August 19, 2024 • 43 mins
In Episode #18, Ashley Hatch and Dr. Matt Moore discuss the story of Alex Honnold and his incredible feat of free solo climbing El Capitan in Yosemite. They explore themes of focus and concentration, goal setting, mental rehearsal, and the psychological challenges Honnold faced. They also discuss how Honnold developed a healthy relationship with fear and embraced it as part of the process. Honnold's self-awareness and ability to eliminate distractions contributed to his achievements. The idea of being fearless is a myth; it's about responding to fear differently. The brain's response to fear can be shaped through experience and preparation.
You can watch Free Solo here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I work through the fear until it's not scary anymore.
(00:03):
You're not controlling your fear,
you're just trying to step out of it.
As he's climbing and as you hear him
kinda like talking himself through things,
he was like, yeah, I just wanna go and see
what feels scary.
If this feels scary, like how do I make it not scary?
And that was like his preparation,
like trying things over and over.
There's one part of the route
that was kind of one of the riskier parts
(00:25):
where he had two choices.
He could either boulder it, which is you jump,
or he had to do, I think they call it the karate kick,
where he puts one leg out and then like crosses over.
It shows him doing it over and over and over.
There was no option.
He had to perfect every single step.
And I feel like that is how he got over the fear
(00:48):
or the things that felt scary.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Ditto.
I'm Ashley Hatch, one of your hosts of Ditto
here with Dr. Matt Moore.
Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm really, really well.
(01:08):
I might sound a little stuffy.
I think it's allergies, the changing of kind of the seasons.
At least here in Utah, it's been fires
and the air hasn't been very clean.
So if I sound stuffy, I apologize.
Other than that, I'm doing really, really well.
How are you, Ash?
I'm doing well also.
Thanks for asking.
Just in the grind of season, practicing every day,
(01:33):
working hard, having fun.
It's good.
Things are good.
Who's the next opponent?
Who's the next one you guys are gonna kill?
We have a friendly against Arsenal.
They come to us.
Audi, yep, should be a fun game.
I'm excited.
And yeah, and then right after that, the next week,
(01:53):
we get back into regular season against Kansas City,
which will be a fun one,
because we haven't played them yet
and they're at the top of the table.
Yeah.
How are those UK teams?
I know the NWSL is king, queen, however you wanna say it.
Yes, from our personal opinion.
Yes, when you play Arsenal or Man City
(02:13):
or whomever over there,
is it high competition?
Are they good or do you usually beat up on them?
That's a good question.
We've never played a WSL team before, so.
I had no idea.
We'll see.
I feel like it's just kind of ongoing controversy
(02:34):
of which league is better, which is the most competitive.
So it's fun to have these friendlies.
We are at different places in our season,
so that's always kind of hard
for whoever is starting their season
or whoever's in the middle of the season
kind of has a little bit of advantage, some would say.
Style of play is different, but I feel like it's always,
(02:55):
I feel like it's gonna be a good game.
They're good teams.
They'll always be competitive.
But since it is a friendly,
I think both teams just use it as an opportunity
to get better and get players minutes and continue to grow.
And then winning is always nice, so.
But deep down, you wanna kick their ASS.
Yeah, of course, always.
Of course.
(03:16):
I just think of my Chelsea Blues coming and playing RSL
in the men's league,
and it just doesn't seem like much of a competition.
I don't know, MLS in my humble opinion
just isn't there yet.
I don't know if they ever will be.
And from being around you,
NWSL seems like the best league in the world
(03:39):
when it comes to the women, so interesting.
I would agree with you, but I know I'm super biased, so.
Yeah.
So we'll just leave it at that.
Arsenal, are they like the,
I can see like the canon, like Arsenal, right?
Yep, they're the red and white team.
Okay.
Yeah, you're correct.
Yeah, okay.
Nice.
Awesome, well good luck, that'd be fun.
(04:01):
Thanks, yeah.
Yeah, I'm excited, I think we're excited.
I have a joke for you.
All right, let's hear it.
I told the joke to my seven-year-old daughter
the other day and she thought it was hilarious.
Perfect, so it's gonna be good.
Yeah, it's gonna be good, you ready?
Yeah.
Why can't you give Elsa a balloon?
(04:26):
I don't know, why?
Because she'll just let it go.
Oh, that's a good one.
I was trying to think of the songs,
but I was drawing a blank.
That's good.
I like that one.
That's good, I wish I could take that for it,
but I don't know where I heard it somewhere.
Yeah, nice, I can see why you got to like that one.
(04:48):
Yeah, yeah, hey, to get this topic started
and this incredible story that we wanna talk about today,
I have kind of a precursor that might be of interest
that will lead into this, you ready?
All right, yeah.
Took my family camping last night,
it was the first time my kids had ever been camping,
so I have a seven-year-old and a three and a half-year-old
(05:09):
and here locally in the state of Utah,
there's just plenitude of campsites
and hiking, outdoor stuff, luckily,
and we live in a beautiful place and it was amazing.
We went up American Fort Canyon, we were in the outdoors.
For those that don't know Utah or at least Utah Valley,
(05:31):
going up American Fort Canyon,
you can see the backside of one of the tallest peaks
in the state, it's called Mount Timpanogos.
Or if you're Siri, it's Timpanogos.
That's how she says it on my phone.
That's funny, I never knew that.
Mount Timpanogos.
Anyways, so you're staring at this beauty
and being in nature, there's just so many wonderful,
(05:55):
amazing, beautiful things about it,
but I couldn't help but think,
of course, based on our story today,
what it would be like to climb one of these peaks.
And then it got me started thinking about one man
(06:16):
in particular that has climbed many peaks,
one in particular that is astounding, not human.
I don't know how you wanna describe it.
Supernatural.
Yeah, do you wanna give the audience
a synopsis of this individual
and who we're talking about and why, maybe why,
or just however much you wanna talk about it.
(06:38):
Yeah, for sure.
So today we're gonna be talking about Alex Honnold,
a free, if you haven't seen it, free solo,
the movie on Disney Plus is all about him free soloing,
which means climbing El Capitan or El Cap in Yosemite
(06:58):
without any ropes or assistance.
So just him, his bare hands, his climbing shoes,
and some chalk.
And to give you a little bit of background
on why this is insane and completely crazy,
this mountain or slab of granite is-
(07:22):
Right, pretty much just a big slab.
Yeah, is 3,200 feet high.
It's no small feat.
Anyway, so we thought this would be a cool story
to kind of dive into because in the movie,
he documents his whole journey
and there's a lot of really cool,
I feel like mental performance sides of it.
(07:43):
Also just the sheer fact that his sport or his hobby,
he's putting his life on the line.
There is no, like he said in the movie,
you either win or you die.
And so his approach to conquering this mountain
or climbing this slab of granite,
(08:03):
it's been his ultimate goal.
His approach was very thought out and very thoughtful.
And so I think diving into it is gonna be really fun
and I'm excited to hear, especially from you, Matt,
the psychological side of it and the mental preparation.
I know when I watched it, I took a lot of notes
because I was just like, this is insane.
But yeah, that's a little bit of background
(08:25):
of Alex Honnold and the story that we wanna dive into today.
Yeah, yeah.
Similar to our last episode or at least the episode
where we talked about the Olympics,
Ashley and I wanna gear some, maybe not all,
but at least some of these future episodes towards stories
and incredible, inspiring stories, sport related or not.
(08:49):
We just think it's really interesting and engaging
and then pulling apart some of these stories
that we find interesting from, of course,
psychological preparation, emotional standpoint,
relationship standpoint.
So for those that haven't seen the film,
again, the film is called Free Solo.
It came out, when did it come out, Ashley?
(09:10):
17-ish?
Maybe?
I think maybe 2018.
Okay, 2018.
Yeah.
Yeah, just an incredible film.
