Details, Details, Details...

On Thursday evening instead of heading to class, I chose to book a family date night at the Imax.  Life has felt busy.  We have been working on renovations in every spare moment and honestly we all needed just a little down town together but away from the house.  We had tried to book tickets to go last Sunday but they were all sold out so that left Thursday night as the only night we could see Apollo 11 and Free Solo.  My expectation for the night was just some time out with my family watching a couple interesting documentaries.  My expectations were exceeded!

The first movie, Apollo 11 was all done based on footage that was 50 years old.  It was at times hard to watch because the footage was grainy and the visuals bounced around a fair bit.  The documentary followed the mission from the date of take off until the completion of the mission.  The preparation that took place and the details that were attended to were evident throughout the entire film. The astronauts were so prepared for their mission that their heart rates did not even exceed 100 during take off.  The only time that there appeared to be any kind of increase was during the lunar landing when they had to make some adjustments because they were initially lined up to land in a crater.  This was not an ideal landing site so they had to choose a different spot while in a time and fuel crunch.  They appeared to stay so calm throughout the adjustments that it would have been easy to miss the true impact until they announced that Neil Armstrong's heart rate was over 150 during the final moments of that landing.  Once he was out walking on the moon, he commented that it felt a little different than the simulations they had run and prepared for.  All in all, the mission was a complete success because of careful planning and attention to every single detail.  Although this was not a focal point of the film, I found it to be quite evident throughout.

The second film, Free Solo was definitely one that I found harder to watch in many ways.  I have a profound fear of heights.  This film is about the first man to ever climb El Capitan in Yosemite free solo.  That means without the aid of anything including safety ropes.  This is a 3000 foot nearly straight vertical climb.  One tiny mistake would mean certain death.

The film did culminate with the filming of this epic climb but that was not really the focus of most of the movie.  Although it would be easy to write off Honnold as completely off his rocker and an extreme risk seeker, this was not a climb that he took lightly.  This final climb was years in the making.  The preparation that went into that one single climb was intense.  He studied the various routes.  He carefully chose the one that he thought would provide the most success.  He intensively climbed that route for two full summers seasons focusing on each grip, step, movement.  He meticulously documented each climb in a notebook.  He seemed to be good at being able to emotionally distance himself most of the time from what he was doing in order to analyze and correct.  This movie was truly one that showed the mastery process in full honesty.  Plan, execute, document, analyze, repeat...  And by repeat, I mean not just once or twice but thousands of times.  He sought the advice of other masters and climbers.  He climbed with others continually as he trained but he did the final ascent alone.

These films have left me with a lot to chew on.  I feel blessed to have seen these examples of the mastery process.  I do believe that my mindset this year allowed me to see these films perhaps from a different perspective than many of the other people who shared the theatre that night.  Now to take the lessons that I learned and apply them to my own mastery process.