I'm turning 35 tomorrow and wanted to do a special birthday podcast episode.

Last year I created a list of 34 short-and-sweet lessons I’ve learned from life and the mountains during my 34 years around the sun so far and sent it as a newsletter to my email list. So this year I decided to revamp that list and add one new lesson. 

In today's episode, I'll be diving deep into 5 of my TOP lessons from that list.

If you want to read the full list you can go to https://www.shedreamsofalpine.com/birthday to check it out.

🎉 SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT 🎉 On November 18th-21st we are opening up enrollment to my signature coaching program, The Backpacking Badass Program (our online course, community and coaching program where we teach you everything you need to know about backpacking and being safe and self-sufficient anytime you hit the trail).

For many of our clients, this program was the difference between “maybe one day” and 👉 going on their first (of many) backpacking trips.

Our Black Friday is a perfect time to join us in the program and go ALL-IN on your goals to start backpacking more confidently in 2025 and beyond.

This is our FINAL enrollment of the year, and we are going BIG with our deals, bonuses, and giveaway prizes during that week. 

Early Birds get EARLY ACCESS to our deals (some are limited!). Plus, when you join our early bird list, we will also email you a Sneak Peek Guide of our bonuses and prizes for that enrollment. 👇

>> Join the Early Bird Waitlist here.

Where to learn more about Allison:

• She Dreams of Alpine Blog
• Instagram @shedreamsofalpine

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🥾 BACKPACKING COURSE WAITLIST: This is our signature program where we teach you how to become a safe, confident, and self-sufficient backpacker. It's an online course, coaching program, and community to support you in your journey to becoming a confident backpacker and step into your adventurous identity.

You're listening to the Adventurous Reinvention podcast. I'm

Alison Boyle AKA She Dreams of Alpine and this is the

show that's dedicated to all the adventurous spirits out there who have either

been transformed by the outdoors or interested in what it

looks like to step into a new adventurous and courageous kind

of identity in their life. It doesn't matter what your background is in the

outdoors, what age you're starting at, or where you grew up. If

you're curious about the outdoors and using adventure as a way to

reinvent yourself, you're in the right place. I'll be

sharing all kinds of personal adventure stories, lessons I've

learned from the mountains, teaching what I know about the outdoors and leadership,

and interviewing some amazing adventurous women all along the

way. I've been coaching women on becoming safe, confident, and

self sufficient backpackers and leaders of their own adventurous lives

since 2018. And I know exactly what

big fears and self doubts can pop up along the way. I have

so much to share with you, so let's dive in. Okay.

Before we get started, I wanted to kick off this podcast episode with

a very quick announcement. So very soon on

November 18th through 21st, which is this upcoming November,

we are going to be opening up enrollment to my signature coaching

program, the backpacking badass program. This is our online

course community and coaching program where we teach you everything you

need to know about backpacking and being safe and self sufficient

anytime that you hit the trail. So for many of our clients, this

program, the backpacking Badass program, was the difference between maybe

one day and going on their first of many

backpacking trips. And this is our very special

only happens once a year Black Friday enrollment

and it's our final enrollment of the year into this program. So

we're going big with our deals, our bonuses, our giveaway prizes

during that enrollment week. So if you've been wanting to

start backpacking or become more self sufficient and confident on your

backpacking adventures, then our Black Friday enrollment is a perfect

time to join us in the backpacking badass program because you'll be able to

go all in on your goals to start backpacking more confidently

in 2025 and beyond. So we have a very, very

special early bird wait list for that enrollment event, which

is which if you go to she dreams of alpine.com/bird,

you can join, and I will also drop that link into the show notes as

well. That's shedreamsofalpine.com/bird. And

the reason that you want to be an early bird is because

our early birds for our Black Friday enrollment get early access

to all of our Black Friday deals, bonuses, and

giveaway prizes, and some of our bonuses are very limited. So you are

gonna wanna be on that list. And if you join that list

at shedreamsofalpine.com/bird, my team and I

created this really special PDF guide. It's

a sneak peek guide of all of our Black Friday bonuses and

prizes for that enrollment, which we've never done before.