It, again, it essentially follows Alex in his preparation
in attempting this climb of 3,200 feet,
(09:31):
just over 3,000 feet, El Cap and Yosemite National Park.
And like Ashley mentioned, there's so many wonderful things
from his meticulous preparation
and physical and mental challenges
and of course, this breathtaking climate itself.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
I've seen this, I think, five or six times,
(09:52):
half a dozen, you probably close, I think, right?
Three or four?
Somewhere around there.
Every time he starts it, it's the music,
it kind of goes silent,
he gets there like early in the morning.
And so, from a dramatic Hollywood standpoint,
it's like unbelievable.
(10:13):
And then it's real, it's not Hollywoodized.
Yeah.
And so, you're literally on the edge of your seat
kind of holding your breath
and you see his team that is surrounding him,
not on the rock,
he's the only one on this 3,000 foot rock face,
but down below and at the top and they're filming him
and they have a telescope, not telescope,
(10:36):
what's the word I'm looking for?
Camera.
Camera or whatever.
They're seeing him on this rock,
far, far, far above him.
And it's so unbelievable to watch
that a human being can do this
and able to do it successfully.
(10:57):
Like I mentioned, there's a number of things,
especially from a psychological standpoint
that I think are astounding.
I wanna get to one in particular eventually
that I think is the most interesting,
but before I get to that one,
I think there are three or four, probably more,
at least from my standpoint
that I have found really interesting
(11:18):
and then Ashley, please interrupt and add
as I kind of share some of these things.
First is this focus and concentration.
So being able to climb this particular rock face
without a rope requires kind of this unwavering focus,
right, and concentration.
(11:39):
And think about this, not losing the concentration
or recognizing when you perhaps do lose
some focus or concentration to bring it back immediately
because if you do make a single mistake, you're dead.
(12:00):
Yeah.
You're falling to your death.
And so the focus and concentration is unbelievable.
I talk to baseball players and golfers
about this all the time in terms of focus and concentration.
It's really next to impossible to be completely focused,
completely concentrated throughout the whole game,
throughout the whole match, which is three to four hours.
(12:21):
You just can't do it as a human being.
And so the idea is to recognize
when your focus is waning, accept it.
It's over here.
I need to bring it back into where I am
playing a baseball game or in a golf match.
Anyway, so there's that alone.
Like, can you imagine the amount of focus
(12:45):
that he had to train and that he experienced
in just doing that?
And so that for me is crazy.
Number two is something that we've talked about
quite a bit on this podcast, Ashley,
is this goal setting idea or goal setting phenomena.
So, Honnold's achievement, you know, being able to,
the importance of being able to set, you know,
(13:08):
these clear kind of challenging goals
and then committing to them fully.
He was so committed to climbing in general,
but climbing a cap without a rope.
And so it was so fun to see his determination
throughout the process.
It was, I don't know if they gave a timeline,
(13:31):
correct me if I'm wrong, Ashley,
but it was years in the making, right?
Did they mention a timeline?
I wanna say eight years, I think.
Yeah.
I think when he first, from what I remember at the end,
one of his buddies congratulated him and said like,
something like, oh, they took you eight years
or eight years in the making,
(13:53):
which is crazy when you put that into perspective.
But I think he was just someone who was so passionate
about climbing and specifically like free-souling
that when he was introduced to this climb or this mountain,
he was like, that's something I wanna do.
And I think he just became obsessed with it, you know?
And he lived in his van.
(14:14):
I think also a reason why it probably took him eight years,
is there's only certain months out of the year
that he can actually attempt this because of the weather.
And so, like, I think every year he would just come back
and he would practice and he would,
obviously he had climbed it many times with the rope.
But I think if you think back to the beginning
(14:35):
of his journey, probably climbing it with the rope
wasn't something that he really wanted to do
as an accomplishment, a goal that he had,
because that alone, I feel like I couldn't climb it
with the rope.
Like, it takes so much skill and knowledge
in owning your craft as a rock climber
to be able to climb it with a rope.
(14:56):
And so, it makes sense of why it took eight years
for him to do it, because he had to take that process
of step by step, getting higher and higher,
figuring out his different grips, his holds,
his different foot positioning, all that kind of stuff.
So, it makes sense that it would take eight years.
(15:16):
You just alluded to kind of my next point.
In conjunction or within this idea or this theme
of goal setting is this beautiful psychological skill set
of mental rehearsal.
I don't know if it went over explicitly.
You recently just watched the documentary.
It's been a little bit since I've watched it.
(15:37):
What he did in terms of visualization and imagery,
do you remember explicit strategies that he was using?
Yeah, so he knew that, he knew LCAP,
like he memorized every single step, every single,
like he memorized-
Hand hold and everything.
Yeah, he memorized every single route.
(16:00):
I think they called it a root in-
Route, root, yeah, same thing.
Yeah, but in the show, I remember singing,
like is it a, I think it's a route,
but they kept saying a root.
Okay.
So, like a tree, you know, like has different roots.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was roots.
R-O-O-T.
Yeah, so I think they called it a root.
That makes sense, yeah, yeah.
(16:21):
I know, because I feel like I'm going crazy,
but they keep saying root.
Anyway, but a part, one of my favorite parts of the movie,
which is really cool, that I would encourage people
when they watch it to recognize it,
but he had this journal, and he, every single day,
he wrote like how it went, what he got stuck on,
(16:44):
what he had trouble with, and then he had,
he had every single step written down,
and he was like reading them out loud and memorizing them.
I wrote down one of his lines.
In his notes, he would say things like trust the feet,
like switch over the feet here, trust, like trust this,
trust that, and I was just like, wow, these,
(17:04):
these are really cool, and like I don't know if he had any,
like mental performance coach, like teaching him these,
these things, it didn't seem like it,
but it's just something that he found that like worked for
him that he did in preparation, and one thing that he talks
about at the beginning of the movie is he, in his mind,
(17:27):
he would say that the risk is low because his preparation
was so good, but the consequence was always high,
so in his mind, there was a difference between risk
and consequence, and I thought that was very interesting
because you think if it's a high risk,
(17:48):
it's a high consequence, but in his mind,
he wasn't as fearful of it, or as he continued to practice
and prepare and just like literally own that mountain,
he didn't see the risk as very high because like I'm so
prepared, like I believe in myself, I know I can do this,
(18:08):
but the consequence will always be really high
if you don't mess up, or if you mess up, so, yeah,
but journaling and just like rehearsing, and then I think
also just practicing so much, like over and over,
and then in his van, he had that little grip thing
in his van, he would just like hang there,
(18:30):
but yeah, he like dedicated everything to achieving
that one goal, which is crazy.
And think of how psychologically comforting that was
for him when he was actually on that morning,
attempting to do it successfully, but I mean,
he attempted it numerous times, but especially the time
he did it successfully, think of the level of comfort
(18:55):
he had psychologically and emotionally because of
that preparation, and then more specifically,
because of this mental rehearsal, I mean, the whole idea
behind mental rehearsal as a psychological skill set
is you're creating comfort for an uncomfortable situation,
and so you're going into a soccer game,
(19:15):
you're going into a business presentation,
you're going to climb El Cap, you start to visualize
and integrate imagery and or imagery before all of this,
in theory, you're gonna be much more comfortable
when it actually happens because you've been there
before psychologically, so doing all of these preparations
(19:38):
holistically, of course, lended itself to his ultimate
success of climbing this slab of rock successfully.
Yeah, anyways.
