The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

such as your arms feeling too pumped to continue, with another thing, such as yelling “Take!” If you break the automatic association, then you begin destroying the habit.
    Don’t do anything. Don’t react to the insistent, comfort-seeking self-talk. Instead, simply observe yourself. Listen to the self-talk. Listen to your conscious mind squirm in the discomfort of being pumped, but don’t act. Be the Witness. If you really are pumped, you won’t be able to continue the observation session for long. It doesn’t matter. A few seconds is enough for you to begin breaking the chain of association. You have proven to yourself that you don’t have to say “take” when you’re stressed out and pumped. It’s not an automatic response. You have options, and delaying gives you time to consider them.
    Delay is the first step. The next is to dissociate from your habitual response. In dissociating, you separate yourself from your performance. Here you are working against your habitual self-image as a person who gets pumped and then yells, “Take!” Instead, call attention to yourself as an autonomous person, capable of making new choices. Call yourself by name, and give a different command not derived from your habitual response to discomfort. Faced with the above scenario, I might say, “Okay Arno, even though you think you’re too pumped, just climb into this next section anyway, since the fall won’t be that long.” If you can do this—delay your response and replace a habit with a fresh action—then you’ve accomplished a powerful feat.
    Another classic scenario for habitual reaction occurs after a fall. You might habitually react in one of several ways. Maybe you get upset and frightened by the feeling of the fall and react by giving up and going down to the ground before examining your options. Maybe you’re self-critical and react by saying something that turns your performance into an absolute, such as, “I’m worthless at this kind of climbing!” Or maybe you react with anger and charge back up without spending any time analyzing your fall or considering what you might do to change your approach.
    Next time you fall, observe your reaction. Your goal is simply to develop awareness, to catch yourself when you react, and to stop that reaction.
    Becoming Conscious is a process that improves awareness, develops an empowering self-image, increases self-confidence, and builds personal power. You accomplish this not by striving directly for an empowering self-image or self-confidence, as goals, but simply by shifting attention inward. Your goal is to gain awareness—to learn—and thus to gain access to deeper and more powerful sources of motivation. The 1000-headed dragon of the Ego has a thousand self-limiting ways of reacting to stress and protecting itself, and many of these ways have become habitual and unconscious. Thus, the Ego is your constant foe but also your teacher. As you gain understanding, you will be able to collect more personal power by diverting attention away from power sinks, such as self-importance, and plugging power leaks, such as wishing or reacting.
    Once we cease to be defined by our past performances and achievements, we begin to see ourselves less rigidly, and as full of potential. Our newly liberated power is ready to be put to use. The next day climbing we might see a complete change in the way we are able to use our minds and bodies on the rock. No matter how our performance turns out, we have the chance to experience profound learning from the fresh material provided by our efforts. All that’s required is that we pay attention. The action word for Becoming Conscious is Observe . Use this word to remind yourself of the elements in this chapter.

Chapter 2
    Life is Subtle
    In Becoming Conscious, you unraveled the devices of the Ego, channeling attention away from power sinks and plugging power leaks. That process frees attention—power—that previously was unavailable to apply to your climbing. In the Life is Subtle process, you collect and center that attention.
    Climbing is full of subtleties, and we constantly overlook them. Take, for example, balance and poise. Intellectually, we understand that these are important elements of technique, yet we constantly botch the subtleties. Here’s a typical scenario: A climber arrives, fairly pumped, at a clipping stance on a sport climb. He is ten feet out from his last bolt and very anxious to get clipped in. He’s tense,