We've never given a sneak peek. Usually, you'll only find out when you are coming

up to enrollment. But this peek. Usually, you'll only find out when you are

coming up to enrollment. But this year, we wanted to show you what you can

expect so that you can take a look at what we're

doing this year and make a plan for which bonuses enrollment

is different than any other kind of enrollment we usually do and it's, like, got

a lot of things going on. So we want you to take a look, make

a plan, ask questions, and all the things. So, again,

you can get on that early bird list for our Black Friday backpacking

badass enrollment by going to she dreams of alpine.com/bird.

Okay. So now let's get on to our actual

episode. This is episode 5 of the Adventurous

Reinvention podcast. Welcome. Welcome.

So excited that you're here, that you're listening. If you're you're coming back to

another episode, you've listened to a past episode, welcome. Thanks for

being here. So tomorrow is

my birthday and I will be turning 35 years

old. I am officially in my mid thirties.

Tomorrow, personally, I'm gonna be heading to celebrate my birthday, I'm

gonna be going to Moab. I was, like, this year, I wanna spend my birthday

in the desert. So I'm gonna be going to Moab in the van with,

I'm gonna be meeting my family there, and I'm also be

going with my husband, Michael, and we're gonna be camping in one of our favorite

areas. We're gonna do some, like, day hiking. My dad has

never been there before, so I'm really excited to show him the desert.

I'm hoping the weather is really great. Maybe do a little bit of climbing with

Michael, but really just, like, enjoying being there

and kind of unplugging from the world and all the things

and just getting to, like, spend time in one of my favorite places just sounded

like a perfect way to spend my birthday. So

this episode in particular is about some of the

lessons that I've learned from life in the mountains. And I'm a pretty

reflective person especially at this time of the year. So, like,

birthdays and holidays sort of bring out the

introspective side of me in in full force.

And even though, like, I'm a really firm believer that

the best time to start pursuing your dreams and goal is now

no matter what time of the year it is. Like, I don't prescribe to the

whole if it's a new year, that's when you can reset your goals. Like, you

can reset your goals at any time. But I also love that

birthdays and, like, certain holidays, especially around the New Year's, they

kind of remind me to slow down, to reflect

back, and maybe even it's a call to refocus on

what I want to create in my life and experience in my life and

just kind of bring that back to my attention because life can go really

fast. You know, like, I don't even know how we're already in

November of 2024. It feels like it just started.

Especially as I get older, I feel like the years go by faster and faster.

So I just love doing this. And, you know, 35

feels like quite the milestone in my life. Like, I've never

I remember when I was, like, in my teens thinking 35

years old sounded really old and now I'm here. The mid

thirties. I'm officially a mid 30 year old woman. And honestly,

I think I feel pretty calm about it. I think going into my thirties felt

tougher for me. When I was going from my twenties to my thirties, I'm like,

what does this mean? But me being in my mid thirties, I don't know. I

feel I feel pretty calm about it. I like a lot about my

life now and even though there's still a lot of things that I

wanna do, a lot of things that I feel maybe even uncertain

about still and I'm, like, still figuring out because I don't feel

like that ever really stops. But, you know, for instance, like

having kids. Like, I don't have kids yet, and I actually don't know if I

wanna have kids. But I'm kinda just letting that be okay for now.

I've really dropped a lot of my drama around it.

And just in general, like, I've really enjoyed the person I've become.

I have been really intentional in creating this person and I feel like each year

I get to know her a little bit better and I just see that getting

better with age. And like I know personally for me

at least that no matter whether I have kids or I decide not to have

kids, my life is going to be really

exciting and filled with adventure because I know how to create

that for myself. So that's something I feel

very calm about, and, yeah, I'm just excited to see

what, you know, going into older age means for me.

Last year, I created a list of 34

short and sweet lessons that I've learned from life in the mountains during my

34 years around the sun, and I sent it to my

email newsletter. You know, definitely encourage you to join my

email list. I send all kinds of goodies. But this year, I decided to revamp

that list and I also added a new lesson for my 35 years.

