'From the top of the mountain, you see clearly. Looking down at your own crap, all you can see is more crap'
The View From the Top of the Mountain
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein
From the top of the mountain, you can see clearly. Looking down at your crap, all you can see is more crap. Sit with that for a moment, because it describes something we’ve all lived. When you’re down in the worry, the anger, the racing mind and the hurt, the crap is at eye level. It surrounds you. It’s everywhere you look, and more you look around is all you can find. From higher up, that very same crap looks completely different, manageable and clear. Nothing about the crap changed. Only your height above it did.
Down in It, More Crap Is All There Is.
When we’re lost in ‘The Tip’ we’re sitting in what I call ‘The confusion fog.’ Around 65,000 thoughts a day swirl through us, and in the thick of it we can’t think straight because the majority of those thoughts are recycled daily. Everything starts to look like evidence that things are bad. There’s no perspective down there, because we’re standing inside the very thing we’re trying to see. You can’t read the label from inside the jar.
A Place I Go
In my book I share something quite personal about how I climb out of that. I have a few beautiful, quiet places around Melbourne where I sit in total silence, and in my mind, I make my way to the top of a hill or mountain where I sit above the cloud of crap I’ve created, and I look down on it from up there.
What I do up on that mountain, and the questions I ask myself, are fully explained in my book. It’s one of the most important passages in there for me, and it deserves more room than a paragraph. What I’ll say here is this: the simple act of climbing above the cloud, even in my imagination, changes everything about what I can see.
Becoming the Observer
Becoming the observer and stepping back far enough, so you’re no longer lost in the swirl, you’re watching it move below you. And that shift, from being in the crap to simply observing the crap, is where clarity begins. It’s the first real step off the slopes of ‘The Tip’ and toward ‘The Garden.’ You don’t fight the cloud. You rise above it, and from up there you can finally see it for what it is. There’s a further step waiting at the top of that mountain which is a realisation about where all that crap actually came from, and what that quietly reflects back to you. It changed everything for me. It’s the beating heart of the chapter in the book.
You Don’t Need a Real Mountain
"Gain a little altitude and watch your attitude follow. The view is always clearer from higher up."
Here’s the good news to leave you with. You don’t need an actual summit. You need a moment of quiet to pause and have a breath, a patch of silence, a single step back and anything that lifts you far enough above the cloud to stop being in the crap and start seeing it. That little bit of altitude is always closer than it feels when you’re buried in it.
So next time you’re down in it, ask yourself: ‘Can I find my way, even for a minute, to the top of the mountain?’
From down there, more crap is all you’ll ever see. From up there, you can finally see clearly. And that view changes what you do next.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? — Navigating the Paths Between Chaos and Clarity → Get the book