We’ve learned that the mind avoids stress, seeks comfort, and plays tricks to skirt stress. Knowing these mental tendencies allows us to notice when tricks occur, stop such thought processes, and redirect attention in ways to deal with the stress. Recall that learning is converting something stressful into something that becomes comfortable. This conversion cannot occur if we give into the mind’s tricks to skirt stress.

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In The Journeys of Socrates, Dan Millman describes the learning process that Socrates goes through. Serafim, one of his teachers, teaches Socrates the art of fighting and how expectations can interfere with preparation and action. Serafim’s teachings on expectations are similar to the story of the old master teaching the art of fencing. The master tells the student to do her daily chores and be prepared to respond to attacks whenever and wherever they occur.

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The student might be going around a corner expecting the attack to come from the front so she prepares for it, yet the attack comes from behind. She goes around another corner expecting the attack to come from behind and gets attacked from the front. The student is in a constant state of tension and expectation. This tension and expectation interferes with her ability to prepare for an attack that comes from any direction.

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When the student expects an attack from one direction, her attention is directed only there. Meaning, she can’t be attentive to all directions. When she learns not to expect an attack from any particular direction she is attentive to all directions. Serafim instructs Socrates similarly to “Expect nothing, but be prepared for anything.” This is really a metaphor for being attentive to everything that is important in a given situation without allowing expectations to narrow our focus. By eliminating expectations we can focus attention on preparing for any possible outcome. With expectations we miss important elements in our preparation.

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In climbing we need to prepare well so we can take appropriate risks. We need to expect nothing, yet be prepared for anything. How can we do effective preparation if we don’t expect anything? We can also rephrase this question by asking: How can we do effective preparation if we do expect something? Either question will shed light on the role of expectations on effective preparation. So, what are your thoughts on this?

Your mind will always look for ways to avoid discomfort or circumvent stress. It will seek to eliminate fear or climb the next grade without doing the required work. Your mind will do anything it can to keep from being fully present for the stress that is inherent in a climbing challenge. Even some common, well-accepted calming tactics are examples of this tendency to escape. For example, many people listen to music when exercising, stretching, warming up, or practicing. Some climbers even listen to music when redpointing a route. Doing this may calm and focus your mind, but it’s a short-term solution. If you want to realize your full potential, you will need to come face-to-face with the stress generated in the climbing experience. The only way to do this is to be present for it. By distracting your mind with calming “tricks,” you allow your mind to evade the growth process. If you use a trick to skirt the growth process, you don’t really grow; you just find a way to ignore the stress. Tricks can produce short-term ends, but they won’t help you learn. Learning is the means that allows you to reach your full potential.

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Labeling outcomes is another limiting tendency of the mind. Your mind tends to label completing a route as good and successful. When you fall off a route, however, your mind tends to label it bad or failure. Doing this takes attention off the learning process and allows your mind to wallow in the trappings that come along with the label. You’re either lost in the label of success and therefore lose sight of what you actually did to create that outcome, or you’re lost in the label of failure instead of exploring what actually happened to cause the fall. When you operate from awareness, you are curious about what happened right at the moment you let go. Yes, not when you fell but when you let go. What thought was in your mind when you separated from the rock? Did your body or your mind let go? You don’t know exactly, and labeling it as failure won’t help you find out. If you keep your attention on how much your mind contributed to separating you from the rock, then you’ll stay excited about the climbing process and won’t allow your mind to trick you into hiding behind the comfort of a label.

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All-or-nothing thinking is another tendency of the mind. When you push yourself on grades that are outside your comfort zone, your mind will resist by creating thoughts to lure you into escaping, or finishing quickly. Your mind seeks the greater comfort before or after the stress and wants to either rush through to the end when the stress is over (all), or not engage the challenge at all (nothing).

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Understand and remember that these ignoring, labeling, and all-or-nothing tendencies are your mind’s natural inclination. Simply identify these thoughts when they happen, and use your awareness to deal with them.

Mental Lies

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The mind doesn’t like stress and will engage in thought processes designed to escape that stress. Often, these thought processes seem reasonable, but they have an ulterior motive of evasion. Many climbers have discovered this tendency of the mind. My first glimpse of it was many years ago as an intermediate climber in Boulder, Colorado. I was working my way through the climbing grades until I was able to climb 5.8s regularly. I wanted to push into 5.9s and had chosen one called Curving Crack on Castle Rock in Boulder Canyon. I was poised at a subtle stance below the last 15 feet, saying to myself, “I don’t think I can do it.” My mind told me to give up, but for no real reason I moved on anyway. Without thinking, I began stemming, laybacking, and jamming my shoes in the crack. I placed a nut and continued. The climbing was strenuous but doable. Stemming seemed to give me stability, and before I knew it, I pulled over the top.

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At the time, I couldn’t believe it. I had felt quite certain I could not do the route, yet I had. I would later realize that almost every climber has had a similar experience. When you dissect these experiences, you find that your mind creates conceptions of situations that you haven’t yet engaged. Since the situation is unknown, these conceptions are not based on fact and often are false. Consider the magnitude of this realization: Your mind gives you false information prior to engaging a new situation. This false information is essentially a lie.

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Realizing that your mind lies to you is a bit unsettling, to say the least. But how could it be otherwise? How can your mind know something before you actually engage? It can’t, and this realization is the beginning of understanding how your mind works.