So I did kinda go through it. I was like, do these fields still applicable

to me? I updated some. I removed some, all the things.

And, I've I've put that out there for you to

read the full list. In this episode, I'm going to

focus on 5 of some of the ones that are most impactful

but also the ones that I feel like most relate to life and the mountains.

So I kind of pulled those out and I wanna walk talk through

some of my top five ones that really have have made a big

difference in my life. But if you want to read the whole list

of 35 lessons that I've learned from life in the mountains, you can

read that full list by going to shedreamsofalpine.com/birthday

to find the full list, and that's just on my blog. You don't have to

opt in to anything. It's just there on my blog and you can read through

the whole list, and these are on that list. But I'm gonna be kinda going

into these top five ones in a little bit more detail in this lesson.

And one day I hope I get to, like, write a 100 of these.

So maybe we'll do a yearly lessons

learned podcast. I don't know. But

let's dive in. Let's dive into lesson number 1. Okay.

So lesson number 1 is

life is 5050. So this is a concept

that I learned from one of my coaches where she taught me that life is

fiftyfifty, meaning it has both its good moments

and its bad moments. So being a human means that we

navigate both ends of the spectrum. It doesn't mean like we're ever

always happy or always sad. We're kind of oscillating

between these, and we we get that full experience. Right?

And what I found most interesting when I first heard

it phrased in this way that, like, life is 5050 and I learned

that concept from my coach is that I recognized

that the mountains had taught me this concept first, especially,

you know, because when I had first heard this from my coach, I think I

had been hiking and backpacking for 6 or 7 years at this

point, mountaineering, climbing, all the things. Right? And I

saw that concept, and I was, like, I love this concept. It's such a beautiful

concept. The mountains have taught me this. And the

mountains taught me that adventure lies within both the

highlights and the low light lowlights. So, like, adventure

is 5050, backpacking is 5050, any activity that you love

to do in the outdoors is 5050. It has

its good moments and its bad moments just like

our lives do. So if you're only imagining

or interested in especially when you're thinking about like getting

outdoors and and backpacking and all the things if you're only imagining

the highs, the epic summit views, the panorama vistas,

the fall colors, the fields of wildflowers, the big

cheesing smiles, like the friendships and camaraderie, well,

you're going to be disappointed and that's because it's

only half the story for any great adventure. And for

me, like, this is really great news. Like, I love that

the mountains have taught me this lesson because this is what I experience

in life as well. So first, you

know, to have that experience in the mountains, it

really grounds my expectations for my life, especially when you have big goals. Like, when

you're setting big my

expectations for my life, especially when you have big goals. Like when you're setting big

goals you are going to for sure feel the rub between the

5050 because you are going after something that is unknown,

is risky, is hard, you're going to be feeling it, right? And second, is risky,

is hard, you're gonna be feeling it, right? And secondly,

it helps me normalize the low moments that no matter what path

that I choose it will always come with its own flavor

of fiftyfifty experience. And for me with

this knowledge, like, it lets me better celebrate and

embrace all of those moments of life and look at them like this

beautiful story or this beautiful adventure that we're writing about our life

and how we can continue on bravely with our human

journey and our human experience. And for me, it brings me, like,

a lot of peace, and it also encourages me to choose the

5050 kind of life that I would rather be living.

So for example, what I mean by that is, like, if

you have listened to my episode on how I reinvented

myself from going being a full time engineer to an

outdoor adventure educator, I had reached

a point in my engineering career where the fiftyfifty of being

there and staying there, which was the good side was,

like, stable good income, but on the opposite end of

the spectrum it for me became this boring kind of

uncreative work that I didn't feel challenged by, I wasn't feeling

compelled by, it was I decided it was not the

5050 I wanted to be experiencing. So

that doesn't mean when I jump into entrepreneurship that it was just

roses and daisies and unicorns there was a

fiftyfifty trade off there, right? So I traded in my spreadsheets

for a new fiftyfifty kind of life with entrepreneurship.

