The cold water shocked my arms and sent a panic message from my limbs to my brain–and my heart.
I was set to make a big swim–a 1.5 mile arc from San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island to Ghirardelli Square, the famed Alcatraz swim. The thing is, I said I would do it naked as part of a bet. It was time to fulfill my end of the bargain.
Sliding off a boat wearing nothing and splashing into sub-sixty degree water was anything but comfortable. The shock of the cold water screamed against my skin, every neuron firing a warning sign in my brain telling me to stop. Swimming naked from Alcatraz was not a good idea. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t comfortable.
Pushing past your boundaries into scary, new, difficult–and certainly uncomfortable–places is one of the key rules to unleashing your potential.
I’m inside of another book this week, reading the last pages of Todd Henry’s latest book, Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day. The book is a minefield for great ideas on building a life (and body of work) that you’re proud of. From shaping the decisions you make (and recognizing that decisions are powerful, albeit painful), to understanding why mediocrity is so rampant, to listening to your emotions and jealousy as information on areas to improve–it’s taken me a long time to read this book because each of the ideas is sifting and settling in my mind as I try to incorporate them into my life.
What does it take to get uncomfortable?
“To make a valuable contribution, you have to get uncomfortable and embrace lifelong growth and skill development.” –Todd Henry, Die Empty.
You don’t need to strip off all your clothes and jump into a freezing body of murky water to get uncomfortable–although doing so certainly helped a tribe of friends and family pull together $32,398 for charity: water. In your own life, however, getting uncomfortable is critical for growth. For stretching, building, clarifying, and growing.
In “Step Out of Your Comfort Zone,” Todd looks at what he calls “dark rooms” that we like to avoid–places its easier not to go into, because we feel safer outside.
We protect ourselves in the following ways:
We’re afraid of harm — and we take big steps to stay out of harm’s way, but then inadvertently miss all of the good stuff of life
We protect our identity — we want to “live with the illusion of invulnerability” instead of ever risking failure.
We love stability — and “the more there is to protect, the less people are willing to try new things.” We risk losing out on all of the future good by holding on too tightly to what’s around us. (This is why good is often the enemy of the great).
Our ego wants control — and so even when we’ve made poor choices, we want to stand by our ego and our decision for fear of being wrong.
Why should we bother getting uncomfortable? Because growth is messy and uncomfortable.
“Growth is painful, messy, and very uncomfortable, and occurs only when we are willing to stretch ourselves in order to accept new challenges.” — Todd Henry.
Back in the open water, the salty cold bay water bit into my mind and the chill seared my body in places that were normally protected by fabric. I was crazy to be doing this, wasn’t I?
I pushed my arms the way I’d trained for decades, and stroked to the edge of the island. I touched it, standing, nude, shivering in the early morning fog. I splashed quickly back in the water and put my face down. Great stories aren’t made sitting on the sidelines, or curling up on the couch.
You may be wildly successful, outrageously funny, brilliant and do extraordinary things.
You also will likely disappoint someone, at some time. And the more that you attempt to do, be, and discover, the higher probability that you will not please everyone.
It’s okay to disappoint a couple of people. It’s okay to disappoint a lot of people. It’s even okay to be disappointed in yourself from time to time.
I’m not sure I know anyone that has lived a life without ever disappointing anyone. Dust yourself off, learn as much as you can, and carry on.
Found via The Buried Life, a “league of very ordinary gentleman asking people the question: What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?” I was fortunate to be a part of the Fall taping of an episode in which Duncan attempts to swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco without a wetsuit as one of his bucket list items. (The link takes you to an 8-minute episode on MTV, where you’ll see me teaching someone to swim Alcatraz at the end of last Fall!)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words…
Swimming Alcatraz Saturday, September 22, 2012
We did it.
$29,382 raised, one chilly swim, and the best birthday present I could ever ask for: clean water for more than 1400 people.
We had more than 400 people donate, over 100 people showed up to the party, and another 50+ companies and individuals donated time, prizes, and energy. This was not the action of a single individual. You all made this happen. Thank you for helping me making it rain: we raised nearly 30K for charity: water in just under three months.
And on Saturday morning, September 22nd, 2012: I woke up at 5 AM, got into a boat with my friends Andi, Alyssa, Laura and my mom, and, as promised, dropped into the cold water at 6:45 AM to swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco wearing nothing but my birthday suit and a swim cap (scroll down for pictures…).
I’ve learned so much, and gained so much, and I hope you all have enjoyed this as much as I have.
To be honest, I’ll be sleeping for the next few days–as well as catching up on work, because even though my company was amazing about letting me take time off last week (they were excited about the swim, too!), now I’ve got to get back and make sure to keep doing the work.
And right now, all I can think is this:
“No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” –Edmund Burke
This happened not from one person, but from the collective action of many hands–from all of YOU. For everyone that donated $5, $10, $29, and $100: thank you.
To the incredible donors that pitched in $290, $1000, and even $2900 because they could afford to and wanted to: bless you.
I’ve got some pretty good news. So exciting, I can barely stand it. Six weeks ago we set out to raise $29,000 for my 29th birthday Charity: Water birthday fundraiser. Did I think I could do it? Um, No. I had no idea if I could do it, and I wondered whether we’d be able to raise even raise $290.
We live in a world of abundance, and this is the year that I finally became worth nothing. Out of all the things that I worked through and built this year, the entire time I still had a bed to sleep in, a family close by, a job that I went to everyday and plenty of food to eat. A pool to swim in, places to run, a city to call home.
When I returned from WDS this year, I was humbled, quiet, confused, and a bit sad: despite all of the engagement, inspiration, and learning, I still wonder: Am I doing things worthwhile? I’m not sure yet. Is there more to do? Absolutely. Have I reached all of my capabilities? I don’t think so. Can I do more? Yes. There’s so much more I want to do.
But while I sit trying to figure it out, other people walk hundreds of miles trying to find the most precious resource of all – water. A drop of clear liquid, the power of life. Some people, however, don’t have the luxury of $100. Of food, water, or a roof over their head. Of a bed to sleep in at night. Of sanitation.
