Page 98 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

slowed to a near stop. I didn’t show him the injury, quietly fought with one arm, fell
into rhythm with his attacks. On the video his hands look like bullets, but in the match

they felt like clouds, gently rolling toward me, easily dodged, neutralized, pulled into
overextension, e xploited. N o thought, just presence, pu re ow . . . l ike a chess game.

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When I think of this testing moment in my martial arts career, it reminds me
of that afternoon in India some years earlier when an earthquak e spur red me to
revelation. In both cases, distraction was conv erted into fuel for hi gh

performance. In the chess scene, the shak ing jolted my mind into clarity and I
discovered the critical solution to the po sition. In the Pus h Hands moment , my
broken hand made time slow down in my mind and I was able to reach the
most heightened state of awareness of my life. 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 hav e to learn to be at pe ace with
imperfection. I mentioned the image of a blade of grass bendi ng to hur ricane -
force winds in contrast to a brittle twig snap pi ng under pr essur e. Next, in our

performance training, we learn to use that imper fection to our advant age —f or
example thinking to the beat of the mus ic or using a shak ing world as a
catalyst for insight. The third step of thi s process, as it pertains to pe rformanc e
psychology, is to learn to create rippl es in our cons cious nes s, little jolts to spur

us along, so we are constantly inspi red whet her or not external condi tions are
inspiring. If it initially took an earthquak e or broken hand for me to ga in
clarity, I want to use that experience as a new baseline for my everyda y
capabilities. In other words, now that I hav e seen what real focus is all abo ut , I

want to get there all the time—but I do n’t want to hav e to br eak a bo ne
whenever I want my mind to kick in to its ful l po tential. So a deep mastery of
performance psychology involves the internal creation of ins pi ring condi tions . I
will lay out my methodology for systematically cultivating thi s ability in Part

III. In this chapter, I will take thes e thr ee steps of high- per formanc e traini ng
and illustrate how they are also critical compo nen ts of the long- term learni ng
process.

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