43 Ideas from The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.
The real art in learning takes place as we move beyond proficiency, when our work becomes an expression of our essence
Why should I read this? – To learn the meta “art of learning” through a fascinating and philosophical memoir by Josh Waitzkin, who is a world champion in chess, tai-chi push hands, and Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Cultivating depth in multiple skills throughout life is a way to master the prized meta-skill: the art of learning. On the way, you learn to understand the nature of competition and achieve true mastery. Delving deeply into one discipline often enhances others, revealing intricate connections. The aim is to become adept at swiftly acquiring new skills—physically, mentally, and spiritually. This pursuit of knowledge fosters youthfulness and adaptability, harmonizing the physiological and mental realms.
I view peak performance in a career like an athlete’s dedication to their sport. There are steps: You have to spend the first few years becoming technically proficient before navigating layers of mastery,
I’m also trying to find similar parallels with my pursuits in fitness. The rewards of unbridled curiosity, self-disciplined practice, and feedback from working / competing with the best and brightest are undeniably sweet.
These 43-ish core ideas may initially sound high-level and fluffy; however, supplemented by Waitzkin’s incredible narrative, they become immutable. I’ve been thinking about them constantly. They’re like a whisper in the back of your mind during critical points in a competitive journey, exactly when you need them most.
A state of pure concentration allows you to see the parallels between different life experiences. Learning is thus a meta-art based on awareness, concentration, and action.
Technical fundamentals are best learned 1-2 themes at a time until you no longer consciously think about it.
Discussions where you poke holes in thought-processes or experiences which repeatedly highlight a given principle/technique are more useful than lectures.
Why pursue excellence? Three reasons. (1) Build resilience. (2) See parallel connections between diverse pursuits. (3) Enjoying the day-to-day of what you do.
Entity vs. Incremental mentalities on excellence is being “smart” or “dumb” vs being mastery-oriented. Entity mentalities believe success is based on a fixed-level of aptitude (natural athleticism, high IQ, etc.) and they tend to fear losing their winning-streak. Incremental mentality believes success is based on a hard-work ethic which incrementally compounds and they embrace harder challenges and potential failures as learning opportunities.
Anorexic hermit crab analogy
The biggest hurdle to the art of learning is staying in a long-term perspective when you are under competitive or short-term pressure. Not choosing to enroll in competition by claiming to “only care about learning” is not aligned with a long-term perspective because we need to be psychologically prepared to face the unavoidable challenges along our way. When it comes down to it, the only way to learn how to swim is by getting in the water.
Learn in layers
How to be empathetic to those who pursue competitive excellence (also applicable when you’re not an expert in their field). Don’t isolate his pain by saying it doesn’t matter. Give him a hug, or a shoulder to cry on. Let them know you’re proud and it’s OK to be sad. Ask him what happened – dissect the psychology and leave the tactics for a coach.
The defining periods of your life will be when you respond to heartbreak with hard work
When you don’t grow via resistance, your mentality goes from open & offensive to closed & defensive. That’s how you die.
Waitzkin believed his competitive edge was thriving in the storm. He believed his mentality let him hone strategy over inherent talent, though he surely had both.
Winning (a milestone you count as a victory) is nothing more than a moment to exhale, take a deep breath, internalize a principle, and then move onto the next adventure.
The soft zone is about integrating the environment into your creative process. Making sandals instead of taming nature.
When you’re conditioned to being in the zone during silence, it’s being able to think to the beat of the background music – being at peace with the noise
Awareness of physical sensations brings rich mental awareness. This is done by focusing on non-shallow (deep) breathing, which is a return to natural equanimity before we internalized bad habits in a hectic world.
Playing against dirty opponents will teach you to raise your game without relying on the ugly ruses of your opponents.
It trains you to condition yourself to be observant about your uncomfortable emotions and come to peace with them
Momentum. Your level of awareness and action dictates your momentum. Whether a loss is just a loss or a devastating downhill spiral
Mastery quickly leaves learning ___ (chess, investing, etc) and becomes a process of discovering your character.
Numbers to leave numbers. Form to leave form. It means that technical work which initially requires high effort becomes an intuition which enables creative leaps.
From child back to child again. This means to have a conscious version of “child’s play” – it’s an analogy which says to maintain a relationship with your art which sticks to your unique disposition.
Your coach should strike a common nerve. His style should not kill your natural flair (shock and awe); it should work in harmony.
Investment in loss is having a beginner’s mind. It’s about losing the need to be correct. Your current mindset surely contains old habits that create repetitive, thematic mistakes. Minimize repetition of errors by keeping an eye out for psychological and technical themes.
Train with people who are better than you or put you outside your comfort zone.
Making smaller circles. Plunge into the repetition and technical details of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick. Overtime, expansiveness decreases while potency increases. Penetrate the macro through the micro.
Injuries don’t have to be setbacks. Times when the body needs to heal are ripe opportunities to deepen the often ignored but equally important mental, technical, internal side of your game. Always come off an injury better than when you went down.
Intense visualization practice / qualitative internal training make up The internal solution. We can notice external events that trigger helpful growth or performance opportunities, and then internalize the effects of those events without their actually happening. For example, we can visualize a workout passing through muscles in our body even when we’re injured. Or we can visualize the in-game match play, observing our psychological tendencies in the game and choosing a mindset to stick by.
Jungle analogy for the brain. Chunking is macheting your way through thick foliage. Carved neural pathways are the clearings you create, which are faster to move once macheted through. If you don’t revisit a clearing for a while, new foliage will grow and you’ll have to bring out your machete again to clear it up.
Chunking. The mind’s ability to assimilate large amounts of information into one mental file that can be accessed as if it were a single piece of information. Just like compartmentalizing.
Carved neural pathways. The navigation system between chunks.
Road signs. You discover organizing principles and new patterns of movement. Just as you initially had to chunk information, now you have to think through the principles in your brain to figure out which to apply to the current position and how. You get faster at this over time.
Counterintuitive road signs. Principles lose rigidity and you find unseemingly better paths in your brain. You discover a second layer of chunks, carved neural pathways, and new counterintuitive road signs.
Slowing down time. A relaxed state of mind is seamlessly switching from the precision of the conscious mind to sharp peripheral awareness of the unconscious mind. The conscious mind slows down time when you focus on less but with more concentration, down to the microscopic details.
Mastery looks at less and sees more because an efficient player gives himself a tiny area of conscious hyper focus, trusting the unconscious to use the highly evolved muscle memory from rigorous training.
If the opponent does not move, then I do not move. At the opponent’s slightest move, I move first. Hone your ability to read intention and then play: Tit for tat at the slightest tit.
The Illusion of The Mystical is controlling the intention of the opponent. You enter his mind and control the pace of the game, conditioning him, when you zoom in on small details to which others are completely oblivious.
Presence must be like breathing. Simple logic: we must prepare through a lifestyle of reinforcement because everything is always on the line.
With incremental training, recovery time can be nearly instantaneous. Incorporate the rhythm of stress and recovery in all parts of your life.
