In late 2020, my world looked like abandoned city streets and one lonely lit window on a 60-story skyscraper.
I recently graduated from university and moved to a city - Charlotte, NC - for the first time. My closest friends were the squirrels that overtook city trees and played in the streets absent of tremendously-loud-honking-animal-crusher-mobiles. I was a deer sitting at an oak-paneled executive desk on the top floor of a shiny hi-rise. I did not belong. All the pieces were supposed to come together - new city, new job - but I was missing half the puzzle.
I was losing faith in myself.
As confidence vaporized, among the many guests present within me, there was always one that kept showing up uninvited: scarcity. Scarcity led me to believe that the only resources available to me were the ones that already lived within my circle. Scarcity arrived, a vampire disguised as a cover model of a limited edition Vogue magazine, restricting my circle of potential. Sucking away my confidence.
Pastel-colored self-help books stared at me longingly across my bedroom. Online articles plastered with pesky ads littered my browser tabs. Their awaiting words treated me like a stiff glass of wine - painting my cheeks rosy and my body warm for an evening only to force me into a haze worse than the day before. The tiny black text spoke to me — when you don’t believe in yourself,
“remember your past achievements”,
“lean into your strengths”,
“use affirmations and positive self-talk”.
Like a bandaid over a wound that desperately needed stitches, pain inevitably bled over temporary relief.
The hobbies I adored - reading, writing, hiking - were isolating. I was in pursuit of finding other deer-type-squirrel-loving friends and the climbing gym parking lot down the road - packed full of dirty Subarus - looked inviting. When I stumbled in and paid for a membership, I expected to find community. What I didn’t expect to find was belief in myself, my missing puzzle pieces, and my stitches.
For most, climbing in a gym quickly progresses into climbing on real rock - like playing checkers before chess. Indoor climbing only scratched the surface of simulating the true sport of outdoor climbing. Like the masses, I was no exception. Mounds of once shiny gear, perfectly tarnished by the elements, filled the trunk of a hatchback. Trails that used to offer alpine views and the serenity of nature became the yellow brick road to scaling new horizons. To climb.
I was too fixated on dancing my feet around slippery roots and wobbly rocks to see the cliffs emerging into view. I only broke my stronghold with the ground when I heard the sounds of shouts and shrieks, the F word booming, all crashing into one another. That’s when I saw it. Menacingly steep cliffs erected from the ground towering 20 body lengths over my head. Sandstone-colored walls of rock banded with iron ore and lichen with chalk splotched in incoherent patterns all over its face. It looked prehistoric, as frightening and extraordinary as the dinosaurs.
The face looked blank, I couldn’t see any holds. How am I supposed to climb that?
I was used to chunky plastic holds caked with layers of chalk covering neon greens, blues, pinks, and oranges. The holds visibly protrude from the indoor climbing gym walls. It is clear which holds are made for your hands and which holds are made for your feet. Your body is intended to move in a pre-ordained way - hands follow feet as the ground grows further away from you.
My eyes darted all over the stone palace that confined me trying to make sense of what I was witnessing. Climbers, with iron forged backs, were free falling 20 to 50 feet into open air only to be abruptly caught by a rope the diameter of your thumb. And the weirdest part was that they were smiling.
Why were they smiling? Smiling means you’re having fun — this does not look fun.
No way I thought. My body felt hollow except for the pounding of my heart that bounced off every wall of my being. My palms grew slick. This is not what I signed up for.
My friends’ encouragement flooded into my rivers of fear. A creek of confusion engulfed me. I pulled my harness tight around my waist with shaky fingers and tied into one end of my climbing rope. As I stepped up onto the sandstone face, I heard someone behind me yell “you’re so brave”. It sounded like a distant whisper compared to the horrors of my mind.
My stomach and I climbed together - my stomach up my throat and me up the wall. Holding crimpy edges for dear life I prayed in desperation that my body wouldn’t cut like a knife through thin air. My breathing was erratic and jagged as the cliffs I was clinging to.
My first outdoor climb was 115 feet with a view more stunning than any 60-story skyscraper. My friends beneath me looked the size of little forest creatures. White water rapids rolled through funneling ranges in the distance. When I clipped my thumb-sized rope into the anchors at the top of the route, my fear rushed out of me like oxygen from a pricked balloon.
As my climbing partner lowered me, I couldn’t wait to have my feet on the ground. But once they were on the ground, there was a part of me that couldn’t wait to have them in the air again.
I beamed, with my face smiling and my posture proud. I was exuding confidence.
I felt confidence not just for completing the task at hand - don’t die - but confident that I simply tried it. A bigger circle outlined my previous circle of potential. In this new circle was new potential for my body and mind, new resources, and new possibilities. The self-help books told me to tell myself that I am capable of doing anything I put my mind to (bounded by physics of course), but they didn’t give me a reason to believe I was. The power of my mind was limited by what I knew. I had to go out and DO.
Instead of doubling down on my strengths, I doubled-knotted my climbing rope and did something I didn’t know how to do - something that absolutely terrified me.
The self-help books will tell you to talk nice to yourself - and you should - but what they don’t tell you is that talking nice to yourself is only temporary. Eternal confidence comes from breaking the barrier of your old circle of potential and drawing a new one.
If your circle is closing in on you, try something you don't know how to do, even something that you’re destined to fail at. For everything you know how to do, there are thousands that you don’t. There are fire eaters and falconers, there are neuroscientists that uncover the wild jungle that is the mind, and physicists that theorize about parallel universes that fan out in time and space.
Imagine a new circle and go pioneer it. Explore it, excavate it, and play in it. Tell yourself what you are capable of.
But then go and do it.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this week’s essay. Big hugs to
, , , , , and for the wonderful feedback and encouragement.All the best, Haley.
This was a great read, Haley! Your language is so vivid and rich. I felt the same vertigo as you and I'm not even a climber (to the dismay of my Seattle friends).
This part stuck with me in particular: A bigger circle outlined my previous circle of potential. In this new circle was new potential for my body and mind, new resources, and new possibilities. The self-help books told me to tell myself that I am capable of doing anything I put my mind to (bounded by physics of course), but they didn’t give me a reason to believe I was. The power of my mind was limited by what I knew. I had to go out and DO."
I truly believe confidence is only developed through actions that align with your values and desired identities. And the expanded circle of potential will stick with me. Thanks for writing this.
Haley, you masterfully nailed the circle metaphor in this article. Your article should be the new standard for what it means to go outside your comfort zone. Your climbing story is fun, immersive, and takes the reader on a climb to re-examine the circle that is currently closing them in. I feel excited by the ideas you have helped me to see with this article—the relationship between scarcity and confidence and what it takes to build eternal confidence.