It’s been a long few weeks–I’m traveling back and forth for lectures, office visits and events and find myself staring out the plane window more often than not. This morning, on the plane ride across the country from San Francisco to Philadelphia, I remembered that this weekend is also a big weekend in college swimming. I couldn’t help but remember my days in Ohio as I crossed over the state, high above hovering around 30,000 feet. The upside of being on a plane so much is that I’m left with my own thoughts, internet-free (mostly), able to write for as long as I can stay awake or until the battery on my computer runs out. Today, a huge rally cry for my teammates past and present, and the current National Championships in swimming. While I talk about swimming a lot, this is about more than swimming: this is about the fact that you only get so many chances in life, so take them. Use them well. Once they’re gone, you don’t get to go back.
Swimming: The love of competition.
Alumni meet, Fall 2010.
I sat on the bleachers of our rickety old Natatorium, hard concrete rows crammed into the upper edge of the 1925 Gregory Pool. A handful of us arrived early that Saturday morning, watching the young swimmers practice. Outside, the early morning chill of a brisk fall permeated the small college campus. Inside, the smell of chlorine echoed off the linoleum walls, stinging my eyes and nostrils in an all-too familiar way. All-American plaques lined the hallways, stacked in tens, wrapping around the pool deck, an homage to all the great swimmers of our colleges’ past.
Parents and alumni trickled in, coffee in hand, watching. The upper bleachers were poorly lit. Shouts and whistles from practice reverberated in the room; the sounds of thirty-six hands splashing rhythmically slapped back and forth against the water.
My body tensed in my abs, stretched in the shoulders, my fingers itching to extend and pull the water again, even after too many years gone by. The memory of being a swimmer sticks in your blood, in your muscles, despite the aging weariness of work. I could feel the past, knowing that years ago, I wasn’t sitting here; I was there. There was a time when it was me that was walking, feet cold against the tile floor, bare and ready, suit straps taught against my thighs, limbering up, a sea of bodies intermingling behind the diving boards, waiting for the cue to start. Tired, exhausted, exhilarated. Ready to perform. Every single day.
Back then, we were an army of swimmers, a mess of bodies in motion, a collective bigger than an individual, a set of minds that worked interchangeably. We didn’t necessarily all like each other all the time—and so goes the social peculiarities of teams, groups, and people—these dynamics magnified as seniors and freshmen battled it out on the lateral playing field.
Outside of the pool I was awkward. I was gangly, shy, strange, insecure, a mess of emotions and flighty hands, unable to string words together in sentences. The men were men, or boys; the women also alternating between mature women and ridiculous girls: all of us were, for the most part, naked and hormonal and tired and hungry. Half the time someone in lane two was dating someone in lane six. You could usually tell by which girls still bothered to put make up on before practice.
Yet in the pool, in the water, cold streaming past your face, each gasp of breath taken and flip-turn turned, you weren’t a mess of social norms. You were just you: you and yourself, your brain, your competition, your ability. The pool was freezing; every day the bitter bite of the water hit my face, the routine of lining up and jumping in with the sweep of the second hand ‘round the clock, indicating our instructions, our commands. Beep. Go.
That’s the old pool! My life for four years; it’s being torn down and a new, larger pool is going up.
And we moved, we jumped, we jostled, we argued for place in the lane, silently, fingers grabbing toes and passing one another if the timing wasn’t right; I wrestled against someone slower than me, someone insistent that I take the spot, someone who wanted me to be third. Weeks later I would gravitate towards leading the lane; towards pulling the tide, towards starting the drafting sequences. I would battle with the boys, egos on line, competition fierce. Some days I’d spend two hours side by side in a drawn out test of strength that lasted over hundreds of laps. Our fingers would sting at the end, our egos possibly bruised by the fierceness of wanting to win, but our spirits championing the fact that neither one of us gave in, neither one of us caved.
And we would battle good-naturedly with each other, knowing that this micro-competition would prep us for invisible competitors training is faraway pools; for purple suits and brazen stories of our true adversaries getting ready for the challenge.
Looking down at the swimmers moving rhythmically back and forth in well-spaces sequences, I marveled at the physicality of it all: the bodies were gorgeous; their sleek physiques and lean torsos glistening water droplets across their chiseled bodies. Swimmer’s hair shines like a Greek goddess; these muscular animals galloping across the surface without seeming to have a care in the world. The best of them have a singular focus on their mind, day in, day out: to perform; to win. To achieve. The definition of success is marked; the ideas concrete, the measurement the clearest feedback you might ever get in your life.
And so they engage, patterns and hierarchies emerging, testosterone raging and hormones drumming, the ultimate test of performance shining from the lights of a red-numbered display:
Lane 4: 1st Place, 51.09.
To perform. To be the best. Singularly.
Will the hard work be worth it?
It’s not sugar-coated, it’s not magic, it’s certainly not easy. Memory tricks us, at times, into painting it as a picture of glory days, of facility over time. We forget the pain of exertion the farther we are from it, and our minds weight unequally the glory of achievement in memory reconstructions. Yet etched in my mind are also the times spent tearfully worrying behind the closed doors of the coaches offices—of the panic ripping through my body each time I had to anchor a relay, of my insecurities and weaknesses, both physical and mental. Adding pressure to the task was the mounting challenge that it seemed I would never be able to accomplish: to focus on both academics and swimming, and do both successfully. I have notebooks lined with illegible scribbling as I fell asleep in class after class. I was worked. It was hard, in the truest sense of the word.
Sometimes we forget what the brain thinks in that moment, the worry painted across my forehead, the thoughts that consumed me: Will I be able to perform? Will what I do matter? Will I be fast enough? Will I be successful?
Will the hard work be worth it?
And you can’t know, because you’re not there yet. Some people will fall to mental struggles; other people will have physical ailments; some won’t be capable of imagining what they look like when they break every record possible; when they burst through their limitations; when they escape the chains holding them back and dare to dream, to perform, and to enjoy the process.