Training cardiovascular interval training can directly affect your ability to release tension and recover from mental exhaustion in other parts of life.
Monitor the efficiency of your thinking / activity and then schedule your deep-breath rest periods
Creativity emerges from little breaks, when you’ve mind is practiced at relaxing but while attuned to the training of your intuition
Waiting is not waiting, it is life. You need to love it and appreciate the hidden richness behind the simple
Success in crunch time is based on keeping everything flowing while everything is on the line
Build presence with incremental condensing practice. It raises the quality of your game and the quality of your life
Work backwards to create a 4-5 step routine filled with activities that relax you and make you focused
Incrementally alter the routine to have the same physiological effect by making the trigger lower maintenance and more flexible
Over time, you can learn to do the form in your mind without moving at all. Visualization proves to be almost as powerful as the real thing.
Righteous indignation can make someone feel the satisfaction of anger, but it gets a competitor nowhere.
Deal with anger and dirty players by welcoming them as the best teachers for intensity and resolve. Sit with your emotional reality, use it, channel it into a heightened state of intensity
Certain states of mind inspire performance more than others – whether it's fear or happiness. This is truly personal, but introspect and use its reservoir to make your own earthquakes.
Once you know what “good” feels like, you can zero in on it as a beacon of quality and then search it out as we expand to more material and regardless of the pursuit.
The real art in learning takes place as we move beyond proficiency, when our work becomes an expression of our essence.
Create a body of theory around a fleeting moment of inspiration. Solidify a higher foundation on your Pyramid of Knowledge for new leaps. It will probably end up looking like the midwit meme after a while.
Every level is constructed of technical information and principles that explain that information and condense it into chunks (Slowing Down Time). Once you have internalized enough information to complete one level of the pyramid, you move on to the next. Say you are ten or twelve levels in. Then you have a creative burst. In that moment, it is as if you are seeing something that is suspended in the sky just above the top of your pyramid. There is a connection between that discovery and what you know—or else you wouldn’t have discovered it—and you can find that connection if you try. The next step is to figure out the technical components of your creation. Figure out what makes the “magic” tick.
The technical afterthoughts of a truly great one can appear to be divine inspiration to the lesser artist. The strong player could shrug and explain the principles behind all his moves, a weak player will just say they had a feeling.
Selections:
Pure concentration didn’t allow thoughts or false constructions to impede my awareness, and I observed clear connections between different life experiences through the common mode of consciousness by which they were perceived.
A chess student must initially become immersed in the fundamentals in order to have any potential to reach a high level of skill. He or she will learn the principles of endgame, middlegame, and opening play. Initially one or two critical themes will be considered at once, but over time the intuition learns to integrate more and more principles into a sense of flow. Eventually the foundation is so deeply internalized that it is no longer consciously considered, but is lived. This process continuously cycles along as deeper layers of the art are soaked in. Very strong chess players will rarely speak of the fundamentals, but these beacons are the building blocks of their mastery. Similarly, a great pianist or violinist does not think about individual notes, but hits them all perfectly in a virtuoso performance. In fact, thinking about a “C” while playing Beethoven’s 5th Symphony could be a real hitch because the flow might be lost.
Whenever I made a fundamental error, he would mention the principle I had violated. If I refused to budge, he’d proceed to take advantage of the error until my position fell apart.
little breaks from the competitive intensity of my life have been and still are an integral part of my success. Times at sea are periods of renewal, coming together with family, being with nature, putting things back in perspective. I am able to let my conscious mind move away from my training, and to gain creative new angles on the next steps of my growth.
Two questions arise. First, what is the difference that allows some to fit into that narrow window to the top? And second, what is the point? If ambition spells probable disappointment, why pursue excellence? In my opinion, the answer to both questions lies in a well-thought-out approach that inspires resilience, the ability to make connections between diverse pursuits, and day-to-day enjoyment of the process.
Research on the effects of a student’s approach on his or her ability to learn and ultimately master material. Dr. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher in the field of developmental psychology, makes the distinction between entity and incremental theories of intelligence. Children who are “entity theorists”that is, kids who have been influenced by their parents and teachers to think in this manner—are prone to use language like “I am smart at this” and to attribute their success or failure to an ingrained and unalterable level of ability. They see their overall intelligence or skill level at a certain discipline to be a fixed entity, a thing that cannot evolve. Incremental theorists, who have picked up a different modality of learning—let’s call them learning theorists —are more prone to describe their results with sentences like “I got it because I worked very hard at it” or “I should have tried harder.” A child with a learning theory of intelligence tends to sense that with hard work, difficult material can be grasped—step by step, incrementally, the novice can become the master.
Children who associate success with hard work tend to have a “mastery-oriented response” to challenging situations, while children who see themselves as just plain “smart” or “dumb,” or “good” or “bad” at something, have a “learned helplessness orientation.”
I definitely made my transition only during the past year. I wonder what led me to that. The first memory from my subconscious was Arham calling me out after we did some problem together: "Oh you're an idiot. You're not actually bad at math. You just expect yourself to immediately get it. You're just an impatient prick."
The results have nothing to do with intelligence level. Very smart kids with entity theories tend to be far more brittle when challenged than kids with learning theories who would be considered not quite as sharp.
Entity theorists tend to have been told that they did well when they have succeeded, and that they weren’t any good at something when they have failed. So a kid aces a math test, comes home, and hears “Wow, that’s my boy! As smart as they come!” Then, next week Johnny fails an English test and hears “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you read?” or “Your Mommy never liked reading either—obviously, it’s not your thing.” So the boy figures he’s good at math and bad at English, and what’s more, he links success and failure to ingrained ability. Learning theorists, on the other hand, are given feedback that is more process-oriented. After doing well on an English essay, a little girl might be congratulated by her teacher with “Wow, great job Julie! You’re really becoming a wonderful writer! Keep up the good work!” And if she does badly on a math test, her teacher might write “Study a little harder for the next one and you’ll do great! And feel free to ask me questions any time after class, that’s what I’m here for!” So Julie learns to associate effort with success and feels that she can become good at anything with some hard work. She also feels as though she is on a journey of learning, and her teacher is a friendly assistant in her growth. Johnny thinks he’s good at math and bad at English, and he focuses on quick results as opposed to long-term process
Someone stuck with an entity theory of intelligence is like an anorexic hermit crab, starving itself so it doesn’t grow to have to find a new shell.
The real challenge is to stay in range of this long-term perspective when you are under fire and hurting in the middle of the war. This, maybe our biggest hurdle, is at the core of the art of learning.
I learned the principle of opposition, the hidden potency of empty space, the idea of zugzwang (putting your opponent in a position where any move he makes will destroy his position). Layer by layer we built up my knowledge and my understanding of how to transform axioms into fuel for creative insight .
His winning streak and the constant talk of it had him all locked up—he was terrified of shattering the façade of perfection. This child was paralyzed by an everdeepening cycle of entity indoctrination.
