Name: The Rock Warrior's Way
ISBN: 9780974011219

The Rock Warrior's Way

Mental training is scarcely covered in the climbing literature, yet it is as important to performance as strength, flexibility, and technique. In his unique approach to mental training, Arno Ilgner draws essential elements from the rich "warrior" literature, as well as from sports psychology, and combines these with his extensive climbing experience to create The Rock Warrior?s Way.Here is a comprehensive program for learning how to focus your mental resources during a challenging climb. It includes step-by-step guidance on motivation analysis, information gathering, risk assessment, mental focus, and deliberate transition into action.Poor use of attention creates fear, which can manifest itself as anything from performance anxiety to sheer terror. By using attention more purposefully we can understand how fear is created, deal with it effectively, and free ourselves to get back in touch with a far more powerful motivating force: our love of climbing. We can then create the kind of unbending intention that leads to outstanding performance. The Rock Warrior?s Way is a revolutionary program for climbers who want to improve both their performance and their enjoyment of climbing.

What Hacker News says

leksakMay 2023

Given how you express yourself, I wonder if you could have some success finding one or more ways to afford yourself to be more detached from your output.

I can sympathize with where you are, as I believe I've been there, but am not there any longer. I've detached somewhat successfully from my own output by virtue of two things, the first and most important one is adapting a growth mindset, which you can read more about here

https://thelearnerlab.com/

and I carry that mindset shift in all parts of my life. Outside of coding, I do a lot of physical activities, and I have meaningfully changed the way I conceive of "failure" so that I have an easier time feeling inspired to try again.

Honestly, I sometimes try to learn by trying to fail as fast as possible. It's quite enriching and takes less of a mental toll.

Besides reading the articles on the Learner Lab (there are some good Power Company climbing podcasts where they interview Trevor Ragan - the guy behind it - that I much prefer to the articles) there is another active choice you could do and that'd be reading the first few chapters of The Rock Warrior's Way which talks a lot about how _not_ to derive a sense of personal worth based on how your performance is perceived by external parties.

Lastly, and this cannot be done actively, eventually, you might find that after you've written buckets and buckets of code during your career you simply care less about it as every design choice you make becomes a smaller percentage of choices you've made in the domain. I believe that's something that has happened to me

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cyberdataOct 2022

The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training for Climbers.

Surprisingly applicable to non-climbers. It is for anyone trying to get better at their craft.

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rich_sashaApr 2021

Leftfield, but I recommend a book “the rock warrior’s way”. It is about mental training for climbers... which is all about facing uncontrollably hard, unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations, and thriving in them.

As well as other suggestions in this thread, some that the book might suggest would include:

- embrace what you cannot control. You cannot control it any more for mentally grappling with it. Instead, build a mindset of being OK living with adversity.

- think of your life as choices, not responses to unavoidable. Sure, life forces us to do things. But really we do have choices, just we don’t like them. You could quit your job and do nothing, and run out of money. It’s not life forcing you to work, it’s you choosing to be employed. You’re choosing the best option for you, not the only one.

- learn to recognise the fight or flight instinct. It is rarely a good advisor, and with training, you can see through it. Quite often things are not as bleak as our mind paints it.

- build goals that you achievable in your current adversity. Make it about something you learn, about yourself or the world or your area of expertise etc. It makes the problem be on your terms, with achievable success, and not indentured slavery.

I know it sounds a bit like magical thinking, but I confirm it works, for both life and climbing.

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cgrubbMar 2017

The Rock Warrior's Way:

https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Warriors-Way-Training-Climbers/d...

Nominally about rock climbing, but really a study of the ego, why we invest so much effort in protecting it, and how little we get for that investment.

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aikMay 2014

You have two options: Change your mindset or continue burying/ignoring your ambitions. Burying your ambitions can make you relatively satisfied in life, but I believe they will always haunt you regardless of how hard you try.

You can change your mindset by developing habits that turns your mind into a force for achieving your ambitions, instead of an obstacle that prevents you from achieving your ambitions (which it appears to be now). Through this you will achieve MUCH more, and I believe be much more satisfied in life.

You're only 30. I would suggest you continue reading, looking inward and learning about yourself, and continue searching for answers concerning why you aren't full of passion and motivation for achieving your ambitions. Everyone's journey is different, however here are a smattering of books/resources that may be insightful and have helped me:

1. Carol Dweck on mindset:

- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

- Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology)

2. About the inner journey of high performance, removing mental obstacles, cross-disciplinary learning, and nature vs. nurture:

- The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence - Josh Waitzkin

- Way of the Peaceful Warrior

- The Talent Code - Coyle

- Bounce - Syed

3. Add some insightful structure to your perspective. Do you have a pessimistic and deterministic mindset that is a detriment to your success?

- http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-...

4. Learn how self-control and willpower works and overcome it:

- The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It - McGonigal

5. Strengthening your mind:

- The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

- A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting

6. Find famous people in history you admire and feel you can relate with, and read their biographies. A few suggestions:

- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

- Titan (about Rockefeller)

- Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

- Steve Jobs - Isaacson

- River of Doubt (about T. Roosevelt's dangerous journey through the Amazon river)

7. Don't worry about things you can't change and place all your focus in the things you can. Stoicism:

- Seneca

- Meditations

8. On how the people who have become masters in their field became masters in their field:

- Mastery by Robert Greene

9. Very intriguing characters that display incredible strength (mixed with some controversial philosophy):

- Atlas Shrugged - Rand

- The Fountainhead - Rand

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patrickyeonApr 2011

Paraphrasing "The Rock Warrior's Way" (_the_ book on mental training for rock climbers, IMO) the comfort zone is where your Ego wants to keep you, because you won't fail and you won't let yourself down. The only way to improve yourself is through learning, which is done outside of the comfort zone. When you get scared or uncomfortable, your Ego works to push you back into that comfort zone. By countering that force, trying things you're not sure of, you learn. In the longer run, you expand your comfort zone, and become capable of more.

This of course doesn't mean ignore fear, but analyze the risks you will take, decide what are acceptable risks that still make you comfortable, and then wholly commit to a path of action outside of your familiar comfort zone.

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