How just living in the Mountains made this Woman Fearless?

You are most of what your Environment is.

The layers of your personality and the colors of your character are shaped by the kind of environment you are brought up in.

A child growing by playing with toys and a child growing by working in the fields are not the same adults. They grow up as two completely different individuals.

The fears, the perspectives, the vision, and the psychology that you have is the result of the conditioning and the World that you grew up living in.

Your mind can make you fearless or fill you with all the fear depending upon the type of vibrations that it receives from the outside.

One such impacting environment is that of living in Mountains.

Taking the first breath of life in the lap of tall mountains made me a little more tough than average without even investing in becoming one. Having my childhood spent in these mountains, I saw life through a different lens. I saw the women were on par with the men. I did not see the fragile, vulnerable side of a woman but a fearless tough spirit that made them unstoppable.

I was studying in the summer capital of India, Shimla, and had my cute little village in the Mountains of Kullu. So, I used to spend my winter vacations in these tall mountains at my grandma, Taya, and Taiji’s place. I grew up with the shades of both the city and the village. I inherited poise from the city and resilience from the mountains.

I did not live here for long, but I had the strength of the mountains imprinted in my soul.

Now that I have grown up into an adult and got some time to go back to these mountains after age, I feel them more deeply, see things happening around me from a writer’s perspective and I feel I have fresh content every single day to write about.

So, it’s been a month since I have been here in my hometown and have had plenty of great experiences that I will keep sharing with you through my blog posts.

So, what is that I want to share in this post?

I saw something shocking while doing my Yoga.

Just a few days back…

It was around 9 am and I was just halfway through my morning yoga routine. I jogged a little to warm up my body and then brought my yoga mat to start the breathing exercises. My sister-in-law had just started jogging and we both were gearing up for the day with a fresh start.

While I was inhaling to do the Anuloma villoma yoga, I moved my neck upwards, and it got stuck in that position as something grabbed my attention.  I found some movement on a tree that was at some distance from me.

The tree was around 100 feet tall, but I could not see it.

Yes, I have farsightedness, but my glasses were just on my side.

I could not resist continuing my yoga without looking at it clearly, so I wore my glasses.

And then I tried to look at what was happening on the tree. I assumed that some man was standing on the tree, but I could not still see it clearly because the man on the tree was covered by the branches and shrubs of the tree.

I took off my glasses and continued with my yoga until I was again interrupted when I heard my sister-in-law talking to someone. I found her talking to the woman who was our only neighbor and was climbing the tree. We called her Bhabhi. My sister-in-law was awestruck seeing her climb like one fearless woman.

It caught me again.

And I wore my glasses again and this time rushed closer to the place where my sister-in-law was standing.

I could now see everything.

I was flabbergasted by the view.

I asked my sister-in-law to capture the amazing thing that was happening.

The woman was more than halfway on this tree, and she was heading above.

It was really scary to see her take even just one step more, but she was fearless.  The tree was around 100 feet tall, and she was probably around 5 feet.

This was the first time I saw a woman doing something extraordinarily daring. She gave us shivers down our spine and goosebumps on our skin. Our eyes were stuck on her, and I honestly could not stop myself from yelling out of fear. I called out to her, telling her to stop and come back as it was getting dangerous with every step.

But she was unstoppable.

Why was the woman climbing the Tree?

This was staggering. The way we cleaned our houses, they cleaned the trees once in 2 to 3 years to keep them healthy. They cut away the dead branches and prune trees so that they look attractive and are safe to walk under. I found it hard to believe how the cleanliness of a tree was of such paramount importance.

But then I got to know that as the tree was just adjacent to their house so a shabby look of the tree would make the place look untidy.

She had a sickle in her hands with which she was cutting the dried leaves and dead branches.

She looked a different Nerve

She made sure that her feet had a strong grip over the branch that she would stand on and then started cleaning and cutting.

It was terrifying to see her climb higher and higher and I desperately wanted her to come back as going up was the scariest thing that I could ever see. I did give attempts to make some plausible statements to get her down.

 But my sister-in-law suggested I should not scare her by showing how scary the whole thing was and I went silent with my fear still on the high.

She was almost just under the clouds and the entire view was mind boggling.

We were silently watching her climb and she kept taking steps one by one. On every branch, she took long pauses to clean and cut the trash.

In a few minutes, she almost reached the very top of the tree and cleaned it all over.

At one point, the Dhatu (Scarf) that she was wearing slipped off of her head. It took some time for the scarf to reach the ground as it collided with the branches and slowly fell onto the ground.

Our beats were up. Her falling scarf for a moment signaled us with fear. But I was shut and silent now. Just tried to keep my fear inside.

The morning had made me numb with this wildly fearless action of the woman of mountains.

She narrated a story from 100 feet height.

There was still more to this thrilling morning that we were yet to witness.