He had to teach me to be more disciplined without dampening my love for chess or suppressing my natural voice. Many teachers have no feel for this balance and try to force their students into cookie-cutter molds.
If I disagreed with him, we would have a discussion, not a lecture. Bruce slowed me down by asking questions. Whenever I made an important decision, good or bad, he would ask me to explain my thought process. Were there other ways to accomplish the same aim? Had I looked for my opponent’s threats? Did I consider a different order of operations?
The top board is a throne or a prison, depending on how you look at it. Everyone dreams of getting there, but then you arrive and find yourself all alone, trapped on a pedestal with a bull’s-eye on your forehead.
One of the problems with being too high is that there is a long way to fall. Had I fallen in my own eyes or also in the eyes of those around me? After trying so hard, was there worth outside of winning?
Training ground for performance psychology
Even for vacation or relaxation, choose something that makes you sink in a rhythm
Virtually all situations can be handled as long as presence of mind is maintained
Lifting us when we were down, providing perspective when we got too swept away by ambition, giving a hug when tears flowed. My mom is my hero.
I arrived at a commitment to chess that was about much more than fun and glory. It was about love and pain and passion and pushing myself to overcome.
I believe that year, from eight to nine, was the defining period of my life. I responded to heartbreak with hard work. I was self-motivated and moved by a powerful resolve. While a young boy, I had been all promise. I only knew winning because I was better than all the other children and there was no pressure competing against adults. Now there was the knowledge of my mortality.
When I was young, I quit. I left golf. I stopped public speaking. I was uncomfortable with competition because I didn't want to put in the work without friends, even if it could be fun. And when I had friends, I was scared to really compete against them. However, that doesn't define me. I am still self-motivated and my mastery starts at 21 instead of 12.
Glory is a powerful incentive. Inevitably dreams are dashed, hearts are broken, most fall short of their expectations because there is little room at the top.
One of the most critical strengths of a superior competitor in any discipline —whether we are speaking about sports, business negotiations, or even presidential debates—is the ability to dictate the tone of the battle.
Waitzkin thrived in the storm and managed to navigate complexity better than other competitors.
Develop the ability to run a mental marathon.
My whole career, my father and I searched out opponents who were a little stronger than me, so even as I dominated the scholastic circuit, losing was part of my regular experience.
Important for maintaining a healthy perspective on the game.
Fear of failure didn’t move me so much as an intense passion for the game.
Incipient danger in what may appear to be an incremental approach. I have seen many people in diverse fields take some version of the process-first philosophy and transform it into an excuse for never putting themselves on the line or pretending not to care about results. They claim to be egoless, to care only about learning, but really this is an excuse to avoid confronting themselves
This is a central line that I will have to navigate with Vipassana Buddhism. How can I be competitive and egoless at the same time?
While a fixation on results is certainly unhealthy, short-term goals can be useful developmental tools if they are balanced within a nurturing long-term philosophy. Too much sheltering from results can be stunting. The road to success is not easy or else everyone would be the greatest at what they do—we need to be psychologically prepared to face the unavoidable challenges along our way, and when it comes down to it, the only way to learn how to swim is by getting in the water.
The key, in my opinion, is to recognize that the beauty of those roses lies in their transience. It is drifting away even as we inhale. We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath, then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure.
First of all, she shouldn’t say that it doesn’t matter, because Danny knows better than that and lying about the situation isolates Danny in his pain. If it didn’t matter, then why should he try to win? Why should he study chess and waste their weekends at tournaments? It matters and Danny knows that.
Give her son a hug. If he is crying, let him cry on her shoulder. She should tell him how proud of him she is. She can tell Danny that it is okay to be sad, that she understands and that she loves him. Disappointment is a part of the road to greatness. When a few moments pass, in a quiet voice, she can ask Danny if he knows what happened in the game. Hopefully the language between parent and child will already be established so Danny knows his mom is asking about psychology, not chess moves (almost all mistakes have both technical and mental components—the chess lessons should be left for after the tournament, when Danny and his teacher study the games). Did he lose his concentration? Did he fall into a downward spiral and make a bunch of mistakes in a row? Was he overconfident? Impatient? Did he get psyched out by a trash talker? Was he tired? Danny will have an idea about his psychological slip, and taking on that issue will be a short-term goal in the continuing process—introspective thinking of this nature can be a very healthy coping mechanism. Through these dialogues, Danny will learn that every loss is an opportunity for growth.
Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.
Of course there were plateaus, periods when my results leveled off while I internalized the information necessary for my next growth spurt, but I didn’t mind.
Then the mind moves with the speed of an electrical current, complex problems are breezed through with an intuitive clarity, you get deeper and deeper into the soul of the chess position, time falls away, the concept of “I” is gone, all that exists is blissful engagement, pure presence, absolute flow. I was in the zone and then there was an earthquake.
Methodology for triggering such states of creative flow.
In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our own earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.
The Soft Zone
The nature of your state of concentration will determine the first phase of your reaction—if you are tense, with your fingers jammed in your ears and your whole body straining to fight off distraction, then you are in a Hard Zone that demands a cooperative world for you to function. Like a dry twig, you are brittle, ready to snap under pressure.
The alternative is for you to be quietly, intensely focused, apparently relaxed with a serene look on your face, but inside all the mental juices are churning.
A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution.
I realized that I could think to the beat of the song. My chess calculations began to move to the rhythm of the music, and I played an inspired game.
Become at peace with the noise.
My only option was to integrate my environment into my creative process.
He explained that in the climactic moments of the struggle, when I had to buckle down and patiently work my way through the complications to find a precise solution, this boy would start to tap a chess piece on the side of the table, barely audible, but at a pace that entered and slightly quickened my mental process. This subtle tactic was highly effective and I later found out that it was an offspring of the Soviet study of hypnosis and mind control. The next time we played, I was on the lookout for the tapping and sure enough, in the critical moment it was right there. Hilarious. Once I was aware of what was happening, I was able to turn the tables in our rivalry.
Learn how to handle dirty opponents without losing cool.
Sometimes noticing the psychological tactic was enough to render it harmless—but in the case of the kicking and barefaced cheating, I really had to take on my emotions.
When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. When injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative.
This type of internal work can take place in the little moments of our lives.
The importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error
The first mistake rarely proves disastrous, but the downward spiral of the second, third, and fourth error creates a devastating chain reaction
The key is to bring that player onto your team by riding the psychological wave when it is behind you, and snapping back into a fresh presence when your clarity of mind begins to be swept away.
Problems set in if the performer has a brittle dependence on the safety of absolute perfection or duplication. Then an error triggers fear, detachment, uncertainty, or confusion that muddies the decision-making process.
If I felt dull during a difficult struggle, I would occasionally leave the playing hall and sprint fifty yards outside. This may have seemed strange to spectators, but it served as a complete physiological flushing
The study of numbers to leave numbers .
During my study of the critical positions, I noted the feeling I had during the actual chess game.
For a period of time, almost all my chess errors came in a moment immediately following or preceding a big change.
With awareness and action, in both life and chess my weakness was transformed into a strength.
