What the Heck Does “Choose Beta” Mean
Alright, time slipped up on me since the last post, but something cool has happened since then.
You can actually find this website on Google now…Cool! This is the first website that I have ever made, and it is awesome to be able to pull out a phone and search it. This is also kind of a drag though, because only a couple people know who I am so I can’t really go showing it around.
I hope all is well in your world, and thanks for coming back:
The Meaning of Choose Beta:
I hinted about it a little bit in the last post, but I wanted to put out a short summary of why Choose Beta.
My all-time favorite activity is rock climbing.
- I love the technical aspects of working a route
- I love the fact that you must have full control of your body and mind
- But most of all, I love the comradery and bonds it creates
There are no better bonds you can find in a sport than when you become confident in literally entrusting your life into someone else’s hands. This is precisely what you are doing when you climb with a partner belaying you. You must fully trust each other.
The second point, is working through project routes together. You will try and fail together until you develop the correct sequence of moves to successfully work through the problem. Many times you can even find someone who already knows the critical steps and can use them as a resource to help guide you through the route.
This step by step sequence of moves is called the “Beta”. So, if I was working on a difficult part in a route (called the crux) and not able to get past it, I could ask another climber if they could “give me the Beta”. They would then help talk me through the correct moves or at least the sequence that they would try to use.
I read somewhere, can’t remember where, that the word Beta came from a climber who would record himself climbing on Betamax tapes so that he could show his buddies and say “You want to see the Beta? Max”. Whether or not that is the true origin I am not sure. Could be fake news.
Either way, Beta has been indoctrinated into the community and is essentially the cheat sheet of the climbing world. Sometimes there is only one logical sequence and other times there can be multiple ways to top out the route. There are many factors that can affect what the most efficient Beta for a specific climber is: including how tall, strong, and flexible they are. I have seen many routes where I will approach it in a very differently than the people I am with.
Life is exactly the same way.
My ideal life is not going to perfectly match yours. We all have different things that bring us happiness and fulfillment. If we can figure out the sequence of steps from people who are farther down the path, then we can use their Beta to expedite our achievement of those same goals.
This is the key to Choose Beta.
Time is finite but there are an infinite number of possibilities on how to live your life. If you understand what you want to achieve in your life, why would you waste it wandering around trying to find your way when you have people around you that can share their Beta???
There isn’t always one right answer, and some moves will feel more natural to you than others, but the key is to build a network of trusted peers and resources so that you can use their Beta and share yours… or at least that is my approach…
You want the Beta on how to Live Better
What can I say? I love climbing
