The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

Working on self-worth involves changing what you value. Our self-worth constantly becomes tied up in our performance. If we want to improve, we need to test ourselves on challenging climbs, but a diet of challenging climbs will yield plenty of performances that fall short of our aspirations. Poor performances can make us feel like “failures.”
    Many people lose effectiveness in their climbing (and other aspects of life) by tying their self-worth to how they are performing. All of us have experienced this to some degree at some time, and many of us feel it constantly. If we are climbing well, we feel good, not just about our climbing but about ourselves. After a “good” day on the crags, we might be confident, upbeat, and self-assured in all our affairs for days afterwards. Conversely, a “bad” day can make us feel down and unsure not just about our climbing but even our jobs, relationships, or our optimism for future happiness. In short, climbing rewards or punishes us, as if we were naïve children and climbing was our parent.

    Babysitting your self-image or hunting for personal power—climbing can be either, and the choice is yours. Photo: Jeff Achey
    Basing your self-worth on climbing performance puts you at the whim of external factors. These factors may be random and misleading. Comparison is one source of illusion. Perhaps you felt that you performed well on a certain climb because your partner was having an off day and found the climbing very difficult. You found it only slightly difficult and conclude that you were climbing quite well, when in fact you were climbing no better than usual. Or, your partner was at the top of his game. You felt lame in comparison, when in fact, objectively, you put in a very strong performance. Environmental factors may be involved. Perhaps you mastered your day’s objective due to especially favorable conditions, such as low humidity, when in fact, you really didn’t climb particularly well. In all these cases, the good or bad feelings you have are not based on something you can take credit for. If the performances boost your self-worth, the boost is grounded in fiction.
    Perhaps you truly did climb well. You rose to the challenge and applied your skills admirably. You can, then, honestly derive satisfaction from the effort, but beyond that, what else? Should your self-worth get wrapped up in the event? Are you a better person for having accomplished your climb?
    No. Authentic self-worth comes from an internal value system, not from simple achievement. Self-worth comes from the positive results of your effort. You may have learned something about yourself or gained the experiential confidence to attempt more difficult challenges. These effects are genuinely valuable. The achievement itself, however, is no reason for an elevated sense of self-worth. You might not have learned anything from your “success,” or you could have learned something equally valuable by not meeting your objective.
    Here’s the complete scenario for performance-oriented self-worth: If you have a string of weak performances, you’ll be down on yourself in general, creating a destructive downward spiral. If you climb well half the time, you’ll be the passive recipient of reward half the time, and of punishment the other half. If you manage to climb well all the time, you’ll get the dubious reward of becoming an egomaniac with a precarious self-image, destined for a crash. You can look forward to an old age spent in endless rehash of past days of glory. If you think about it, no matter how well you climb, tangling up your self-worth with your performance is a lose-lose situation.
    Instead of simply falling into this habitual self-worth mindset, analyze it. Focus your attention on it. Discover its logic, or lack thereof. In the light of consciousness, its hold on you will begin to break down. You will see that external achievement is not the root of anything really valuable that we can derive from a climbing challenge. So what is? What can we take away and really use?
    The answer: learning. Hard climbs push us out of our comfort zone, and once in the unknown, we can learn. Often, in the midst of the challenge, we push ourselves in ways we didn’t know possible, gaining knowledge that we can’t lose. And, if our effort is strong and creative, we can gain that knowledge regardless of the outcome of the climb. Achievement may or may not be the result of an effort, but the essential payoff