Worldwide Success

In the first section of this two-part series we covered some key success concepts from Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence.  In this section we continue exploring additional success insights from Josh.  We left off discussing the importance of learning how to deal with loss, which is a good segway to the next topic:

Investment in Loss

Dealing with loss is important, but just as important is knowing how to invest in loss.  Investment in loss is basically about being humble enough to understand that you have to expose yourself to loss in order to gain the insights that will lead to wins.  If your ego prevents you from placing yourself in situations where you may lose, you will never learn and grow enough to reach the next level of performance.

Josh describes his learning process in Push Hands as humility training, and observes how others had difficulty letting go of their egos:

“While I opened 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…They were locked up by the need to be correct.”

The Soft Zone

In one of his chess tournaments Josh used an earthquake to reach a higher state of consciousness and find a solution to a difficult chess situation.  Later in a Push Hands tournament, he broke his hand is the heat of battle and turned this weakness into a strength.  The pain of a broken bone triggering a state of mind that helped him slow down time and intensify his focus, ultimately leading to victory.

Sport psychologists call this the Soft Zone, a state of performance in which you are intensely focused but relaxed.  Josh compares this state of mind to a flexible blade of grass that can move with and survive hurricane-force winds.  The opposite state is the Hard Zone, where you are tense and straining to fight off distractions.  The analogy here is that of a brittle dry twig that snaps under pressure.

When dealing with highly competitive situations, your mental preparedness is fundamental to your success.  In some competitions, “dirty” psychological tricks are used as weapons to distract an opponent.  If this triggers a state of anger, it could lead to the demise of the opponent.  But strong competitors learn how to use these distractions and irritants to their advantage.  They train to perform under the most distracting and unfriendly circumstances so that they are ready when the critical moment arrives.  Josh summarizes it nicely:

“Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously.”

Recovering from Your Mistakes

What distinguishes top performers from average performers is their ability to recover from their mistakes.  Everyone makes mistakes.   But the most successful have mastered the ability to regain presence and clarity of mind after making a serious mistake.  In fact, the very best are able to recover from their mistakes so subtly that the mistake goes unnoticed by most people.

The first mistake is not fatal, but if the mistake triggers an emotional state that leads to a downward spiral of additional mistakes you will fail.  Top performers realize that brilliant creations are born of small errors and they use improvisation as an opportunity to turn an error into a great moment.

Josh teaches us that being present at critical moments of competition can turn losses into wins, and that the distance between winning and losing is sometimes very small.  Successful people understand that there are always ways to steal wins from the maw of defeat.

The Connection of What Appears to be Disconnected

Josh describes in his book how he was having trouble with transitions in his chess tournaments and how he eventually came to realize that this trouble was a manifestation of a feeling of homesickness.  Once he realized what was troubling him he was able to correct the problem.

He explains how the human mind defines things in relation to one another.  He then concludes that if we feed the unconscious it will discover connections between what appears to be disparate realities.  For example, insights gained from chess, helped him gain a deeper understanding of Push Hands.  Another example is the fact that many music students find it easier to understand some mathematical concepts as they internalize pattern recognitions and other conceptual understanding from their music training.

According to Josh, intuition is what pulls it all together.  Your intuition is the reflection of all the learning and internalization of the experiences in life.  Therefore, when your gut tells you something, you should pay attention to it.

Small Circles – Mastering the Basics

The concept behind small circles is to break down the steps in the learning process so that you gain a complete, deep understanding of every step.  In a society that has a short attention span and is addicted to superfluous multi-tasking, there is a tremendous lesson to be learned here.

Josh describes his learning of difficult moves in Push Hands as a continuous repetition of each step in slow motion.  He needs to do it slowly before having any hope of doing it right with speed.  In a world that demands immediate gratification, this method of learning takes us back to a time when a disciplined approach to first mastering the basics delivered much better results:

“The fact is that when there is intense competition, those who succeed have slightly more honed skills than the rest.  It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.  Depth beats breadth any day of the week.”

Slowing Down Time and Focused Information Processing

Josh describes his experience fighting with a fractured hand against a very aggressive opponent in a Push Hands competition.  He sees his opponent’s movements in slow motion, even though they were coming at him fast and furious.

He draws the analogy of stories of women lifting cars off their children or time seeming to slow down during an accident.  This proves that humans have the mental capacity to channel energy and focus with a high degree of intensity in a life threatening situation.  In this case, our brain zeroes in on a very small amount of critical information, blocking everything else.

A similar result can be achieved if we learn to convert all the surrounding information into unconscious integrated data so that the conscious mind can better focus on a smaller level of detail.  He illustrates this concept by alluding to the fact that a chess Grandmaster looks at a lot less information on a chess board than someone with lower skills.  He looks at very little, and yet he sees quite a lot.

“…we can train ourselves to have remarkable potent perceptual and physical abilities in our disciplines of focus.  The key of course is practice.”

Conclusion

Josh brings it all together by talking about the importance of presence under mounting pressure and the impact of recovery periods.   According to Josh, what separates the top performers from the rest it the ability to be clearheaded and stay cool when everything is on the line.  Then he reminds us that everything is always on the line, whether we are in competition, taking an exam, making a business presentation, or even being at the operating table. 

Physiologists at the Human Performance Institute in Florida discovered that one of the dominant characteristics of top performers is the use of recovery periods.  Josh takes this discovery to explain how to master the Soft Zone by practicing the ebb and flow of stress and recovery.  He gives the example of swimming laps in a pool.  Instead of swimming until you are totally exhausted, you should push yourself to a healthy limit, recover for a couple of minutes, and then push yourself again.  If you want to be a top performer in any discipline, you must incorporate the rhythms of stress and recovery into all aspects of your life.

Finally, Josh teaches us how to enter the zone at will.   He devised a method of association that begins by identifying an activity that takes you to a serene focus.  Then you perform a series of steps just before this activity, such as eating a light snack, meditating, stretching, listening to music, and then performing the activity you identified.  After some practice you will naturally associate those steps with the desired state of mind.  Then you take those steps right before the big event so that you will be in the zone at the time you need to perform.  Over time, you practice taking fewer steps and condensing the routine until you can elicit the zone with something as simple as taking a deep breath.

Josh teaches us so much in The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence.  This article only scratches the surface of this in-depth look at the fundamentals of achieving exceptional performance.  If you are searching for success, I would highly encourage you to read and study this book.

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