Yeah, he said, I wrote down here, he said,
I work through the fear until it's not scary anymore,
and he talked about you're not controlling your fear,
(20:03):
you're just trying to step out of it,
and then I feel like his level of self-awareness
was honestly incredible because as he's climbing
and as you hear him kind of talking himself through things,
he was like, yeah, I just wanna go and see what feels scary,
and if he was like, if this feels scary,
(20:26):
how do I make it not scary, and that was his preparation,
trying things over and over, trying things with the rope,
there's one part of the route that was kind of one of the
riskier parts where he had two choices,
he could either boulder it, which is you jump,
like you literally have your grip, you jump, let go,
(20:48):
and then try and grip on, or he had to do,
I think they call it the karate kick,
where he puts one leg out and then crosses,
like shimmies over, and it shows him doing it over,
and over, and over with the rope,
and just like trying the karate kick, falling,
(21:08):
trying the boulder, falling, and riding it down,
like he just wanted, he had to, there was no option,
he had to perfect every single step,
and I feel like that is how he got over the fear,
or the things that felt scary.
I don't think it was.
Yeah, his preparation was everything,
(21:29):
so yeah, but his level of self-awareness
is what helped him continue to like try, fail,
try, fail until he ultimately succeeded.
Right, yeah, I mean, again,
so many beautiful things in there.
That fear part is what I wanna get to here in just a second,
which is, like I alluded to at the beginning,
(21:50):
something that's the most interesting to me.
One last kind of takeaway, at least from my perspective
in watching and rewatching this film,
of course I'm gonna talk about resilience and perseverance.
I just think he exudes it to the utmost degree,
(22:10):
being able to be consistently persistent
through his training and in his self-belief.
I mean, there were times relationally,
at least in the film, that he had some ups and downs,
and then in his own mind,
(22:31):
I mean, you can tell throughout just the film,
I'm sure there was a whole lot more going on
that we didn't see as just from not watching
or watching pre-solo,
that emotionally and psychologically,
there were, like us as human beings,
there was a lot going on, a lot of ups and downs,
and so he recognized the importance of being
in the good head space to be able to attempt
(22:53):
something like this, not only to do it successfully,
but to stay alive and not die.
So that for me was something that really stood out as well.
Here's the last kind of huge takeaway,
and you alluded to it already, this fear part.
(23:18):
I, over the years, in studying the mind,
studying human beings and teaching about human beings,
so this is a film I show my undergraduates
almost every semester because of everything
that we're talking about in my sports psychology class,
is this idea of fearless,
(23:40):
and I wholeheartedly, this is just my opinion,
agree that there is no such thing as being fearless.
It's developing a healthy relationship with fear
that I think is the main point.
And so here's my challenge for everyone listening.
(24:04):
When you hear somebody say that someone else
or another team or anything,
any other being is fearless, just throw caution to the wind,
because my guess is at some point,
that team, that individual, did experience fear.
It's just, how did they respond as a result of it?
And so in the film,
(24:26):
something really, really interesting happened.
Neuroscientists, at least they showed,
I don't know if they showed him actually going to the doctor,
maybe they did, some of these neuroscientists,
they performed an MRI on his brain, right?
Yeah.
And it showed that his brain, Alex Honnold's brain,
doesn't respond to fear stimuli
(24:48):
like a quote unquote normal brain.
And so, but then they didn't really unpack it further
from there, and so I've had students and people
that have seen this that are like,
well, that's why he can do this,
that's why he's quote unquote fearless,
because he doesn't respond to fear like us.
And my response is, yeah, no joke,
(25:10):
he doesn't respond to fear like us.
This is Alex's quote from him,
after these neuroscientists have found
that his brain is not normal,
especially as it pertains to fear.
He said, I find that slightly irritating,
because I've spent 25 years, that's a lot of years,
(25:33):
conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions.
So of course, my brain is different,
just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating
or a taxi driver who has memorized all the streets
of the city would be different.
Then he goes on to say that it's because of his preparation,
like we've mentioned, because of his preparation,
(25:58):
why his brain is different, why it's not normal.
So for years, like for instance,
he was afraid of El Capitan.
Of course, it's a 3000 foot rock wall in Yosemite
and the idea of trying to climb on but without a rope,
that's gonna be scary for anybody.
So he goes on to say, I would drive into Yosemite,
(26:21):
I would look at the wall,
and I would think, no way, too scary.
So then to gradually expand his comfort zone,
he would climb El Cap hundreds of times with a rope
and then slowly maybe take off a rope for certain sections
(26:42):
so he could get used to some of this,
the idea of climbing it, the whole thing,
without a rope, which happened on June 3rd, 2017,
he became the first.
Anyways, so this idea of fear lists
is really interesting to me.
And I believe as in working with high performers
(27:08):
and if there's anyone listening that's wanting to perform
at any kind of high level,
you're probably at some point experiencing fear,
experiencing some sort of anxiety.
Don't try to get rid of it.
And don't try to think that it needs to go away
so that you can perform at your very best.
You just simply need to respond to it differently.
(27:30):
And if we're using Alex's example,
you need a lot of practice.
So if you're presenting in front of a group
and that gives you a lot of fear
and according to a lot of different reports
and a lot of research,
our number one fear as human beings is public speaking.
Go speak in front of people.
(27:50):
Start with two people, then expand it to four,
then expand it to a dozen.
Practice speaking in front of people
because you're gradually like Alex expanding this comfort zone.
It probably starts out really minuscule
but then as you deliberately practice,
like Alex was doing,
(28:10):
you're gonna stare at this mountain
that might be really scary.
But then eventually you'll start to recognize,
ooh, I can still do this even though
I am still experiencing some sort of fear.
Maybe it's on a really small level
or maybe it's somewhere in between.
Anyways, what do you think, Ash, with some of that?
(28:32):
I know you shared some of your thoughts on that,
but yeah, take it.
No, I think it's all very fascinating
and I guess I have some questions for you
because the part where they do scan his brain,
I thought was really interesting
and I wish that they dove into it a little bit more.
Do you remember the name of the part of the brain
that the doctor was talking about
that I think it was something that registers fear
(28:58):
and a lot of emotion?
Oh, the hypothalamus?
Not the hypothalamus, what was it?
Fear center of the brain.
Yeah, I think it started with an A.
But anyway, amygdala, yes, that's what it was.
So my question for you,
just because I don't really understand the brain
(29:22):
as much as you probably do,
but is the amygdala something that,
not really a muscle, but something that you can develop,
Alex kind of alluded to,
the reason why he's not registering fear as much
is because he does these crazy, scary things
(29:43):
and practices and prepares.
So are you saying that that's something
that has been trained,
kind of like a nature versus nurture type of conversation?
That's something that he has trained
and that's the reason why his brain is the way it is,
not because he was born that way.
100%.
No one comes hardwired with the ability
(30:04):
to not experience fear or this abnormality
to not respond to fear,
unless something is seriously wrong with the brain.
Yeah.
The idea is that emotions like fear
are shaped by experience, by prior experiences.
Yeah.
And so at first, when he even just merely thought
(30:26):
of the idea of trying to climb El Cap without a rope,
I'm sure the amygdala was going crazy.
And as he alluded to,
he would stand in front of this mountain going,
no way, way too scary.
But as you shape that experience,
you're giving different meaning to it,
(30:46):
especially in the present sensational experiences
in those moments.
And then you're adding more to it and adding more to it.
So the fear and preparation,
especially in Alex's case,
were inversely relational or proportional.
(31:08):
So the idea is the level of fear
greatly depends on the level of your preparation.
And it's not, once again, that it's gonna be fearless
or the amygdala is gonna be completely shut down.
You're just going to experience it differently
and still be able to perform at a really, really high level.
(31:31):
And so, I'm not a neuroscientist.
I wish I knew the brain more than I actually do.
I'm what you call a social scientist.
But that's the whole take home message,
at least from kind of this neurological,
neuroscientific standpoint,
scientific standpoint,
is finding the preparation to combat
(31:56):
that or relate, I should say, to the fear differently.
That make sense?
Yeah, totally.
And that's kind of what I gathered from the movie,
but they didn't dive into it enough
for I feel like the viewers to kind of really understand that.
They're just like, look,
this part of his brain isn't like everyone else's.
(32:18):
We're like, that's probably why,
in the quote that you shared, he was frustrated.
He's like, well, no, duh.
