The Mountain Didn't Change Me. It Revealed Me.

What if the greatest challenge you're facing isn't meant to change you…

What if it's revealing who you've been becoming all along?

In this solo episode of She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, Anna reflects on an unexpected lesson she discovered while training for the 29029 Everesting Challenge. What began as physical preparation for climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest became something much deeper: a journey of releasing performance, embracing presence, and redefining what strength really means.

Through stories from the trail, Anna shares how the mountain exposed old patterns of perfectionism, overachievement, and the need to prove herself—and how learning to slow down transformed not only her training, but the way she moves through life.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why transformation happens long before you reach the summit
• The difference between achieving and becoming
• How performance can disconnect us from ourselves
• What your greatest challenges may be trying to reveal about you
• Practical tools for navigating life's mountains with greater self-awareness and compassion
• How journaling, meditation, and intention can help you move from proving to presence

Whether you're walking through grief, rebuilding after divorce, facing illness, navigating a career transition, or simply feeling called into a new season of life, this episode is a reminder that the goal isn't just to get through the climb.

It's to become someone new because of it.

✨ If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who's climbing a mountain of their own.

📖 Read Anna's companion Substack essay:
"The Mountain Isn't Changing Me. It's Revealing Me."
https://substack.com/@annadiazmcbride/note/p-208899736?r=21pxmn&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Connect with Anna:
🌐 Website: https://www.annamcbride.com
📸 Instagram: @iam_annamcbride
🎵 TikTok: @iam_annamcbride

💬 I'd love to hear from you: What mountain are you climbing right now—and who is it inviting you to become?

#SheAskedPodcast #AnnaMcBride #PersonalGrowth #Resilience #HealingJourney #SelfDiscovery #29029 #Mindset #LifeTransitions #Women'sGrowth #Transformation

✨ Schedule your Free Call with Anna

💌 Join Anna's Newsletter

🎬 Subscribe on YouTube

✨Follow on Instagram

Transcript

Welcome And What Practical Hope Means

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host Anna McBride. I'm a therapist, a coach, a storyteller, and someone who is learning that life's greatest teachers rarely come wrapped in comfort. Sometimes they come wrapped as divorce, sometimes like grief, sometimes an illness or failure, or uncertainty. And sometimes they arrive disguised as a mountain. If you're new to us, I am so glad you found us. Each week on She Ask, we explore the stories, the questions, the practical tools that help us navigate life's transitions with more courage, more grace and ease, and more hope. And if you're walking through your own season of change, whether that's grief, divorce, reinvention, or simply feeling called towards something more, I hope you'll know that you don't have to figure it out on your own. Through coaching, workshops, retreats, and this podcast, My Greatest Joy, is walking beside women as they rediscover who they are. You can always learn more at anamcbride.com.

Training For 29029 And The Real Lesson

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Today I don't have a guest. It's just you and me. And honestly, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because something has been happening to me over the last several months that I didn't expect. As many of you know, I am training for the 29029 Everesting event that's going to take place in Lake Tahoe later this year in October. It's an endurance event over three days that asked the participants to climb over 29,000 feet of elevation, the equivalent of Mount Everest. When I first signed up, I thought it was all about training to climb a mountain. Now I'm not so sure. People ask me all the time, Anna, who would voluntarily do something like that? I know it sounds crazy, right? Because some weekends, I'm hiking for eight, nine hours. I walked 20 miles a couple of weekends ago in the pouring rain. And then the next weekend I hiked 17 miles with more than 4,500 feet of elevation climbing. And this week I'm out in California because I just attended a training camp for the event that I'm going to be participating in, where we we hiked over 40 miles, climbed over 6,500 feet of elevation in two days. It was intense. And it pushed me way, way, way out of my comfort zone. Now these are all different trails, different weather, different challenges. But every hike has been teaching me the very same lesson. I've realized this mountain isn't changing me. It's revealing me. And I have a feeling that's true for every one of us. Because maybe your mountain doesn't have trees or hiking boots. Maybe your mountain is caregiving. Maybe your mountain is about rebuilding after divorce. Maybe it's grief. Maybe it's a diagnosis. Maybe it's wondering who you are after your children are all grown. Or your career has changed. Or the life you've been living is no longer looking like what you thought it would. Whatever your mountain is, I think the question is the same. Not how do I get through this? But who is this experience inviting me to become? That's the conversation I'd love for us to have today. Because somewhere along all these trails that I've been hiking, I stopped believing that transformation happens when I reach the finish line, the summit. I started believing that transformation happens with every single step we're willing to take. So let's talk about becoming, not achieving, not arriving, becoming. Let's begin.

