After the first two days and nights with no sleep, my class settled into a new normal—constant performance pressure, intense exhaustion, and plodding to the next meal. I was relying 100 percent on the mental skills I had learned in my Zen work—using breath control and positive self-talk, visualizing success, and maintaining presence. And I collapsed time to focus on micro-goals as the instructors advised. Those skills were money, and many students didn’t have them.