The Mountain Is YouThe Mountain Is You

Brianna Wiest's book is about self sabotage. The mountain in the title is whatever keeps stopping you, and her argument is that most of the time, the mountain is you. We hold ourselves back because some part of us gets something out of staying stuck, even if it's only not having to find out whether we'd fail.

She spends most of the book on how to notice that happening and how to work through it. There's a lot on emotional intelligence, on listening to what your feelings are trying to tell you instead of fighting them, and on building a version of yourself that doesn't need the old patterns anymore.

One idea in it that I do think is right is that people often choose a familiar problem over an unfamiliar change, even when the problem hurts, because the familiar thing feels safer. She writes about it gently, and much of the book is short reflective passages instead of steps to follow.

A lot of people I know found it really helpful, which is why I picked it up. It just didn't land for me. I finished it anyway, because I didn't want to put down a book after a few chapters and then have an opinion about it.

I kept it on the shelf anyway. Someone who borrows it might get more out of it than I did.