Day One When Performance Takes Over

SPEAKER_00 5:09

So this weekend I attended a training camp. It was two days of intense hiking through the Sierra Nevadas. We were at a beautiful resort in Lake Tahoe. And the coach who led it, Coach Chris, has been with 29029 since its beginning, about 10 years ago. And he's from this area, so he's very well versed on all of these mountain trails. He challenged us to hike in elevation, these long distances, for eight to ten hours a day, whatever it took to complete what was right ahead of us. And what happened was that in usual form, I showed up for this event, ready to show everyone who I was. I am so used to being underestimated, discounted. Or so it seems. It was three miles apiece. Straight uphill. Would have added another 1500, maybe 1200 to 1500 feet of elevation climb. I chose not to do it. I said, I'm done. And I was sore. And my calf was, you know, pushing me. Now I wonder if I hadn't performed in that first stretch of hiking, would I have had extra to go up that mountain? You know, because the day of the event is anything in life. Pushing through, not paying attention, not pacing yourself isn't a good strategy. It sets you up for failure. It could, anyway. It can certainly disassociate you from your body and from the experience. You can over-intellectualize it. And I did all that. That was day one.

Day Two Slowing Down On Purpose

SPEAKER_00 9:44

On day two, the coach, the coaches, challenged me. They said, can you stay in the middle or at the end of the pack? Can you do that? You're not allowed to be out in front. And just see what that feels like. See what comes up for you during that. What are your thoughts? What are your feelings? Oh my gosh, I was so pissed off. I was like, don't tell me what to do. Who's going to think I'm special if I'm at the end of the line? Because the losers are back there, right? The older people back there. What a reveal of who I was being doing that. That lasted, that attitude lasted, thankfully, for only the first five miles, which were all uphill. Something in me shifted. Something in me gave me permission to just be, to just breathe. And these coaches are really good. You know, they could spot the look on my face, the breathing technique that I had, right? To tell whether I was in comfort or discomfort. And their challenge was to remain in comfort as long as possible. At a pace that suited my body. I could just know it, or I could feel it, or I could just let that go. And let me just say this. I'm really grateful that that happened. Because even though I was mad about it, even though I had that bad attitude at the beginning, it really brought me back to this knowing that I have shared with so many clients, so many people throughout my therapeutic practice, I have said, you are special because you're here. You don't owe anybody anything. Just know that. Live from that. Act from that. I have to internalize that more. I have to be more intentional with the energy I bring to these challenges so that they're no longer a performance. They're about enjoyment. Because that question that everyone would say, who would voluntarily choose to do this? I don't want my answer to be the performer. I want the answer to be the person who is becoming so in love with herself, so in love with her life, that she values her health, she values her body, that she doesn't have to torture it, beat it up to prove anything. That's who I'm becoming. I'm becoming