My study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis.
I was no longer primarily refining the skill of playing chess, but was discovering myself through chess. I saw the art as a movement closer and closer to an unattainable truth
By numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form, I am describing a process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence. Sometimes there will literally be numbers. Other times there will be principles, patterns, variations, techniques, ideas. A good literal example of this process, one that does in fact involve numbers, is a beginner’s very first chess lesson. All chess players learn that the pieces have numerical equivalents: bishops and knights are worth three pawns, a rook is five pawns, a queen is nine. Novices are counting in their heads or on their fingers before they make exchanges. In time, they will stop counting. The pieces will achieve a more flowing and integrated value system. They will move across the board like fields of force. What was once seen mathematically is now felt intuitively.
A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness.
From child back to child again
One of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition.
Study the way the great players of my nature have integrated this element of the art.
Let’s say there are two possible guides for him in this educational process. One is an esoteric classical composer who has never thought much of the “vulgarity of rock and roll,” and another is a fellow rocker who fell in love with classical music years ago and decided to dedicate his life to this different genre of music. The ex-rocker might touch a common nerve while the composer might feel like an alien.
The great Abstract Expressionist painters and sculptors, for example, came to their revolutionary ideas through precise realist training.
Just as the yin-yang symbol possesses a kernel of light in the dark, and of dark in the light, creative leaps are grounded in a technical foundation.
Shock and awe
If you walk straight toward a horse, it will look at you and probably run away. You don’t have to oppose the horse in that way. Approach indirectly, without confrontation. Even an adult horse can be gentled. Handle him nicely, make your intention the horse’s intention.
“Then, when riding, both you and the horse want to maintain the harmony you have established. If you want to move to the right, you move to the right and so the horse naturally moves right to balance your weight.” Rider and animal feel like one. They have established a bond that neither wants to disrupt.
The fields of learning and performance are an exploration of greyness—of the in-between. There is the careful balance of pushing yourself relentlessly, but not so hard that you melt down. Muscles and minds need to stretch to grow, but if stretched too thin, they will snap. A competitor needs to be process-oriented, always looking for stronger opponents to spur growth, but it is also important to keep on winning enough to maintain confidence. We have to release our current ideas to soak in new material, but not so much that we lose touch with our unique natural talents.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Shambhala Center in downtown Manhattan and studied meditation
The Tao Te Ching’s wisdom centers on releasing obstructions to our natural insight, seeing false constructs for what they are and leaving them behind.
searching for the flow that lay at the heart of, and transcended, the technical.
The Tao Te Ching provided a framework to help me sort out my complicated relationship to material ambition.
Tai Chi is the meditative and martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy
As I consciously released the tension from one part of my body at a time, I experienced a surprising sense of physical awareness.
When deeply relaxed, I could focus on any part of my body and become aware of a rich well of sensation that had previously gone unnoticed.
A huge element of Tai Chi is releasing obstructions so the body and mind can flow smoothly together. If there is tension in one place, the mind stops there, and the fluidity is broken. Chen could always see where my mind was.
Breathing should be a return to what was natural before we got stressed out by years of running around a hectic world and internalizing bad habits
In William Chen’s Tai Chi form, expansive (outward or upward) movements occur with an in-breath, so the body and mind wake up, energize into a shape. He gives the example of reaching out to shake the hand of someone you are fond of, waking up after a restful sleep, or agreeing with somebody’s idea. Usually, such positive moments are associated with an inbreath—in the Tai Chi form, we “breathe into the fingertips.” Then, with the out-breath, the body releases, de-energizes, like the last exhalation before falling asleep. For a glimmer of this experience, hold your palms in front of you, forefingers a few inches apart, shoulders relaxed. Now breathe in while gently expanding your fingers, putting your mind on your middle fingers, forefingers, and thumbs. Your breath and mind should both softly shoot to the very tips of your fingers. This inhalation is slow, gently pulling oxygen into your dan tien (a spot believed to be the energetic center—located two and a half inches below the navel) and then moving that energy from your dan tien to your fingers. Once your inhalation is complete, gently exhale. Release your fingers, let your mind fall asleep, relax your hip joints, let everything sag into soft, quiet awareness. Once exhalation is complete, you reenergize. Try that exercise for a few minutes and see how you feel.
It is Chen’s opinion that a large obstacle to a calm, healthy, present existence is the constant interruption of our natural breathing patterns. A thought or ringing phone or honking car interrupts an out-breath and so we stop and begin to inhale. Then we have another thought and stop before exhaling. The result is shallow breathing and deficient flushing of carbon dioxide from our systems, so our cells never have as much pure oxygen as they could. Tai Chi meditation is, among other things, a haven of unimpaired oxygenation.
If aggression meets empty space it tends to defeat itself.
The problem is that we are conditioned to tense up and resist incoming or hostile force, so we have to learn an entirely new physiological response to aggression. Before learning the body mechanics of nonresistance, I had to unlearn my current physical paradigm.
Learn how not to resist . If a big strong guy comes into a martial arts studio and someone pushes him, he wants to resist and push the guy back to prove that he is a big strong guy. The problem is that he isn’t learning anything by doing this. In order to grow, he needs to give up his current mind-set. He needs to lose to win. The bruiser will need to get pushed around by little guys for a while, until he learns how to use more than brawn. William Chen calls this investment in loss. Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process.
While I learned with open pores—no ego in the way—it seemed that many other students were frozen in place, repeating their errors over and over, unable to improve because of a fear of releasing old habits. When Chen made suggestions, they would explain their thinking in an attempt to justify themselves. They were locked up by the need to be correct. I have long believed that if a student of virtually any discipline could avoid ever repeating the same mistake twice—both technical and psychological he or she would skyrocket to the top of their field. Of course such a feat is impossible—we are bound to repeat thematic errors, if only because many themes are elusive and difficult to pinpoint. For example, in my chess career I didn’t realize I was faltering in transitional moments until many months of study brought the pattern to light. So the aim is to minimize repetition as much as possible, by having an eye for consistent psychological and technical themes of error.
Constantly training with people who were far more advanced
As I got used to taking shots from Evan, I stopped fearing the impact. My body built up resistance to getting smashed, learned how to absorb blows, and I knew I could take what he had to offer. Then as I became more relaxed under fire, Evan seemed to slow down in my mind. I noticed myself sensing his attack before it began. I learned how to read his intention, and be out of the way before he pulled the trigger. As I got better and better at neutralizing his attacks, I began to notice and exploit weaknesses in his game, and sometimes I found myself peacefully watching his hands come toward me in slow motion.
Beginner’s Mind and Investment in Loss
It is important to have perspective on this and allow yourself protected periods for cultivation. A gifted boxer with a fabulous right and no left will get beat up while he tries to learn the jab. Or take the talented high school basketball player learning how to play point guard at the college level. He may have been able to dominate schoolyards in his past, but now he has to learn to see the whole court, share the ball, bring the best out of his teammates. If a young athlete is expected to perform brilliantly in his first games within this new system, he will surely disappoint. He needs time to internalize the new skills before he will improve.