I've been practicing this my whole entire life.
But when you were talking about the reason
why his levels of fear are different
because of his preparation or the first time
he drove up and saw El Capitan and said,
(32:41):
whoa, no way, that's scary.
It reminded me of another quote that he said
when he was talking to his girlfriend at the time.
He was just saying, I think her name was Sunny.
Yeah, yeah.
He was like, Sunny lives to be happy.
If she's happy and other people around her are happy,
then that's a successful life for her.
(33:02):
And he's like, I live for performance.
I want to achieve my goals.
And he said, no one achieves anything
from being happy and cozy.
And he just says it so nonchalantly.
But he's right.
We all kind of, as you're alluding to
with the public speaking, we all don't grow
(33:25):
unless we do things that are scary
or we step out of that happy and cozy little bubble
that we want to be in.
But he also shares that he expanded his comfort zone
by practicing over and over.
So imagine how much happier and how much happier
(33:47):
and how much cozier we can be
when we expand that comfort zone.
I feel like it's this kind of this false idea
that we're gonna stay happy and cozy
if we don't do things that challenge us.
But then that means our comfort zone
is gonna be like itty bitty.
It's gonna be this small
because there's gonna be a lot of things
(34:08):
that don't make us happy and cozy.
But if we kind of push those boundaries,
we expand our house, then we're gonna have more things
that are gonna be happy and cozy.
We're gonna be happy and cozier for maybe a little bit longer.
And then we're gonna be like, okay,
I wanna push myself and I wanna continue to achieve this.
(34:29):
And you go out and you do it
and then your happy and cozy bubble gets bigger and bigger.
But I just thought that was so interesting.
I'm curious to see what he does next
because he just accomplished something that no one,
I don't even know if anyone else could do it.
I'm sure people seeing him do it,
they may want to do it.
But just the level of commitment
(34:53):
that you see in the film as you watch it,
he just eliminates distractions.
He's so self-aware, even with his relationship
with his girlfriend at the time,
who I think is now his wife.
I think Jeff and I Googled it.
Oh, sweet.
Good for him.
Yeah, they have two kids now.
Oh, sweet, yeah.
Yeah.
(35:13):
But yeah, I think the day that he actually did it,
I think he told her to leave or she drove away.
I think he just wanted to eliminate all distractions,
which I can respect,
but I feel like that would be really, really hard.
But another thing that's very interesting too
(35:36):
is the first time that he attempted to do it,
like without any ropes, he attempted to free solo it,
he stopped and he waved the white flag
and he was like, I don't feel good, I can't do it.
He's like, I cheated, I grabbed one of the ropes
(35:57):
or hooks or something.
And I thought it was really cool that I showed that
because he didn't push through it.
I think if you hear his story and you hear the end result,
you think he probably grinded it out
and he just pushed through it.
He's careless, he was reckless, but it's the exact opposite.
He was so careful and he was so particular
(36:19):
and he knew that he wasn't,
I don't think he was really feeling it that day.
He didn't want to tell his girlfriend too
when he was deciding to do it.
He was very, very self-aware.
And as he was like, he didn't even get that far up,
he was just like, I can't do it today, I don't wanna do it.
And if you think about all that preparation,
I feel like I'm sure he felt a lot of internal pressure
(36:42):
and probably external pressure from all the cameras there,
the people that are working with him, but he didn't do it.
And so he came down and he kept practicing,
waited till he felt better and then he went
and tried again.
I think that's a huge lesson for all of us to learn
when we're going for our goals or something like that.
(37:03):
It's okay, you don't have to push through something
that's gonna be detrimental to you.
You can still achieve it.
And I thought that was very commendable of him
and I feel like he gained so much trust from his team
when he did do that because they were like,
they were all so scared.
They had so many honest conversations of like,
(37:24):
we will do this, but we want to let you know
this is scary for us,
because we don't wanna see you fail,
because that would be terrible for all of us.
We would watch you die, right.
Yeah, exactly.
But the conversations that he has with his crew
and everything, they were just all so open
and so honest and raw that I feel like that's why it worked.
(37:46):
And I feel like that step was really important for him
to actually achieve what it was that he wanted to achieve.
I feel like that step was crucial in gaining the trust
of his crew and that he trusted himself.
And I think his crew really appreciated that too.
It kind of like, you could tell he was disappointed,
(38:07):
but it's like, we'd rather have that
than you push through something and then not be successful.
So I thought that was really cool too.
100% to all of it, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto.
We need a jingle, don't we?
Yeah, I think you should do it.
You want me to do it?
You want me to come up with one?
(38:27):
Yeah, maybe.
I'm gonna embarrass my wife half to death.
Basically, if I had to summarize everything you just said,
which was awesome, I would say quality from quantity.
So if you out there, you wanna have confidence like Alex
(38:52):
and be able to climb your own 3000 foot rock wall
without a rope, whether it's in business or sport
or relationships, whatever you are doing.
Start by climbing it hundreds of times with a rope.
Quantity, eventually that's gonna be quality
(39:12):
and then do so deliberately like you just mentioned.
I think it was very deliberate of him to say,
this isn't the day, so I need to try again another day.
So anyways, there's just so much we can learn
from this extraordinary human being
and this extraordinary feat that he did.
(39:34):
So find your own route in your life, R-O-O-T.
Yep.
And know that you don't need to be fearless, folks.
In fact, welcome the fear and start to change
how you relate to that fear in your own life.
And I promise eventually things will start to unfold
(39:58):
in ways that in my mind are gonna be both subjectively
and objectively successful.
So that's my, I guess my drop the mic moment.
What about you Ashley, what else from this experience
did you have?
No, I really liked that.
I think there's an endless amount of lessons
(40:19):
that we can learn.
I think one of, I keep saying this is my favorite,
but this is also another one of my favorite parts
is when he does conquer that one maneuver,
the boulder challenge or whatever it was,
when he's free-souling and he does it,
and then he just like has the biggest smile on his face.
(40:41):
And I think when you're prepared
and that preparation feels your confidence,
you see a lot in athletes when they're doing something
like they're just honed in and they do something
and they know it's good and they finally like crack a smile
and then they start having fun.
And it's so fun to watch those athletes perform.
(41:03):
After he finished that maneuver and conquered that move,
the rest he was just coasting.
And it was so fun to watch him.
And the only way he could have gotten to that point
where he could finally crack a smile,
free-souling a mountain that's 3,200 feet high
was because of his preparation.
(41:24):
So I would just, that's kind of my biggest takeaways.
You get to those moments by preparing
and it was so fun to watch and really, really cool.
But yeah, ditto to everything that you said
and yeah, thanks for all your thoughts.
Yeah, I just saw that in fact watching Gabby Thomas
(41:46):
run the 200, did you watch her run that in the Olympics?
Yeah.
So that joy and that preparation,
I mean you could just tell like everything you just said
just materialized anyways, yes.
All right, that was a wonderful episode.
I think hopefully you thought, you listener.
(42:09):
Alex Honnold is one of I think about a billion stories
that we could start to share on this platform
that you can unpack from 3000,
oh, I didn't even mean to do that, 3000 viewpoints.
And he climbed a 3000 foot rock fall.
Look how I'm just seamlessly integrating puns.
(42:34):
Listener, if you liked it, please do the heart button
and the thumbs up button and the share button,
whatever that looks like on your screen,
share with a friend, share with a family member.
We would love to get the message out
that we just wanna talk about things
(42:54):
that are hopefully inspiring to people
and helping you be a better human being.
And then if you're doing all that, please leave us a review.
If you love it, please let us know.
If you think we can improve, please let us know.
And then let us know what we can do to improve.
(43:14):
And if you want a certain guest, put it in the notes
or if you want a certain topic, put it in the notes.
Anyways, so please like, share, love,
shout it from the rooftops, et cetera.
Ashley?
Yes, we would appreciate all of that.