So on the positive side it's creative, life

changing work. I get to work intimately with people to help them

see themselves in a new way, to identify more adventurously, to feel confident in

the outdoors. This is work that really fulfills me.

But on the other side of that, right, I have the

responsibility of running a company to make sure I pay myself and pay my

employees. I have a lot more pressures. I work harder than I've

ever worked in my life. Like, there are trade offs. There is

fiftyfifty in both choices, right? So

whenever you think about your hard moments in life, remember

that it's part of our human experience. This is the

5050. When you are going through a tough moment, you're

like, remind yourself of this concept, and we know

this to be true because the mountains taught us first. Now I

wanna do, like, a bigger podcast on this one day because I think this is

worth diving into a bit more, but I'm just gonna end that lesson

here to go on to the next lesson. So lesson

number 2 of lessons I've learned in life and the mountains

Loop in the Grand Canyon and it was, like, 4 day backpacking trip and it

was one of the hardest backpacking trips that I had ever done.

It's remote, it's super rugged, it's very

physical, and it required a lot of technical skill and know how

more than any other backpacking trail that I had done.

And I think it's funny because when you read about this trail online like here's

how the National Park Service describes this trail. They say, this

hike offers about a 1000000 ways to get into serious trouble in a

remote part of the Grand Canyon. And for me, like,

me and my friend, we described this trip in one

short phrase. We called it the no fall zone trip.

So there were so many moments on that trail where you're just like, don't trip.

Don't fall. This would be bad. Right? And, like, just as

a public service announcement here because this is an outdoor adventure

kind of related podcast. This is in the trail that I would

be, like, recommending to most of my clients. It's it's something

that you want a lot more skill, a lot more experience,

technical skill, more experience with pivot, more experience

with heat. There's so many things that we could go into on, like, what you

would need to have to embark on this trail, but

that's for another day. So I just wanna say it's a really cool trail, but

probably most of y'all aren't ready to do it yet. And if you

are, then you'll know kind of what things you need to be looking

for. For my friend Meg and I,

this trip was a 100% in our wheelhouse. We We both

collectively, between her and I, to get like, both ourselves

have 10 plus years of experience with all those skills that I've mentioned.

And we completed this route, like, so

successfully and smoothly, and I was really proud of

ourselves. It was a really high consequence trail, but we were really

prepared for it. We were safe with our decisions on the trail. We made pivots

and adjustments when needed. We were communicating really well with each other,

which is important in a really high stakes sort of situation or

adventure that you're going on, is to trust and feel like you can

listen and talk to your partner. We leaned on each

other's strengths. We both had strengths and weaknesses that we kinda had

to, like, ebb and flow between, and we supported one another

in tough moments. So for me, this trip

felt like this full circle moment as an outdoor educator in

particular. So these exact educator in particular. So these exact

these are, like, exactly the skills that I'm aiming to

teach my clients inside of the backpacking badass program, which is,

like, safe decisions, knowing your limits, communicating

well, knowing how to make pivots because oftentimes

you have your plan, which I want you to learn how to make a really

rock solid safety plan and trip plan, but you need to know

how to make pivots within that plan, how to, like, adjust when

things happen, right? So these are things that I aim to teach my clients in

the Backpacking Badass program and they also come from experience.

So testing myself with my friend on one of the most technical

backpacking routes in the Grand Canyon, it reinforced so

much for me. Like and

for the full circle moment, like, I never would have imagined

ever doing something like the royal arch loop 11 years ago when I

was brand new to backpacking. But it's like doing

this trip this year I was like, yes. It was challenging?

Yes. I had some self doubt? Yes. But it was completely

within my wheelhouse. And it felt really good to see the

growth in myself and it felt good testing my skills even

though the trail leaned more on the hard side rather than the fun

side in the traditional sense. So the challenge for that

trip is kind of what made it fun for me and my friend. We were,

like, doing it because it was hard, and to see my growth in

that area so tangibly was really, really

satisfying. It was like this badass adventure

with one of my good friends, testing our skills,

being, like, just 2 women in the mountains, like, using our grit and

mental strength the whole way. It was an experience I'll never forget. Right?

