52 Weeks, 52 Words: Week 43 - Determination

I love the 100 Fly. I love the 100 Fly.

That was the phrase I used to repeat to myself as I took the plunge into being a competitive swimmer after my basketball career ended as a sophomore in high school. I was 6’ tall in the 6th grade and towered over my teammates so, back then, the offense went through me as team’s Center. But by high school I was rendered obsolete when everyone was now as tall or taller than me and I became an out of position player with no handle. So, I took the plunge, quite literally into another sport.

My current dad bod was never quite the swimmer bod, but I was fast and defied expectations. My stroke, particularly in butterfly, more resembled a snow-plow going through the water creating a wall of white water, and somehow I was effective. Technique aside, butterfly is a challenging stroke and the stamina required for the 100-yard distance was one that I had to drum up and sustain throughout the race. So, I began repeating the phrase above as a sort of mind hack to get around the buildup of lactic acid in my shoulders.

What’s the point, you might be asking? Well, it could be construed as a story of perseverance – but I wrote about that topic several weeks back in Week 30. No, it’s a tale of the mind hack that is sometimes necessary in order to achieve the unimaginable.

Determination is the fuel that powers the engine of perseverance.

Without a steely resolve driving the mindset within perseverance alone is just a slow builldup of tolerability to pain and punishment. Determination is the force that pushes you each time onto the starting blocks and convinces you to try again, whereas perseverance reminds you to keep going. It’s easy to see the two together or even blur the lines in athletic competition. And, certainly, one without the other is typically a non-starter. If you have determination without perseverance you’ll quickly lose both; but if you have perseverance without determination you may too easily be identified as a glutton for punishment.

As our HR Director has often reminded me during the transformation of our company culture and the renaissance of our business model, “there’s no growth in your comfort zone, and no comfort in your growth zone.” Perhaps that is just it.

For any of us to succeed and for our medical communications agency to thrive we have to identify the trajectory to which we are headed and plot our course toward that new horizon, regardless of the potential discomfort. We have to take that first step, again and again; if you will permit the extension of the metaphor, a willingness to take the plunge into the deep end and swim our way out.

It may require a mantra that we repeat to ourselves over and over again during the gritty part, but, like with my swimming career, eventually muscle memory takes over.

Before long, the strokes came easier and I even qualified for state championships my junior and senior years. Then I went on to swim competitively in college where I still swam the 100 Fly (with greater ease and confidence) but then added the 200 Fly and even the 400 IM (essentially the 100 Fly followed by 100 yards of three other strokes. That's part of determination too...not allowing ourselves to plateau but to keep going and keep dreaming.

I imagine failure is the biggest deterrent to our collective determination. A client rejecting an idea – particularly one that is well-constructed and well-designed – is not a reflection of the virtues of that idea. In fact, it may just be that the idea was not served up to the right client for the right solution, or at the right time.

We would do well to remind ourselves that strategy and activation aren’t formed in a vacuum.

The toil and labor we don’t see behind a finished product is where the real magic of determination are truly realized.

To appreciate the finished product is also to respect the drafts, prototypes, and re-dos that aren’t visible at the awards ceremonies. It's the hours in the pool, lap after lap, stroke after stroke. It is also, to recognize that their may have been circumstances and adversity that could have prevented their being a finished product at all!

Mary T. Meagher is a a swimming legend who grew up not far from where I did and one of her coaches along the way of her Olympic career happened to be one of my coaches in college too. Mary suffered from asthma and her breathing problems nearly forced her out of the pool. But she was determined…she was not going to let the shallowness of her breath limit her capacity. Through her training and countless hours in the pool, Mary coached her body to perform in a limited oxygen environment. Basically, she taught herself to swim without taking a breath!

Determination implies a sort of fearless living; a notion that we can (and will) accomplish what we set out to do. We will need motivation along with way, encouragement when we feel as though we are drowning, inspiration to either keep going, or start again, and a confidence that we can push through a barrier by, in part, enjoining ourselves toward a future state we may still in the process of building. Or, at the very least, a north star on which to fix our gaze and propel us forward.

I love the 100 Fly.