Rare moments of beautiful performance dance across my mind; personal achievements that still startle me to this day. Moments spent flyingthrough the water, hands curved in perfect precision, energy and effort coordinated in a seamless release, a mental precision uncatchable.
Sometimes, unbeknownst to even me, I would break into the surface of the water, glide forward, and watch in astonishment as my body danced and darted forward, laughing, skipping, bursting through the waves and dropping seconds off of all of my times. To limit what I was capable of to the beliefs in my brain was silly. I could do far more than I knew.
This is all you get.
And at the Alumni meet, my hands are folded across my lap, my comparatively lethargic 28-year-old self catching hold of the memory of my former collegiate days, my fleshy feet padding across the surface, the years patterned in my brain as episodic memories. I re-fashion those endless four years in emotions and standout moments, and I can see my freshman self, teary and weary, climb out of the slow lane, move towards the middle lane, challenge the senior lane, and move upwards; I can see when we welcomed in new crops of talent each year, when I began winning events for the first time, how all of us built our bodies from a weakling to a structured, strong upper physique.
I cannot thank swimming enough for changing me into the person I am today; for the endless iterations testing my mental and physical prowess; for carving out of all of the possibilities of who I could be to become something absolutely great. In the short time I spent at school, I finally felt like I became someone, something, and then, before I could really match my mind to reality, my school pushed me out the door, depositing me on the doorstep of a new city with a piece of paper and not much more than a set of memories.
On the bleachers, sitting, jeans pinching my belly, soft thighs no longer brusquely shaped to perfect; I am not there anymore. I am no longer a college student—even though once, I was. It was; but I am no longer a part of it. My body, the cells, the pieces, the fragments; it was as if the water within each small cell leaned forward, thirsty for synchronicity with the pool’s rhythms, and I could feel the tingle in every inch of my muscle fibers, longing to jump in.
You’re all done; that’s all you get. Goodbye.
I return almost every year, sweeping my eyes across the campus trees, noting the huddled buildings tucked along the hillside, watching students stream in and out of the classrooms giggling. Notebooks tucked underarm, the clock bell chiming each hour, denoting the river-like passage of time; always moving; never staying still.
Everything changes. We hold onto a strange idea that life is fixed and permanent; that what happens today will be similar to what happens tomorrow, or a year from tomorrow. In reality our selves change every few years. Life is a constant re-invention; in the pool, each swim is a chance to do what you’ve already done or carve out a new print in your abilities by shaving seconds off of each performance.
The bodies in front of me, below, beneath the bleachers: they don’t know the shape of the future, of life after college, all you know is what you currently have. Jobs and families and careers are vague, fuzzy shapes. More pressing on the psyche for them is the feelings of the day, of the moment: They think, today I am tired. Today, my muscles ache from double practices. Today, I’m mentally and physically fatigued, worn out from hurling medicine balls across the tennis courts at 5 in the morning, from racing against the machine with the ominous swim benches, from stepping up to do test set after test set as the coaches glare angrily down at my inability to perform.
But you have a chance.
I cannot go back, except in my mind.
You’re still on the other side of the future. You have the possibility, the opportunity, the chance.
Will you take it?
While there, I know what it feels like: it feels like eternity. When you leave, it’s over. You don’t get to go back.
Last year, at the close of the 2011 championship, I watched as the men’s 400-free relay team captured the national title by half of a point, snatching victory from the ever-ominous rival team. I stared at the computer screen, refreshing the live-stream over and over, watching the commentary from all of my current and former teammates rapidly pop up on the screen. In those moments, I catch a glimmer and my heart races and pounds and aches, because I know what it’s like to be a swimmer. I know what it’s like to be there.
This weekend, swimmers from all over the world collect to match up in the great performance show-down of the nation. While no rival for March Madness or the media buzz of the Olympics, these events are still special, wonderful, spectacular.
You don’t get these moments back again – you live them once.
You have once chance.
And then my mind turns sharply from the linked associations and neuron firings pulling me deep into the memories of a time when I almost conquered the pool, when I dared to dream larger than myself and let my body take over, when I faced my coaches and teammates and said Yes, yes, I will do this. I will take this challenge.
Slowly, my mind unravels the history of the pool and I’m back in the sweaty chlorine of the upper bleachers of the old pool. I shake loose the memories and look forward to the possibilities for tomorrow, seeing the pavement of an uncharted idea rolling out under my footsteps, as though each foot prints a mark on hot asphalt, leaving a track and trace.
Do not let it go by without giving it every inch of what you’ve got.
You only get this chance. Let go of the fear. Of the uncertainty. Of the demons. Of the doubts. You’re the best you ever will be, and you’re more capable than you’ll ever know.
I’ve taken a four-month break from swimming; launching a project, traveling, and other interests have put my swimmingadventures on the back burner recently. For several reasons: A) I’m not super-human, and therefore, B) I can’t do everything at once. Yet I’m getting the itch, again, and feeling the need to be swimming. The glorious (albeit strange) sunny mornings in the Bay have me standing at the waters’ edge, wishing I were back in the ocean, navigating the waves. And it’s apparent in my writings: I’m writing, dreaming, imagining, planning about swimming. Here’s a story I wrote about a race last summer, and what I was thinking about before driving to the start line.
Also, if you’re in San Francisco next week, I’ll be giving a talk about endurance swimming and telling the story of the 9 mile prison-to-prison swim on Thursday, February 16th, 7 PM along with five other endurance athletes. Come join!
###
The morning of the race, I drive slowly through the foggy air on the 101 highway, meandering my small hatchback Toyota Matrix along the winding highways and through the tunnel. The golden gate bridge arches gracefully, simply, silently across the mountainous opening to the vast terrain of the flat Bay waters. To the east, the sun still hides beyond the tangent of the earth’s curved surface, darkness enveloping the city. The black water sprawls out eastward, north, and south, tendrils circling around bay towns, creating a flat plane of water connecting and separating each of the communities in the area.
