What does it actually take to walk toward the one mistake that would kill you, and stay calm the whole way up?

When I watched Free Solo the first time, I saw a story that was beautifully created in how it looked and with great storytelling, and most of all I saw what I though was fearlessness. Re-watching it now, I realize I was totally wrong! It's actually the opposite — a story about preparation so exhaustive that fear had almost nothing left to attach to.

Lesson 1: Separate the consequence from the likelihood

Alex Honnold free-soloed El Capitan's 900-metre granite wall — no rope, no harness, no gear. One mistake, anywhere on the route, is fatal.

Most of us collapse consequence and likelihood into one thing: "high stakes" becomes "too risky," full stop. Honnold's actual model treats them separately. The consequence of a fall never changes — it's always fatal. What he spent years reducing was the likelihood — through rehearsal so exhaustive that "improvising on the wall" essentially never happened.

In 2016, neuroscientist Jane Joseph put Honnold through an fMRI while showing him disturbing, fear-inducing images. His amygdala — the brain's threat-detection centre — showed no measurable activation, next to a control climber whose amygdala lit up normally. Researchers are clear this isn't a defect. Years of controlled exposure appear to have strengthened the prefrontal cortex's ability to regulate the fear response, not switched the fear response off entirely.

The leadership version of this isn't "don't be afraid." It's: don't let the size of a consequence stop you from doing the unglamorous work of reducing how likely it actually is. Failure to prepare is preparing for failure, and everytime I have a well prepared presentation, meeting, call etc, it goes better. So why not prepare well every time?

Lesson 2: The team you don't see in the frame

Free solo climbing looks like the most solitary act imaginable. It wasn't.

Climbing partner Tommy Caldwell spent months on the route with Honnold on ropes, mapping every hold, pressure-testing what was actually possible before Honnold went up without protection. Director Jimmy Chin's film crew had to solve a genuinely hard problem: how do you document a man who might die on camera without your presence becoming the reason he does? Their protocol was built entirely around not adding pressure — no interaction that could nudge a decision that needed to stay entirely his.

And when conditions weren't right on his first real attempt, Honnold walked away. No one talked him out of it. No one shamed him for it.

The equivalent for a leader isn't hard to translate: the quiet sparring partner who stress-tests your thinking before it matters, the people around you disciplined enough not to add pressure at the exact moment you need clarity instead, and a culture where walking away from a bad-conditions decision is treated as competence, not failure. I'm super lucky to have a few colleagues that push and help me, I truly appreciate them, and my friends outside work that do the same. I cannot imagine doing what I do without them.

Lesson 3: The work nobody sees is the actual work

Every hold Honnold eventually climbed without a rope, he'd climbed dozens of times before with one — rehearsing the same sequence until it stopped requiring a decision at all. He kept a logbook of every hold and sequence, rewriting uncertainty into something rehearsed enough to stop being uncertain.

Kobe Bryant, writing in The Mamba Mentality, described the same discipline from a completely different sport:

The visible thirty minutes on El Capitan sat on top of years nobody filmed.

None of that volume of invisible work is sustainable without genuinely loving it. Grit that isn't backed by real interest in the craft runs out. Grit backed by actual love for the process doesn't feel like grit most days — it just feels like the thing you'd rather be doing anyway. And you know what, Hard Work Works!

Where this starts — before any of it

Every one of these three lessons is really about the same prerequisite: leadership of self before leadership of others. Honnold couldn't have out-sourced the fear regulation, the preparation discipline, or the daily logbook to someone else. Before he could manage a wall, a crew, or a partner's judgement, he had to be able to manage himself.

I don't apply this as rigorously as Alex does, not even close. But what I'm proud to say is that I do work out every day — work out the mind and soul through philosophy, work out the body through morning workouts, and having my own path in life clear to myself. The order feels right to me: self-leadership first, everything else built on top of it, not the other way round.

Thanks for reading!

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/Jonas

Everything here is built from my own ideas, drawn from my reading, and life experience. For structure, validating research, proofreading, and edits, I use AI tooling to help make it a better experience for you, the reader.

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