It is essential to have a liberating incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in a peak performance state. We must take responsibility for ourselves, and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to become the best that we can become. Great ones are willing to get burned time and again as they sharpen their swords in the fire.
In Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Phaedrus liberates the girl from her writer’s block by changing the assignment. He asks her to write about the front of the opera house outside her classroom on a small street in a small neighborhood of that same dull town. She should begin with the upper-left hand brick. At first the student is incredulous, but then a torrent of creativity unleashes and she can’t stop writing. The next day she comes to class with twenty inspired pages.
The theme is depth over breadth. The learning principle is to plunge into the detailed mystery of the micro in order to understand what makes the macro tick.
I focused on small movements, sometimes spending hours moving my hand out a few inches, then releasing it back, energizing outwards, connecting my feet to my fingertips with less and less obstruction.
When through painstaking refinement of a small movement I had the improved feeling, I could translate it onto other parts of the form, and suddenly everything would start flowing at a higher level. The key was to recognize that the principles making one simple technique tick were the same fundamentals that fueled the whole expansive system
I explored endgame positions of reduced complexity
In order to touch high-level principles such as the power of empty space, zugzwang (where any move of the opponent will destroy his position), tempo, or structural planning. Once I experienced these principles, I could apply them to complex positions because they were in my mental framework.
My understanding of this process, in the spirit of my numbers to leave numbers method of chess study, is to touch the essence (for example, highly refined and deeply internalized body mechanics or feeling ) of a technique, and then to incrementally condense the external manifestation of the technique while keeping true to its essence. Over time expansiveness decreases while potency increases.
Making Smaller Circles
Let’s combine Pirsig’s Brick with my concept of Making Smaller Circles and see how they work
By now the body mechanics of the punch have been condensed in my mind to a feeling . I don’t need to hear or see any effect—my body knows when it is operating correctly by an internal sense of harmony.
The key is to take small steps, so the body can barely feel the condensing practice. Each little refinement is monitored by the feeling of the punch, which I gained from months or years of training with the large, traditional motion
Subtle internalization and refinement is much more important than the quantity of what is learned
In the chapter The Soft Zone, I mentioned that there are three critical steps in a resilient performer’s evolving relationship to chaotic situations.
First, we have to learn to be at peace with imperfection. I mentioned the image of a blade of grass bending to hurricane-force winds in contrast to a brittle twig snapping under pressure. Next, in our performance training, we learn to use that imperfection to our advantage—for example thinking to the beat of the music or using a shaking world as a catalyst for insight. The third step of this process, as it pertains to performance psychology, is to learn to create ripples in our consciousness, little jolts to spur us along, so we are constantly inspired whether or not external conditions are inspiring. If it initially took an earthquake or broken hand for me to gain clarity, I want to use that experience as a new baseline for my everyday capabilities. In other words, now that I have seen what real focus is all about, I want to get there all the time—but I don’t want to have to break a bone whenever I want my mind to kick in to its full potential
Training with only one hand available. We moved slowly, standing up, without throws, doing classical Push Hands in which the two players try to feel each other’s centers, neutralize attacks, and subtly unbalance the partner. It is very important for athletes to do this kind of visualization work, in a form appropriate to their discipline, but often when we are caught up in the intense routine of training and competition, it feels like we have no time for the internal stuff.
The importance of undulating between external and internal (or concrete and abstract; technical and intuitive) training applies to all disciplines, and unfortunately the internal tends to be neglected.
It was fascinating to see how my body reacted. My left arm instinctively became like two arms, with my elbow neutralizing my opponent’s right hand and my hand controlling his left arm. I had no idea the body could work this way, and after a few days of this training, the notion that I was playing at a disadvantage faded.
If the opponent is temporarily tied down qualitatively or energetically more than you are expending to tie it down, you have a large advantage. The key is to master the technical skills appropriate for applying this idea to your area of focus.
By intense visualization practice. My method was as follows: I did a daily resistance workout routine on my left side, and after every set I visualized the workout passing to the muscles on the right. My arm was in a cast, so there was no actual motion possible—but I could feel the energy flowing into the unused muscles. I admit it was a shot in the dark, but it worked
One thing I have learned as a competitor is that there are clear distinctions between what it takes to be decent, what it takes to be good, what it takes to be great, and what it takes to be among the best.
Most people think of injuries as setbacks, something they have to recover from or deal with. From the outside, for fans or spectators, an injured athlete is in purgatory, hovering in an impotent state between competing and sitting on the bench.
Almost without exception, I am back on the mats the next day, figuring out how to use my new situation to heighten elements of my game. If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage. That said, there are times when the body needs to heal, but those are ripe opportunities to deepen the mental, technical, internal side of my game.
You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down.
Once we learn how to use adversity to our advantage, we can manufacture the helpful growth opportunity without actual danger or injury. I call this tool the internal solution —we can notice external events that trigger helpful growth or performance opportunities, and then internalize the effects of those events without their actually happening.
If dirty opponents inspire a great competitor to raise his game, he should learn to raise his game without relying on the ugly ruses of his opponents
Once we reach a certain level of expertise at a given discipline and our knowledge is expansive, the critical issue becomes: how is all this stuff navigated and put to use?
My vision of the road to mastery: you start with the fundamentals, get a solid foundation fueled by understanding the principles of your discipline, then you expand and refine your repertoire, guided by your individual predispositions, while keeping in touch, however abstractly, with what you feel to be the essential core of the art. What results is a network of deeply internalized, interconnected knowledge that expands from a central, personal locus point.
chunking
Chunking relates to the mind’s ability to assimilate large amounts of information into a cluster that is bound together by certain patterns or principles particular to a given discipline.
So, in a nutshell, chunking relates to the mind’s ability to take lots of information, find a harmonizing/logically consistent strain, and put it together into one mental file that can be accessed as if it were a single piece of information.
“carved neural pathways”
the process of creating chunks and the navigation system between chunks
Let’s say that I spend fifteen years studying chess. During these thousands of hours, my mind is effectively cutting paths through the dense jungle of chess. The jungle analogy is a good one. Imagine how time-consuming it would be to use a machete to cut your way through thick foliage. A few miles could take days. Once the path is cleared, however, you could move quickly through the clearing. If you were to make a road and ride a bike or other vehicle, the transportation would get faster still.
When confronted by a new chess position, initially I have to plod through the variations. During this process, I discover organizing principles and new patterns of movement. This new information gets systematized into a network of chunks that I can access with increasing ease as my navigational function improves.
To make a responsible chess decision, I have to look at all those pieces and check for captures, quick attacks, and other obvious possibilities. By the time I get to the third piece, I’m already a bit overwhelmed. By the tenth piece I have a headache, have already forgotten what I discovered about the first nine pieces, and my opponent is bored.
So let’s say that now, instead of launching from the standard starting position, we begin on an empty board with just a king and a pawn against a king. These are relatively simple pieces. I learn how they both move, and then I play around with them for a while until I feel comfortable.