The drive across the bridge in my car is same rhythm; a sweep under the poised arches, the swoop from the long linear cables supporting the vast planes of concrete. Despite crossing the bridge back and forth most every day of my San Francisco life, I still marvel at the towers with each crossing. Like a patron at a church, I bow gracefully in my mind to the relics of humanity; to the strength and impressiveness of architecture and engineering. Together, we built this. We created this. Somewhere in our collective history, we did something together to build, piece by piece, the metal structures and spans that stand, today, as the icon of the city and gateway to the bay area.
My car, my mechanical lump of plastic and steel, zooms quickly across the bridge, hugging tightly against the center lane. The bridge is divided split down the middle, barely a drop of traffic this early in the morning. At certain times of the day, the bridge lanes change direction in response to the disproportionate volumes of traffic headed in and out of the city. Small round holes with 2’ high yellow pegs indicate the lane change, a single white line separating the two lanes of high speed traffic. Why there are not more head-on collisions is beyond me.
The beauty of the bridge, in my mind, is tempered by the sadness of the deaths associated with it. Each year, 40-odd individuals stand at the height of the towers, looking out from the rust red metal railings, and stare into the open air. At over 300 feet high, in the center of the small opening to the bay, wind whips around the bridges’ struts, a sense of extreme brevity and tenuousness alighting any lone soul on the bridge. Loneliness, emptiness, and fatigue with life are exacerbated by the conditions at hand: extreme distance, crisp air quality, a stunning visual 360-degree view of the entire Bay’s waters and the history embedded in the waterfront shorelines. San Francisco, home to the gold rush, to the container ships from China, to a massive amount of trade; the heart of the northern California area. In the center of the Bay, Angel Island; south of that, Alcatraz. Below and above the bridge, fog runs in and out, slowly engulfing the bridge and releasing it in a temperamental dance.
But my mind flickers to the dark side of the bridge; the stories untold and unreported by the media. Despite the beauty, despite its grace, the bridge offers a sinister promise to humanity. The ideal of death, the promise of ending, the temptation of suicide flashes into the minds of those haunted by their own psychology, plagued by the torturous thoughts that inhabit their psyche.
And, slowly, people step up the rails, arch their arms, lean forward, and drop with the heavy weight of gravity to the watery world below, ending their brief and seemingly inconsequential reign on this planet. That people can get to this place, the darkness of isolation, the sadness of mental confusion – this flashes through my head as I drive. Every day, I pay homage both to the brilliant architects and engineers, and to the lost people who didn’t make it to their next day, for reasons unknown fully beyond even their own mental capacity. And yet, I understand them both. I am them both. We are all here, together, and sadness – it is not a unique condition. I feel it when I swim, I escape from it when I run, I hear it when I play, I taste it when I breathe. I know. Deeply, intuitively, living it – I know the depth of darkness and sadness, and I feel the lone harmonicas and haunting harps play when the mind starts to bend in maladaptive ways to become our own worst enemy, to work against ourselves by worrying, by thinking, by being.
And swimming, swimming, swimming – the beautiful sport of being by yourself, the act of understanding how your mind plays with your body, and how your body can overcome your mind, and how you can move beyond something by steadily practicing it each day, bending your physical and mental capabilities into new territories – it is a marvel to me. My mind is a joy, my being an art, my ability to negotiate the two terrains a brilliance I try to dumbfoundedly enjoy. Swimming taught me this, I know it. I feel it. I reach my arms out and pull invisibly, feeling the weight of the air and the lightness of the world, knowing that this practice has somehow made me able to see this. The good side. The beauty in it all.
It’s eight in the evening. I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. My eyes stay open even underneath the closed lids, and I think fleetingly about tomorrow. I’m tucked into my warm bed, lying flat against the bed covers, staring up at the ceiling. Words and ideas dance across my vision, a small dagger of anxiety sitting in the bottom of my stomach. The tension of fear pulls on my body, spreading into my calf muscles and lower back. I feel the tightness in my upper shoulders and I try to force myself to breathe slowly and relax. I turn over and roll out of bed, standing slowly. I bend in half, stretching my legs and my arms, loosening up the tight places. A few minutes and my breathing is steady, but my mind is still rolling. I’m excited and terrified for tomorrow.
***
It started as a normal day. From the outside, just another Saturday. I worked with a client all morning and spent the afternoon in a park, reading books. Nothing special. I tinkered in the apartment, spent some time writing, folded my laundry.
As with any big event, nervous anticipation builds in a slow crescendo through the day. I avoid dwelling in it, for I know if I unlock the excitement too early I’ll never be able to settle down again. Instead, I focus as much of my energy as I can muster on the droll, regular, routine tasks. I clean laundry. I fold clothes. I pack my bag for the next day and walk through all of the items I’ll need for the big swim:
Wetsuit. Swimsuit, 6 water bottles. Food for feeding. Towel. Wellies. Socks. Jacket for after the swim. Spare goggles. Food for before the race. Caffeine. Salt Tabs. Body Glide. Warm Cap. Regular Caps. Back up swim suit. Change of clothes for afterwards. Small bag with essential items – cell phone, keys, wallet.
It’s all in the preparation.
This week, I gave up alcohol and began extensive stretching and pulling on my body to limber up my joints. The last two days – these 48 hours – plays itself in my physical being very significantly, so what I do and don’t do is critical. I’m not the kind of person to wake up on a whim and do a big event; I am cautious, careful, and I really like being prepared. Drinking alcohol is gone; food becomes more important; green is my friend; sleep is paramount. My body must perform.
Now, today, Saturday afternoon, the bags are packed and my room is a chaotic mess. I’m sitting, gripping the ground tightly in an effort to put my mind at ease. The frenzy of mental race preparation sets in. I finish stretching and I pull out my sleeping bag – my go-to comfort and security blanket, and I crawl inside the sleeping bag and tuck it under the sheets in my double bed. I pull the sheets over me above the sleeping bag and pull a hat on. Bathing in the warmth of the small cocoon, covered from head to toe, I rest peacefully in my bed and quell my nerves with pragmatic thoughts about being well-prepared.
