The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance Features

Additional The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance Information

In his riveting new book, The Art of Learning, Waitzkin tells his remarkable story of personal achievement and shares the principles of learning and performance that have propelled him to the top -- twice.

With a narrative that combines heart-stopping martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs with life lessons that speak to all of us, The Art of Learning takes readers through Waitzkin's unique journey to excellence. He explains in clear detail how a well-thought-out, principled approach to learning is what separates success from failure. Waitzkin believes that achievement, even at the championship level, is a function of a lifestyle that fuels a creative, resilient growth process. Rather than focusing on climactic wins, Waitzkin reveals the inner workings of his everyday method, from systematically triggering intuitive breakthroughs, to honing techniques into states of remarkable potency, to mastering the art of performance psychology.

Through his own example, Waitzkin explains how to embrace defeat and make mistakes work for you. Does your opponent make you angry? Waitzkin describes how to channel emotions into creative fuel. As he explains it, obstacles are not obstacles but challenges to overcome, to spur the growth process by turning weaknesses into strengths. He illustrates the exact routines that he has used in all of his competitions, whether mental or physical, so that you too can achieve your peak performance zone in any competitive or professional circumstance.

In stories ranging from his early years taking on chess hustlers as a seven year old in New York City's Washington Square Park, to dealing with the pressures of having a film made about his life, to International Chess Championships in India, Hungary, and Brazil, to gripping battles against powerhouse fighters in Taiwan in the Push Hands World Championships, The Art of Learning encapsulates an extraordinary competitor's life lessons in a page-turning narrative.

What Customers Say About The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance:

Lucky, John Cutler Anderson, still on the road, make it a blue road. He is into fight and not flight, usually, but it is fight with insight and not blind rage. There are the 4 Fs of life: fight or flight, feed and.O foolery, have focus, and be my friend. I really enjoyed this book by Josh. OK - read Josh's book. It is well written, as well. It takes the reader step by step towards mastery of one's chosen field, be it art. I think the best part for me is on how to use adversity to your advantage.

If you are a seasoned self-help/lifestyle veteran like myself then I would still recommend this book for the gems like circle making.If you want concrete, step by step paths that require small amounts of introspection, then look elsewhere. It is loaded with concepts that you can take and start personalizing to meet your own ends. If you want an amusing story with boatloads of applicability via intense, and most importantly, honest introspection then pick this up immediately.It is in my top 5 of all of my self-help/lifestyle purchases, perhaps top 3. First of all, I am not a viral marketer, which is what I assume all 5 star reviews are. If you are one of those people who reads biographies of exceptional individuals trying to extract wisdom to apply to your own life and circumstances then I highly recommend this book to you.

More than once too the author portrays his opponents at chess tournaments after the publicity surrounding the Searching for Bobby Fischer movie as "seething with jealousy". I've come away from this book with an awful impression of "Mr." Waitzkin. Nobody this obviously immature could possibly have anything worthwhile to teach about how to learn. Really, 29 year-old (now 30 something) man-child, get over yourself. He blames his failure to proceed any further in his chess career on everybody but himself. His portrait of Mark Dvoretsky as a veritable ogre is absolutely disgraceful and seems colored more by his disagreement with Dvoretsky's training suggestions than anything.

However, that was too small of a proportion of the book. First off, Josh Waitzkin has an incredible life story. I do think that you need that from a narrative perspective but I would have preferred to spend a bit more time on those concepts and maybe some more empirical or in-depth information around that as opposed to it just being purely anecdotal. The majority was an auto-biographical sketch. Being a world champion in probably the most intellectual competitions, chess, and then also being a martial arts champion is truly amazing. Being a world-class performer isn't all about talent but the incredible amount of hours needed to be put into the discipline (10 years being the minimum) and the fact that he was able to do it twice is impressive.How he did that was what I was interested in and some of the concepts were very interesting.

As he knows, along with everyone really talented that overconfidence, pretentiousness, dishonesty hinder performance. Someone with no knowledge of chess may have to let a few things go over his or her head. This book is a Gem. Has the potential to be a truly life changing book. Without any knowledge of tai chi before hand everything he wrote about it made perfect sense to me. It is one of those books that any intelligent or serious person will learn something worth remembering from. Josh succeeds in telling the way his mind works, the way he has reached greatness without any pretentiousness.