How To Not Become Someone You Despise
Honing your ability to "move on"
“Self-awareness is important because how you act and present yourself in social and professional settings determines your ability to advance in life.”
Hey reader,
We all know someone who lacks basic self-awareness in social settings. Most — ok, all — of us have been that person at least once.
Hopefully, if and when that’s happened to you, you’ve later come to realize that, “Hey, I might have embarrassed myself the other day” or somehow not put your best foot forward.
Today’s essay is about two things. Identifying when these moments happen and learning from them so as to me more self-aware next time, and being able to move on from situations (or entire parts of your life) that no longer suit you.
And below the essay, a quick installment of the Remote Focus photo series, because I got out for a late-season May powder day last week on Vail Pass. Big ups to Paragon Guides out of Edwards.
I hope you enjoy, and please let me know what you think by hitting reply.
Community Shoutouts
Welcome to the five new subscribers since last week’s dispatch! This newsletter is all about building a life that you want to live — in the mountains, of course. Check out the back issues for more inspiration and actionable tips.
Thanks to those who shared their thoughts on last week’s essay on fintech apps (here it is in case you missed it).
Want to take a moment to shout out Palisade Kombucha, made by my buddy and Mountain Remote supporter, Will. Delicious booch that is slowly taking over the Grand Valley. Give it a try if you’re in the area.
Now, it’s time to move on.
How To Not Become Someone You Despise
My mid-thirties have been a period of self-reckoning. I constantly ask myself a series of self-deprecating questions, like do I like who I have become? Am I living a life of purpose? If my career took a nose-dive tomorrow, what the hell would I do?
And the heaviest questions of all, now that I'm a new parent -- Is this good for my family? What would my daughter think of this decision/conversation/article/etc? What will she think of me?
I don't always have answers to the questions when they arise.
One thing I've found that consistently helps me remain at peace with myself is an ability to move on.
I'm not talking about moving on from romantic mishaps. Rather, moving on in this sense refers to an ability to move from one aspect of your career and relationships to the next, and from one chapter of life to the next chapter, without being insecure about what you're leaving behind.
In other words, careening through the phases of life without FOMO for your past. Being able to step out of your comfort zone and grow as a person.
I wasn't always good at this. In fact, I was terrible at it until my mid-twenties.
This deep dive starts with my story of how I learned how to move on, in the most suburban white kid way possible -- by going away to college
At age 17, my parents took me on a road trip across Colorado to look at colleges. My options were statewide, but primarily limited to liberal arts and smaller four-year schools due to my lack of focus (and subsequent lack of a quality GPA) in high school.
That was fine, I told myself. I was going to major in English and didn't care about university sports or frat houses, anyway. The other thing I told myself, and my parents, was that I'd rather stay in Denver. How about I apply to Metro State and get an apartment in the city?
My logic for staying closer to home was simple. It was cheaper. I already had friends. I knew plenty of people moving to the bigger schools in Boulder and Fort Collins that I could visit to attend keg parties.
Plus, in Denver, I'd have a better chance of finding a group of guys to start a punk band with, my primary life goal at that age, than I would if I moved to some small town I didn't know.
My dad was no fan of this plan. Partly because Metro, the four-year school located downtown, had a reputation of being the place you went if you couldn't get in anywhere else.
But his main reason for wanting me to move further away was much deeper, and it confounded me.
"If you stick around Denver, you're just going to end up hanging out with the same kids you've been screwing around with the last few years," he said.
"Yeah, but we're all growing up -- we're all going to school and won't just be raising hell in the suburbs anymore," I replied. "And they're my friends. We grew up together, we know each other."
What I was really saying, of course, was that I didn't want to go through the hassle of starting over in a new place. I didn't want to step out of my comfort zone.
"Look," he said. "Your friends are your friends. But the people you knew in high school, they're not going to be the people you know for the rest of your life. They're going to move on and grow up. They won't be the same people in five years. The people you meet in college and in your twenties -- those will be the people you're friends with for the rest of your life."
I outwardly doubted that. But looking back, it's absolutely proven to be true.
Don't be afraid to move on from one phase of life to the next
Reading between the lines, my dad was telling me that it was time to move on and leave my childhood and angsty teen years behind. Otherwise, I'd become that guy that peaked as a teenager, stuck around his hometown for fear of not being the guy that everyone new and loved, and ended up becoming a total loser.
I attended Fort Lewis College in the mountain town of Durango. I chose this school thinking that if I could snowboard almost every day, the prospect of leaving my friends behind didn't sound so bad.
For the first month, I hated it. I was alone. Everyone and everything I knew and cared about were six hours away. My inside jokes and traditions that I'd shared with my high school friends were suddenly meaningless.
Slowly, though, I began to understand what my dad was talking about. Being on my own and without my usual fallbacks forced me to make decisions and take full responsibility for them.
I made friends, got a job at a restaurant in town, and tried to figure out how to budget my money. I went to class. As the semester went on I partied and snowboarded and fell head over heels for a girl with blonde hair and a Rancid t-shirt.