Also, we are in the works of gathering questions
(43:35):
for our Q&A bonus episodes.
So if you have any specific questions for Matt or I,
please check out the notes and submit your questions.
But as always, we appreciate you all.
Thanks for listening.
Matt and Ash Orr out.
D-I-T-T-O.
Yeah.
I work through the fear until it's not scary anymore.
(00:03):
You're not controlling your fear,
you're just trying to step out of it.
As he's climbing and as you hear him
kinda like talking himself through things,
he was like, yeah, I just wanna go and see
what feels scary.
If this feels scary, like how do I make it not scary?
And that was like his preparation,
like trying things over and over.
There's one part of the route
that was kind of one of the riskier parts
(00:25):
where he had two choices.
He could either boulder it, which is you jump,
or he had to do, I think they call it the karate kick,
where he puts one leg out and then like crosses over.
It shows him doing it over and over and over.
There was no option.
He had to perfect every single step.
And I feel like that is how he got over the fear
(00:48):
or the things that felt scary.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Ditto.
I'm Ashley Hatch, one of your hosts of Ditto
here with Dr. Matt Moore.
Matt, how are you doing today?
I'm really, really well.
(01:08):
I might sound a little stuffy.
I think it's allergies, the changing of kind of the seasons.
At least here in Utah, it's been fires
and the air hasn't been very clean.
So if I sound stuffy, I apologize.
Other than that, I'm doing really, really well.
How are you, Ash?
I'm doing well also.
Thanks for asking.
Just in the grind of season, practicing every day,
(01:33):
working hard, having fun.
It's good.
Things are good.
Who's the next opponent?
Who's the next one you guys are gonna kill?
We have a friendly against Arsenal.
They come to us.
Audi, yep, should be a fun game.
I'm excited.
And yeah, and then right after that, the next week,
(01:53):
we get back into regular season against Kansas City,
which will be a fun one,
because we haven't played them yet
and they're at the top of the table.
Yeah.
How are those UK teams?
I know the NWSL is king, queen, however you wanna say it.
Yes, from our personal opinion.
Yes, when you play Arsenal or Man City
(02:13):
or whomever over there,
is it high competition?
Are they good or do you usually beat up on them?
That's a good question.
We've never played a WSL team before, so.
I had no idea.
We'll see.
I feel like it's just kind of ongoing controversy
(02:34):
of which league is better, which is the most competitive.
So it's fun to have these friendlies.
We are at different places in our season,
so that's always kind of hard
for whoever is starting their season
or whoever's in the middle of the season
kind of has a little bit of advantage, some would say.
Style of play is different, but I feel like it's always,
(02:55):
I feel like it's gonna be a good game.
They're good teams.
They'll always be competitive.
But since it is a friendly,
I think both teams just use it as an opportunity
to get better and get players minutes and continue to grow.
And then winning is always nice, so.
But deep down, you wanna kick their ASS.
Yeah, of course, always.
Of course.
(03:16):
I just think of my Chelsea Blues coming and playing RSL
in the men's league,
and it just doesn't seem like much of a competition.
I don't know, MLS in my humble opinion
just isn't there yet.
I don't know if they ever will be.
And from being around you,
NWSL seems like the best league in the world
(03:39):
when it comes to the women, so interesting.
I would agree with you, but I know I'm super biased, so.
Yeah.
So we'll just leave it at that.
Arsenal, are they like the,
I can see like the canon, like Arsenal, right?
Yep, they're the red and white team.
Okay.
Yeah, you're correct.
Yeah, okay.
Nice.
Awesome, well good luck, that'd be fun.
(04:01):
Thanks, yeah.
Yeah, I'm excited, I think we're excited.
I have a joke for you.
All right, let's hear it.
I told the joke to my seven-year-old daughter
the other day and she thought it was hilarious.
Perfect, so it's gonna be good.
Yeah, it's gonna be good, you ready?
Yeah.
Why can't you give Elsa a balloon?
(04:26):
I don't know, why?
Because she'll just let it go.
Oh, that's a good one.
I was trying to think of the songs,
but I was drawing a blank.
That's good.
I like that one.
That's good, I wish I could take that for it,
but I don't know where I heard it somewhere.
Yeah, nice, I can see why you got to like that one.
(04:48):
Yeah, yeah, hey, to get this topic started
and this incredible story that we wanna talk about today,
I have kind of a precursor that might be of interest
that will lead into this, you ready?
All right, yeah.
Took my family camping last night,
it was the first time my kids had ever been camping,
so I have a seven-year-old and a three and a half-year-old
(05:09):
and here locally in the state of Utah,
there's just plenitude of campsites
and hiking, outdoor stuff, luckily,
and we live in a beautiful place and it was amazing.
We went up American Fort Canyon, we were in the outdoors.
For those that don't know Utah or at least Utah Valley,
(05:31):
going up American Fort Canyon,
you can see the backside of one of the tallest peaks
in the state, it's called Mount Timpanogos.
Or if you're Siri, it's Timpanogos.
That's how she says it on my phone.
That's funny, I never knew that.
Mount Timpanogos.
Anyways, so you're staring at this beauty
and being in nature, there's just so many wonderful,
(05:55):
amazing, beautiful things about it,
but I couldn't help but think,
of course, based on our story today,
what it would be like to climb one of these peaks.
And then it got me started thinking about one man
(06:16):
in particular that has climbed many peaks,
one in particular that is astounding, not human.
I don't know how you wanna describe it.
Supernatural.
Yeah, do you wanna give the audience
a synopsis of this individual
and who we're talking about and why, maybe why,
or just however much you wanna talk about it.
(06:38):
Yeah, for sure.
So today we're gonna be talking about Alex Honnold,
a free, if you haven't seen it, free solo,
the movie on Disney Plus is all about him free soloing,
which means climbing El Capitan or El Cap in Yosemite
(06:58):
without any ropes or assistance.
So just him, his bare hands, his climbing shoes,
and some chalk.
And to give you a little bit of background
on why this is insane and completely crazy,
this mountain or slab of granite is-
(07:22):
Right, pretty much just a big slab.
Yeah, is 3,200 feet high.
It's no small feat.
Anyway, so we thought this would be a cool story
to kind of dive into because in the movie,
he documents his whole journey
and there's a lot of really cool,
I feel like mental performance sides of it.
(07:43):
Also just the sheer fact that his sport or his hobby,
he's putting his life on the line.
There is no, like he said in the movie,
you either win or you die.
And so his approach to conquering this mountain
or climbing this slab of granite,
(08:03):
it's been his ultimate goal.
His approach was very thought out and very thoughtful.
And so I think diving into it is gonna be really fun
and I'm excited to hear, especially from you, Matt,
the psychological side of it and the mental preparation.
I know when I watched it, I took a lot of notes
because I was just like, this is insane.
But yeah, that's a little bit of background
(08:25):
of Alex Honnold and the story that we wanna dive into today.
Yeah, yeah.
Similar to our last episode or at least the episode
where we talked about the Olympics,
Ashley and I wanna gear some, maybe not all,
but at least some of these future episodes towards stories
and incredible, inspiring stories, sport related or not.
(08:49):
We just think it's really interesting and engaging
and then pulling apart some of these stories
that we find interesting from, of course,
psychological preparation, emotional standpoint,
relationship standpoint.
So for those that haven't seen the film,
again, the film is called Free Solo.
It came out, when did it come out, Ashley?
(09:10):
17-ish?
Maybe?
I think maybe 2018.
Okay, 2018.
Yeah.
Yeah, just an incredible film.
It, again, it essentially follows Alex in his preparation
in attempting this climb of 3,200 feet,
(09:31):
just over 3,000 feet, El Cap and Yosemite National Park.
And like Ashley mentioned, there's so many wonderful things
from his meticulous preparation
and physical and mental challenges
and of course, this breathtaking climate itself.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong,
I've seen this, I think, five or six times,
(09:52):
half a dozen, you probably close, I think, right?
