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: Lawsagna

Learning to learn from Joshua Waitzkin, a champion in chess and martial arts

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SharpBrains offers a thought-provoking interview with Joshua Waitzkin, a champion in chess and martial arts and the author of "The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance." A passionate learner, Waitzkin fuses philosophy, psychology, meditation with his personal experiences in mastering chess and tai chi to create a unique blend of principles for learning, self-improvement, and mastery:

I am able to compete at the highest levels because I have cultivated an approach to learning and performance that maximizes my strengths, tackles my weaknesses through the prism of my strengths, dissolves crippling false constructs and divisive mental barriers, and allows me to express myself through my art in as unhindered a manner as possible.
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Growth only really comes at the point of resistance, but that is the moment that we tend to stop. Because it hurts. Whether we are confronting our psychological foibles or our physiological limits, it is much easier to turn back from the challenge than to push through the discomfort. I think digging deeply into ourselves, pushing our limits, is a muscle that can be cultivated like any other -- incrementally. If we embrace these outer limits of our ability as something malleable that can expand with training, and if we embrace the discomfort of these moments of growth, then we start to love the richness of the self-discovery. The discomfort becomes exquisite. Learning becomes life.
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I have learned that in those rare moments of truth in our lives, we have to be willing to let go of the comfort of our knowledge, our preparation, our sense of control, and we have to flow with an improvisational spirit that embraces chaos, turns adversity to our advantage, and digs into our deepest reservoirs of energy and creativity. Our relationship to the learning process, in my opinion, should be one that prepares us for that freedom under pressure - or more truly, that liberates us to live every moment with that openness to unexpected beauty. Learning and peak performance aren't about control or memorization or perfection - they are about something much deeper, something more essentially human.

Click to read the full interview with Joshua Waitzkin at SharpBrains.

Full post as published by Lawsagna on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).