpar commitment.
I've discovered that when you do something, you must be deliberate with it - when you choose to climb a mountain or hike a trail a certain day, you commit to finishing it (force majeure aside). The biggest reinforcement for your strength of will is just doing things to completion, no matter what they are - if you choose to love someone, love them with all your heart. If you yearn to climb a mountain, do not stop until you have reached the summit. If you want to take a gondola up to the top of the mountain and take a photo, by all means, but start with that intention in mind such that you do not disappoint yourself.
Choices make us, and choosing where you're particularly deliberate makes us. My best friend and I likened this to a barbell strategy in investing - where you make highly deliberate short term bets and long term plays, but you never aim for the middle safe average or "grey" of decision-making. In finance, when people invest in ETFs (index funds - a basket average of stocks), they make less of a deliberate decision than, say, investing purely into a single stock or set of related individual stocks by virtue of an investment thesis. It's a lazy way to invest if you have no thesis or direction, and I think life itself follows the same principles; if you choose the lazy unexamined path, you will be rewarded with average unexamined outcomes.
It is a rare type of person to be able to climb the mountain, and even rarer so to deliberately choose to do so, over and over. Now I ask you:
Would you climb the mountain?
Be well,
Michael Kirsanov