I found a new form of happiness -- the kind that you build for yourself when you step out of your comfort zone and make something happen, even if you aren't sure what that thing is quite yet.
The concept of moving on became a mantra that I'd live by. It is the single best piece of advice my dad ever gave me. The ability to move on has become something I admire in a person.
It's why I admire Tom Delonge of Blink-182 so much. He left one of the most successful bands of the 00's era -- in which he made tens of millions of dollars -- to start an artsy side project and search for aliens, and everyone thought he was crazy.
But for him, it was what he needed to do in order to grow. Now, he's more successful and fulfilled even than when All The Small Things hit #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts.
Tom can still make dick jokes and sing songs about drinking beer at high school when it suits him, but it doesn't have to be the sole defining characteristic of his legacy. And in my own small way, moving away from Littleton meant that being a middle-class kid from a boring Denver ‘burb didn't have to define my legacy.
Self-awareness is the key to moving on
Jim Rohn said that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. I don't inherently disagree with this statement. But I see it as being accurate in a way that isn't all about adopting their character and qualities and shortcomings. I see this statement as a chance to also reflect on oneself, not just on those around you.
This is because your family, friends, and colleagues know and trust you. You know and trust them (hopefully). As a result, you can constantly gauge your own self-awareness by how healthy your relationship is with each.
Self-awareness is important because how you act and present yourself in social and professional settings determines your ability to advance in life.
If you are being unintentionally offensive, or aren't picking up on something being conveyed, or otherwise not presenting yourself how you are envisioning yourself, these people are the ones who will let you know, whether in a straightforward manner or inadvertently.
They will do this either by telling you or otherwise signaling, or by allowing a rift in the relationship to develop.
When you detect even a small rift in a close relationship, and you don't know immediately why it's there, that's a good sign that you aren't being self-aware.
Those who are the most self-aware tend to be humble, approachable, and confident. These are all qualities that most of us aspire to be. By using your closest relationships to constantly hone your self-awareness, you will undoubtedly find that you come ever closer to these qualities.
Don't be concerned with making people younger or older than you think you're "hip" or "cool"
As you get older, you leave the wayward traverses of your youth behind you. That's if you move on, of course -- and don't become Matthew McConaughey's character in “Dazed and Confused.”
Thing is, you're inevitably going to come into contact with the new crop of young, hip, cool kids. Maybe that's through a younger sibling bringing her friends around, or a young coworker who just graduated and still lives in a studio flat in Uptown while you live in a box house near the light-rail station.
When this contact happens, you may be inclined to convey the fact that you, too, were once cool and hip. That you had a firm grasp on the lingo of the times and can still recall those freewheeling weekends of late-night revelry.
Do not do this.
There is nothing more pathetic than someone blatantly trying to impress someone else, particularly someone younger than them and socially unrelated, and this is especially true when it's clear to all that the person doing the impressing is having a tough time accepting their current station in life.
It took me many years to learn this. The perfect example of my dubiousness is in my many attempts to make my wife's youngest brother think I'm as cool as he is.
He's more than 10 years my junior, and though we enjoy many of the same hobbies including mountain biking, snowboarding, camping. and beer drinking, the generation gap is painfully obvious every time I'm around any of his friends.
I've slowly come to accept my role as the older brother figure. I enjoy it now that I understand it. And what's crazy is that I know he respects me as a mentor, more than he ever could as one of the 'bros.
I’d like to ask a quick favor — can you share this newsletter with one person who’d enjoy it? This is a reader-supported newsletter, and I really appreciate it!
Remote Focus: Vail Pass
Zone: Vail Pass — 1,000 Turns Bowl, Gore Ridge, and backside of the ridge above it looking towards Summit County. Conditions were great for early May — two inches 48 hours prior, light freeze overnight and thawing as day went on. We hit east-facing slope first run after skinning up the west face, and took west-facing laps after they warmed up.
Watch a video of our turns on Gore Ridge east face here.
Date: May 6, 2022
Team: Tim Wenger, Jim Gabriel (Paragon Guides)
Itinerary:
7:15 AM - Arrive at trailhead atop Vail Pass
9:15 AM - Arrive atop Gore Ridge
9:25 AM - Drop into east-facing bowl on backside of Gore Ridge towards Summit County
10:15 AM - Arrive back atop Gore Ridge
10:25 AM - Drop into 1,000 Turns Bowl
11:00 AM - Arrive atop third run, east of 1,000 Turns Bowl
11:10 AM - Drop in and ride (and then traverse) back to trailhead
12:00 PM - Arrive back at trailhead
I drink a lot of coffee putting Mountain Remote together.
Mountain Remote news and further reading
You probably have a puffy jacket or other pieces of down gear. Is it ethically sourced? I reported on the importance of ethically-sourced down — and where to find it — for Matador Network.
If the idea of buying a small plot of land and sticking an eco-friendly prefab house on it appeals to you, as it does to me, Dwell reported on a company in Australia that aims to take the concept mainstream.
Remote work is shifting the entire hospitality business, according to this excellent feature in Skift.
Thanks for reading! See you next time. Have thoughts? Hit reply or leave a comment below.