The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

by Josh Waitzkin

At a young age I came to know that there is something profoundly hollow about the nature of fame. I had spent my life devoted to artistic growth and was used to the sweaty-palmed sense of contentment one gets after many hours of intense reflection. This peaceful feeling had nothing to do with external adulation, and I yearned for a return to that innocent, fertile time.

In a room with fifteen new students, Chen would look into my eyes from twenty feet away, quietly assume my posture, and relax his elbow a half inch one way or another. I would follow his subtle instruction and suddenly my hand would come alive with throbbing energy as if he had plugged me into a soothing electrical current. His insight into body mechanics seemed magical,

insisted on some bad habits I had learned in the park—for example, bringing out my queen early. This is a typical beginner’s error: the queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard so people want to bring her into the action right away. Against unskilled opponents who can’t parry simple attacks, this strategy works marvelously. The problem is that since the queen cannot be traded for any of the opponent’s pieces without significant loss,

Bruce had a fine line to tread. He had to teach me to be more disciplined without dampening my love for chess or suppressing my natural voice. Many teachers have no feel for this balance and try to force their students into cookie-cutter molds.

some teachers rebel so far away from being authoritarian that they praise all their little player’s decisions, good or bad. Their intention is to build confidence, but instead they discourage objectivity, encourage self-indulgence, and perhaps most destructively, they create a dishonest relationship between instructor and pupil that any bright child can sense.

my parents and Bruce decided to keep me out of tournaments until I had been playing chess for a year or so, because they wanted my relationship to the game to be about learning and passion first, and competition a distant second.

Many very talented kids expected to win without much resistance. When the game was a struggle, they were emotionally unprepared.

My style was to make the game complex and then work my way through the chaos. When the position was wild, I had huge confidence.

was unhindered by internal conflict—a state of being that I have come to see as fundamental to the learning process.

was unhindered by internal conflict—a state of being that I have come to see as fundamental to the learning process.

Confidence is critical for a great competitor, but overconfidence is brittle. We are too smart for ourselves in such moments. We sense our mortality like a cancer beneath the bravado, and when things start to go out of control, there is little real resilience to fall back on.

There have been many years when leaving my New York life felt like career suicide—my chess rivals were taking lessons and competing in every weekend tournament while I was on a boat crashing through big waves. But I would come back with new ideas and a full tank of energy and determination.

is true that I played with the knowledge that my dad’s heart was on the line side by side with my own—but I also knew that he would love me regardless of the outcome. There is little question that some psychologists would frown upon such co-dependence between father and son, but when you are pursuing the pinnacle sometimes limits must be pushed.

The unconscious alerts the conscious player that there is something to be found, and then the search begins. I started calculating, putting things together. Slowly the plan crystallized in my mind.

First, what is the difference that allows some to fit into that narrow window to the top? And second, what is the point? If ambition spells probable disappointment, why pursue excellence? In my opinion, the answer to both questions lies in a well-thought-out approach that inspires resilience, the ability to make connections between diverse pursuits, and day-to-day enjoyment of the process.

Children who are “entity theorists”—that is, kids who have been influenced by their parents and teachers to think in this manner—are prone to use language like “I am smart at this” and to attribute their success or failure to an ingrained and unalterable level of ability.

learning theorists—are more prone to describe their results with sentences like “I got it because I worked very hard at it” or “I should have tried harder.” A child with a learning theory of intelligence tends to sense that with hard work, difficult material can be grasped—step by step, incrementally, the novice can become the master.

Children who associate success with hard work tend to have a “mastery-oriented response” to challenging situations, while children who see themselves as just plain “smart” or “dumb,” or “good” or “bad” at something, have a “learned helplessness orientation.”

What is compelling about this is that the results have nothing to do with intelligence level. Very smart kids with entity theories tend to be far more brittle when challenged than kids with learning theories who would be considered not quite as sharp.