Three or four?
Somewhere around there.
Every time he starts it, it's the music,
it kind of goes silent,
he gets there like early in the morning.
And so, from a dramatic Hollywood standpoint,
it's like unbelievable.
(10:13):
And then it's real, it's not Hollywoodized.
Yeah.
And so, you're literally on the edge of your seat
kind of holding your breath
and you see his team that is surrounding him,
not on the rock,
he's the only one on this 3,000 foot rock face,
but down below and at the top and they're filming him
and they have a telescope, not telescope,
(10:36):
what's the word I'm looking for?
Camera.
Camera or whatever.
They're seeing him on this rock,
far, far, far above him.
And it's so unbelievable to watch
that a human being can do this
and able to do it successfully.
(10:57):
Like I mentioned, there's a number of things,
especially from a psychological standpoint
that I think are astounding.
I wanna get to one in particular eventually
that I think is the most interesting,
but before I get to that one,
I think there are three or four, probably more,
at least from my standpoint
that I have found really interesting
(11:18):
and then Ashley, please interrupt and add
as I kind of share some of these things.
First is this focus and concentration.
So being able to climb this particular rock face
without a rope requires kind of this unwavering focus,
right, and concentration.
(11:39):
And think about this, not losing the concentration
or recognizing when you perhaps do lose
some focus or concentration to bring it back immediately
because if you do make a single mistake, you're dead.
(12:00):
Yeah.
You're falling to your death.
And so the focus and concentration is unbelievable.
I talk to baseball players and golfers
about this all the time in terms of focus and concentration.
It's really next to impossible to be completely focused,
completely concentrated throughout the whole game,
throughout the whole match, which is three to four hours.
(12:21):
You just can't do it as a human being.
And so the idea is to recognize
when your focus is waning, accept it.
It's over here.
I need to bring it back into where I am
playing a baseball game or in a golf match.
Anyway, so there's that alone.
Like, can you imagine the amount of focus
(12:45):
that he had to train and that he experienced
in just doing that?
And so that for me is crazy.
Number two is something that we've talked about
quite a bit on this podcast, Ashley,
is this goal setting idea or goal setting phenomena.
So, Honnold's achievement, you know, being able to,
the importance of being able to set, you know,
(13:08):
these clear kind of challenging goals
and then committing to them fully.
He was so committed to climbing in general,
but climbing a cap without a rope.
And so it was so fun to see his determination
throughout the process.
It was, I don't know if they gave a timeline,
(13:31):
correct me if I'm wrong, Ashley,
but it was years in the making, right?
Did they mention a timeline?
I wanna say eight years, I think.
Yeah.
I think when he first, from what I remember at the end,
one of his buddies congratulated him and said like,
something like, oh, they took you eight years
or eight years in the making,
(13:53):
which is crazy when you put that into perspective.
But I think he was just someone who was so passionate
about climbing and specifically like free-souling
that when he was introduced to this climb or this mountain,
he was like, that's something I wanna do.
And I think he just became obsessed with it, you know?
And he lived in his van.
(14:14):
I think also a reason why it probably took him eight years,
is there's only certain months out of the year
that he can actually attempt this because of the weather.
And so, like, I think every year he would just come back
and he would practice and he would,
obviously he had climbed it many times with the rope.
But I think if you think back to the beginning
(14:35):
of his journey, probably climbing it with the rope
wasn't something that he really wanted to do
as an accomplishment, a goal that he had,
because that alone, I feel like I couldn't climb it
with the rope.
Like, it takes so much skill and knowledge
in owning your craft as a rock climber
to be able to climb it with a rope.
(14:56):
And so, it makes sense of why it took eight years
for him to do it, because he had to take that process
of step by step, getting higher and higher,
figuring out his different grips, his holds,
his different foot positioning, all that kind of stuff.
So, it makes sense that it would take eight years.
(15:16):
You just alluded to kind of my next point.
In conjunction or within this idea or this theme
of goal setting is this beautiful psychological skill set
of mental rehearsal.
I don't know if it went over explicitly.
You recently just watched the documentary.
It's been a little bit since I've watched it.
(15:37):
What he did in terms of visualization and imagery,
do you remember explicit strategies that he was using?
Yeah, so he knew that, he knew LCAP,
like he memorized every single step, every single,
like he memorized-
Hand hold and everything.
Yeah, he memorized every single route.
(16:00):
I think they called it a root in-
Route, root, yeah, same thing.
Yeah, but in the show, I remember singing,
like is it a, I think it's a route,
but they kept saying a root.
Okay.
So, like a tree, you know, like has different roots.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was roots.
R-O-O-T.
Yeah, so I think they called it a root.
That makes sense, yeah, yeah.
(16:21):
I know, because I feel like I'm going crazy,
but they keep saying root.
Anyway, but a part, one of my favorite parts of the movie,
which is really cool, that I would encourage people
when they watch it to recognize it,
but he had this journal, and he, every single day,
he wrote like how it went, what he got stuck on,
(16:44):
what he had trouble with, and then he had,
he had every single step written down,
and he was like reading them out loud and memorizing them.
I wrote down one of his lines.
In his notes, he would say things like trust the feet,
like switch over the feet here, trust, like trust this,
trust that, and I was just like, wow, these,
(17:04):
these are really cool, and like I don't know if he had any,
like mental performance coach, like teaching him these,
these things, it didn't seem like it,
but it's just something that he found that like worked for
him that he did in preparation, and one thing that he talks
about at the beginning of the movie is he, in his mind,
(17:27):
he would say that the risk is low because his preparation
was so good, but the consequence was always high,
so in his mind, there was a difference between risk
and consequence, and I thought that was very interesting
because you think if it's a high risk,
(17:48):
it's a high consequence, but in his mind,
he wasn't as fearful of it, or as he continued to practice
and prepare and just like literally own that mountain,
he didn't see the risk as very high because like I'm so
prepared, like I believe in myself, I know I can do this,
(18:08):
but the consequence will always be really high
if you don't mess up, or if you mess up, so, yeah,
but journaling and just like rehearsing, and then I think
also just practicing so much, like over and over,
and then in his van, he had that little grip thing
in his van, he would just like hang there,
(18:30):
but yeah, he like dedicated everything to achieving
that one goal, which is crazy.
And think of how psychologically comforting that was
for him when he was actually on that morning,
attempting to do it successfully, but I mean,
he attempted it numerous times, but especially the time
he did it successfully, think of the level of comfort
(18:55):
he had psychologically and emotionally because of
that preparation, and then more specifically,
because of this mental rehearsal, I mean, the whole idea
behind mental rehearsal as a psychological skill set
is you're creating comfort for an uncomfortable situation,
and so you're going into a soccer game,
(19:15):
you're going into a business presentation,
you're going to climb El Cap, you start to visualize
and integrate imagery and or imagery before all of this,
in theory, you're gonna be much more comfortable
when it actually happens because you've been there
before psychologically, so doing all of these preparations
(19:38):
holistically, of course, lended itself to his ultimate
success of climbing this slab of rock successfully.
Yeah, anyways.
Yeah, he said, I wrote down here, he said,
I work through the fear until it's not scary anymore,
and he talked about you're not controlling your fear,
(20:03):
you're just trying to step out of it,
and then I feel like his level of self-awareness
was honestly incredible because as he's climbing
and as you hear him kind of talking himself through things,
he was like, yeah, I just wanna go and see what feels scary,
and if he was like, if this feels scary,
(20:26):
how do I make it not scary, and that was his preparation,
trying things over and over, trying things with the rope,
there's one part of the route that was kind of one of the
riskier parts where he had two choices,
he could either boulder it, which is you jump,
like you literally have your grip, you jump, let go,
(20:48):
and then try and grip on, or he had to do,
I think they call it the karate kick,
where he puts one leg out and then crosses,
like shimmies over, and it shows him doing it over,
and over, and over with the rope,
and just like trying the karate kick, falling,
(21:08):
trying the boulder, falling, and riding it down,
like he just wanted, he had to, there was no option,
he had to perfect every single step,
and I feel like that is how he got over the fear,
or the things that felt scary.
