What is high performance?
I don’t watch sports on TV. Sports like lawn bowls, sailing and cricket appear the perfect argument for why I don’t. But Barcelona is hosting a bunch of sailing regattas at the moment and I’m finding it both exciting and educational.
I like to sail. Big boats (kellers) and little boats (like Lasers). It helps to know how challenging something
This was the case for the most recent race I saw, the 4th in the Louis Vuitton finals between the British and the Itailians. The race was delayed multiple times because the wind was too strong and when they did start it was still at the peak of the boats wind limit. They were pushing the bounds of yachting and human performance. Not only was this fun to watch but an incident that happened before the race even started really reminded me how we can all deal with situations
In this sort of match racing the boats are given two minutes to jostle for position and attempt to get the best possible position on the starting line. Constantly moving at around 80 kph, it’s a bit like a game of cat and mouse. Each one coming close to the other to push them off balance or draw a penalty. As you can imagine, the teams are highly focused. A moment came when the British had the upper hand and were pushing the Italians towards the out of bounds, when the Intalians turned a little unexpectedly and got extremely close to the British boat. With microphones on all the sailors I clearly heard the British shout out “protest, protest, big protest” (a cry to the umpires), then “Jesus Christ!” and then multiple people shouting, drowning out each other. At about the same time I heard a single voice, in an Australian accent, the skipper of the Italian crew calmly say, “turning right now boys”. The umpires indicated no penalty.
For the first half of the race and I suspect for the whole race, the British sounded annoyed. Two more moments like the pre-start happened with the same result, frustrated voices and no penalty. The Itailians went on to win the race by 4 seconds.
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My lesson in seeing this moment in action was that no matter how stressful, uncontrollable or frustrating
When life seems to be going crazy around us, when we feel like we're pushing our limits and when we have little control, do ourselves a favor and don’t over exert our minds with thoughts that do nothing to help us in the moment.
Enjoy,
Tim.
Effortless Leadership |Transformational Facilitator, and Executive Leadership & Resilience Coach | Keynote Speaker | Creativity & Innovation
5 个月I totally agree with you Tim. Being totally present and not looking back is both safer and opens up more opportunities.