A figure in a red T-shirt ascends the glass-and-steel of Taipei 101 with only his two hands, two feet, and an intensely focused mind. He slowly climbs the 508-meter skyscraper without either ropes or safety equipment for over an hour and a half,triggering thunderous cheers from the crowd gathered below when he finally reaches the top of the building.
The man is American free-solo climbing legend Alex Honnold,who selected Taipei 101 as a target in 2013, when he personally scouted the building for a television project that never materialized.
In an interview conducted two weeks before the climb, Honnold noted he was pleasantly surprised to discover that this architectural structure was "exceptionally suitable for climbing."
His scaling of Taipei 101 was streamed by Netflix around the world.
Why Taipei 101?
He once surveyed the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, but concluded that while it was feasible to climb, it was too challenging due to its slippery exterior. In contrast, Taipei 101 was just the right level of difficulty.
"When you get permission to climb such a cool building, you have no reason to say no," he said.
Dialogue with Fear
Fear is humans' most primitive survival instinct. All those witnessing Honnold's ascent likely experiencedweak knees, despite standing in safe locations. While Honnold says he hasn't eliminated fear, he claims he has restructured his relationship with it.
Drawing an analogy, he notes that fear is like hunger. While we experience it daily, it lacks overwhelming power. If felt as frequently as hunger, fear loses its submissive force and returns to being a signal from the body that needs to be rationally assessed like any other.
In the Oscar-winning documentary "Free Solo," scientists scanned Honnold's brain and discovered his amygdala—the brain region processing fear—responds far less to stimuli than that of the average individual.
Honnold interprets this as the result of deliberate practice of controlling his emotions in fearful situationsconsistently over thirty years, and believes that years of meditation could achieve similar effects.
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When Fear Strikes, This is His Response
Honnold has a clear protocol to deal with fear during climbing.
First, he breaths deeply tocompose his mind, emphasizing that climbing has little time pressure. Even while suspended on cliff faces, maintaining static positions typically doesn't excessively drain physical energy, providing climbers with ample time for the next step.
The most crucial phase involves rational assessment, analyzing fear's source: "Sometimes you're just inexplicably afraid, but sometimes you realize, 'Oh, I misjudged the rock conditions—this is more dangerous than I imagined.'" Honnold admits that when misjudgment reveals genuine danger, he abandons climbs without hesitation.
Intriguingly, Honnold confesses that he finds the social fear of public speaking more terrifying than the risk of falling while rock climbing. Most people's fears areintimately connected with self-esteem and social status, representing emotionalembarrassment rather than life-threatening dangers. Honnold claims has also conquered his fears of speaking through practice, confirming his core belief that all fears can be tamed.
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Mental Rehearsal of Death
"What if he falls!" was likely the universal thought among viewers watching Honnold climb 101. Every breath and movement on the precipice resembled an improvised dance with death. However, Honnold explains that his ability to display superhuman composure while on a cliff faces stems from intense pre-climb mental simulation of every movement—where his left hand grips, where his right foot steps, how his body weight shifts.
Honnold describes his core preparation technique—visualization—as a form of "conscious daydreaming." He imagines the authentic sensations of climbing, even considering different weather variables.
While preparing for Taipei 101, he contemplated: "If humidity is high that day, how will the glass and metal feel? Will they be stickier and easier to grip, or too slippery?"
The most shocking element of visualization involves deliberately imagining and experiencing the process of falling from rock faces and dying. This sounds like cruel self-torture, yet the underlying psychological mechanism is extremely rational. He explains that processing the emotional impact of worst-case scenarios beforehand in safe environments (such as solo mountain hiking) ensures these "what if" thoughts won't suddenly emerge to interfere during actual climbs. When facing perilous real situations, his brain's sole task remains "execution."
While preparing to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park (Honnold remains the only person to free-solo El Capitan), he deliberately scheduled expeditions to Alaska and Antarctica after the challenge. This psychological positioning transformed climbing El Capitan from a monumental goal into "one of several preparation exercises for the Antarctic expedition." Through "goal stacking," he downgraded potentially psychologically devastating, difficult challenges into components of a larger objective, thereby relieving immense mental burden.
Serving as an extreme athlete dancing with death on precipices is only part of Honnold's identity. When he returns to the ground, he's also a husband, father of two daughters, foundation-establishing philanthropist, and in friends' eyes, a wise and humble soul. Honnold states his life dream involves peacefully dying at 80 surrounded by grandchildren. This heartwarming vision stands in stark contrast with his extreme sport pursuits.
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You've read it. Now let's talk. Follow us on X. Editor: Chase Bodiford
