Swimming the Amazon: 3,274 Miles on the World’s Deadliest River - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
While I am swimming long distances I am rolling very interesting different films and stories in my head in order to forget about swimming and pains that I have in my body. Basically I am like a robot and if someone suddenly “wakes me up,” I usually get angry, because I fall out of my concentration. This “robot stage” is an ability of high-level concentration, which works like hypnosis. So I could say that if you want to forget your pains and action you have to know how to put yourself into hypnotism. This hypnotized stage could last up to one hour on my swims and I can repeat several times a day. I needed many years to train/teach myself how to do it. I could not do this when I was younger.
Swimming the Amazon: 3,274 Miles on the World’s Deadliest River - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Simply, Wow. I wonder what the robot stage has in common with the ‘zone’ one can get in whilst doing an athletic activity where you go on autopilot and work with instinct, rather than conscious thought. Its then that the best or atleast the most satisfying performance happens, and the pain is forgotten and bliss lives on.