Mastermind
I’ve just finished reading an excellent book called “Mastermind” by Jerry Moffatt. It’s a guide aimed at improving your climbing by getting your head in the right place. If you’re a climber, I highly recommend that you get a copy of this book. It’s filled with beautiful pictures, inspirational quotes and interviews with professional climbers. However, you don’t need to be a climber to gain value from this book. The lessons and concepts can be applied to all areas in life and can help us to get our minds into the right space for doing difficult things. I want to share with you some of the ideas that resonated with me.
Below are the top two lessons that I took away from the book. It should be very easy to apply these to all areas in life (not just climbing).
Visualisation
The concept of visualisation is very simple. You imagine yourself successfully completing your desired task (in this case, climbing to the top of the route without falling). Although this is simple in practice, it can be extremely powerful.
Jerry and his climbing buddies all talk about actually visualising the climb before they do it. They will first imagine themselves climbing the route from their perspective (first person) and then they will visualise it again as if they were observing themselves from a distance (third person perspective). The combination of these two view points really helps the brain to feel as if it has already experienced the event. It will, in theory, help you to feel more comfortable and confident when the time actually comes to (insert your task here). Visualisation is essentially the act of mentally doing the task without physically doing it. Now obviously this isn’t going to help you wash the dishes… but that’s not what you should use it for.
The rock climber Alex Honnold is known for his bold climbs without ropes. He recently climbed El Capitan’s stunning Freerider route in Yosemite (approx 1000 meters of vertical rock) without a rope. The film “Free Solo” documents this beautifully and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s absolutely mind blowing. The interesting thing is that Alex talks a lot about visualisation. He runs through every eventuality in his mind so that there are no surprises when he starts his climb. He pictures all the scenarios and how he would deal with them. This is the ultimate preparation tool and the perfect example of how we can actually use visualisation to our advantage. “Mastermind” has lots of quotes and interview snippets with Alex, so if you’re a Honnold fan (who isn't ?) then you can start to understand his mental process a little more if you read the book.
So how can we use visualisation? Well, the next time you find yourself on public transport, staring into space or waiting, why not use this time to practise a bit of your own visualisation. You can use this to help you mentally prepare for a work engagement, a physical task (maybe you’re training for a race), a goal you are working towards or as a way to overcome a fear. By running through events mentally, you can be better prepared to face the challenge.
A very important part of visualisation is to remain positive. Once you have visualised potential problems (Alex has talked about visualising falling to his death), you can move on and start to reinforce positive mental images about your task. This will help you to create a good vibe around what you are visualising. This leads on perfectly to the second lesson that resonated with me.
Positive self-talk
Remaining positive and believing in yourself is extremely important. It’s so easy to be negative and this can have a massive impact on our performance. Jerry writes about winning climbing World Cups and the right kind of mindset you need for competing. It’s such interesting reading and you get a real sense of the kind of pressure these athletes are under. At one major competition, a very small issue caused Jerry to miss first place. He believes that this was all down to a slightly negative conversation that he should have walked away from. The power of negativity is incredible and it has the ability to cause people to crumble under pressure.
This is obviously a very transferable lesson. By creating a positive inner-dialogue, we are starting to create a more positive attitude. This attitude will give us the belief and confidence to succeed. I certainly notice this when climbing. If I’m in a bad mood and feel that I’m climbing poorly, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and I end up climbing like a drunken monkey. On the other hand, if I’m feeling confident, I can surprise myself by climbing things harder than normal. It therefore makes sense to try to cultivate this mindset each time I’m at the wall. This is easier said than done, but at least I know what I need to do.
By using visualisation and positive self-talk, we can get our minds in the right place for optimum performance. But don’t just take my word for it. There are countless athletes and professionals with more experience of this than me and they fully endorse this attitude. I recommend the book “Mastermind” if you want to explore these ideas in a climbing context. For those who want a recommendation that isn’t so climbing based, I suggest “The Pressure Principle” by Dave Aldred.
So good luck with your goals/dreams and hopefully a bit of visualisation and positivity will help you to achieve them faster.
“In high pressure, stressful environments visualisation is a great way for calming yourself down. ”