Alex Honnold cannot afford to choke. There’s not much else that requires a level of sustained concentration as free soloing. If he falls, he almost certainly dies. That was certainly true when he scaled the Taipei 101 skyscraper live on Netflix tonight. What’s fascinating is that Honnold doesn’t think when he’s on the wall. He feels. When I interviewed Honnold for "The Way of Excellence," he told me that when he prepares for a challenging ascent, he spends time “visualizing what the entire experience will feel like, what specific sections will feel like, and even what individual moves will feel like.” He knows that when he’s on the rock face of a towering mountain (or a 1,670 foot skyscraper), thinking too much will get him into trouble. So he practices how the climb ought to feel. It’s not just Honnold. Research shows the best way to learn something is to feel what it’s like to do it correctly and incorrectly. You feel the perfect golf swing, swim stroke, running stride, or tennis serve. You feel the keys on the piano or the strings on the guitar. You feel when the painting or song is just right. Surgeons, courtroom lawyers, traders, sculptors, coaches, and educators have all told me some version of the same thing: Thinking may be a significant part of what they do, but when they are at their best, it is their feelings that take center stage and guide them toward peak performance. Research backs this up. The sociologist Richard Sennett is known for his work studying craftspeople. He coined the term "situated cognition" to describe how the better someone gets at an activity, the less they think with their head and the more they think (and feel) with their entire being. “When we focus on making a physical object, or playing a musical instrument, our concentration level is mainly self directed,” he concluded. Exhibit A of situated cognition: ...