The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

empowering aspects of the experience while maximizing the actual danger. In contrast, the warrior’s choice-making involves impeccable use of attention.
    The Choices process is about directing your full attention in a specific direction, either into the risk or toward a definitive escape from the risk. Remember, not taking the risk is an essential option. Choosing not to take certain risks is part of the path to knowledge and power. Simply assessing a risk and working toward preparing for it are valuable learning activities. The Rock Warrior’s Way is definitely not a method for pushing yourself into foolish risks. It is a method for cutting through the mental clutter, gathering your attention, discerning exactly what the risk is, deciding if the risk is appropriate for you, and then fully committing your resources to your choice. You decide the appropriateness of a risk by comparing the new situation to situations you’ve already faced. You weigh the fall consequences against your experience with responding to such consequences. Everything—the moves, the reserve strength you have left, the fall consequences, your level of motivation—is on the table. With this clarity you make your choice.
    The Rock Warrior preparation processes—Becoming Conscious, Life is Subtle, Accepting Responsibility, and Giving—lay a sound foundation for marshalling mental resources and assessing a risk. If we’ve prepared well we have as much information as possible about what we’re facing. The preparation processes also collect and focus attention, making it powerful enough to punch through our natural resistance barrier that defines the edge of our comfort zone. Now, should we choose to take the risk, our task is to direct our full attention into it. We’ve collected all the power available. More power can only be gained by stepping off into the unknown.
    Unbending intent
    Directing attention into a choice involves more than simply shifting focus. It should be a dramatic, cathartic event. Attention focused in the direction of a choice is a new entity: intention . A warrior’s intention is a powerful force. He intends to do something, intends to take action—not casually but with all his being. Don Juan called the moment of decision the warrior’s gate of intention , and the mental state of a warrior, once he passes through this gate, one of unbending intent .
    Unbending intent means 100-percent commitment into the risk zone, total engagement of the challenge presented by the route. There may be flexibility in the specific choice of moves, as intuition dictates, but the will to move forward is fierce and unbending. The Choices process is the art of decisiveness. The word decisive derives from the Latin decidere , literally, “to cut off.” You cut off what’s no longer necessary: the unchosen options, the uncertainty and dispute. You cut off all possibility of hesitating, doubting, and wondering. The immediate future becomes very simple. You commit completely to a single course of action.
    Total commitment is more than just saying you’ll do something and then doing it. Powerful things transpire when you fully commit. W. H. Murray can help us realize more of what is happening in this process with his passage on commitment in the book Scottish Himalayan Expedition , which ends with a couplet from Wolfgang von Göethe:
    “Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it .”
    As you keep your attention 100-percent directed into the risk, you’ll obtain assistance from unseen forces to help carry you through the risk. What unseen forces? The unseen forces are the unlimited potential of your subconscious. Have you ever surprised yourself while climbing? Climbed something you didn’t think you could? Most climbers have experienced this. That surprise happens when the conscious mind is