Next I have to learn the principles of coordinating the pieces
These road signs are principles. Just as I initially had to think about each chess piece individually, now I have to plod through the principles in my brain to figure out which apply to the current position and how.
Over time each chess principle loses rigidity, and you get better and better at reading the subtle signs of qualitative relativity. Soon enough, learning becomes unlearning. The stronger chess player is often the one who is less attached to a dogmatic interpretation of the principles. This leads to a whole new layer of principles—those that consist of the exceptions to the initial principles.
This is like how 2nd year analysts often think they know a bad deal, but a VP would reconsider bc they've been able to get past the dogmatic principles
The next step is for those counterintuitive signs to become internalized just as the initial movements of the pieces were. The network of my chess knowledge now involves principles, patterns, and chunks of information, accessed through a whole new set of navigational principles, patterns, and chunks of information, which are soon followed by another set of principles and chunks designed to assist in the interpretation of the last.
Everyone at a high level has a huge amount of chess understanding, and much of what separates the great from the very good is deep presence, relaxation of the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow unhindered.
The idea is to shift the primary role from the conscious to the unconscious without blissing out and losing the precision the conscious can provide.
Let’s allow the conscious mind to be represented by your area of visual focus, and your unconscious to be your peripheral vision. Chances are you are sitting down reading this book. What you see is the book. Now if you relax your eyes and allow your peripheral vision to take over, your visual awareness will take in much more, you can see things that are well off to the side. Now, the next step is to refocus on the book, while maintaining a peripheral awareness.
In a relaxed enough state of mind, you can zoom in on something in front of you with great precision while maintaining a very sharp awareness of your surroundings.
Our realities are very different. I am “seeing” much more than he is seeing.
The key to this process is understanding that the conscious mind, for all its magnificence, can only take in and work with a certain limited amount of information in a unit of time—envision that capacity as one page on your computer screen. If it is presented with a large amount of information, then the font will have to be very small in order to fit it all on the page. You will not be able to see the details of the letters. But if that same tool (the conscious mind) is used for a much smaller amount of information in the same amount of time, then we can see every detail of each letter. Now time feels slowed down.
Slow down time by focusing on fewer but with more concentration. Hyper focus on just some things.
Another way of understanding this difference in perception is with the analogy of a camera.*With practice I am making networks of chunks and paving more and more neural pathways, which effectively takes huge piles of data and throws it over to my high-speed processor—the unconscious. Now my conscious mind, focusing on less, seems to rev up its shutter speed from, say, four frames per second to 300 or 400 frames per second. The key is to understand that my trained mind is not necessarily working much faster than an untrained mind—it is simply working more effectively, which means that my conscious mind has less to deal with. Experientially, because I am looking at less, there are, within the same unit of time, hundreds of frames in my mind, and maybe only a few for my opponent (whose conscious mind is bogged down with much more data that has not yet been internalized as unconsciously accessible). I can now operate in all those frames that he doesn’t even see.
The similarity is that a life or-death scenario kicks the human mind into a very narrow area of focus. Time feels slowed down because we instinctively zero in on a tiny amount of critical information that our processor can then break down as if it is in a huge font. The trained version of this state of mind shares that tiny area of conscious focus. The difference is that, in our disciplines of choice, we cultivate this experience by converting all the other surrounding information into unconsciously integrated data instead of ignoring it.
The Grandmaster looks at less and sees more, because his unconscious skill set is much more highly evolved.
Tai Chi Classics
If the opponent’s movement is quick, then quickly respond; if his movement is slow, then follow slowly.
If the opponent does not move, then I do not move. At the opponent’s slightest move, I move first.
I have come to understand those words. At the opponent’s slightest move, I move first, as pertaining to intention—reading and ultimately controlling intention.
I’m an outgoing guy and tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. My goal was to use my natural personality to dictate the tone of the struggle
The observation and programming side of this interaction. What can really happen is that our wrists meet and I apply the tiniest amount of pressure conceivable. My opponent holds his ground without his conscious mind even realizing that he has responded. He is already set up to be thrown with a one two combination because his reaction to the one is already predictable. I will move before his two .
If a pattern of interaction is recognizable to the adversary, then mental conditioning will not be terribly effective.
In virtually every competitive physical discipline, if you are a master of reading and manipulating footwork, then you are a force to be reckoned with.
The simple principle of weight redistribution. Two intertwined components to this process. The first is condensed technique. The second is enhanced perception
If, through incremental training as described earlier in the book, your unconscious understanding of your discipline of choice has become sufficiently advanced, and you have learned how to trust your physical and intuitive intelligence to handle the technical components of your moment, then your conscious mind can zoom in on very small amounts of data—in this case, the eyes. Because our minds are so complex, if you give us a small amount of material to work with, and we do it with great intensity, then we can break it down into microscopic detail. If our conscious mind is purely focused on the eyes, they will seem to take a while to blink. We see them beginning to close, closed, starting to open, and then open again. That’s all we need.
So beware when squaring off with a well-versed negotiator, salesman, or lawyer! Understand that the battle stretches well beyond the traditional arena. When one player is more aware of these issues than the other, conditioning is quite simple.
Control the pace of the game
There is nothing mystical about controlling intention or entering the mind of the opponent. These are skills to be cultivated like any other
learning how to maintain the tension—becoming at peace with mounting pressure
In every discipline, the ability to be clear headed, present, cool under fire is much of what separates the best from the mediocre
The prey is no longer objective, makes compounding mistakes, and the predator moves in for the kill.
In solitary pursuits such as writing, painting, scholarly thinking, or learning. In the absence of continual external reinforcement, we must be our own monitor, and quality of presence is often the best gauge
The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in the competition or in the boardroom.
We have to be prepared for a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing
I knew how to block out my issues in a sprint, but in marathons I ran out of gas. Consistency became a critical problem. On days that I was inspired, I was unstoppable. But other days I would play bad chess.
Learn the science of long-term, healthy, self-sustaining peak performance.
A simple question led to a revolution in my approach to peak performance: did I believe the quality of a chessic thought process was higher if it was preceded by a period of relaxation?
Looking back over my games, I saw that when I had been playing well, I had two-to ten-minute, crisp thinks. When I was off my game, I would sometimes fall into a deep calculation that lasted over twenty minutes and this “long think” often led to an inaccuracy. What is more, if I had a number of long thinks in a row, the quality of my decisions tended to deteriorate.
Stress and Recovery
one of the most telling features of a dominant performer is the routine use of recovery periods. Players who are able to relax in brief moments of inactivity are almost always the ones who end up coming through when the game is on the line.
I found that if a think of mine went over fourteen minutes, it would often become repetitive and imprecise. After noticing this pattern, I learned to monitor the efficiency of my thinking. If it started to falter, I would release everything for a moment, recover, and then come back with a fresh slate. Now when faced with difficult chess positions, I could think for thirty or forty minutes at a very high level, because my concentration was fueled by little breathers
How do we learn to let go?