So the lesson, don't ever count yourself out like I wanna

bring it back to that. So I was

if you listen to my the reason why I did these stories at the very

beginning of our podcast, my reinvention stories, if you go back to, I

think it's episode 2, my reinvention story on how I became

outdoorsy, I was not adventurous or outdoorsy

at all when I first found backpacking in my mid twenties.

And, you know, like, if you want to

be an adventurous, like, a bad bitch but you've

never gone hiking before I want you to know there's no

reason that you can't be that woman. Like, I don't care how

old you are, I don't care what state you grew up in, I don't care

how scared you feel about it right now, how awkward you might

feel right now being new to it because we always kind of feel awkward doing

new things, especially if we're starting a new adventure or

hobby in our older age, we can tend to feel like I don't belong here

kind of energy. I don't care if you're divorced. I don't care if

you have no outdoorsy friends or partners in your life yet

or you've always wanted to do this kind of thing but like maybe you had

kids or career or life happened and so you haven't been able to focus on

it until maybe now. I want you to know to never count

yourself out and it's never too late to go for it. So

if you drop the it's too late for me story

that's when we can get to work on crafting like the most incredible

adventurous version of you that exists out there. So I

want you to be infinitely curious about what could be possible for you even

if you can't see exactly what that would look like and

take that next step. Like, get a mentor and a coach. Learn the

skills. Be willing to feel some fear and

uncertainty around all of it and be willing to take some risks and be willing

to be uncomfortable, be willing to be awkward because

no transformation happens without being willing to face some of

that. So for me, I just wanna encourage you

that if you wanna do this kind of thing, refuse to give up on your

dreams, shake things up, explore a new identity for

yourself, see what you can create

from this big, beautiful life that we have as

humans, our time here on this world, play a little bit more, don't

take yourself so seriously, and don't be afraid of a challenge.

And, you know, consider the things that you've

always been told about yourself or you maybe you've already always told

yourself about you, like, that you can change them and that you're

tougher and more resilient and fierce than maybe you grew up believing.

And don't count yourself because you could have a full circle moment like I

did like 11 years from now 5 years from now where

you're like wow 5 years ago 11

years ago I never would have thought I'd reach this point where I'm just so

confident in this skill that I thought I was so awkward at, so new at,

all the things. Okay. That was lesson number

2. So lesson number 3.

Some of these are, like, kinda related but I feel like they're worth going into.

This lesson is discomfort is the currency of our

dreams. This is another quote from one of my coaches

that she says all the time and something that it's easy for me to remember

so I love that phrase. Discomfort is the currency of our dreams. It's something that

I've often had put on a sticky note on my, you know,

computer just to remind myself of this. And this one kind of goes along with

that concept in lesson number 1 about life being

5050, but I feel like it deserves its own special distinction.

So embarking on an adventure that

is outside your comfort zone in any kind of way is

going to be uncomfortable at least

for part of the time. So like first there is the self doubt discomfort so

can I even do this? Will I be at the back

of the pack? Will I be the slow one? Will it be too much for

me? Will I get along with the group, right? Or am I going to be

the oldest one? I get along with the

group? Right? Or am I gonna be the oldest one? There's that

self doubt discomfort. And many people don't even make it to a

trailhead because of the overwhelming the overwhelming

amount of discomfort that they feel from self doubt that they're

experiencing from those kinds of questions. And then if you do make

it to the trailhead, there is the on trail discomfort.

There's the altitude if you're going to the mountains. Right? There's

the uphills, there are the rugged terrains, there's the

weather conditions, there's the heat, all of the things.

But here's what I know is true that if you're willing to let

it be okay that you have some self doubt discomfort,

keep going anyways, and you're willing to accept that there will be

moments that you feel physically uncomfortable on the trail because both of these

things are true in my experience on most trips that you're going to go

on. If you're willing to do that, that is when we

open ourselves up to the possibility, the growth, and the magic that

can come from doing hard, somewhat uncomfortable

things. So when you're willing to open yourselves up to the

discomfort, you can do things you never thought you could do. You

get to raise the bar for you on what's possible.

