Discipline may not be your problem.

So I've been doing a little bit of online mentoring in the last year or so, which I think has been pretty interesting, pretty fun. And you know, it's kind of similar, people not necessarily the same age, but like kind of in a similar place with guiding where they're trying to do the next step and figure out what that is. And you know, and just need a little bit of guidance or something to talk to really about how to make this career work in some of the facets. And it's been interesting because it's kind of a great opportunity for me to reflect on my own journey, my own career and the choices I made, the things I did and the things I didn't do. And you know, it's been interesting because you know, I think when people oftentimes are looking for this advice, you know, about what to do, I think sometimes people will, sometimes the conversation will kind of come down to like talking about discipline. Right. And I oftentimes hear people like, oh, I don't have the discipline for that or whatever. And you know, when I, when I'm actually thinking about, and this is something I thought about a lot for myself personally, especially in the last several years, is you need more than discipline, right? Discipline by itself is great, but it really doesn't really do a lot for you. Unless you have the underlying structure as well. So a lot of times when people think they have a discipline problem, it's actually they have usually a structure problem. Right. We are all more disciplined than we may think. Like if you show up to work every day, even if you don't want to, that's discipline because there's structure involved. If you brush your teeth twice a day, right. That is discipline because there's a structure that's been overlaid. So a lot of times when I'm coaching these people, you know, and trying to tease out, you know, what their goals are, what they think their strengths are, what they think they need to work on, things like that, you know, a lot of times it's like, all right, well, it sounds like you just need some more structure. So you can apply the discipline you have, right. A great example is like people oftentimes want, you know, to increase their ability to climb like their technical grade, they want to climb harder. Either just personally or professionally or the necessity to get into a higher level course. You know, and there's a lot of things we could talk about there, but oftentimes I'm like, you know, this is a great place to outsource the structure. Because I bet if you had the right structure, you had a trainer say, hey, here's a great progression. Someone that you can talk to, right, and develop a relationship with. Then you probably will have less of an issue attaining these higher levels of performance because you have the structure now. And once you have the structure, it's a little bit easier to apply the discipline you have because you don't have to spend all the energy, like trying to figure out the structure. I think for me, sometimes I get really overwhelmed with certain aspects of life when it just seems too big, too much, too many things like I can't figure out that, like, it's like, thinking about starting a business, like, not that I really want to start a business, but like, like, that just seems overwhelming to me. It's because I don't have the structure of why it takes to do that. So it feels completely like out of my ability to do that. It's like, well, I actually do have the discipline. I just don't know how to do it. And that would be a place where I would need to outsource that. So once again, this, like, helping people figure out like, where it's a great place to spend the money to outsource the information, right, the structure. So they can just focus on the discipline to just focus on the results, right. Ultimately, you want to focus on the process. But the results are nice, right. So we do, we do hope to achieve something by applying a certain amount of discipline to a certain structure, right. I mean, I do that every day, playing the guitar, right. I have a lot of discipline, but I've also focused a lot on my structure, especially the last year about refining my structure in terms of length, time, rest, approach to working on music, because you can easily just like have the discipline to sit in a chair for hours and just mindlessly do repetitive things. But to be honest, that's not the most efficient way to get better. It gets you something, but there is a certain diminishing return. So like understanding how the brain works, understanding how to structure your time can really, you know, maximize the time you spend doing something, right. So making it really efficient. So in that way, you have the discipline, you have the structure, but you're also trying to maximize that efficiency. And I think that goes true for guiding and learning any skins, really. And I just think it's really interesting that mostly don't have discipline issues, you most have structure issues. Like, for example, if there's a plate of brownies in my house, I will eat multiple brownies at the time every time. Right. Fun fact, brownies are the only food I'll eat to live on it. And my structure is just to not have that plate of brownies in my house. Right. So that bolsters my discipline. Now, I have enough discipline that I'm not constantly going out and buying boxes of brownies. Right. There's enough barrier there to kind of enhance my discipline. But if they're in the house, I will eat them and eat a lot of them at once. So like, I just don't have them in the house. That's how I deal with that. And it's also interesting how, and I was thinking about this other day, there's a difference between external structure and internal structure. Like, sometimes