The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

of the experience is learning.
    An important principle of Becoming Conscious, then, is to untangle your self-worth from your performance. You will perform better on some days than on others for reasons ranging from muscle fitness at a crucial instant, to the temperature of the rock, or to what music you listened to while driving to the crag. This should not be a self-worth issue. Achievements are satisfying, but simply having them doesn’t increase your personal power, regardless of what your Ego may tell you. If you want a more consistent and authentic source from which to draw a sense of self-worth and personal power, you will eventually need to reject external factors such as comparison and achievement. You must look inside and embrace learning.
    Learning to Love and Loving to Learn
    Let’s recap the process so far. I’ve said that many climbers are largely unconscious of how they think about their climbing, and of how they attain their sense of self-worth. All of us fall prey to hidden, habitual thought patterns that lead to sub-optimal performance. Indeed, these thought patterns and performances comprise our sense of who we are. Yet, the Witness position reminds us we are not these things. We are not our thoughts, but the observers of those thoughts. Once we consciously appreciate the Witness position, our mind becomes a field of inquiry. We observe that our thoughts about self-worth are tied to achievement. We also identify that this system of thought is flawed. We realize that it promotes performance plateaus and general unhappiness. Our habitual thought system is stubborn, but once we’re aware of it and dissatisfied, we begin to look for a better system.
    When you focus on the external outcome of your efforts, you are at the mercy of chance. You worry about making it up your climb, and how you’ll feel if you don’t. If things go your way and you make it, you’ll react to the outcome with happiness. If things don’t go your way and you don’t make it, you’ll be unhappy. Either way, you are reacting to a situation that is out of your control—a stressful, unempowering state of affairs.
    If, on the other hand, the self-worth you derive from your climbing is based on what you learn during the experience, then you are less concerned about the outcome of your efforts and able to focus more on the effort itself. What really matters when facing a challenge? What matters is learning. You want to test yourself, throw yourself into something outside your comfort zone and see what you’re capable of. Your true goal is not to conquer fifty feet of inanimate rock, but to expand your abilities through learning.
    With a focus on learning, awareness improves. During the climb, you’re free from anxiety and therefore, free to apply yourself more fully to the effort. Obviously, this mindset increases your chance of making it up your climb. After the climb, your thoughts focus on the internal process, not the outcome. If you fall off your climb, you are not plagued by thoughts of failure. You don’t kick the rock and yell, “I suck!” as some climbers do, nor quietly hang your head, victim-like, and let your performance affirm a poor self-image. Instead, your attention goes to the positive aspects of the experience: what you learned, what mistakes you made, why you fell off, what you will do next time in the light of your new knowledge. Self-worth does not enter the picture. Your self-worth comes from inside, from your dedication to the quest for knowledge, from a love of learning. This gives you a more realistic and consistent basis for your motivation to climb and improve.
    Of course, shifting over completely to internal motivation is easier said than done. Most of us have a combination of internal and external factors motivating us. To increase the power of your internal motivation and reduce your dependence on external factors, it helps to analyze what’s important to you and what you’re passionate about. Spend some time identifying the things you love about climbing. These may include the beauty of the rock and environment, the friends and companionship, and the many complex factors that relate to challenge and achievement. Beauty, friendship—these are ever-present in climbing. Our experience is improved by taking the time to appreciate them, and to remember that whatever happens, we are involved in these things we value. The last category, challenge and achievement, requires more careful