Summary

The article recounts a personal journey of self-discovery and life lessons learned during a challenging 4-day hike in the wild nature of northern Finland.

Abstract

The author embarked on a physically demanding hike through Finland's rugged terrain, seeking to uncover life lessons that could be applied to daily life. Amidst the arduous journey, the author discovered that the mind can be incredibly resourceful when given time and space to think. Two strategies emerged to ease the difficulty of the hike: focusing on physical sensations to connect with the body and distracting oneself by engaging in conversation. The overarching life lesson was the importance of staying present and focusing on the task at hand, rather than wishing for the challenge to end. This approach, akin to taking one step at a time, is presented as a universal principle for achieving goals and enjoying the journey of life.

Opinions

The author believes that enduring a lengthy and physically demanding challenge can yield valuable life lessons.
Engaging with the full spectrum of feelings and sensations during the hike is seen as a way to transform negative experiences into positive ones.
Distracting oneself with conversation and thoughts can be an effective strategy when facing tedious parts of a challenge.
The author emphasizes that constantly hoping for a challenge to end makes the experience unpleasant and the time drag on.
Occasionally looking up to assess the best route or actions is important, but the focus should primarily be on the immediate task to avoid suffering through the process.
Setting clear goals is important for guidance, but the real achievement comes from the work put in, step by step.
The author suggests that wishing for quick results implicitly devalues the present moment, turning the passage of time into a punishment rather than a pleasure.

This Great Life Lesson You Cannot Miss

Self-improvement advise I found while hiking in the wild nature of northern Finland.

At the end of August, I went to visit Finland for the first time in my life, with the plan of making a 4 day hike through the wild nature. Packed with a backpack weighing around 20 kilograms, up to 20 kilometers of hiking per day, and going over the highest tunturi (a tunturi is a hill high enough that its top is above the tree line) in the reserve, I found myself up for a challenge.

The purpose

What I wanted to find out on this trip was:

What life lessons can you learn going through a lengthy and physically demanding challenge?

The goal is especially about learning a lesson that would translate into daily life.

So anything that is not a general lesson does not count.

The journey

After the first day of hiking, it had become clear that it would be a long journey, without any feeling of the time flying whatsoever. Day in day out, me and my comrades would hike over endless hills and tunturis, around some of the thousands of lakes Finland is famous for, going over rocks and swampy substrate.

During this hike, I found out that having countless hours to just walk and think makes you very creative, almost childlike. There are endless things on the road to ponder upon, as well infinite remaining tasks in your mental inbox waiting to be processed for who knows how long.

The mind is an incredible tool, and all by itself, it started to help me with my journey.

After coming up with many ideas about how to think to make the experience feel like less effort, I came up with 2 different strategies as well as a very valuable life lesson:

1. Focus on what you feel

This would allow me to fully connect with my body, as there were more than enough sensations that help you to feel alive. Pain in your feet, tired and sore legs just to name a few, are all part of the deal. It’s quite remarkable how little of the spectrum of feelings and sensations you get to experience on a day-to-day schedule. This is a way to become more connected and to practice turning something negative into something positive. This also worked very well as strategy number 2.

2. Distract yourself

Placing your focus somewhere else than on the challenge you are facing can be very helpful at times. Especially when the going is not incredibly tough but just a little bit tedious. I found that striking up a conversation about whatever it is that comes up from your mental inbox works wonders for this, thoughts you normally enjoy by yourself now can be enjoyed in conversation.

The life lesson

On the third day of the hike, I was getting myself mentally prepared that this would be the toughest day, hiking up and over the highest tunturi in the whole reserve. This tunturi consisted of multiple smaller hills that proved to be very steep for ‘ just hills’.

This made me realize the biggest lesson of this trip, and I’m sure you will recognize this.

When you have a goal in mind, what do you focus on?

Possible answers in the example of the highest Tunturi as a goal are:

To constantly hope the challenge will be over soon, hoping every hill and every step will be the last one.
To only look down, only focussing on the next step.
To look forward every now and then, to look for a short-term goal and route (read plan), and for the rest focussing on the next step.

As it turned out, I found that there is one strategy one needs to adopt in order not to suffer the process constantly. This strategy is focussing on the task at hand at least most of the time.

Whenever you are constantly hoping for the next hill to be the last, you are implicitly defining that where you are now is not where you want to be. This makes the time go awfully slow, and the experience at best pessimistic.

What I also found is that looking up occasionally is very helpful in making sure you pick the best route (or actions/tactics) in the short term. Be aware, though, that you should only spend a little time on this.

Most of the time, you want to focus on just doing the work, step by step.

Life lesson for daily life

So how does this story about nature translate to a crucial life lesson?

In order to accomplish anything in life, it is wise to set clear goals that help guide you through the process. It is easy, however, to get drawn away by goal setting and by focussing too much on the result.

The real results come from putting in the work, so you should be focussing on taking the next step most of the time.

Hoping the result you are after will come quickly means that you are implicitly making your current situation undesirable. This makes the passing of time a punishment instead of a pleasure to enjoy.

To be more efficient with taking steps, it is important to look up from time to time, so you can make adjustments along the way.

“To get through the hardest journey we need to take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping.” — Chinese proverb

Thanks for reading my article. Since you made it all the way, also check out this super short article based on one amazing quote!

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