This is a swim I’ve never done before; four times longer than my last solo race in the bay. Alcatraz, the famed race and notoriously treacherous swim, is only 1.5 miles in the bay water. In relative terms, it’s not that difficult for experienced swimmers – it’s a 1.5 mile swim or about 30-45 minutes of open water swimming.
Bridge to Bridge, from the Bay Bridge Pylons to the mouth of the golden gate, is 6 miles – four times the distance of an Alcatraz swim. If the tides would allow it, it would be an out and back swim to Alcatraz – twice.
***
4:30 AM. The alarm sets off quietly – a soft chirping noise in my ear, and I lift up out of bed and stand tall. I open my shoulders to the morning air and touch my toes. The yoga mat, still on the floor from the night before, calls me to crawl into an early downward-dog for a morning hello to my body. My legs pull tightly at my calves and I breathe out. I stand up. My body feels the first roll of excitement and nervousness.
Can I do this? Can I really do this? I’m terrified and scared. I doubt myself at every turn, and doing things I’ve never done is just as hard as it ever was. Part of me hopes that Neal will call and tell me he can’t make it, that the swim is off, that I don’t have to do it. I worry that the swim will hurt my shoulders, that my feet will cramp, and that mostly, my mind will give up before it’s over and tell me to quit. I don’t want to fail. Worry rolls through my body and I breathe again, stretching.
My mind is a mental battlefield, and I bring up other points in an early morning counterargument to my mental self. I don’t think I really want to do this, my mind starts. You are a strong swimmer, I reply to that thought.
You are what your mind thinks about; there is nothing more powerful than the psyche.
You enjoy doing this; this is a normal flutter, take it in stride. What you think and what you do defines you. Remember, you’re always scared in the beginning of something new. I take each of these complaints and accept them, write them down on the paper space in my mind, and then I softly, subtly, repeatedly, rebut them. You will do the best you can. Firmly, I take a stance in my mind and with each added thought, I build a new construct in my mind. You’re not there yet, but each time you do this you do end up enjoying it. I do? No I don’t! my terror replies. Yes, you do. Keep going. Things will change, just you watch. Over time, I think I begin to believe it, too.
4:45 AM. I strip my soft pajamas off of my body; the first cold awakening that reminds me of the swim ahead; I begin to don the attire of an open water swimmer. I pull on the under suit, naked in the cold San Francisco apartment, and pull my wetsuit from the rail. The rubber and I battle for a few minutes as I peel it slowly across my skin, adjusting and negotiating its position until it sits right on my legs, calves, and hips. The 2mm and 3mm rubber wetsuit provides a barrier across my entire body, making me warmer, more buoyant, and faster in the water. I’ve swum without the wetsuit before, but not for 2 or more hours. Today, I’ll do the swim with a wetsuit.
5:00 AM. I boil coffee and fry an egg. 2.5 hours before take off. Perfect time to have a last bit of protein. The food will keep my body warmer, and burn right at the time I need it to burn. I have carbs packed away for 30 minutes before and during the race as well. Conventional wisdom suggests different food preparations, but twenty years of training and paying attention to my body, and I’ve learned what works. While I can get away with eating many things, I’ve learned to tune my mind to the subtle nuances of feedings. In the mornings, my body craves protein in egg-sized amounts. If not eggs, I usually have almonds, peanut butter, or some cold turkey early in the morning. Without it, my body leaps from sugar high to sugar low and loses the steady consistency of slow-burning fuel.
5:15AM. My bags are packed. I carry them one by one down the stairs, stomping so loudly I’m sure my roommate is awake as well. I cringe as the door slams, afraid I’m being a terrible roommate. In the din of the porch, I drop my bags, steeping down to the streets of San Francisco. Two late night partiers smoke in the early light of the morning outside, their amber ashes glowing softly in the light. I wait against the curb, stretching again, folding myself in half to encourage my legs to stay limber and loose.
The streets are empty and quiet, lines of parked cars marching up the hill on either side of the street, as immobile as their owners, equally asleep within their respective apartments. At the bottom of the hill, a black convertible turns up the street, its engine whirring softly as it crescendos in acceleration and then slows outside of my house. Neal rolls down the window, smiling. You ready to swim?
I grin. Excitement bubbles at the gates of mind.
Yup. Let’s do this.
***
to be continued…
***
This summer, I’ve been writing a short collection of thoughts on swimmingand the time I spend in the pool and in the open water. This is an excerpt from the book. Have any comments, thoughts, suggestions or reactions? I’d LOVE to hear them – leave them in the notes below! To stay updated on future posts, sign up for updates here. Part 2 of this swim, and other stories, coming soon.
San Quentin from the Bay in the early morning light. June 19, 2011.
San Francisco. Monday, June 20, 2011.
Walking in San Francisco.
Wow.
When you come down off of a high like this, the world – the normal world, with people floating in and out and waking up, walking around – looks strange.
Normal is strange. Regular looks weird. Nothing is how it should be, but I move through it just the same. Step, step. My feet work. I’m standing. Am I standing?
***
These are the thoughts that dance in my head as I walk down Polk Street in San Francisco, feet covered in work shoes, sidewalk slightly grungy from whatever last nights’ mess of partiers, diners, and hobo lovelies left around on the streets. I remark, in my mind, the incredible transformation that happens between 3am and 5am each day, as the world transitions from the late night ending to the early morning working in just a few hours. The sidewalk is quiet, save a few men clad in business suits walking aggressively in different directions. A lone jogger jiggles past me, the tin of her headphones blasting the latest pop song too loudly.
I walk a few more steps. Stores are shuttered closed; it’s early. Starbucks and Peet’s coffee are ablaze on the corners of Polk and Broadway, early bees starting their routines. A line of caffeine-addicted humans space out behind the register. Newly-caffeinated zombies titter with each other on the sidewalks. I walk a bit further, up the hill towards the infamous Lombard Street. I make my way up the hill, slowly, wandering without a purpose for a short while in the cold morning air. A single tennis ball bounces back and forth between two early risers; the ball bounce adds a soft drumbeat to my footsteps. Below me, water runs off of a lawn being over-watered and the sidewalk drips into the street. My calves burn a bit as the grade steepens. I reach the top of Lombard.