I don't think it was.
Yeah, his preparation was everything,
(21:29):
so yeah, but his level of self-awareness
is what helped him continue to like try, fail,
try, fail until he ultimately succeeded.
Right, yeah, I mean, again,
so many beautiful things in there.
That fear part is what I wanna get to here in just a second,
which is, like I alluded to at the beginning,
(21:50):
something that's the most interesting to me.
One last kind of takeaway, at least from my perspective
in watching and rewatching this film,
of course I'm gonna talk about resilience and perseverance.
I just think he exudes it to the utmost degree,
(22:10):
being able to be consistently persistent
through his training and in his self-belief.
I mean, there were times relationally,
at least in the film, that he had some ups and downs,
and then in his own mind,
(22:31):
I mean, you can tell throughout just the film,
I'm sure there was a whole lot more going on
that we didn't see as just from not watching
or watching pre-solo,
that emotionally and psychologically,
there were, like us as human beings,
there was a lot going on, a lot of ups and downs,
and so he recognized the importance of being
in the good head space to be able to attempt
(22:53):
something like this, not only to do it successfully,
but to stay alive and not die.
So that for me was something that really stood out as well.
Here's the last kind of huge takeaway,
and you alluded to it already, this fear part.
(23:18):
I, over the years, in studying the mind,
studying human beings and teaching about human beings,
so this is a film I show my undergraduates
almost every semester because of everything
that we're talking about in my sports psychology class,
is this idea of fearless,
(23:40):
and I wholeheartedly, this is just my opinion,
agree that there is no such thing as being fearless.
It's developing a healthy relationship with fear
that I think is the main point.
And so here's my challenge for everyone listening.
(24:04):
When you hear somebody say that someone else
or another team or anything,
any other being is fearless, just throw caution to the wind,
because my guess is at some point,
that team, that individual, did experience fear.
It's just, how did they respond as a result of it?
And so in the film,
(24:26):
something really, really interesting happened.
Neuroscientists, at least they showed,
I don't know if they showed him actually going to the doctor,
maybe they did, some of these neuroscientists,
they performed an MRI on his brain, right?
Yeah.
And it showed that his brain, Alex Honnold's brain,
doesn't respond to fear stimuli
(24:48):
like a quote unquote normal brain.
And so, but then they didn't really unpack it further
from there, and so I've had students and people
that have seen this that are like,
well, that's why he can do this,
that's why he's quote unquote fearless,
because he doesn't respond to fear like us.
And my response is, yeah, no joke,
(25:10):
he doesn't respond to fear like us.
This is Alex's quote from him,
after these neuroscientists have found
that his brain is not normal,
especially as it pertains to fear.
He said, I find that slightly irritating,
because I've spent 25 years, that's a lot of years,
(25:33):
conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions.
So of course, my brain is different,
just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating
or a taxi driver who has memorized all the streets
of the city would be different.
Then he goes on to say that it's because of his preparation,
like we've mentioned, because of his preparation,
(25:58):
why his brain is different, why it's not normal.
So for years, like for instance,
he was afraid of El Capitan.
Of course, it's a 3000 foot rock wall in Yosemite
and the idea of trying to climb on but without a rope,
that's gonna be scary for anybody.
So he goes on to say, I would drive into Yosemite,
(26:21):
I would look at the wall,
and I would think, no way, too scary.
So then to gradually expand his comfort zone,
he would climb El Cap hundreds of times with a rope
and then slowly maybe take off a rope for certain sections
(26:42):
so he could get used to some of this,
the idea of climbing it, the whole thing,
without a rope, which happened on June 3rd, 2017,
he became the first.
Anyways, so this idea of fear lists
is really interesting to me.
And I believe as in working with high performers
(27:08):
and if there's anyone listening that's wanting to perform
at any kind of high level,
you're probably at some point experiencing fear,
experiencing some sort of anxiety.
Don't try to get rid of it.
And don't try to think that it needs to go away
so that you can perform at your very best.
You just simply need to respond to it differently.
(27:30):
And if we're using Alex's example,
you need a lot of practice.
So if you're presenting in front of a group
and that gives you a lot of fear
and according to a lot of different reports
and a lot of research,
our number one fear as human beings is public speaking.
Go speak in front of people.
(27:50):
Start with two people, then expand it to four,
then expand it to a dozen.
Practice speaking in front of people
because you're gradually like Alex expanding this comfort zone.
It probably starts out really minuscule
but then as you deliberately practice,
like Alex was doing,
(28:10):
you're gonna stare at this mountain
that might be really scary.
But then eventually you'll start to recognize,
ooh, I can still do this even though
I am still experiencing some sort of fear.
Maybe it's on a really small level
or maybe it's somewhere in between.
Anyways, what do you think, Ash, with some of that?
(28:32):
I know you shared some of your thoughts on that,
but yeah, take it.
No, I think it's all very fascinating
and I guess I have some questions for you
because the part where they do scan his brain,
I thought was really interesting
and I wish that they dove into it a little bit more.
Do you remember the name of the part of the brain
that the doctor was talking about
that I think it was something that registers fear
(28:58):
and a lot of emotion?
Oh, the hypothalamus?
Not the hypothalamus, what was it?
Fear center of the brain.
Yeah, I think it started with an A.
But anyway, amygdala, yes, that's what it was.
So my question for you,
just because I don't really understand the brain
(29:22):
as much as you probably do,
but is the amygdala something that,
not really a muscle, but something that you can develop,
Alex kind of alluded to,
the reason why he's not registering fear as much
is because he does these crazy, scary things
(29:43):
and practices and prepares.
So are you saying that that's something
that has been trained,
kind of like a nature versus nurture type of conversation?
That's something that he has trained
and that's the reason why his brain is the way it is,
not because he was born that way.
100%.
No one comes hardwired with the ability
(30:04):
to not experience fear or this abnormality
to not respond to fear,
unless something is seriously wrong with the brain.
Yeah.
The idea is that emotions like fear
are shaped by experience, by prior experiences.
Yeah.
And so at first, when he even just merely thought
(30:26):
of the idea of trying to climb El Cap without a rope,
I'm sure the amygdala was going crazy.
And as he alluded to,
he would stand in front of this mountain going,
no way, way too scary.
But as you shape that experience,
you're giving different meaning to it,
(30:46):
especially in the present sensational experiences
in those moments.
And then you're adding more to it and adding more to it.
So the fear and preparation,
especially in Alex's case,
were inversely relational or proportional.
(31:08):
So the idea is the level of fear
greatly depends on the level of your preparation.
And it's not, once again, that it's gonna be fearless
or the amygdala is gonna be completely shut down.
You're just going to experience it differently
and still be able to perform at a really, really high level.
(31:31):
And so, I'm not a neuroscientist.
I wish I knew the brain more than I actually do.
I'm what you call a social scientist.
But that's the whole take home message,
at least from kind of this neurological,
neuroscientific standpoint,
scientific standpoint,
is finding the preparation to combat
(31:56):
that or relate, I should say, to the fear differently.
That make sense?
Yeah, totally.
And that's kind of what I gathered from the movie,
but they didn't dive into it enough
for I feel like the viewers to kind of really understand that.
They're just like, look,
this part of his brain isn't like everyone else's.
(32:18):
We're like, that's probably why,
in the quote that you shared, he was frustrated.
He's like, well, no, duh.
I've been practicing this my whole entire life.
But when you were talking about the reason
why his levels of fear are different
because of his preparation or the first time
he drove up and saw El Capitan and said,
(32:41):
whoa, no way, that's scary.
It reminded me of another quote that he said
when he was talking to his girlfriend at the time.