there's an external structure that's imposed on you. And then there's an internal structure that you need to develop to help facilitate that discipline. Right. Like, if I go to any gas station, there's usually brownies at the counter. That's kind of an external structure imposed on me. Like, they want you to buy the brownie, right. They're putting them there for a reason, you know, an impulse buy. But I have enough internal structure at this point. It's barely enough to know what it feels like to vomit after eating brownies. And I have to work really hard to conjure that image in my head to have the discipline not to buy that brownie at the counter every time. It's kind of funny. I actually experienced this the other day. I was up in the gas bay, which is in Quebec and gas bay peninsula. It's a really wonderful backcountry ski place. Here in the Northeast, super cool for very, various reasons. And we were on this skin track. I had never been on this particular skin track. It was a newer like cut, you know, glazed skin track. It was a set skin track. And it was classic skin track, not just in Quebec, hostile, but in everybody style, you know, fairly technical like it was just low angle enough where you didn't need risers, but you could have used risers, but you didn't quite need risers. And then there are a lot of kick turns. Of course, there's sharp, the angled steep kick turns poorly, you know, laid out. And anyways, so we were going up this this skin track. And there was a party of Quebec, who off folks above me, big party. And I ended up catching up to them. And it was funny because as you got higher up on the skin on the skin track and you got further and further with more and more kick turns. But before you got like into this open snow field, before you ripped your skins, like the upper kick turns all had big divots below them, which means, oh, people are tired and they're falling off the kick turns because they don't have good kick turns. And you know, I get up to this party and there's this guy, like making this kick turn for life, you know, it's kind of like long sliding fall conditions, we had this dust on cross conditions where this person was they weren't going to go that far, but still, you know, kick turns are a place for you to hurt. And I was watching this person like they're in mid kick turn classic, you know, you know, kick turns style, big open V and guy was struggling. He was nervous. He was there for a handful of minutes making this kick turn because he was scared to transition his weight from one foot to next now that he was in big open V just was not set up for success. But that's what this person knows right and ultimately made the kick turn, but it was like really I for me personally was uncomfortable to watch not because I know there's a better way, but just like watching this person's emotional state and physical state, especially as everybody's watching them right. It was just kind of like, oh, this isn't look very fun. And then the group let me go by and then I actually demonstrated like a really good kick turn, I went on prep to kick turn did a really slow motion, you know, which took significantly last time this other person took almost zero effort, my part and then went my way right. So here's a situation where this person has the discipline to go out and ski tour and beyond these skin tracks is not like they'd never ski tour before that was clear they clearly have ski tour before and they had the external structure. impose of them of this skin trap, which was mostly fine, right? But at all these kick turns, they were sharp and it was hard, you know, dust on crust and the kick turns were, you know, not in the best condition because of everybody doing this particular kick turn style, right? But on every single one of those kick turns, I used my internal structure of how to do a good kick turn, how to prep a kick turn to do it well, do it efficiently, do it safely, do it quickly, right? So every kick turn, I still did that even though there was external structure already in place, impose of me, and I used my internal structure. And I actually showed my, a couple of my friends who were new to ski tour, they had never been on a skin track like that, they had never done real kick turns. And I showed them how to do it early and some other tricks about being on a skin track like AVA turns. And by the time they got to the top of the skin track, which also had a little side healing, which also had a little boot pack, you know, it was actually have great skin track for them, they were like vastly better ski tours from the morning because they had the internal discipline to soak in the structure I was giving them, the internal structure I was giving them so they could respond more appropriately to the external structure that was imposed on them. And it was really great to see that and they were psyched, they were just like, "Whoa, we went from like zero to hero today in ski touring." Like we really soaked up these lessons that, you know, me and my other friend were giving them about how to skin effectively, especially when you're dealing with more technical aspects. So I think that's pretty important. And for me as a guide and as a mentor, it's part, there's a big piece of me that's like, I'm always trying to show the way, right? As I see it, right? You know, as I've learned a certain way of being in the mountains or in life, I'm trying to help impart people into finding their own way, you know, with through the the allegories of my life and my experiences, because my way is not necessarily your way. It can't be because you're a different person. We can have some similar things, right? But not going to be exactly the same. So, but there are