Looking at Alcatraz from atop Russian Hill in San Francisco
At the top, I stop and stare for a bit, a lone pedestrian standing in the morning fog of San Francisco. To the north, I can see out to Aquatic Park and to the east, I can see clear to the Bay Bridge. When the fog burns off, I’ll be able to see all the way to Oakland across the Bay.
The air feels different, tactile, and thick – although not as viscous as water and certainly more fluid in many respects. It’s easier (physically) to move through, although mentally I can’t wrap my head around it. I’m back on land, standing, staring. Already, I miss the water.
I stare in wonderment at the little island, the infamous Rock, and the swells that look laughably small off in the distance.
Did I just do that?
Flashback to yesterday, to the day before, to the weekend, to images of the events. I can hardly believe it’s real, and despite the evidence to the contrary splashed on Facebook and in my journals, and most of all, in photographs – I still have to pinch myself – ouch – yes, it happened – My sore arms remind me of what I just did. My triceps burn a bit. I raise my arms over my head and feel the memory imprinted in my muscles, albeit briefly. Yes, we did it.
Sometimes I surprise even myself. A little jolt of fear runs through my veins, but it’s exciting. This time, I’m overcome with an excitement:
I’m not afraid of what I can’t do. I’m almost afraid of what I can do.
***
The map of our swim: 10 miles across the Bay
***
Saturday, June 18th. Two Thousand Eleven.
Marin. At the Hotel.
My brain is in a whirlwind. It’s nighttime, before the race. I need to go to bed, but I can’t focus, and I can’t think, I simply can’t believe that tomorrow is already in front of us. Time is slipping away like the stars that zoom past the opening screens of the Star Wars movies – it seems to be rushing past me in a way I can’t contain. I know that in a few hours, I’ll be doing something, and I can’t get my head around it. I just can’t get it, no matter how I try to visualize it. Sometimes our minds can’t catch up, and it’s terrifying: mapping what I’m going to do is just not possible in my head. I’ve never done it before.
For a few seconds, I feel like I can’t breathe.
My body tells me to stop, to stop being crazy, not to try it, to quit – please – just sleep. All I want to do is sleep. My panicked mind and jumpy body lay parallel to the floor in the hotel bed, but I’m not sleeping. It’s 9:00 PM and I’m wide-eyed and awake.
Perhaps it’s a protective mechanism, perhaps it’s the way that I cope, but I forget about the swim. Throughout the entire day, I’ve alternated between frenzied giggles and extreme lethargy and through it all, I wonder if I’ll be able to make it through a distance swim of this length. I jump from fear to fear and attack myself in typical self-sabotage. (You aren’t qualified! What are you thinking! This is stupid! Run away, don’t do it!) My mind runs around in circles, pent up energy waiting to be released, and I do my best to relax, breathe, and settle down. We’ve got one night ahead of us – just a few short hours, and then we’re on.
We’re ON.
Swimmers better be ready.
Am I crazy?
***
The sun rising early in the morning over the Richmond Bridge. June 19, 2011
***
We have planned for months in advance, prepping for our longest event to date. The summer before last, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to swim again. This spring, after months of training slowly through the winter season, I made a plan to attempt four major swims over the course of the summer, each testing the limits of my capabilities in sequence, in events that I’d never thought of or dared to consider previously. In early March, I met with our team – Justin, Neal, Kim and myself – and we mapped out a strategy to attempt two solo Bay Crossings from San Quentin to Alcatraz, a 10-mile swim.
When we met to plan, the longest open-water swim I’d done was 1.5 miles; the Alcatraz crossing. The swim we began to plan was 10 miles – 6 times longer than the previous swim. With a solo row boat. On a swim that had never been done before by any woman.
It started as a dare, somewhat of a joke. What if we crossed the bay, made a map north to south, from one prison to another? What if we didn’t escape FROM Alcatraz, but escape TO it? What if we made an event of something that had never been done before?
We mapped the swims, planning for hours late in the evening one Monday night, discussing ebb and flood tides and optimal conditions and nailing down two possible dates based on tide charts and weather conditions. We had to nail it on June 19th or be delayed a month for a second attempt. By May 1st, we had it booked on our calendars, and in the weeks prior to the swim, our pilots worked invisibly, doing a tremendous amount of legwork to gain approvals from the South End Rowing Club, coordinate our arrival with the Marin Rowers Association, and book the boats, radios, flags, and prerequisites well in advance of the swim.
And then suddenly, it was here. It was Saturday – blink – Kim and I were doing a practice swim in the morning hours in Aquatic Park, testing our equipment, sitting in the cold water, getting used to the Bay and – blink – I was packing my bags and laying out the pieces I needed – blink – Kim and I were driving across the Golden Gate Bridge and then –blink – it was 6:30 at night and we were eating dinner the night before the swim together and – blink – I was in bed and we were getting ready to wake up, sleeping just a few hundred yards from prisoners on Death Row in the California State Penitentiary, San Quentin, and we were going to do what we’d just laughed about doing – we were going to cross the Bay in a 10-mile open water swim.
Throughout the day, on multiple occasions, Kim and I looked nervously at each other. Our eyes caught each other’s and we said something along the lines of:
Holy Shit. This is happening, isn’t it?
Yes, yes it is – really soon. Really soon, it’s upon us,
Now, Kim, we’re going to bed –
Now and we’re going to wake up and start swimming.
Neal and Justin Rowing up the River on Saturday.
Earlier that Saturday afternoon, the boys pulled up in row boats, docking and prepping the boats. I sat, quietly, bailing water out of the boat, mopping up dirt with sponges, wiping the boat down. We tied down life jackets to the side of the boat to prevent it from overnight damage. We wrapped up quietly, staring out at the highways above and walking through long, leggy grasses back up to the parking lot.