The physical conditioners at LGE taught me to do cardiovascular interval training on a stationary bike that had a heart monitor. I would ride a bike keeping my RPMs over 100, at a resistance level that made my heart rate go to 170 beats per minute after ten minutes of exertion. Then I would lower the resistance level of the bike and go easy for a minute—my heart rate would return to 144 or so. Then I would sprint again, at a very high level of resistance, and my heart rate would reach 170 again after a minute. Next I would go easy for another minute before sprinting again, and so on. My body and mind were undulating between hard work and release. The recovery time of my heart got progressively shorter as I continued to train this way. As I got into better condition, it took more work to raise my heart rate, and less time to lower my heart rate during rest: soon my rest intervals were only forty five seconds and my sprint times longer.
There is a clear physiological connection when it comes to recovery—cardiovascular interval training can have a profound effect on your ability to quickly release tension and recover from mental exhaustion.
Physical flushing and mental clarity are very much intertwined.
During weight workouts, the LGE guys taught me to precisely monitor how much time I leave between sets, so that my muscles have ample time to recover, but are still pushed to improve their recovery time
if I was doing 3 sets of 15 repetitions of a bench press, I would leave exactly 45 seconds between sets. If I was doing 3 sets of 12 repetitions with heavier weights, I would need 50 seconds between sets, if my sets were 10 reps I would take 55 seconds, and if I was lifting heavy weights, at 3 sets of 8 reps, I would take one minute between reps
Real martial power springs from the explosion from emptiness to fullness, or from the soft into the hard.
Ultimately, with incremental training very much like what I described in the chapter Making Smaller Circles, recovery time can become nearly instantaneous. And once the act of recovery is in our blood, we’ll be able to access it under the most strained of circumstances, becoming masters of creating tiny havens for renewal, even where observers could not conceive of such a break.
Incorporating the rhythm of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life.
Truth be told, this is what my entire approach to learning is based on breaking down the artificial barriers between our diverse life experiences so all moments become enriched by a sense of interconnectedness.
Now that your conscious mind is free to take little breaks, you’ll be delighted by the surges of creativity that will emerge out of your unconscious. You’ll become more attuned to your intuition and will slowly become more and more true to yourself stylistically.
The more seasoned competitors relax, listen to headphones, and nap. They don’t burn through their tanks before stepping on the mats.
Not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. Because waiting is not waiting, it is life.
I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday—the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life’s hidden richness—is where success, let alone happiness, emerges.
To have success in crunch time, you need to integrate certain healthy patterns into your day-to-day life so that they are completely natural to you when the pressure is on.
The real power of incremental growth comes to bear when we truly are like water, steadily carving stone. We just keep on flowing when everything is on the line.
My method is to work backward and create the trigger. I asked Dennis when he felt closest to serene focus in his life.
The next step was to create a four- or five-step routine.
There is no doing badly or well, just being with your breath, releasing your thoughts when you notice them, and coming back to breath. I highly recommend such techniques.. Not only is the return to breath a glimmer of the zone—a moment of undistracted presence—but the ebb and flow of the experience is another form of stress and recovery training.
Vipassana meditation technique
For about a month, Dennis went through his routine every day before playing catch with his son. After he had fully internalized his routine, I suggested that he do it the morning before going to an important meeting.
The point to this system of creating your own trigger is that a physiological connection is formed between the routine and the activity it precedes.
Once the routine is internalized, it can be used before any activity and a similar state of mind will emerge. Let me emphasize that your personal routine should be determined by your individual tastes.
He ate five almonds every forty-five minutes during a long chess game, to stay in a steady state of alertness and strength.
Always be prepared for exertion by being nourished, but never to have too full a stomach and thereby dull your senses.
The next step of the process is to gradually alter the routine so that it is similar enough so as to have the same physiological effect, but slightly different so as to make the “trigger” both lower-maintenance and more flexible
Dennis started doing his routine every day before work, the only difference being that he would eat a larger breakfast than the light snack, and he would listen to Dylan during his short drive to the office. Steps two and three took place at home, after breakfast, as originally planned. Everything was going beautifully. Next, for a few days, Dennis meditated for twelve minutes instead of fifteen. He still came out in the same great state of mind. Then he stretched for eight minutes, instead of ten. Same presence. Then he changed the order of the stretch and meditation. No problem. Over time, slowly but surely, Dennis condensed his stretching and meditation routine down to just a few minutes. Then he would listen to Bob Dylan and be ready to roll. If he wasn’t hungry, he could do without the snack altogether. His routine had been condensed to around twelve minutes and was more potent than ever. Dennis left it at that because he loved Dylan so much, but the next step would have been to gradually listen to less and less music, until he only had to think about the tune to click into the zone.
As I inhale, my mind comes alive, and I visualize energizing from my feet into my fingers. When I exhale, the mind relaxes, the body de-energizes, lets go, winds up, and prepares for the next inflation.
I need to try to do this before I do my founder calls – the one activity that I will be doing the most in the next 2 years. Quick recovery is the key to preventing burnout from hard work.
I also learned to do the form in my mind without moving at all. The visualization proved almost as powerful as the real thing.
At a high level, principles can be internalized to the point that they are barely recognizable even to the most skilled observers.
This type of condensing practice can do wonders to raise our quality of life. Once a simple inhalation can trigger a state of tremendous alertness, our moment-to-moment awareness becomes blissful, like that of someone half-blind who puts on glasses for the first time.
The notion of boredom becomes alien and absurd as we naturally soak in the lovely subtleties of the “banal.”
Presence has taught me how to live.
Anger. First, we learn to flow with distraction, like that blade of grass bending to the wind. Then we learn to use distraction, inspiring ourselves with what initially would have thrown us off our games. Finally we learn to recreate the inspiring settings internally.
He was playing outside of the rules so a natural defense mechanism of mine was anger and righteous indignation. After losing a couple of games to him, I realized that righteous indignation would get me nowhere.
When Boris tapped pieces, I took a deep breath. When he talked about the position with his coach, I just played knowing I would have to beat both of them. When Boris shook the board, I ignored him. This might have seemed a good strategy, but the problem with this approach is that Boris didn’t have a limit. He was perfectly content to escalate the situation
It is easy to speak of nonviolence when I am in a flower garden. The real internal challenge is to maintain that fundamental perspective when confronted by hostility, aggression, and pain.
There will always be creeps in the world, and I had to learn how to deal with them with a cool head. Getting pissed off would get me nowhere in life.
On the learning side, I had to get comfortable dealing with guys playing outside the rules and targeting my neck, eyes, groin, etc. This involved some technical growth, and in order to make those steps I had to recognize the relationship between anger, ego, and fear. I had to develop the habit of taking on my technical weaknesses whenever someone pushed my limits instead of falling back into a self protective indignant pose. Once that adjustment was made, I was free to learn. If someone got into my head, they were doing me a favor, exposing a weakness. They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence. Dirty players were my best teachers.
