The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

to control the conversation because his agenda is set by the Ego, which doesn’t care about new ideas or learning. It’s looking for approval, and it wants to show either the superiority of its own habitual ideas, or the ability to dictate the conversation. It’s the same in climbing when you become rigid. You’re preoccupied with preconceived notions and with your actions. You’re defensive rather than curious. You want a sense of control, even if the only way to attain it is by clinging to a mediocre level of performance. You’re looking for an escape from the discomfort of the effort and you aren’t Listening.

    If the route follows some bizarre feature that your conscious mind has no idea how to climb, listen to the rock. Notice the subtleties. Avoid tunnel vision. Leave the comfort zone of your limited repertoire of techniques and learn. Photo: Jim Thornburg
    If you find yourself clinging to a large hold or to the sensation of an inefficient move, remember that this is part of the Ego’s agenda. Draw your sword and slice off the dragon’s head. By slaying the Ego you become free to stay receptive and to listen to what’s happening in the moment. By listening, you suspend your limiting perceptions and old beliefs. Habitual perceptions and beliefs will take you to your previous levels of performance—and no further. If you want to exceed your old boundaries you need to create a new and expanded understanding. Not only must you enter the risk zone on the rock, you must enter it in your mind. Just as you leave the comfortable stance and launch out onto steep, smooth, unknown stone, so must you let go of those comfortable notions that define what you think you can do. The risk zone is the learning zone. As Albert Einstein said, “No problem is solved with the same level of consciousness that created it.” The Ego won’t bring you to a new level. You must listen to the unknown.
    Listening
    “Listening” is a metaphor for the mindset you’re striving for as you climb. Listening is not something you do just with your ears, but rather is an entire way of staying receptive. When you’re too focused on a rigid, specific plan in your climbing you’ll tend to squint your eyes and create a sense of concentration in your forehead and temples. When you open up a bit and adopt an attitude of receptivity, your face relaxes, creating a soft-eyes focus, the role of your eyes becomes less overpowering, and the focus of sensation moves back toward your ears. Receptivity is the basic attitude of listening, which is very different from seeing. We can see only in the direction we look, but we can hear from all directions at the same time. When we listen, we’re paying attention to our whole environment.
    We tend to overlook or not recognize an unexpected discovery when we’re narrowly focused. Being too selective compromises our receptivity and therefore our learning. For example, while climbing into a crux, you move over a roof by pulling on edges. As you move up you find the wall above also has a hidden finger crack. An unreceptive climber will tend to dismiss this unexpected discovery and stick with his original plan of face climbing and looking for edges to grab. A receptive, “listening” climber will use the unexpected crack as a clue to modify his approach from face climbing to crack techniques.
    Specific expectations in general are antagonistic to a listening mindset. In the Choices process we talked about setting an intention and introduced the concept of unbending intent. Unbending intent might seem opposed to a mindset of listening, but it’s not. The beginning of your action may involve predetermined moves you are certain of, but after those moves, your intention must be able to accommodate new information. Your intention isn’t to put one hand here and one foot there. It’s to continue climbing through the risk or to fall. In other words, you make a 100-percent commitment to effort and action, not to some specific set of techniques or moves.
    With your intention set on the outcome you tend to map out your course in advance and develop rigid expectations about the moves you’ll do. These expectations ruin your ability to climb spontaneously. When the situation changes, you must revise your plan. It takes precious time to withdraw your original plan and redirect your intention to a new plan. Your new plan, of course, involves new expectations. As you continue climbing into the unknown and the