Building on these efforts, an avalanche practitioner and alacritous thinker by the name of Roger Atkins developed a concept that we could more strategically prime our automatic thinking process by deliberately choosing a “mindset” before going out the door each day. His original concept, published in an ISSW paper from 2014 under the title of Yin, Yang, and You, has been highly lauded and expanded upon by others in our field.

Atkins delivers a compelling argument that this is a multi-faceted approach that can ultimately help guide our decisions towards correct actions that align with present conditions. He notes that an initial step in this process is augmenting what he calls “a selection of desires.” Desires underlie our decisions and are often difficult to combat if we focus on too narrow a set. An example he gives is that a desire to ride steep and deep powder will ultimately guide one towards doing so, and that in some circumstances that is totally permissible, but in others the result could be catastrophic. This is but one of many desires that avalanche practitioners may select from and he lists several more in his paper.

The concept of adopting a mindset, or a fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations, isn’t foreign to us as humans (Atkins 2014). We do it every day in our activities. He illustrates that we can be strategic about it by selecting from a list of pre-determined mindsets that are defined by typical conditions and operational strategies. This list has become the stuff of lore within our industry and is still being argued about and mulled over in meetings, bars, and locker rooms the world over.