Regardless of what you are doing, entirely focusing your mind on it and letting your intuition play a part too can make a difference. Take for example exercising in the gym - if your mind is somewhere else and you don’t focus on the muscles that you want to work out and, on your breathing, it might be more productive for you to read a paper in a coffee shop.
That's why I am kind of obsessing about preparing in the right way for the Everest - from customizing the training for the climb to figuring out a smart way of packing for almost two months, while I’ll be away.
I’ve made a list of what I might need to prepare for and how and it got longer day by day:
- Cold temperature management: read about Tibetan monks’ Tummo meditation - shutting down your mind and directing your energy to warming up your body. Also, the modern version launched by Wim Hoff.
- Deal with high altitude: Hypoxico tent at home before the trip; calm mind, garlic, ginkgo and ginger while up there. It seems garlic is Slovenian’s favorite altitude deli. There are no vampires on Everest that I need to fend off, but I will try it nonetheless.
- Training my mind - deep breathing, meditation. Wim Hoff class and Head Space app do help.
- List of quotes and imagery for: when it gets too hard and I am tempted to stop, when I am too tired, and my body is not listening to me anymore, for survival situations, for relaxing and falling to sleep (sleeping at high altitude is a tall order)
- Getting the right gear - such a hassle! Boots and socks, crampons and ice axes, trekking poles and backpacks, sleeping bags and liners, carabiners and jumars, climbing helmet and harness, layers and jackets…losing my mind!
- Finding the right snacks and electrolytes, also good thermos as most of the people run out of water on the summit push as their water bottles freeze. Thinking about the right place to keep the thermos – close to my body?
- How to pack and what to pack - understanding the life of a snail.
- Books to read/listen and music to listen to in the base camp and on the trek, also movies to watch in BC (I heard that you might get bored with yourself up there, so you need some high-quality entertainment)
- Fine tune my wilderness navigation skills.
- Ice climbing/rock climbing skill - knots, hitches, self-repelling, self-arrest, anchors, crevasse self-rescue techniques - luckily very informative videos out there.