While she was on the very top, she responded so calmly and comfortably to our conversation that she even headed to tell us about one of her past experiences of climbing this tree.

Hung on one branch, her face towards us with the sickle held in one hand, she started to narrate her story.

She was standing almost 90 feet high from the ground and narrating to us her experience as if her position was all cushy and safe.

She told us that the last time she climbed on the same tree was around a year back, and suddenly the winds started howling.  They went so violent that the branches of the tree started to shake terribly and that shook her too. The winds were so wild and strong that they almost made her fear life.

She further told us that the moment was so dreadful that she could not hold her tears back and lost all her confidence. She started to pray standing right on the top of the tree.

The branches were then sleek and inchoate, so they were easily shaken by the winds.  But somehow by keeping herself strong through prayers and willpower she came over that situation and also overcame the fear forever.

 And now she was standing tall with her confidence narrating her story from a 100 feet tall tree.

We captured her entire footage while she narrated to us.

Find this captivating view in this video here.

What looked boggling to us looked normal to the woman’s daughter.

We gazed at her every movement with our undimmed eyes, and it deeply unnerved us. But we were silent and praying. We were filled with fright, but she looked fearless.

While we were capturing this mind-boggling spectacular view with our phone cameras, her daughter stepped out of the house and saw her mother climb to the top of the tree, she did not give the slightest expression of the entrance. And that made us ponder.

Why was it so different and frightening to us and so normal for her daughter that she just had a word with her mother and went back?

This difference in reacting to the same situation made me think in deeper layers. And the daughter who was probably more than a decade younger than me.

I was gushed with so many thoughts that left me perplexed.

Something that looked like a herculean task to us looked like just another household chore to the daughter. The view that looked dicey to us was a dime a dozen to her daughter.

We as neighbors feared her life but she as her daughter was so normal with it.

Did she not fear at all? My mind was self-interrogating.

Well, I asked my mind to put a pause and not overthink at the moment and just wait until she reaches back to our planet Earth, safe and secure.

Going downhill was even scarier

After she was done with the cutting, coming down was no less scary. We prayed at her every step. We captured the entire footage with our hearts on a rapid beat.

A woman coming down from a tree standing 100 feet high was something to be marveled at. It was a glimpse that filled us with so much thrill, fear, and a big-time inspiration as well.

 The woman was no athlete, not a mountaineer, not an arborist who had been trained for tree climbing but a simple homemaker. But what made this homemaker different was the environment that she grew up in. Living in the lap of tall tough mountains was enough for her to be such a brave soul.

At every step on the way down, my sister-in-law continuously murmured prayers.

“God please bring her safe down, God please help her” She kept on with these words while her camera was capturing every step of the woman.

The bold spirit and the brave soul finally made up back to the ground all safe.

The insights that I drew from this mindboggling tree climbing

I was entranced by the whole experience, and it left me with so many things to think about.

I drew so many conclusions from this morning’s thrill that we were fortunate to see and experience it firsthand.

No matter how much it filled us with fear, but the fearless spirit of the woman did leave a mark on our minds and that somehow pushed us to think beyond our spectrum of fear.

My bar of astonishment was raised.

I came up with some insights that I want you to take away from this Blog post:

The only weapon to encounter fear is to raise the belief system

You lose by letting the fear in and you win by making the belief stronger. And the belief system is built by the environment you grow in and by feeding your mind with positive thinking. There is a constant battle between fear and belief and you stand amidst both to decide what is to be allowed to grow and scale and what to refrain from. You chose the one you practice the most. If you dwell in fear, you will involuntarily be on its side and if you practice your goal, you will build your territory of a strong belief system.

A terrific first attempt can either make you quit or make you a champion

Getting your hands on something new is always challenging and failing at it has obvious chances. What is important is not winning right away at the first attempt, but it is not letting the failed attempts stymie you from winning in the next attempts. Failure in the first attempts can take away all your willpower and belief and make you quit. But the other side of the coin is that if you understand what lies hidden in the failure is your scope of improvement, you are one step away from becoming a champion.

Winning lies on the other side of your fears

All your success and triumph lie on the other side of your fears. If you are willing to stand in the face of things that shake you, make you tremble, and deeply unnerve you, you are sure to experience the best that life has to offer you.

 Fear is not harmful, instead it saves you from being harmed

Your fear is not harmful, instead, it saves you from being harmed.

It is an indication that you need to build something that stands against your fear strongly and makes it surrender. And only with the right knowledge and practice, you can override the fearful thoughts that stop you from taking the challenge.

The fear tells you that there is room for improvement which only with your consistent practice can make you fearless.

This experience got me a hangover for a couple of days, and it kept me thinking about the fearless spirit of the woman. I might not be able to climb like her but what I drew from her fearless climbing was that nothing that I want to achieve is impossible. What is needed is a practice that can make the fear shudder with your confidence.

I hope you enjoyed reading this mind-boggling experience.