The Mountain is You
Anurag Dhungana / July 15, 2023
6 min read • 252 views
I just started reading The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest and I'm already so into it.
The main purpose of this blog post is to document my thoughts and takeaways from the book. I'll be updating this post as I read through the book.
Table on Contents
- [Chapter 1 | The Mountain is you](#Chapter 1 | The Mountain is you)
Chapter 1 | The Mountain is you
Just as a mountain is formed when two sections of the ground are forced against one another, your mountain will arise out of coexisting but conflicting needs. Your mountain requires you to reconcile two parts of you: the conscious and the unconscious, the part of you that is aware of what you want and the part of you that is not aware of why you are still holding yourself back.
A banger as soon as I start reading! This line really resonated with me because I've been feeling this way for a while now. I know what I want to do, but I'm not sure why I'm not doing it. I'm hoping this book will help me figure that out.
The objective of being human is to grow
A simple line has the ability to make someone rethink their whole situation. We are a product of our environment, if we don't grow out of our environment (both physical and digital) then we will never grow as a person.
Time to evolve.👀
Your mountain is the block between you and the life you want to live. Facing it is also the only path to your freedom and becoming. You are here because a trigger showed you to your wound, and your wound will show you to your path, and your path will show you to your destiny.
Your whole path to success depends fully on how you manoeuvre your mountain. You and only you are in charge of how your life is gonna be like.
Once you begin to really question and observe these pre-existing beliefs, you begin to see how warped and illogical they were all along—not to mention distinctly holding you back from your ultimate potential
Your life is defined not only by what you think about it, but also what you think of yourself. Your self-concept is an idea that you have spent your whole life building. It was created by piecing together inputs and influences from those around you: what your parents believed, what your peers thought, what became self-evident through personal experience, and so on. Your self-image is difficult to adjust, because your brain’s confirmation bias works to affirm your pre-existing beliefs about yourself.
This is an eye opener for sure! We are what we believe in. The moment we start questioning it, we unlock new pathways for our future.
Human beings are guided by comfort. They stay close to what feels familiar and reject what doesn’t, even if it’s objectively better for them.
Get angry, determined, and allow yourself to develop tunnel vision with one thing and one thing only at the end: that you will not go on as you are.
What you believe about your life is what you will make true about your life. We all have heard about manifestation, and even though I am still wrapping my head around it, I have seen it have worked wonders for so many. We need to question some of the default narratives we believe in and really question why is it that we believe in it. To truly change, we need to look at out beliefs from the outside rather than from the inside.
THERE IS NOTHING HOLDING you back in life more than yourself.
If there is one key thing that we can take away from this chapter is this : When you decide you truly do not ever want to feel a certain way again, you set out on a journey of self-awareness, learning, and growth that has you radically reinvent who you are.
You alone have the power to change everything. The only thing stopping is our own self nothing else.
Your new life is going to cost you your old one. It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are, and if you are willing to change, then hey that's a really great loss. You’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward.
This chapter opened my mind up to new perspectives. I can feel that this is the start of something great. This chapter is the reason why I started to do things that I really wanted to and this is the chapter why I am not gonna stop. For too long I have embraced the comfort zone, but not anymore. In order to stand out, you need to do things that most people are not willing to.
Chapter 2 | THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS SELF-SABOTAGE
WHEN YOU HABITUATE YOURSELF to do things that move your life forward, you call them skills. When they hold your life back, you call them self-sabotage. They are both essentially the same function.
We are creatures of habit. Our habits shape us, for better or worse. Sometimes, we get so used to our way of living that we forget to dream of a different life. Sometimes, we make choices out of ignorance, unaware that better options exist. Sometimes, we settle for what we're given, not knowing we can ask for more. Sometimes, we drift through life, believing we lack choices. But remember, we always have the power to choose our path.
The way we can overcome this is not by trying to figure out how to control our impulses, its about first determining why those impulses exists in the first place.
We have to get clear on what we want as well as when and why we want it
Everyone knows what they want, but the key difference is why. "Why" should be personal, should not be influenced by the masses. Figure out the why and the path is set. We have to identify unconscious beliefs that are preventing us from showing up and work on why we believe in it.
Don’t worry about doing it well; just do it.
For most of the time, we all focus on finding out the best way to do something, or the optimal and managed way. And for 90% of the time, this is what is stopping us from ever starting.