He was just saying, I think her name was Sunny.
Yeah, yeah.
He was like, Sunny lives to be happy.
If she's happy and other people around her are happy,
then that's a successful life for her.
(33:02):
And he's like, I live for performance.
I want to achieve my goals.
And he said, no one achieves anything
from being happy and cozy.
And he just says it so nonchalantly.
But he's right.
We all kind of, as you're alluding to
with the public speaking, we all don't grow
(33:25):
unless we do things that are scary
or we step out of that happy and cozy little bubble
that we want to be in.
But he also shares that he expanded his comfort zone
by practicing over and over.
So imagine how much happier and how much happier
(33:47):
and how much cozier we can be
when we expand that comfort zone.
I feel like it's this kind of this false idea
that we're gonna stay happy and cozy
if we don't do things that challenge us.
But then that means our comfort zone
is gonna be like itty bitty.
It's gonna be this small
because there's gonna be a lot of things
(34:08):
that don't make us happy and cozy.
But if we kind of push those boundaries,
we expand our house, then we're gonna have more things
that are gonna be happy and cozy.
We're gonna be happy and cozier for maybe a little bit longer.
And then we're gonna be like, okay,
I wanna push myself and I wanna continue to achieve this.
(34:29):
And you go out and you do it
and then your happy and cozy bubble gets bigger and bigger.
But I just thought that was so interesting.
I'm curious to see what he does next
because he just accomplished something that no one,
I don't even know if anyone else could do it.
I'm sure people seeing him do it,
they may want to do it.
But just the level of commitment
(34:53):
that you see in the film as you watch it,
he just eliminates distractions.
He's so self-aware, even with his relationship
with his girlfriend at the time,
who I think is now his wife.
I think Jeff and I Googled it.
Oh, sweet.
Good for him.
Yeah, they have two kids now.
Oh, sweet, yeah.
Yeah.
(35:13):
But yeah, I think the day that he actually did it,
I think he told her to leave or she drove away.
I think he just wanted to eliminate all distractions,
which I can respect,
but I feel like that would be really, really hard.
But another thing that's very interesting too
(35:36):
is the first time that he attempted to do it,
like without any ropes, he attempted to free solo it,
he stopped and he waved the white flag
and he was like, I don't feel good, I can't do it.
He's like, I cheated, I grabbed one of the ropes
(35:57):
or hooks or something.
And I thought it was really cool that I showed that
because he didn't push through it.
I think if you hear his story and you hear the end result,
you think he probably grinded it out
and he just pushed through it.
He's careless, he was reckless, but it's the exact opposite.
He was so careful and he was so particular
(36:19):
and he knew that he wasn't,
I don't think he was really feeling it that day.
He didn't want to tell his girlfriend too
when he was deciding to do it.
He was very, very self-aware.
And as he was like, he didn't even get that far up,
he was just like, I can't do it today, I don't wanna do it.
And if you think about all that preparation,
I feel like I'm sure he felt a lot of internal pressure
(36:42):
and probably external pressure from all the cameras there,
the people that are working with him, but he didn't do it.
And so he came down and he kept practicing,
waited till he felt better and then he went
and tried again.
I think that's a huge lesson for all of us to learn
when we're going for our goals or something like that.
(37:03):
It's okay, you don't have to push through something
that's gonna be detrimental to you.
You can still achieve it.
And I thought that was very commendable of him
and I feel like he gained so much trust from his team
when he did do that because they were like,
they were all so scared.
They had so many honest conversations of like,
(37:24):
we will do this, but we want to let you know
this is scary for us,
because we don't wanna see you fail,
because that would be terrible for all of us.
We would watch you die, right.
Yeah, exactly.
But the conversations that he has with his crew
and everything, they were just all so open
and so honest and raw that I feel like that's why it worked.
(37:46):
And I feel like that step was really important for him
to actually achieve what it was that he wanted to achieve.
I feel like that step was crucial in gaining the trust
of his crew and that he trusted himself.
And I think his crew really appreciated that too.
It kind of like, you could tell he was disappointed,
(38:07):
but it's like, we'd rather have that
than you push through something and then not be successful.
So I thought that was really cool too.
100% to all of it, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto.
We need a jingle, don't we?
Yeah, I think you should do it.
You want me to do it?
You want me to come up with one?
(38:27):
Yeah, maybe.
I'm gonna embarrass my wife half to death.
Basically, if I had to summarize everything you just said,
which was awesome, I would say quality from quantity.
So if you out there, you wanna have confidence like Alex
(38:52):
and be able to climb your own 3000 foot rock wall
without a rope, whether it's in business or sport
or relationships, whatever you are doing.
Start by climbing it hundreds of times with a rope.
Quantity, eventually that's gonna be quality
(39:12):
and then do so deliberately like you just mentioned.
I think it was very deliberate of him to say,
this isn't the day, so I need to try again another day.
So anyways, there's just so much we can learn
from this extraordinary human being
and this extraordinary feat that he did.
(39:34):
So find your own route in your life, R-O-O-T.
Yep.
And know that you don't need to be fearless, folks.
In fact, welcome the fear and start to change
how you relate to that fear in your own life.
And I promise eventually things will start to unfold
(39:58):
in ways that in my mind are gonna be both subjectively
and objectively successful.
So that's my, I guess my drop the mic moment.
What about you Ashley, what else from this experience
did you have?
No, I really liked that.
I think there's an endless amount of lessons
(40:19):
that we can learn.
I think one of, I keep saying this is my favorite,
but this is also another one of my favorite parts
is when he does conquer that one maneuver,
the boulder challenge or whatever it was,
when he's free-souling and he does it,
and then he just like has the biggest smile on his face.
(40:41):
And I think when you're prepared
and that preparation feels your confidence,
you see a lot in athletes when they're doing something
like they're just honed in and they do something
and they know it's good and they finally like crack a smile
and then they start having fun.
And it's so fun to watch those athletes perform.
(41:03):
After he finished that maneuver and conquered that move,
the rest he was just coasting.
And it was so fun to watch him.
And the only way he could have gotten to that point
where he could finally crack a smile,
free-souling a mountain that's 3,200 feet high
was because of his preparation.
(41:24):
So I would just, that's kind of my biggest takeaways.
You get to those moments by preparing
and it was so fun to watch and really, really cool.
But yeah, ditto to everything that you said
and yeah, thanks for all your thoughts.
Yeah, I just saw that in fact watching Gabby Thomas
(41:46):
run the 200, did you watch her run that in the Olympics?
Yeah.
So that joy and that preparation,
I mean you could just tell like everything you just said
just materialized anyways, yes.
All right, that was a wonderful episode.
I think hopefully you thought, you listener.
(42:09):
Alex Honnold is one of I think about a billion stories
that we could start to share on this platform
that you can unpack from 3000,
oh, I didn't even mean to do that, 3000 viewpoints.
And he climbed a 3000 foot rock fall.
Look how I'm just seamlessly integrating puns.
(42:34):
Listener, if you liked it, please do the heart button
and the thumbs up button and the share button,
whatever that looks like on your screen,
share with a friend, share with a family member.
We would love to get the message out
that we just wanna talk about things
(42:54):
that are hopefully inspiring to people
and helping you be a better human being.
And then if you're doing all that, please leave us a review.
If you love it, please let us know.
If you think we can improve, please let us know.
And then let us know what we can do to improve.
(43:14):
And if you want a certain guest, put it in the notes
or if you want a certain topic, put it in the notes.
Anyways, so please like, share, love,
shout it from the rooftops, et cetera.
Ashley?
Yes, we would appreciate all of that.
Also, we are in the works of gathering questions
(43:35):
for our Q&A bonus episodes.
So if you have any specific questions for Matt or I,
please check out the notes and submit your questions.
But as always, we appreciate you all.
Thanks for listening.
Matt and Ash Orr out.
D-I-T-T-O.
Yeah.
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