Learning theorists, on the other hand, are given feedback that is more process-oriented. After doing well on an English essay, a little girl might be congratulated by her teacher with “Wow, great job Julie! You’re really becoming a wonderful writer! Keep up the good work!” And if she does badly on a math test, her teacher might write “Study a little harder for the next one and you’ll do great! And feel free to ask me questions any time after class, that’s what I’m here for!” So Julie learns to associate effort with success and feels that she can become good at anything with some hard work. She also feels as though she is on a journey of learning, and her teacher is a friendly assistant in her growth.

In one study, children were given different instructions about what the aim of their task was. Some kids were told that solving certain problems would help them with their schoolwork in the future, and other kids were told that they would be judged based on their results. In other words, half the kids received “mastery-oriented” instructions, and half the kids received “helplessness-producing” instructions. Needless to say, the kids who were temporarily mastery-oriented did much better on the tests.

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.

In the long run, painful losses may prove much more valuable than wins—those who are armed with a healthy attitude and are able to draw wisdom from every experience, “good” or “bad,” are the ones who make it down the road. They are also the ones who are happier along the way. Of course the real challenge is to stay in range of this long-term perspective when you are under fire and hurting in the middle of the war. This, maybe our biggest hurdle, is at the core of the art of learning.

Many kids like this are quite talented, so they excel at first because of good genes—but then they hit a roadblock. As chess struggles become more intense and opponents put up serious resistance, they start to lose interest in the game. They try to avoid challenges, but eventually the real world finds them. Their confidence is fragile. Losing is always a crisis instead of an opportunity for growth—if they were a winner because they won, this new losing must make them a loser.

improvisation for me. jump and build the parachute on the way down.

One of the most critical strengths of a superior competitor in any discipline—whether we are speaking about sports, business negotiations, or even presidential debates—is the ability to dictate the tone of the battle. Many of my young chess rivals preferred to keep the game in control.

have seen many people in diverse fields take some version of the process-first philosophy and transform it into an excuse for never putting themselves on the line or pretending not to care about results. They claim to be egoless, to care only about learning, but really this is an excuse to avoid confronting themselves.

Danny’s mom can help him internalize a process-first approach by making her everyday feedback respond to effort over results. She should praise good concentration, a good day’s work, a lesson learned. When he wins a tournament game, the spotlight should be on the road to that moment and beyond as opposed to the glory.

When we have worked hard and succeed at something, we should be allowed to smell the roses. The key, in my opinion, is to recognize that the beauty of those roses lies in their transience. It is drifting away even as we inhale.

The fact of the matter is that there will be nothing learned from any challenge in which we don’t try our hardest. Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities.

From one perspective the opponent is the enemy. On the other hand there is no one who knows you more intimately, no one who challenges you so profoundly or pushes you to excellence and growth so relentlessly. Sitting at a chessboard, just feet away from the other, you can hear every breath, feel each quiver, sense any flicker of fear or exhilaration.

incredible description of getting into flow within an amazing anecdote

In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our own earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.

The nature of your state of concentration will determine the first phase of your reaction—if you are tense, with your fingers jammed in your ears and your whole body straining to fight off distraction, then you are in a Hard Zone that demands a cooperative world for you to function. Like a dry twig, you are brittle, ready to snap under pressure. The alternative is for you to be quietly, intensely focused, apparently relaxed with a serene look on your face, but inside all the mental juices are churning. You flow with whatever comes, integrating every ripple of life into your creative moment. This Soft Zone is resilient, like a flexible blade of grass that can move with and survive hurricane-force winds. Another way of envisioning the importance of the Soft Zone is through an ancient Indian parable that has been quite instructive in my life for many years: A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution. Like the Soft Zone, it does not base success on a submissive world or overpowering force, but on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience.

One of these boys, who was my archrival for years, had the habit of kicking me under the table during the critical moments of a game. He would also get up from the board at tournaments and talk about the position in Russian with his coach, a famous Grandmaster. There were complaints, but little was done to stop the cheating. No one could prove what was discussed because of the language barrier, and the truth is that it didn’t even matter. While valuable chess ideas might have been exchanged, the psychological effect was much more critical. Opponents felt helpless and wronged—they took on the mentality of victim and so half the battle was already lost.

Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. When injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.

One idea I taught was the importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error. This is a hard lesson for all competitors and performers. The first mistake rarely proves disastrous, but the downward spiral of the second, third, and fourth error creates a devastating chain reaction.

you have a much better position. For the last three hours you have been pressuring your opponent, increasing the tension, pushing him closer to the edge, and searching for the decisive moment when your advantage will be converted into a win. Then you make a subtle error that allows your opponent to equalize the position. There is nothing wrong with equality, but you have developed a powerful emotional attachment to being in control of the game. Your heart starts to pound because of the disconcerting chasm between what was and what is.

Almost invariably, there was a consistent psychological strain to my errors in a given tournament, and what I began to notice is that my problems on the chessboard usually were manifesting themselves in my life outside of chess.

I also studied my opponents closely. Like myself, their psychological nuances in life manifested over the board. I would watch a rival tapping his feet impatiently while waiting for an elevator or carefully maneuvering around his peas on a dinner plate. If someone was a controlling person who liked to calculate everything out before acting, I would make the chess position chaotic, beyond calculation, so he would have to make that uncomfortable leap into the unknown. If an opponent was intuitive, fast, and hungering for abstract creations, I would make the position precise, so the only solution lay in patient, mind-numbing math.

I believe that one of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition. There will inevitably be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take in new information—but it is critical to integrate this new information in a manner that does not violate who we are.

you have to know the rules to break the rules

Just as the yin-yang symbol possesses a kernel of light in the dark, and of dark in the light, creative leaps are grounded in a technical foundation.

As it was, perhaps because of his own playing style, my full-time coach was drawn to Dvoretsky’s conclusions—and so from the age of sixteen a large part of my chess education involved distancing myself from my natural talents and integrating this Karpovian brand of chess. As a result, I lost my center of gravity as a competitor. I was told to ask myself,“What would Karpov play here?” and I stopped trusting my intuition because it was not naturally Karpovian. When the maelstrom surrounding Searching for Bobby Fischer hit me, a big part of my struggle holding course stemmed from my sense of alienation from my natural voice as an artist. I lacked an inner compass. Reflecting back on the last years of my chess career, more than anything else I am struck by the complexity of the issues confronting an artist or competitor on a long-term learning curve.

We have to release our current ideas to soak in new material, but not so much that we lose touch with our unique natural talents.

As I consciously released the tension from one part of my body at a time, I experienced a surprising sense of physical awareness. A subtle buzzing tickled my fingers. I played with that feeling, and realized that when deeply relaxed, I could focus on any part of my body and become aware of a rich well of sensation that had previously gone unnoticed.

Over time, as we got to know each other, our interactions became increasingly subtle. He would notice a small hitch in my form like a psychological wrinkle buried deeply in my shoulder, and from across the room, in a blink, he would look into my eyes, take on my structure, make a small adjustment, and then fall back into his own body and move on with the class. I would follow and immediately feel released, as if somebody had taken a heavy knot out of my back. He might glance back to check if I had noticed, he might not. If I was ready, I would learn. It was amazing how many students would miss such rich moments because they were looking at themselves in the mirror or impatiently checking the time. It took full concentration to pick up each valuable lesson, so on many levels Tai Chi class was an exercise in awareness.

In William Chen’s Tai Chi form, expansive (outward or upward) movements occur with an in-breath, so the body and mind wake up, energize into a shape.

It was remarkable how developing the ability to be physically introspective changed my world. Aches and pains dissolved with small postural tweaks. If I was stressed out, I did Tai Chi and was calmed. Suddenly I had an internal mechanism with which to deal with external pressures.

He asked me to push him. I pressed into his arm and chest but felt nothing at all. It was bizarre, like hitting a soft void. He was gone and yet he was standing right there in front of me with that same calm expression on his face. I tried again, and this time the lack of resistance seemed to pull me forward. As I adjusted back he barely moved and I went airborne. Interesting.