The Mountain Is You Book Summary - The Mountain Is You Book explained in key points

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The Mountain Is You summary

Name: The Mountain Is You
Rating: 4.6 (1218 reviews)
Author: Brianna Wiest

Brianna Wiest

Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

4.6 (1218 ratings)

16 mins

Brief summary

The Mountain Is You by Brooke McAlary is a self-help book that teaches readers how to overcome self-sabotage and achieve personal growth.

Topics

Learning Self-Help Personality Routines & Habits

Table of Contents

The Mountain Is You
Summary of 7 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Understand your subconscious behavior and reach your greatest potential.

Your fears and bad habits can prevent you from living your best life, but they can also show you how to get there.

The path will be tough – like climbing a mountain. You’ll have to sit with your discomfort and be honest about your actions. Change is never easy but you can transform your negative patterns and reinvent yourself as the person you were meant to be.

In this Blink to Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain is You, you’ll discover the many ways habits and worries can hold you back. And in doing so, you’ll find that there are also many ways you can learn from those negative behaviors, and use that knowledge to point you in a positive direction.

While reading, you’re sure to find a familiar trait or feeling from your own life. Good. It’s all part of the process when you finally get honest and face your most challenging obstacle – yourself. That’s what the mountain symbolizes, the inner struggles that are holding you back.

Wiest provides multiple routes over the mountain, explaining where they start and end, warning of their various twists, and describing the scenery along the way. This Blink won’t go down all those paths, but it will show you how to start climbing that mountain and change your life in the process.

What is self-sabotage?

Self-sabotage might sound like something you’d be forced to do under hypnosis. Everyone’s laughing while you’re on stage unaware and flailing about. It’s clearly nothing you’d do consciously. But the truth is that self-sabotage is much more subtle than a hypnotist’s show. And it’s incredibly common.

Self-sabotage is a coping mechanism you use to meet a need or emotion that’s being neglected. It protects you and soothes the discomfort you feel from that neglect. But like all coping mechanisms, self-sabotage only provides temporary relief. It doesn’t truly fulfill your needs.

The way you self-sabotage can take many shapes. There’s perfectionism, which protects you from failing by sabotaging your efforts to try new things because you can’t stand to do them imperfectly, so you don’t do them at all. Or uprooting, which protects you from facing the real problems in your life by diverting your attention to the next relationship, job, home, or whatever other new project you’ve just started. Or pride, which protects you from judgment by keeping you in situations that no longer work, like not ending a bad marriage because you’re too ashamed of what others will think of your divorce.

There are several ways to tell if you’re stuck in a spiral of self-sabotage. If you care more about appearing happy than actually being happy, for example. Or if you’re more scared of your feelings than you are of anything else. Or if you’re waiting for someone else to lift you out of your current situation and into a better one.

Escaping the spiral isn’t easy. The first step is recognizing your self-sabotaging acts for what they are – coping mechanisms that feel good in the moment but are actually holding you back. Or to put it another way, they are the mountain.

To help recognize your own coping mechanisms and see them for the saboteurs they really are, make a list of all your problems. Write down every single one. Be specific, clear, and honest. Admit what’s really wrong and then promise yourself you won’t accept it anymore.

Listen to your behaviors.

Once you’ve identified your self-sabotaging behaviors, you can discover what they’re really saying about you. Uncovering the hard truths about bad habits can reveal your true needs.

Let’s take overworking, for instance. Yes, you can be passionately committed to your career but neglecting the rest of your life to be in the office isn’t healthy. If that’s what you’re doing, it could mean you’re uncomfortable being with your own feelings. Be honest about what you’re hiding from and deal with that instead of working another late night.

Filter out the noise.

Gut instinct is more than a saying. It’s real.

Your gastrointestinal system, or your gut, can actually store information. The vagus nerve delivers this information to your brain faster than your conscious mind can recall it, and voilà, you have gut instinct.

Manage your discomfort by making small changes.

Just because you can recognize your self-sabotaging behaviors doesn’t mean you can stop them. Humans are resistant to change.

Your brain regulates thousands of bodily functions without you even knowing it – from big, muscular movements like breathing and heartbeat, to the release of thousands of chemicals into your billions of cells. As your brain controls all these moving parts, it’s also keeping them in balance. This creates a physical comfort zone which is good for your body. Your brain also tries to maintain a balance but staying in your mental comfort zone isn’t always good for you.

Become the best version of yourself.

Don’t think about pink elephants.

You just thought about a pink elephant, didn’t you? That’s okay, it’s only natural. That’s why it doesn’t work to just not think about the bad habits and negative feelings that you’ve been using as coping mechanisms. If you can’t not think about something silly like a pink elephant, how are you going to not think about your deeply rooted behaviors?

Find your inner peace.

Nice job, you’ve made it. You’ve identified your self-sabotaging behaviors, learned from them, ignored the false realities of feeling, faced your faults honestly, and made incremental changes until you’ve become the best version of yourself. You’ve climbed the mountain. It should be all easygoing from here, right?

Well, not so much. Life doesn’t suddenly become easy for successful people. They don’t stop having needs. They don’t stop having emotions that can distort reality. But they know how to satisfy their needs in healthy ways. They know how to sit with their emotions, how to feel them without reacting impulsively, and how to interpret their messages. They also know they need to continue the inner work of studying their habits and being honest about what they see, or else they’ll fall back into negative patterns.

Final Summary

You’re your own worst enemy and your greatest teacher. You sabotage yourself with behaviors meant to satisfy your unmet needs, but those behaviors also hold the key to reaching your fullest potential, if you can learn from their messages. They’re deceptive and can take many shapes, so look carefully.

These self-sabotaging behaviors that block your way are your own personal mountain. Climbing that mountain and changing your pattern of behavior takes hard, honest work. The going will be slow and the footing can get treacherous. It won’t be comfortable, but it will help you change your life.

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What is The Mountain Is You about?

The Mountain Is You (2020) can help you recognize the negative patterns in your life and what they are really telling you. Changing those patterns will be like climbing a mountain and the reward will be unlocking your own potential.

The Mountain Is You Review

The Mountain Is You (2020) provides valuable insights on overcoming self-sabotage and unlocking personal growth. Here's why this book is a must-read:

It offers practical strategies for identifying and addressing self-destructive behaviors.
The book's relatable examples and anecdotes make it easy to understand and apply the lessons.
It encourages readers to embrace self-compassion and mindfulness in their self-improvement journey.

Transform your life by conquering self-sabotage with The Mountain Is You.

Who should read The Mountain Is You?

People with bad habits that they want to understand and change
Those looking to maximize their potential
Anyone who feels stuck

About the Author

Brianna Wiest is an American writer. Her books have sold over one million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 20 languages. Her other titles include 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think, This Is How You Heal, The Truth About Everything, and Salt Water, a book of poetry.

Categories with The Mountain Is You

Psychology Personal Development

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