How to handle things that terrify you, from a guy who climbs 2,500-foot cliffs without ropes
When it comes to climbing massive cliffs without ropes, there's no one like Alex Honnold.
He's the undisputed master of the perilous sport known as free solo climbing, which involves scaling vertical walls without the help of ropes, harnesses, or anything that might break a fall.
Now 30, Honnold — frequently referred to as "one of the humblest climbers around" — has notched a number of achievements that leave viewers shaking their heads, thinking he must be insane.
Honnold nailed the first free solo climb of the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome in Yosemite in 2008. In 2014, he scaled the 2,500 foot El Sendero Luminoso limestone cliff in El Potrero, Mexico, doing a climb that often takes two days in three hours.
On a recent episode of The Tim Ferris Show podcast, Ferris asked Honnold how he handles the mental preparation for a climb that he knows will be particularly challenging.
"When I'm planning on doing something challenging, I spend the time sort of visualizing what the experience will feel like and what the individual sections of it will [feel like]," said Honnold.
"Particularly if it's a free solo, I'm climbing ropeless, then I'll think through what it'll feel like to be in certain positions, because some kinds of movements are insecure and so they're kind of scarier than other types of moves, and so it's important to me think through how that'll feel when I'm up there, so that when I'm doing it I don't suddenly be like 'Oh my God, this is really scary!' I know that it's supposed to be scary, I know that's going to be the move, I know what it'll feel like, and I just do it."
Honnold's mental prep sounds like a psychological technique known as "mental rehearsal," which is used to get ready for anything difficult. Research has shown it can help doctors perform better. Astronauts like Chris Hadfield say it's an essential part of their preparation for spaceflight.
If you've already thought through how everything could feel, even when it goes wrong, you're prepared if things actually do go south.
Rehearsing the way that certain scary moments will feel means that those moments feel "right" when they happen, instead of feeling surprising.
And while mental rehearsal (along with climbing ability, strength, and what sounds like a natural way to approach climbing without fear) helps Honnold perform at his best, it's a technique that can be incorporated into anyone's day-to-day life.
It can help ordinary people prepare for a job interview, a difficult conversation, or a marathon. In Honnold's case, it's enough to get him ready to dangle thousands of feet above the rocky ground.
"I think through how 'airy' certain positions will feel, because sometimes you can be all spread out with the void below you, and you're be like, 'wow this is quite the air around me,'" he says on the podcast. "It's good to have thought about that and basically to think through all potential things beforehand, so that when you're up there there's no unexpected thing that happens."
Sounds like a good strategy in a situation where the expected thing is to look down and see thousands of feet of nothing between you and the ground.
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