You can see things that you never would have been able to see and go

places you never would have imagined you could go. You get to make connections

and friendships with others that you maybe never would have made before. You

get to feel alive in a way that sitting on the

couch watching your favorite Netflix show can never compare

to. You get to taste even more freedom because

you've blasted through so many of your perceived limitations.

You get to blow your own mind. You get to experience an

identity shift internally, and you get to connect with that side

of yourself that is unstoppable and, and quite frankly

like a badass kind of person, right? And that's not

even, like those are kind of a lot of like the internal things, that's

not even talking about the other tiny beautiful things that you

experience when you're willing to show up to discomfort and embrace

discomfort like sunsets and alpine glow

and crystal blue lakes and time away from

your phone screens, right, rest for your

soul, peace for that constant, like, mind chatter going on.

Summit. Sometimes you'll get a summit, and sometimes it's just, like, the

simple joy of watching, like, a tiny cute marmot on a

rock in the mountains. Right? These are all the

things that we get to experience when we're willing to

embrace discomfort as part of our join journey. And we have to

remind the brain that it's okay to move towards

discomfort just like we do on the trail. So on life and on mountains,

it is the same. And I want you to approach your life with the same

conviction that discomfort is the currency of

your dreams and that concept can change everything for you.

Okay. So lesson number 4,

if you have big dreams and goals but you're scared,

do it scared. Now this is something you may have heard

before. I know it's like I'm not the first person to ever say do it

scared, but I feel like it's worth mentioning, especially in the context

of adventure. If you're listening to this hoping to step more into an

adventurous identity but you have a lot of fear, this concept

will really help you. In my experience, there is no fantasy land where you are

fearless. And in fact, as you grow as a hiker and backpacker,

what I tell my clients is what will normally happen for most of them is

they'll reach a point where clients is what will normally happen for most of

them is they'll reach a point where it's like new level, new devil.

So you're always growing, always evolving, and therefore you're gonna

be always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and

therefore you're always gonna be encountering new fears. So

stop waiting to be fearless. Fear is not a problem.

Fear is a human emotion. We can work with

fear. And sometimes fear is, like, really important. It's doing its job.

So we need to learn how to distinguish between fear that is, like,

telling us to do something and fear that's just our brain being uncomfortable

with the unknown. But most importantly is, like, fear doesn't have

to be something that defines you or defines how you

show up. So, of course, when you're new to backpacking and, like, outdoor

activities, in the beginning, there's this point where you wanna make sure

that you are doing things safely, you're learning the skills, you need to be safe,

and, like, you have that kind of baseline confidence in what you're

doing. But most people, there is a point where you

do know you have that knowledge, you've been practicing some of those things,

and now you're ready for the experience side of things. Like you're ready

to go out there, test your skills, and you're gonna have to do it

scared. And I often teach this to my

clients by helping them embrace more of their duality. And

I kind of call this concept living living in the and. So if

you could see me, I'm, like, putting quotations quotation marks around and. I

call this living in the and. And living in the and kinda sounds

like I'm scared and courageous.

I'm lazy and hardworking. I am

sometimes sad and happy. I am

lonely and I enjoy my solitude. I have self

doubt and I'm gonna do it anyways. So I find

that embracing duality helps us release

so much judgment, helps us release shame, and it helps us,

like, release some of the pressure, right, on trying to be perfect. Like, when

we're trying to remove fear entirely, it's

kind of us being perfectionists. We're like, I need to be perfectly

confident and that is not true. We can be fearful

and courageous, right? And I

think that embracing duality reminds us that we're so much more

than our fear and our self doubt. And one more note

like kind of related to this topic, I just wanna also

encourage you that you will get better at handling the emotion of fear. The more

you practice, the more experiences that you have, the more the emotion of fear. The

more you practice, the more experiences that you have, the more that you do it

scared, the better that you'll get at processing the emotion of fear and practicing the

emotion of being brave and courageous. So bravery

and being adventurous and being courageous, these

are and being

courageous, these are just skills that can be learned and practiced just like any other

skill, just like outdoor navigation. These are skills that

you will get better at. For me in my experience,

I mean there

there are some people that are out there that have this kind of like

natural ability to just be brave but for me

it's not something you have to be naturally good at. Like I

wouldn't call myself a naturally brave person.

