The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

that too much attachment to such goals isn’t effective in achieving them. Learning and personal power are the actual goals. If our efforts are firmly directed toward those deeper goals, then we’re able to reach our climbing goals more effectively.
    The Journey mindset is love-based and ready to engage the risk. It’s not rooted in escape or avoidance as destination thinking is. When you love the challenge, you freely give your attention to it. You are in tune with the flow of the experience. You aren’t fighting it, avoiding it, or wanting to end it.
    Journey thinking also increases your post-climb rewards. If your attention isn’t in the present during the experience, you won’t remember the experience very well. The details are vague. You can’t remember the texture of the rock or the sensation of suddenly intuiting elusive moves and flowing into them. Your attention had already moved on, ghost-like, to dwell in a hollow fantasy of your future success. You were only partially present at the scene of the climb. You were climbing in order to be finished climbing. Now that you are finished climbing, it is as if you never really climbed.

    Forget the top. Just be there. Photo: Jeff Achey
    One of the first times I was conscious of really enjoying the journey occurred in Yosemite Valley. In 1984 I climbed El Capitan for the first time. Steve Petro and I had just spent four days climbing Zodiac . We were worn out after the climb and now faced the job of dragging all our gear and ourselves down to the valley floor. Walking down the shoulder of El Cap to the East Ledges and doing the rappels with heavy haul sacks and ropes biting into our shoulders and hips, our attention wandered to the future, that soon-to-be-experienced time when we’d be down, showered, and relaxing.
    As I walked the last mile or so, I had a conscious realization that this experience, so rich and rewarding, was almost over. It would then drift into memory and slowly fade away. I realized then I wanted to feel all the pain, discomfort, and everything that was happening at the moment. I wanted to feel it fully without trying to escape it. The experience would be over all too soon, and I wanted to feel it in its entirety.
    Thinking of a future destination, when I’d be pain-free and comfortable, didn’t change the fact that I was currently in pain. By feeling the discomfort and the weariness, my full attention remained in the moment. I still remember the experience vividly, even the descent. By staying in the discomfort of the moment, my experience was much richer, and I can actually relate that I enjoyed that suffering.
    Many climbers have had experiences like this at the end of long, drawn-out challenges. They realize they’ve been on a great adventure which is almost over. The art of the warrior Journey process is to stay in this mindset even during a five-minute challenge.
    Grace Under Pressure and Playing for Keeps
    The Journey mindset focuses attention in the present. To climb at our greatest potential we need all our attention focused on the climbing. We can’t squander it on the future. This is easier said than done. The risk zone is uncomfortable, and we are in the habit of escaping discomfort. What we say in the heat of the moment, such as, “If I could just get to that hold …” betrays the mindset: our attention is slipping out of the journey toward a destination.
    Stop the tendency to let your attention move from one comfort zone to the next. Such an approach will make your effort jerky, halting, and wasteful of energy. Instead, be fluid and flexible. Climb continuously, with unbending intent, leaving no time to latch onto fear and doubt.
    Discomfort, a sense of chaos, fight-or-flight responses—these characterize a typical climber’s experience in the risk zone. The warrior’s task is to enter the risk so knowingly and so fully that he can embrace the stressful conditions and not fight them. In the risk zone you will naturally experience a tension between opposites: between the desire to rest and the desire to exercise your power; between the desire to emerge at the top of the challenge and the desire to be tested. Hold the tension. Find comfort in the chaos. Break the habit of wanting to escape a demanding situation as quickly as possible. Adopt an attitude of appreciation toward the challenge and the learning. Set goals that involve the journey and the effort rather than the destination and the redpoint. The goal