Every serious sportsperson knows that diet, training, and equipment can improve performance only up to a certain point, after which sport becomes a mind game.
September 25, 2019, was an important date. It was somebody’s birthday in my family, but when midnight chimed, I was at 15,500 feet on Mount Kilimanjaro, dressed in five layers of thick clothing to protect myself from the subzero temperatures.
Uhuru Peak was 4,000 feet above, roughly the equivalent of a 400-storey building. The oxygen content in the air was only about half that at sea level, we had to reach the summit by dawn, and then descend about 10,000 feet to a lower camp, trekking a distance of about 32 km on rough mountain territory, and all this without sleep for the past 18 hours and the next 18 hours.
Sportspersons know that the body can keep going long after the mind has decided to quit. There were five mental tricks that I used on Kilimanjaro.
The first trick was thinking that, no matter what happens, time would pass, the night would end, and day would dawn with my feet on the summit. It was just a matter of time. The second was that I did not have a mountain to climb; I just had to take a step. And then another step. And then another.
The third was that, whatever I was experiencing, others had experienced before me; so if they had suffered and succeeded, then so could I. It was just a matter of time, waiting till dawn, taking one step at a time. The fourth was that, when half the night was over, the rest of the climb was getting shorter and shorter and the goal was getting nearer and nearer.
What did I feel when I reached the summit? Nothing. There was no exhilaration, no cry of triumph, taking photographs, and preparing for the descent.
And that was the fifth and most important trick. Reaching the summit was not the end of the journey; it was merely a milestone along the way. There was a long way to descend, nearly 10,000 feet, a long trek on the mountain, another 16 km, and another 12 hours left in the day before I could think of rest. I could not afford to surrender my concentration merely because I was at the top.
These tricks cannot be learned overnight for use on demand. They need to become the mental habits of a lifetime. We need to play mind games not just in sports but also in life, to survive and to succeed.