Switchbacks

An Acceptance and Commitment metaphor

Suppose you are taking a hike in the mountains. You know how mountain trials

are constructed, especially if the slopes are steep. They wind back and forth; often have

“switchbacks”, which make you literally walk back and forth, and sometimes a trail will

even drop back to below a level you had reached earlier. If I asked you at a number of

points on such a trail to evaluate how well you are accomplishing your goal of reaching

the mountaintop, I would hear a different story every time. If you were in switchback

mode, you would probably tell me that things werenʼt going well, that you were never

going to reach the top. If you were in a stretch of open territory where you could see the

mountaintop and the path leading up to it, you would probably tell me things were going

very well. Now imagine that we are across the valley with binoculars, looking at people

hiking on this trail. If we were asked how they were doing, we would have a positive

progress report every time. We would be able to see that the overall direction of the

trail, not what it looks like at a given moment, is the key to progress. We would see that

following this crazy, winding trail is exactly what leads to the top.