Tools That Shift The Nervous System

SPEAKER_00 13:35

the person who's more aligned with her nervous system. Whew. Wow. It's incredible. Yeah. So, you know, our program is all about tools for practical hope because I didn't just flip a switch and turn off the performer. I had to do some soul searching. So that challenge that was given to me at the end of day one, I went back to my room and I did the three things I always do when I want to expand my awareness. I write down the questions that were in front of me. Like, who would I be if I didn't have to be out in front? Who would I be if I could let go of the performance? Who would I be if I could just enjoy the experience instead of thinking the goal is to win the outcome? What if I just made it about the hike, the journey? Yeah. So I wrote a lot about that. And then I meditated. Because meditation helps settle me. It helps bring me to that part of myself that knows that it's really okay. Everything is okay as long as I am in alignment in integrity. You know, and the truth is, for a long time now, I have been praying to live with integrity. Because somewhere, somehow, I knew something's off. And that's the thing about this hike, these hikes and the way they've been transforming me. They've been bringing to the surface the stuff that I hadn't fully seen. It's been bringing the clarity of where am I off? How am I living that's not in alignment with the way that I have been suggesting I've been. Yeah. When it comes to challenges, physical ones, I'm not so kind with myself. Turns out. I can be really, really negative and self-degrading if I don't take the lead. Climb that mountain in front of everybody. Yeah. Turns out that that's how I've been. Not kind. Not listening to my body. I mean, that day one, I didn't even stop to pee. I barely ate. I didn't hydrate properly. This is all true. So the second day, at a much slower pace, I knew, could feel it, when I needed to drink, when I needed to eat, when I needed to go to the bathroom. And it was felt safer. It felt attuned. It felt comfortable, even though it was 14 miles in the elevation of a 3,700 to 4,000 feet of climbing. It wasn't easy. It wasn't comfortable. But I felt more comfortable because I was going at a pace that was actually more natural for me. That was right for me. So mind-blowing that something that simple could be that profound. So the tools I use of journaling, the hard questions, meditating to settle the mind and body, the breath work, to let myself calm down to sleep. And in the morning, before day two began, I did the same thing. I journaled my intentions that today I'm going to go slower. I'm going to give myself permission to be in the middle of the pack or at the end of the pack. And let that be enough. Let that be the winning. Let that be my choice. Because let me say this. What I have come to learn through this process of hiking is it's never about where you end up. It's about who you become through the process.

Questions To Ask On Your Mountain

SPEAKER_00 19:14

That's the real transformation. It's in the consistency of effort. And, you know, this life of mine has been very off track, you know, ever since I got divorced. And my life started becoming something that I hadn't intended. And my work took on a different look, a different meaning. You know. I've been in this process of change. Yeah. Eight years of change. And now I'm choosing this physical challenge, which is probably calling forth more change and growth in this year that I've been doing this, you know, all this training. I had to let go. I've had to let go of so much of the attitude that I had that I thought took to really perform. This is no longer about performing. This is about being. And whether I reach the end in perfect time or not, no longer matters. Now let me be honest. If I don't finish, I'm sure I'll be bummed. Yet it's not going to ruin my life or my thoughts about myself. Because this is no longer about the event. This is about all the change that's happening in the preparation. And I'm so, so grateful. So use those tools if you're facing whatever kind of mountain that you have in front of you. Ask yourself some questions. I always like the ones that are open-ended. Like, what is this mountain really about? What is this challenge really about? How am I performing in it? And be honest. And then ask yourself who would I be in it if I gave myself permission to be kinder to myself? If I gave myself permission to not perform anymore, to take care of me the way I really need to be. Taken care of. Who would I be? If you can be that honest and open and creative, wow. And then meditate. See yourself like that. Because if you see it, you can be it. Set those intentions. Set a promise and keep it. This is how we change. So as we come to the end of this conversation, I'd like to leave you with two questions. What mountain

Closing Reflections And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 22:48

are you climbing right now? And perhaps the more important question, who is this mountain inviting you to become? I don't know what season of life you find yourself in today. But I do know this. Storms don't last forever. Neither do steep climbs. And neither does the version of you who first stepped onto the trail. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to continue it with you. I've written a Substack essay called The Mountain Isn't Changing Me, It's Revealing Me. Please will have a little information about it in the show notes. So check it out. This is where I explore more these lessons more deeply. And if you know someone who's facing a mountain of their own, please share this episode with them. Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer another person is the reminder that they don't have to climb alone. If you are looking for someone to walk beside you through this season of your life, I'd be honored to be that companion. Through one-on-one coaching, workshops, retreats, I help women move through life's transitions. Not by avoiding discomfort, but by discovering the strength, the wisdom, and the grace that has been with them all along. You can learn more about that at AnnaMcBride.com. Until next time, remember the mountain isn't changing you. It's revealing you. It's revealing the person you've been becoming all along. You've been listening to She Ask Tools for Practical Hope. And until soon, be well.