Book review: The Art of Learning
This review is of The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. It's a good book and I give it a mild recommendation - if you're at a point in your life where you're looking for this sort of thing, or willing to implement it, then it is excellent. Otherwise, meh.
It's been about four years since I took control of my life. I had my ex served with divorce papers on October 31, 2010. It took about two years to get that finalized, during which I didn't try to advance on any other front (except staying employed). I wrote, but didn't garden much. I read some books, but not a lot. One of the first things I did after the divorce was granted was to make some decisions about what my other goals were for life.
I wanted:
The first two went well enough. I tried therapy for the third, but although it helped some, it didn't address all the things I was looking for. I wanted to not just deal with my issues, but redevelop the intellect I'd lost through the course of stress and depression/oppression. I'd become mentally dull and clumsy, sort of numb and not just emotionally. I'll come back to this issue ... For physical, I pursued some exercise and eventually opted for weight loss, which has been very successful. My garden looks great, I've wrapped up most of my writing projects (Shattered Salvation, mainly), and a lot of fandom doesn't interest me the same way it used to. My family relationship is awesome. I'm working on the friends part, but it's showing promise.
Back to the mental thing - although I've felt myself recovering as time has passed since the divorce, I still think I could be better. There are tricks to these things. Among the books I selected hoping they would clue me in was The Art of Learning. It's very helpful.
The author, Josh Waitzkin, tells how to achieve optimal mental performance by explaining the road he took to become an eight time national champion at chess before he was 18 and a Tai Chi Chuan world champion eight years later. More than athleticism, excellent trainers, or even sheer practice (which he acknowledges all played a big part), he credits the ability to bring his best mental game, time after time. It wasn't something he knew how to do at the age of 7, which is what the story is about - it's about his gradual acquisition of all the tools necessary to optimal mental performance, which can be applied to any discipline.
I read this while on airplanes and in airports to and fro from Monterrey, Mexico. The notes I took and my thoughts about them (thoughts are after the double dash --):
It's been about four years since I took control of my life. I had my ex served with divorce papers on October 31, 2010. It took about two years to get that finalized, during which I didn't try to advance on any other front (except staying employed). I wrote, but didn't garden much. I read some books, but not a lot. One of the first things I did after the divorce was granted was to make some decisions about what my other goals were for life.
I wanted:
- Financial stability.
- To provide for my children's present and future.
- To be mentally healthy.
- To be physically healthy.
- To entertain myself through the outlets of writing, fandom, and gardening.
- To enhance my relationship with my family.
- To get friends.
The first two went well enough. I tried therapy for the third, but although it helped some, it didn't address all the things I was looking for. I wanted to not just deal with my issues, but redevelop the intellect I'd lost through the course of stress and depression/oppression. I'd become mentally dull and clumsy, sort of numb and not just emotionally. I'll come back to this issue ... For physical, I pursued some exercise and eventually opted for weight loss, which has been very successful. My garden looks great, I've wrapped up most of my writing projects (Shattered Salvation, mainly), and a lot of fandom doesn't interest me the same way it used to. My family relationship is awesome. I'm working on the friends part, but it's showing promise.
Back to the mental thing - although I've felt myself recovering as time has passed since the divorce, I still think I could be better. There are tricks to these things. Among the books I selected hoping they would clue me in was The Art of Learning. It's very helpful.
The author, Josh Waitzkin, tells how to achieve optimal mental performance by explaining the road he took to become an eight time national champion at chess before he was 18 and a Tai Chi Chuan world champion eight years later. More than athleticism, excellent trainers, or even sheer practice (which he acknowledges all played a big part), he credits the ability to bring his best mental game, time after time. It wasn't something he knew how to do at the age of 7, which is what the story is about - it's about his gradual acquisition of all the tools necessary to optimal mental performance, which can be applied to any discipline.
