A way to excellence

First of all, this guy, Josh Waitzkin, is a natural on chess and many other things. By any definition, it is a GIFT to learn by simply staring at it. It is also true that however magnificent one’s natural gift is, to achieve a profound level of understanding and to transfer the knowledge to other domains, require much more than gift. In fact, if one’s mentality associates success with natural gift, he will very likely to stop growth whenever his learning reaches difficulty, which is inevitable. On the contrary, if one embraces an ‘incremental’ mentality, he will see every success, and more importantly, every failure, is a way to manifest how hard he has worked and where is the weakness. Therefore, through reflection, one can operate at a higher level, which leads to continuous growth.
 
During the learning process, failures, rather than success are the definitive moments for growth. Great ones are willing to get burned and invest in their losses. Sure, failure is bitter and unbearable, one might need weeks or even month before one can examine the failure in detail and spot the technical or psychological weakness exposed.

Emotions, such as anger, fear, happiness, are part of equation and make a huge difference when one is performing under pressure. We make peace with our emotions, observe them, ‘learn how to let them float away if they are rocking our boat, and how to use them when they are fueling our creativity. ‘In the end funnels every emotion into focus. Next, we discover that emotional states usually trigger our greatest performances.

The Key part of learning is to incorporate the healthy rhythm into all aspects of life, so that they are completely natural to you when the pressure is on. Especially, in the absence of continual external reinforcement, we must be our own monitor. ‘If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we've got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.’

The healthy pattern can be working for 25mins then stop, can be running to push you to the limit then rest, then repeat. The healthy pattern can be high concentration on everything you do, especially under adverse situations.

Finally, if I learn anything from the book, it can be summed up in three phrases, namely, incremental mentality, focus, healthy rhythm.