some things where I'm like, all right, I just want to show you the way. I want to help you understand how to be in this place better, right? So you're more comfortable. You're using less energy. You're using less equipment or more equipment if it's appropriate, right? That you are now maximizing the discipline that you might have inherently in you with the structure you need to support it in back and forth, right? Those are those things go back and forth, right? So like we once again use this example of ski touring with this group that we were just with in gas bay, like day one, we go out and ski toward the conditions where like it's not going to avalanche. It just warmed up and rained and got locked down cold. Like the snow is not going to move, like long-siding falls is a problem or punchy snow, but avalanche is not a problem, right? But, you know, these people were newer to ski touring. They'd never really ski toward in the back country like this. And I was like, we're going to we're going into avalanche train. We're going to put the avalanche kid on because we don't we don't know. All we know is the weather report. What happened, right? But you never know. Funny things happen and then you don't want to get caught with your pants down. So it's like, I said, it's important that we do a beacon check and the parking lot. And here's why, and this is and here's how we do it, right? And there are a few different variations on how we do it. But we need to do it with these specific parameters because we're trying to check these specific things every time we need the discipline to do this every time. And here is the structure or one structure to do it effectively every time, right? And there's there's both like positive or there's there's many positive reasons to do that that go beyond just making sure your beacon's working and you have the right battery. There's like very much a culture piece around your group that you're ski touring in with rather that you that's important to do this and just the habit of always doing this. So if you always do this really well, if you apply the discipline and the structure to always do this really well, then you don't have to worry about it, right? You don't have to worry about, you know, do I do it, do I not do it? It's like it's just you just do it and it's done. And now you can really focus more on the other aspects of that day, right? Having fun ski touring in the mountains and trying to be as safe as possible, right? So it's really interesting to lay that framework and now that I'm older and can reflect more and have searched for more structure because I now I realize I actually have a lot of discipline and I've exhibited a lot of discipline throughout my life. I just many times for many topics haven't had the structure that you know that was really necessary. And when I got old enough, I could I started to realize I had a search for that structure. Sometimes there are certain things that I provided my own structure for because of just my general curiosity like I would, you know, try a lot of technical things, try to experiment with technical systems and I just had this curiosity which gave me the structure to make observations, try things and then and then observe what went well, what didn't go well and then try to think about how to make it better. So there are some things that we can provide our own structure, right? It's like it's like at some point if you are mentoring somebody else, you have developed some of your own structures around how to do certain things, right? That were influenced by other people, but certainly you made them into your own thing, which is kind of cool. So anyways, atomic habits, a great book by James Clear, because this is all tied in together discipline, structure, habits, how to build these things in small increments, so it seems less overwhelming so that and they will be longer lasting how you build them in conjunction with other good habits you're already doing. So once again, it feels easy to create a new habit and apply the discipline that you probably have, right? And create the structure that you need, right? So that's a great book, atomic habits to read. But then once again, you know, if you're struggling with something and you think it's a discipline thing, it might be really more of a structure thing. And then you might need to outsource that structure piece to somebody else to provide you at least a framework to start from. And then from there, you can evolve that to suit your specific needs. That is not easy sometimes because you know, you can go online and just find structural or the place doesn't mean it's good structure, right? There is good structure and bad structure, just like there's good discipline and bad discipline, right? All those certain things, like you can practice too much and get all kinds of like an instrument for example and get all kinds of hand injuries or whatever that injury would be for your particular instrument, like that's bad discipline, right? So sometimes the discipline to not play is really hard. Just like sometimes the discipline to not climb or not ski if you're dealing with an injury is really hard, but like that's super important. But anyways, find people who resonate with you that you enjoy their approach to whatever topic you're trying to gain structure in. And then once again, that's a starting point for you to start evolving and creating your own structure to help you with your discipline. So discipline, structure and habits, it's all one interesting game. There's external, you know, structure rather and internal structure. And it's worth trying to go down these rabbit holes to figure out what you need and help you move further down your path more efficiently.