Trusting your gear. Trusting your self.
If you’re any kind of outdoor lover, chances are good you’ve been told once or twice to “trust your gear.”
That hold might be small, but the Vibram rubber on your shoes will hold.
All you have to do is trust your gear.
The bike’s suspension will flow easily over that rock garden.
All you have to do is trust your gear.
When it comes to our hardware, we get used to trusting the gear. We need to, otherwise, too many thoughts of disaster go racing through our brains and then our performance level plummets.
Trusting your gear allows you to take on a route with confidence, all the worries about what disaster could happen taking a comfortable backseat.
Trusting our hardware is one thing. Trusting ourselves is a whole other world.
The lack of trust in our skills, knowledge, and capacity to handle adversity can be one of the most massive hindrances in our lives.
And this comes down to everything. From handling a medical emergency deep in the backcountry to filling out a job application for your dream position, you need to trust in yourself to show up and do the thing you know you can do.
When I was working in wilderness therapy, there was one mantra that kept me comfortable and confident. Whatever comes up, we can handle anything. No matter what, there’s a path forward because we’ve been trained to take it all on.
But it wasn’t that easy. Because nothing ever is.
So then, what’s it actually look like to trust yourself? And how do you get there?
Build the skillset you need on paper
Most everyone’s journey starts here, and it’s a great place to begin.
Taking the right courses and getting the right credentials is a great start to building that trust and believed competency.
We’ll never get to a place of true competence if we embark on a learning journey all alone. The outdoor industry is built on the shared experiences of everyone who’s worked outside for decades and decades.
That shared experience has come together to build these training courses that are offered by reputable organizations all around the world. These courses are all designed to build up your skillset and your confidence in using those skills, to prepare you for almost anything outside.
But.
The training isn’t everything if you don’t have the right mindset.
I’ve been coaching someone who’s been talking a lot about the need to get the next big certificate or qualification to feel like they can take on their job. But after some time, they realized that even getting that certificate won’t do it.
For some of us, we train and train, study and study, but the confidence just doesn’t come. So then, what the heck do we do?
Scenario! Scenario! Scenario!
Even typing that out, my body goes into some level of stress response.
In my past WFR courses and for my guiding job in Southeast Alaska, the idea of scenarios really stressed me out. You had to demonstrate your skills while people stood there, judging you.
Sure, they were fun at times. Like when we tipped canoes in the ocean with a jetboat speeding circles around us to create more turbulent conditions. That’s memorable, and I know that I can rescue people from the water in tricky situations. But there are plenty of scenarios that were simply stressful.
But looking back on the training, the stress induced by being watched is nowhere near what the stress level can be in a real-life situation caused by the situation itself.
Some people aren’t huge advocates of stress exposure training, and I get that to a point. But when stress is the thing holding you back from showing up, go immerse yourself in it. Make it your friend, not your enemy.
When the time comes, stress no longer gets in the way and can fuel you to perform when it matters.
Pick up a mentor
Mentorship is one of the best ways to refine and improve your skills. This partnership helps you practice a variety of skills while getting real-time feedback.
A good mentor is someone that you can trust to be brutally honest with you. If you get someone who will say whatever they think you want to hear, your confidence level will stick to the floor and you’ll only doubt yourself further.
We need that harsh view of reality at times. We need to be told what we’re messing up and what we’re doing well. Because when it comes to trusting yourself in the outdoors, it can often be about saving a life.
Real, honest feedback helps us grow and get better. Plus, external validation is real. It shouldn’t be the only thing we rely on, but it’s still valuable and can help build that confidence to start trusting yourself outside.
Experience, experience, experience
Situational scenarios and constructed events that help you train up skills are gold, but nothing really nails down a skill like just doing it over and over again in a real-world situation.
They say that doing something for 10,000 hours makes you an expert. It’s all about doing the thing, over and over again.
Maybe you’ll pick up the confidence and trust in yourself at hour 5, or maybe you’re still struggling with it at the 10,000-hour mark.
When you’ve been doing something for a while and feel that you still can’t trust yourself, there’s something deeper going on.
Recognize, confront, and get rid of your limiting beliefs
Limiting beliefs—those tricky things you believe about yourself or the world that are holding you back—get in the way of who we want to be and what we want to do all the time.
And it’s really annoying.
Whenever we’ve done something a bunch of times but still struggle to accept that, not only are we capable but, we’re the best person for the job in that moment, it’s often about a deeper limiting belief that we may or may not be aware of.
These limiting beliefs are born from a variety of different life experiences, and it’s not our fault that we have them. Not our fault, but it is our responsibility to get rid of them if we want to move forward.
Not trusting yourself outside can mean you have beliefs like:
I’m not good enough.
I mess everything up.
There’s someone out there that’s better at this.
I’m a failure.
I can’t handle the pressure.
All of these beliefs will almost certainly hold you back from trusting yourself, which means it will hold you back from grabbing onto the life that you want and pursuing new and challenging experiences in the outdoors, and anywhere else.
There are ways to get past limiting beliefs, but it won’t be easy.
Challenge your belief - Is this belief true? What is this founded in and why the heck do I believe it?
Acknowledge what the belief is holding you back from achieving - Where could I be in life if this wasn’t a problem I’m facing?
Adopt a new belief - Who do I want to be? What do I need to believe in order to get there? What would my life look like if I believed myself to be more capable?
Go be you - What opportunities come up with this new view of myself? What do I want to do now that I couldn’t do before?
Again, it’s not easy. This is some serious self-work that has immense power behind it. This is where the role of a coach could be hugely beneficial.
Overcoming big hurdles is what coaches help you do, and this is a big, towering hurdle.
Trust your gear, and yourself
It’s easier to trust gear. Someone else made it. A lot of people were paid a lot of money to ensure that we could trust this piece of gear.
When it comes to trusting yourself, that’s on you and you alone.
So it ain’t easy, but damn is it worth it.
