My Topanga Hike

I recently took a hike in the Topanga Region, and although I certainly wasn’t ready to go hiking (I was wearing casual shoes and had injured my foot last week), there was no way I could not do it. I knew the views would be worth it, so I set out on my adventure.

Initially, I had planned to only do about 1km of walking, just to get a nice scenic view. Of course, as I began the trip, each stop looked more and more magically and I just kept pushing through the pain.

After zig zagging up and down a section of the mountain, I began to hear the roaring of cars, and knew this was a sign that I’d trekked my distance. Previously, everything was quiet and I was one with nature.

I sat down and threw some thoughts into my journal, and quickly took a screenshot of my location on maps - I didn’t think twice about what I’d written.

When I returned to the real world, I thought I’d look back over my notes. My opening sentence began: “just hiked to the middle of Backbone Trail” - although no one will read the journal entry, I still undervalued my work. Upon looking at my screenshot, I’d realised (days later mind you), that I’d actually hiked about 90% of the trail.

What’s this got to do with anything?

As designers, we constantly undervalue our work. Regardless of whether it’s for a client “sure this’ll take me a week”, or our own achievements - we’ve led ourselves to believe that everything we produce or achieve isn’t quite as valuable as it is.

How do we fix it?

We need to start looking at our work and ourselves from an outsider's perspective. To turn the subconscious mind off and look at ourselves without the biases we’ve internally created.

There’s positivity in everything we do in life (unless you’re a flat out dick - in which case get off my site. Here let me help you). Sometimes we just need to step back and think of ourselves as a character in a book.

How do we?

We need to start looking at our work and ourselves from an outsider's perspective. To turn the subconscious mind off and look at ourselves without the biases we’ve internally created.