I am a practiced brave person. It's

a skill that I've honed now with over 11 years of hiking and

backpacking and climbing and mountaineering. And, like,

with that example of when I did that big backpacking trip this past April that

I was just talking about in a couple of lessons,

I still had a lot of fear and self doubt going into that trip.

But, like, the brain, it just likes to question everything, but I know

that now. Like, I know

that I know how to work with the fear, how to recognize

it when it's more valid to pay attention to when it's not, and I've learned

the process of, like, how to move through it. And that has only come

from years of doing it scared. So now for me, like,

fear feel feels more like this softer,

duller sensation in my body. It's less panicky, and it's more like,

okay. Like, my senses are heightened. What do I need to do to

be safe here? What can I rely on? What skills can I pull on from

my toolbox? What resources do I do I have, like, to help

me here? How can I regulate this sensation in my body? And I can

move forward with more focus and calm decision making, which that is the

skill I really want you to practice is learning how to make your fear your

superpower and focus and make calm

decisions and safe decisions even in the face of fear. And

that is, like, so much that's, like, a such better skill to

have than going into something fearless is knowing how to process fear

when it pops up. But for me, all of this started with first doing

it scared. Okay. And finally, this one will be a

little bit shorter, but lesson number 5, I wanted to

share this one last insight from the mountains that has also applied so

much in my life. And this final lesson is that

summits are just a bonus. So when you

start to approach your adventures and your life with that kind of mindset

that summits are just bonus, you're going to finally open

up to the magic of the present moment. When we're only when I'm

using summits here, but you can insert anything. But when you're only focused on

the summit, like, the end point, you miss out on all

the beauty that happens in between, the growth, the friendships, the

little moments. These are what make a life. These are what

make an adventure an adventure. Right? It's not the summit. It's

not the end point. Summits to me

or you can insert big goal here big goals,

summits, these are just coordinates to point our compass towards to get us motivated to

do the growth to do the hard thing to embrace the discomfort

discomfort, to embrace the 5050. The adventure,

the actual adventure in all of it is in the

becoming the person who creates

the who creates the ability to hit the summit, who reaches that

summit point or hits that goal. That is where the true

adventure lies. And so just remembering that summits are just

a bonus and a cherry on top to everything

is such like a calming and important thing to embrace in

your life and in the mountains.

So okay y'all that is all for today

and again if you wanna read my whole list of 35 lessons,

this was just 5 of 35, you can go

and look at my whole list at shedreamsofalpine.com/birthday

to find the full list. I hope that you've enjoyed this episode.

If there was a lesson that resonated with you in particular, I'd love to

know. You can always reach out to me in the DMs on Instagram at she

dreams of alpine. I'd love to hear from you. And I'm off y'all.

I'm gonna go officially close-up and

start to enjoy my birthday weekend. I hope you have a wonderful

week, and talk to you next week. Bye.

Hey. I wanted to thank you real quick for tuning in to the show and

listening all the way to the end. If you love this episode and you want

deeper support in becoming a safe, confident, and self sufficient hiker and

backpacker, then head over to shedreamsofalpine.com/waitless

to learn more about our backpacking badass coaching program, where I teach

you absolutely everything you need to know to be self reliant on the

trails and stop waiting around on others for the adventure

invite. So I'd love to help you more in your journey of stepping into

your adventurous identity, and that program is the

absolute best place for us to start working together. So, again,

that's she dreams of alpine.com/waitlist, and you

can learn all about it there. So that's it for today, folks. I hope

you get to spend some time outside this week, and I'll be back very

soon with a brand new episode. Bye.