Sweet Dissatisfaction | Exploring Discomfort in Climbing

Photo: Rya Sipe

Climbing is hard.

It makes us uncomfortable. If you’ve climbed long enough, you’ve probably had moments when you questioned why you keep doing it. Is all of the discomfort even worth it?

Curiosity is one of our most basic, intrinsic motivators – it is an innate human drive to explore novelty, to seek knowledge, to learn, simply for the sake of gaining understanding. In his book Curiosity, Ian Leslie called curiosity “the sweetest form of dissatisfaction.” 

We don’t climb to be comfortable, we climb to explore challenges. (If you don’t want to be challenged, bail now. Pack up the climbing shoes, head back to your couch. Or rather, stop reading, close the window that’s open on your device and snuggle into the couch – this article is not directed at you.) Challenge means you will fail. You'll be anxious or downright scared. You’ll get flustered. You’ll fall off. Again. And again.

Photo: Jenny Walters

You’ll feel frustration. Discomfort. Dissatisfaction.

“Curiosity killed the cat…” The often shortened idiom has cast curiosity in a negative light, but the full saying actually goes: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” If exploring challenge is that sweet dissatisfaction, then gaining understanding in our “failures,” in our discomfort, may in fact be what keeps bringing us back to climbing.

Discomfort isn't something that we automatically get excited about. It isn’t natural to want to engage with it. So how can we turn discomfort into something that we actually want to explore? How do we tap into curiosity’s deep well of motivation?

What makes us feel curious in the face of anxiety, fear, and frustration?

It's all in asking the right questions. Curiosity appears when there is an information gap – a space between what you know about something and the information you perceive you don’t yet know about that thing. An information gap requires you to know enough about a topic to pique your interest, but not so much that you feel like you know everything that is worth knowing on the topic. Asking the right questions illuminates the information gap.

The upside is, we know something about rock climbing and ourselves, plus there's always more to learn. The downside is, when we get caught up in those uncomfortable emotions, we don’t automatically respond in a way that provokes curiosity. We forget to ask questions, or we ask the wrong questions.

Photo: Drew Smith

For example: you’re anxious about falling or failing. You’re just overwhelmed and blinded by that uncomfortable emotion and that’s all you’re able to focus on. Or if you’ve already fallen, you might ask (or your partner asks): why did you fall? Or you might even look a little deeper and ask: what did you learn? What could you do better next time? While these questions might provide useful information to reflect on, they don’t necessarily spark your curiosity. The questions are too simple (even if they are difficult to answer). These are questions that have a distinct answer embedded in them. They won’t necessarily shine a light on an information gap.

In order to tap into the motivation of curiosity, we need to ask questions that force us to explore something new, in order to fill the void of an information gap.

You’re anxious before a redpoint effort and you hate this feeling! Try asking: what are you actually anxious about? What if the worst case scenario plays out? (Ex: you stick the crux, then punt. Now you have to climb it again. That cute crusher at the crag saw you fail, your friends tease you…) Really explore the emotion of anxiety. What does it feel like? Can you describe the sensation in your body? What does it mean to you? Instead of having a negative meaning, could it be an indicator that you are excited to try hard?

You’re climbing, about to enter a crux sequence, you feel more pumped than you’d like to feel here. You’re tempted to say “take” or just rush through the next sequence to escape this discomfort in your forearms, because at least you’ll fall trying. Instead, pause and observe the sensation. Why is it so uncomfortable? Is it because of what it means to you and how you normally react (by getting anxious, saying take or rushing through the sequence)? Instead of an indicator of impending failure, could it instead be a trigger for taking a deep breath and moving with more focus and precision? How hard can you actually try when you’re this pumped?

You fell. Again. Something didn’t go right and now you're frustrated. What is actually making you frustrated? Did you mess up the beta? Did you just give up because you didn’t do it perfectly? Why does this make you feel frustrated? Does it threaten your identity as a climber? Dig a little deeper. Explore the emotion of frustration. Can you describe the sensation in your body? What does it mean? Is there another possible meaning you can assign to it?

Discomfort is there to get you to pay attention – because something is important.

Why is this climb important? Or why is climbing important to you, in general? Probably because it challenges you, so you’ve had to invest energy in it. Things we invest in become important. Climbing is hard and you fall or “fail.” This is what inspires you to invest in getting better. The above examples are just a few of many uncomfortable situations in climbing. The concepts can be applied universally: get to know the uncomfortable emotions and their meaning. Instead of avoiding them, explore them. Instead of fighting against the discomfort, can you accept it and try to assign a different meaning to the feeling? When you ask the right questions, the discomfort feels a little sweeter.

If you haven’t listened to the podcast episodes with Josie yet, check them out:
Part 1: Sport Climbing to Train for Big Walls and Narrowing Failure
Part 2: Exploring Identity and Discomfort