The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

analysis.
    Do you love to challenge and test yourself on a difficult climb, or do you simply love the feeling of accomplishment or the praise from your peers once the climb is over? If love of praise and need for gratification are your core values in climbing, you are drawing from a shallow well. If you could be forever surrounded by weak, inept climbers, who constantly fed your Ego, would you choose that, even if it meant that you never improved? Would the pleasure and satisfaction last? Would you knowingly choose such a situation over one where your Ego had to struggle face-to-face with climbers more accomplished than you?
    The Ego plays a game, making arbitrary rules so that it can win. If it’s losing, it makes excuses and creates a fantasy world where it could have or should have won. The tricks of the Ego are not helpful or meaningful ways of thinking. Rather, they are traps that we all fall into when we become separated from what we truly value. Connecting with the deeper reasons you climb is essential for progressing in the Rock Warrior’s Way.
    Looked at objectively, your self-worth is essentially static: you are worth the same as anyone else, no more and no less. Having made it up climb X, Y, or Z is not relevant. You may be glad to have accomplished these climbs, but they have not increased your worth as a person. Yet your best climbs have given you something. You can feel it. What is it, if not self-worth? It is growth. The experiences have helped teach you something about yourself. They have increased your self-knowledge and thus your personal power. Once you learn to consciously separate achievement from self-worth, you become free of the self-limiting need to establish external “proof” of self-worth. You’re better able to focus on what the efforts of climbing really can do: improve the self through growth and learning. For most climbers, a little soul-searching will go a long way toward replacing the value of achievement with the value of learning.
    Shifting from external toward internal motivation gives you the power to determine value and worth. Thus, internal motivation builds self-confidence. Variable external factors play a smaller role in how you feel about yourself. You are in tune with what you are doing, with your strengths and weaknesses, and you have a reliable, stable core to your being. You are not invincible, but your abilities can be counted on. This is confidence—confidence in your self. Self-confidence gives consistency to your performance. By having a solid core, you’re more comfortable and secure in the uncomfortable, insecure atmosphere of a climbing challenge. This core grows when you value the learning above the achievement.
    Power
    The ability to do things, the ability to learn, having energy to apply to new situations, self-confidence, boldness—all these are elements of something the warrior literature calls power . We are not speaking here of conventional power, control over others through money or influence, but rather something more personal. Power is the ultimate goal of the warrior. Doing difficult climbs, taking risks, challenging oneself, doing new things—these are undertaken for the purpose of increasing personal power. For the Rock Warrior, power is the currency of climbing effort. It appears in the form of full attention, shrewd analysis, timely action, inventiveness, explosive effort, and commitment. Power gets the job done and transports the warrior into the wild and risky places where opportunities for learning abound. Above all else, a warrior is a hunter of personal power. He takes proper care of the power he has and constantly searches for more.
    Power Sinks
    We all have generous helpings of personal power, but we waste it. One form of waste is called a power sink . Power sinks are energy-sapping elements of our personalities. The first power sink is self-importance . In an ordinary frame of mind, we constantly sink attention into unconscious, ineffective, Ego-promoting thoughts. The Ego’s sense of self-worth, as we have said, relies on petty comparison, being better than or worse than others. A warrior, in contrast, sees self-worth as a non-issue. He is equal to others. He doesn’t sink power into proving to himself that he is as good or better than others. Instead, he is aware of the self-importance power sink and stops it. Instead of valuing a personal identity relative to others, he values learning, growth, and situations that increase his