We booked a hotel aside San Quentin for the night, checking in Saturday evening and staying for a few short hours. The hotel was booked based on price – excessively cheap – located in the fringe corner of land between the San Quentin and the Richmond Bridge. Prime land, terrible neighbors.
The clock - That's 3:45 AM.
We went to bed early, or at least tried to. Kim and I stretched and relaxed, lying across the beds, talking in bursts about the next day’s events. We reviewed the swim strategy, again, lining up our accoutrements bedside to wake up the next day. Wake time, 3:45AM. Breakfast call, 4:00AM. Depart the hotel: 4:30AM. Arrive at the boat docks, 5:00AM. Leave: 5:15AM. Arrive at San Quentin: 5:45AM. Swimmers Drop: 6:00AM.
Swimmers Drop.
That’s the name for the time when you lean over the edge of the boat, press your hands against the wood, stare into the murky blackness, and jump in. When you dive into a world of cold, wet, and unfamiliar. A world of sensations awaits you, but most of them are clouded by your mind – the worry, thoughts, fear, clarity, precision, and nervous energy voiding out most of the sensations of the moment.
I never really notice if the water is cold. I’m too busy thinking, planning, prepping.
And then, with a few short strokes, a quick pull through the water, popping my body up to the surface and settling immediately into the rhythm of breathing, I forget. The thoughts escape as quickly as they tumble into my mind, and I’m here. I’m swimming, and it’s all that I want to do. There’s nothing else. I give a short wave to Neal, my Pilot, and Justin – Kim’s Pilot, and with the quickness of my breath, the world disappears from my vision and it’s just me and the water.
Two swimmers stand in front of San Quentin.
***
We’re outside of San Quentin, two lone boats on the still, flat water, 100 yards off shore. Along the coast of some of California’s most beautiful landscape, a ten-foot concrete wall lines the periphery to encase the prisoners’ fortress. Thousands of prisoners, stuck inside the compartments of containment for the rest of their lives. Something small to think about while I embark on one of the toughest Bay swims in San Francisco.
The guard towers stand tall, menacing, a pile of folded sticks and huge structures, housing men with machine guns in lookout towers. Dominating. From the boats, Neal and Justin wave. Kim and I can only pray that they don’t shoot at us as we make our way over to the prison walls. It’s one thing to joke about a rifle tower pointed at you. It’s another thing to strip to your skivvies and jump in the water, daringly, right in front of them. My thighs shiver. We’ve obtained permissions and we stopped by the prison gates the day prior, but still. You never know.
We head off towards the starting point, Kim and I, and we swim easily over to the giant concrete walls of San Quentin. At the water’s edge, we put our feet down on the water’s floor and stumble on top of the slippery, wet rocks. We both stand and fall, grab the land, and try to stand but fall again. Graceful we are not. Kim and I laugh, the sound of our voices cutting through the silence of the morning. The light rises beautifully over the Richmond Bridge, a spectacular multi-colored sunrise framing the swooping bridge in morning light. Fog rolls over the Tiburon mountains, and in the distance, Mount Tam. We curl our toes over the rocks beneath the surface of the water and hug each other, turning around towards the boats. We wave. I nod at her and she nods at me:
Yes.
Let’s get started.
We ease back into the water, our home away from home, our silhouettes casting a shadow in time against the concrete wall, erased quickly from the present by becoming the past as soon as we move away from it. An event only in time, captured briefly with a still photograph, taken from the rower’s boats. We ease into now, into swimming, into the journey we’ve set our crazy minds to begin, to do, to try.
***
On the water, my mind is a blank slate of motion, interrupted only by encouragement and feedings from my rower, Neal. Occasionally, I stop and think of something I must say and I pop my head up, say a sentence, and keep on swimming. Out of my periphery, I can see Neal laughing at me, although he’s busy doing everything I’m not doing – watching the tides, keeping the time, rowing the boat, leading the way, triangulating our position, communicating with the Coast Guard, observing vessel traffic, and prepping my feedings and water – the fact that he has time to keep me entertained as well baffles me. Throughout the swim, the rowers watch the swimmers nearly non-stop, keeping an eye on the sole body moving steadily through the water. My life is in the hands of the water, the world, and the pilot. I am responsible only for swimming, for ticking the metronome of time with my arms in the water.
Swimming, and time, has the odd sensation of taking both forever and finishing in an instant. Depending solely on the state of my mind, a few minutes can be intense agony, while an hour can be a freedom of floating, drifting in and out of subconsciousness. For the early part of the swim, I think about the aerial map of the Bay and try to understand where I am as I move across the surface laterally. I see the coastline off to my right and I keep an eye on it, the green hillscape and multi-million-dollar homes a testament to the effusive wealth of the Bay Area. A few boats pass by us, but for the most part – blink – the first hour of the swim passes uneventfully, a calm stillness on the Bay treating us well. I drink water before I need it, I eat before I want to, and when it comes time to check in with my Pilot, I laugh and gab about whatever was on my mind. What it was, I can’t remember now. Perhaps an idea, or an inspiration, or a quick and fleeting thought – but whatever it was, the thought drifted out of my mind the minute I set my head back down.
***
Swimming is like making music. It’s a rare form of dancing, of moving lightly on the surface between two viscosities, between the elements water and air, married briefly by the human body that touches the water, the air, and the water again in counterbalanced synchronicity. Swimming well is a rich cherishing of the body as a work of art, a place, a vessel that I’m delighted to be a part of for a short time. I am in awe of the precision of my body, and in constant wonder of the precious things we are capable of if we set our minds to just try. My muscles stretch and lengthen, pull and shorten, bend and borrow strength, and pull me along in the beautiful art that is swimming.
Years of training are imbued in each stroke. Each silent pull, each micro-effort and rotation of the body, each lengthening stretch and long side breath, is a work of more than two decades; of a body of people and events and seemingly inconsequential decisions that add up to this.