The only way to succeed is to acknowledge reality and funnel it, take the nerves and use them. We must be prepared for imperfection. If we rely on having no nerves, on not being thrown off by a big miss, or on the exact replication of a certain mindset, then when the pressure is high enough, or when the pain is too piercing to ignore, our ideal state will shatter.
Instead of denying my emotional reality under fire, I had to learn how to sit with it, use it, channel it into a heightened state of intensity.
Guys like Miller, Jordan, Hernandez, and Robinson are so far beyond shakable that opponents, instead of playing mental games, cower for fear of inspiring them.
Of course there were stages to this process. As a teenager I was thrown off by emotion and tried to block it out. Then, in my early twenties, during my initial experiments with Buddhist and Taoist meditation, I worked on letting my emotions pass like a cloud. This was interesting as it opened up a working relationship with my emotional reality very much like how I described working with the unconscious in the chapter Slowing Down Time. Instead of being dominated by or denying my passions, I slowly learned how to observe them and feel how they infused my moment with creativity, freshness, or darkness. Once I had a working relationship with my emotions, I began to take on my psychological reaction to foul play in the martial arts with a bit more subtlety.
The next step in my training would be to channel my gut reaction into intensity. This is not so hard once you get comfortable in that heated-up place. It is more about sweeping away the cobwebs than about learning anything new. We are built to be sharpest when in danger, but protected lives have distanced us from our natural abilities to channel our energies. Instead of running from our emotions or being swept away by their initial gusts, we should learn to sit with them, become at peace with their unique flavors, and ultimately discover deep pools of inspiration. I have found that this is a natural process. Once we build our tolerance for turbulence and are no longer upended by the swells of our emotional life, we can ride them and even pick up speed with their slopes.
I was no longer being governed by self-protectiveness and fear, and so there was no disorienting anger.
I felt no anger, just resolve.
At one point, after Kasparov had lost a big game and was feeling dark and fragile, my father asked Garry how he would handle his lack of confidence in the next game. Garry responded that he would try to play the chess moves that he would have played if he were feeling confident. He would pretend to feel confident, and hopefully trigger the state. Kasparov was an intimidator over the board. Everyone in the chess world was afraid of Garry and he fed on that reality.
Garry was not pretending. He was not being artificial. Garry was triggering his zone
You will probably notice that certain states of mind inspire you more than others. For some it may be happiness, for others it may be fear.
But how do you play your best when there is no one around to provide motivation? There is no cookie-cutter mold to inspiration. There is, however, a process we can follow to discover our unique path. First, we cultivate The Soft Zone, we sit with our emotions, observe them, work with them, learn how to let them float away if they are rocking our boat, and how to use them when they are fueling our creativity. Then we turn our weaknesses into strengths until there is no denial of our natural eruptions and nerves sharpen our game, fear alerts us, anger funnels into focus. Next we discover what emotional states trigger our greatest performances. This is truly a personal question. Some of us will be most creative when ebullient, others when morose. To each his own. Introspect. Then Make Sandals, become your own earthquake, Spike Lee, or tailing fastball. Discover what states work best for you and, like Kasparov, build condensed triggers so you can pull from your deepest reservoirs of creative inspiration at will.
The real art in learning takes place as we move beyond proficiency, when our work becomes an expression of our essence.
I still wasn’t playing competitively so much as working on the ideas I described in the chapters Making Smaller Circles, Slowing Down Time, and The Illusion of the Mystical . I was still in the “research and development” stage.
In the early chapters, I described the importance of a chess player laying a solid foundation by studying positions of reduced complexity ( endgame before opening). Then we apply the internalized principles to increasingly complex scenarios. In Making Smaller Circles we take a single technique or idea and practice it until we feel its essence. Then we gradually condense the movements while maintaining their power, until we are left with an extremely potent and nearly invisible arsenal. In Slowing Down Time, we again focus on a select group of techniques and internalize them until the mind perceives them in tremendous detail. After training in this manner, we can see more frames in an equal amount of time, so things feel slowed down. In The Illusion of the Mystical, we use our cultivation of the last two principles to control the intention of the opponent—and again, we do this by zooming in on very small details to which others are completely oblivious.
Once we have felt the profound refinement of a skill, no matter how small it may be, we can then use that feeling as a beacon of quality as we expand our focus onto more and more material.
Principle of penetrating the macro through the micro
We would then convert what had been creative inspiration into something we understood technically.
If a chess expert were to have his most inspired day he would come up with ideas that would blow his mind and the minds of others at his level. But for the master, these inspired creations would be humdrum. They are the everyday because his knowledge of chess allows him to play this way all the time. While the weaker player might say, “I just had a feeling,” the stronger player would shrug and explain the principles behind the inspired move. This is why Grandmasters can play speed chess games that weaker masters wouldn’t understand in hundreds of hours of study: they have internalized such esoteric patterns and principles that breathtakingly precise decisions are made intuitively. The technical afterthoughts of a truly great one can appear to be divine inspiration to the lesser artist.
Imagine that you are building a pyramid of knowledge. Every level is constructed of technical information and principles that explain that information and condense it into chunks (as I explained in the chapter Slowing Down Time ). Once you have internalized enough information to complete one level of the pyramid, you move on to the next. Say you are ten or twelve levels in. Then you have a creative burst like the ones Dan and I had in the ring. In that moment, it is as if you are seeing something that is suspended in the sky just above the top of your pyramid. There is a connection between that discovery and what you know—or else you wouldn’t have discovered it—and you can find that connection if you try. The next step is to figure out the technical components of your creation. Figure out what makes the “magic” tick.
Pyramid of Knowledge
created a body of theory around a fleeting moment of inspiration
solidified a higher foundation for new leaps.
There is a grand ceremony welcoming the foreigners, but they don’t want us to win. The way they tend to steer results is by making some horrific calls early in the match to get the momentum going in the direction of the local player. Usually when a foreign competitor starts to feel that the match is rigged he gets increasingly desperate and overaggressive. Instead of competing with presence he becomes overwrought and caught up in a downward spiral. His game falls apart. Then, once the Taiwanese player is in control of the match, the judging becomes exceedingly fair. In fact, they become overly kind to create the illusion of fairness.
To survive and win, I became a gladiator, pure and simple. I hadn’t fully understood that he was inside of me, waiting, but surely all the work I had done for years had made him possible, perhaps inevitable.
If I have learned anything over my first twenty-nine years, it is that we cannot calculate our important contests, adventures, and great loves to the end. The only thing we can really count on is getting surprised. No matter how much preparation we do, in the real tests of our lives, we’ll be in unfamiliar terrain. Conditions might not be calm or reasonable. It may feel as though the whole world is stacked against us. This is when we have to perform better than we ever conceived of performing. I believe the key is to have prepared in a manner that allows for inspiration, to have laid the foundation for us to create under the wildest pressures we ever imagined.
Side notes:
These questions from a student-guide also seem helpful for those trying to develop their own path to learning
It’ll be useful to spend some time determining for a given Skill (investing, a sport, meditation): how to measure myself, define technical foundations, create specific routines, record data, and reflect on mindsets.