The Mountain is You - Brianna Wiest - Review
A look at a few of Brianna Wiest interviews makes one wonder how such a young individual who has barely crossed her thirties can exhibit calm demeanor to a stream of questions posed against her. A deeper dive into her writing journey stuns us with the fact she has already authored ten books, with a clear focus on the self help section.
'The Mountain is You’ can be broadly split into two parts, the first one deals with an individual's inclination towards self sabotage and the latter part narrates on ways towards self mastery. Now, what’s self-sabotage, if there is an ongoing gap between current and desired state while the respective individual’s effort to close it is consistently met with their own resistance, pain or discomfort, it means self-sabotage is a dominant function of mind. Brianna provides the bridge towards mastery in a three step process which leads to a transparent emotions assessment.
(i) Be clear with what happened
(ii) Validate your feeling
(iii) Determine a course correction
I have quoted below some of the statements relating to self-sabotage, many can be marked for a deeper reflection.
“Human beings experience a natural resistance to the unknown since it’s associated with loss of control. The state is true even if the unknown is benevolent.“
“The greatest act of self love is to no longer accept a life you are unhappy with. It is to state the problem in a plain and straightforward manner.”
“The first step in healing is no longer be in denial about the current state of life.”
“It’s ok to be at rock bottom and not be able to see through the path of recovery.”
“Overcoming self sabotage is not about overriding the impulse rather one should start with determining why the impulse exists in the first place.”
“Most of us are unaware of an upper limit to happiness beyond which an uncomfortable sensation emerges within an individual in the form of headache, pain, tension or some other form of resistance. Though it may seem totally counterintuitive, we allow ourselves to be happy only with the realm of our comfort zone and once the threshold is breached, the process of self sabotage begins to surface.”
“At the core of our behavior, one part of our psyche understands that we should evolve and move forward with our lives and another is intimidated by the potential discomfort it would bring. Usually, this culminates into so much tension and frustration leading to a breaking point.”
“Instincts aren’t feelings but responses, if you feel drained after speaking to someone or on doing a certain work, it’s your instinct that’s flagging the feeling. Instinct helps to quickly move away from harm’s way without thinking too much about it.”
“Mindlessly scrolling through social media to kill time is one of the easiest ways to numb yourself. It’s a coping mechanism to avoid a true reflection of our current state of affairs or discomfort.”
“Gut instinct can only respond to what’s happening in the present.”
Brianna elucidates thoughts into intuitive and intrusive for a deeper understanding. The 14 differentiating factors are enough to convince any individual on the line of thoughts that needs to be enhanced and which one should be numbed. It goes without stating that the intrusive thoughts are hard to control and takes patience combined with required level of temperament to deal with it.
Intuitive Thoughts | Intrusive Thoughts |
Calm | Hectic and fear inducing |
Rational and makes a degree of sense | Irrational and often aggrandizes the situation or jumps to worst possible conclusion |
Helps you in the present and provides inputs to make better decisions | Mostly random and has nothing to do with the moment |
Quiet | Loud and hence makes it harder to listen other thoughts |
Intermittent | Persistent and induces panic |
Sounds loving | Sounds scared |
Usually comes out of nowhere | Triggered by an external stimuli |
No need to grapple with intuitive thoughts, we can have them and let them go easily | It’s a spiral of fear and other forms of emotions making it hard not to think about it |
Opens up the mind to other possibilities | Closes your heart and make you feel stuck |
Comes from the perspective of your best self | Comes from the perspective of fearful self |
Solves problems | Creates problems |
Empathy in approach | Conflict in approach |
Helps understand our own feeling and thoughts | Shifts the focus to thoughts and behavior of others |
Shows how to respond | Demands a reaction |
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