I read this while on airplanes and in airports to and fro from Monterrey, Mexico. The notes I took and my thoughts about them (thoughts are after the double dash --):
- A parent should support the process of learning, not so much the accomplishment. Make sure the child understands the learning process is incremental, consisting of small steps and tiny masteries and not an innate feature that they may or may not be good at. They're good at nearly anything - if they work at it. Value the effort, not the results. Learn the path, not the destination. -- I think this applies not only to how I encourage my children, but also the self-talk I use with myself. There are many things where I have told myself 'I expect to lose more than half my plants the first time around in gardening at a new place. It takes a while to build things up. Just account for it and continue. It will get better just like it did when I worked at it at the last place.' Or for weight loss: 'I'm following the process. The process is sound. A little deviation is to be expected. That I weigh more today than yesterday is fine. Look at the trend. Don't get discouraged. I'm working at it.'
- Meditate. Focus at being at peace without the focus. -- I finally meditated, or tried to, as much as one can on an airplane. But it was important to me that I tried. I found it helpful that he talked about how the mind raced for people new to meditation and how unsettling that often is, how it scares many people off from it (like it had me). He talked of how this is an important part of the process, to sense yourself racing and let it go, and that this process of noticing and moving your attention elsewhere was critical. So it's okay to have your mind race and feel like you're not accomplishing anything, because you're accomplishing something simply by noticing. With time, you'll get better at it. That gave me enough encouragement to try it even in a setting that wasn't all that conducive, because I felt it was okay to 'fail.'
- Tai Chi. -- I'd been looking for/thinking about getting into a martial art. My reasons for this are not just being badass, but I don't want to be so afraid of other people. I want to be at peace with myself and my body, which might be the most profound thing I got out of reading this book (that is, the realization of what I wanted out of martial arts training and exercise). That will guide me in choosing a martial art and give me determination to carry through once I join. It also explains how hollow getting the gun feels to me - not that I have the gun yet, but I'm getting it because my boyfriend wants me to have one and I have other friends who think guns are great. I want to demystify the gun for me and get comfortable with it, but it doesn't address my core desire for martial prowess, which isn't the ability to intimidate people or defend myself. It's the ability to feel safe and in control of myself, comfortable under stress and tension. The gun won't grant that (and in fact, will probably make it worse), but Tai Chi might.
- Live in the moment. Be present. Respond to the here and now. -- These aren't hard for me to do. The stuff I've read about cognitive behavioral therapy, especially in Mind/Body Health, has helped me with my self-talk and decreased how much I worry about the future or angst about the past.
- When corrected, do not justify or explain yourself. Simply correct. -- This has been something I've been thinking on for the last year, but the author put it so plainly that I finally got it! Doing anything other than correcting is NOT correcting. It's being defensive, letting ego drive you as you cling to the old way. Don't cling. Just correct.
- Find my strengths and build on them. -- I spent some time in the airplane thinking on this. I need to continue those thoughts.
- Interval training builds skill in recovery and provides cleansing exertion. -- This was good! I came to better understand the interval training my trainer has always encouraged and teaches in her boot camp and stations classes. But she'd never talked about the importance in training your body to recover. Instead, she talked about how it built muscle faster or was more effective in burning fat. Now I see another layer to it.
- Build a trigger to high mental performance. -- This is essentially conditioning yourself for easy and intentional assumption of a high mental performance state. It's like how to take a test. I used to tell people in high school that I wasn't all that smart - I simply knew how to take tests well. That may or may not be true about the intelligence part, but I certainly knew how to take tests, which mainly consisted of relaxing, not stressing about it, and blowing through the damn thing. It usually worked. Interesting to read this book and find that not letting stress eat you up is the main thing. Interesting also because although I knew this truth in high school, I'd lost it in college (where my home life was a pressure cooker and I had no support) and never thought to attempt to apply it in my work life until the last couple years (when my home life was great again). Now I see why it was working.
- Sit with your emotions and experience them. Later, channel them. -- This really jumped out at me because it was the same wording the good therapist used with me a couple years ago. I've tried to put his directions into action, but it's been difficult. This was good reinforcement and gave me some new ideas as to how to proceed (with meditation and breathing exercises) and why I was having so much trouble with it (blocking, self-denial, fear of self, poor self-talk where I labeled myself as unable to do the task before I tried it, etc.) I will try some more.