The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

actions toward what’s really important, valuable, and purposeful in our lives. Death reminds us that we have no time to waste. This program is called the Rock Warrior’s Way because the mental principles it uses have a close kinship with those discovered by those who were in actual martial situations. Death was so likely that unusual mental preparation was absolutely essential. Even in less perilous activities, such as rock climbing, death is still a real possibility, and this truth can help us. Ultimately, for each of us, death is certain. The question, then, is how can we use the unavoidable truth of our mortality to empower us rather than cripple and terrify us?
    The Rock Warrior’s Way
    Learning and growth, by definition, take us out of the familiar and into the unknown. Hence, we must leave our comfort zone. Leaving the comfort zone is a risk—either real or perceived. The Rock Warrior’s Way is in many ways a structure to guide risk-taking. Risk-taking has three phases: preparation, transition, and action.
    The conscious mind is the primary agent active in the preparation phase. It lays the groundwork to allow the subconscious mind to effectively guide action later, when you’re actually in action, when there’s little time for thought. In the preparation phase, ideas and concepts are the important elements. You will “clean house” in your brain, assess, and plan. You’ll learn to avoid traps such as wishing behavior. You will train to focus not on how difficult the climbing is, but rather on what possibilities are open to you. You also will prepare the conscious mind to stay out of the way once you’re in the heat of action. The preparation phase includes Processes 1 through 4 below.
    The transition phase, Process 5, is short: it’s the moment of truth, of choice. Your goal will be to make a powerful, abrupt, and complete transition from preparation into action.
    In the action phase, Processes 6 and 7, your goal is to live fully within the challenge rather than try to escape it. You’ll avoid the “fight-or-flight” mentality and embrace the effort as an opportunity for learning. You will keep your conscious mind quiet, thereby allowing your intuitive abilities to come forward. You’ll keep your focus on the journey, not on the destination.
    Outline of the Program: the Seven Processes
    1. Becoming Conscious . In the first process, you improve observation skills to become more self-aware. You direct awareness onto your inner dialogue. You examine the grounds of your self-worth. You detect gross attention leaks.
    2. Life is Subtle . Attention is collected and centered. You direct awareness onto sensations in the body (breathing, posture, etc). You speak to yourself deliberately, rather than listening to the regular chatter of the inner dialogue.
    3. Accepting Responsibility . Here, you focus on being responsible for the situation, rather than assigning blame, wishing that the situation was otherwise, or hoping for magical deliverance. Blaming, wishing, and hoping take power out of your hands. Accepting responsibility comes to terms with the objective information you gather about the risk.
    4. Giving . Here you adopt an attitude of power: you ask what you can give to the performance, rather than what you might receive if you “succeed.” You focus your attention on options and possibilities. This process collects the subjective information about the risk and comes to terms with it.
    5. Choices . This is the transition phase, the moment of truth. You choose either to direct attention away from the risk or into the risk. Declining to take the risk is not failure. Many, many risks are foolish and taking them could kill you. The key to the warrior Choices process is to be absolutely decisive. If you’re going to back off, you do it without misgiving. If you go forward, you do so with your full being, without looking back. You set an intention to act with unbending intent, which produces 100-percent commitment.
    6. Listening . This process guides you as you act out the risk. It helps you stay on course, in the risk, rather than falling into a control mentality that will divert attention and rob you of power. You are in action now, in the unknown; you need to learn something. “Listening” to the situation and the route facilitates the learning process. This is a very intuitive process. In Choices, you accepted the possible outcomes of your effort and made the leap; now you must trust in the