***
My mind is a part of my body, but my body also has a mind of it’s own; I am merely an embodied soul. More often than not, I need to separate my minds’ fears and insecurities and let my body, my self, my being do the work that it knows how to do. Every swim surprises me, changes me, tells me something new. The days when I think I’m too exhausted, too tired, too lethargic to swim, I’ve learned to dive headfirst in anyways. I trust in the going and I head to the pool or bay despite my hesitations. Do it anyways, I remind myself. And on those days when I think I’m too tired, or I feel too scared, or I worry too much – those days I find an unexpected physical energy, a delight in swimming, a clarity in being. It turns out the cloudy fog was just in my head, merely a mental block that, if I believed in it, would have prevented me from experiencing the events as they unfold in front of me.
I have a tenuous grasp on the luckiness I feel to be a part of this, this.
***
The rolling coastline of Tiburon, from the water, covered lightly in fog.
In the water, a song plays against the backdrop of my mind; Zac Brown Band’s rhythm of “Where the boat leaves from” skips around in my brain and the upbeat happy melody joins me for a half hour. I laugh and lift my head briefly and tell Neal about the song. He’s occupied and busy, but he entertains my random thoughts.
The hour is filled with things that don’t happen on a typical day: Running into seaweed patches. Peeing in my wetsuit. Watching the sun rise high in the sky. Stopping to see the moon high over Alcatraz. Getting lost in a deep fog that completely disorients us. Fighting through a windy chop near Raccoon Straights, the patch between Angel Island and Tiburon.
“Sarah!”
Neal is laughing. I pop my head up again. “Sarah! You just got a container ship diverted for you…”
“I what!?”
We diverted a container ship. The visibility conditions were so low, the container ship didn’t want to run the risk of running over a swimmer without being able to see them. Neal switched the radios from channel 14 to 71 and talked rapidly with the Coast Guard. “What’s your visibility, Rower?” — “We’re at 2 Football Fields, Over.” — “Okay, we’ll divert the ship; Coast Guard to Vessel 89245, can you confirm the Southern Route?”
And in a second, a giant sideways skyscraper -a massive mess of containers aboard an inbound ship from China – moved it’s vector trajectory from the northern side of Alcatraz to the southern route, avoiding us and it’s rapid-speed movement. Swimmers don’t mess with container ships. In that battle, you lose. A human body can get sucked quickly into the churning propellers of the container ship and get tossed into the meat grinder like a rag doll in a washing machine. It’s never a battle you want to have. In the case of accidental paths crossing, you haul your swimmer on board as quickly as possible and row like mad. All you can do between you and the beast is get. out. of. the. way.
And the container ship bowed gracefully for us, to a lone swimmer and an invisible rower. With the tug and pull of a few navigations, the large cruiser moved effortlessly towards the southern side of the Bay, leaving the window of the north bay open for – well – for me. For me and Kim. For us to swim, our lone, sole efforts.
The effortlessly beautiful Kim Chambers, approaching Alcatraz in the final part of the swim.
And then suddenly, Alcatraz appeared out of the foggy enclosure and the vertical walls of the Rock and the aged prison rose, statuesque, in a formal greeting to us and our efforts. I sucked my breath in and I stopped, briefly. I looked up and felt the world around me, a flatland of water and a vertical, mobile plane from which everything else rose upwards. I was at zero, the water level, the place where the gravity of the earth’s spin pulls you in as close to the center as you can get. The lands of San Francisco, all of the bumps and hillsides, rise steadily from the water’s zero point, carving upwards in the sky the topography that thousands of us march on and drive over each day. All of it, in my vision. And a few hundred yards left to swim.
That’s it? It’s over already?
I breathe again, a perpetual and necessary habit, tasting the bitter salt water and the rings of sand building around my ears and my face. A slight rubbing on my neck from the tight suit has turned into a steady chaffing, a red mark that will burn for a few days as a reminder of today’s exertions. We aim for the concrete structures, but just as steadily as we swim the tide ebbs and pulls us towards the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. The two vectors collide, directing us ever Westward in our approach, despite our mighty muscular arms. When we arrive, we’re at the western-most point of the Island, at the ‘little rock’ and Kim and I are there – together – we’ve finished within minutes of each other – and we’re laughing and we’re touching the rock, and then we’re climbing on top of little Alcatraz, and we’ve done it.
We swam from one Prison to the other Prison.
2 hours and 40 minutes, one strong ebb tide, and a 10 mile journey was started, finished, and complete.
***
Arriving at Little Alcatraz.In front of THE ROCK. 9:30AM, Sunday, June 19 2011.
***
Monday, June 20, 2011.
San Francisco. Standing.
I’m back on the San Francisco hillside, and it’s Monday, and I’m on top of the topography I look at for reference when I’m down in the water. I’m walking around in the early morning, feet on land, wondering in awe at the weekend. I can’t hardly believe what I’ve done, and in the morning when I wash my face in the bathroom sink, I giggle excitedly when I look in the mirror, before I get absorbed in the present again, looking at the drawings I’m working on, at the essays I’m cultivating, at my mind maps scattered on paper as I mull over thoughts.
It’s not really about the swimming, although those few hours were remarkable. It’s about doing things. About setting your mind to something and just, simply, doing it.
You are capable of anything. I truly believe that – Actually, I don’t just believe it, I know it. And if you know it, too, you’ll be unstoppable. We can’t stop in admiration of what others do for too long – we must go; we must create. Most of the blocks in our lives are mental – we just get in our own way too darn much.
Everything I do – everything I look at, struggle to attain, fight to achieve, quietly and methodically pluck away at – you can, too. Nothing is stopping you. NOTHING. Seriously, most of what’s stopping you can be eroded away at, with time and determination. It won’t all happen tonight. It won’t happen tomorrow. What will happen today and tomorrow will seem insignificant. The decisions you make now – to write at home, or to party, to work an extra 30 minutes, or to wake earlier by 10 minutes, to drink less coffee, to run once more per week – these are the decisions that matter. The littlest things – they add up. What’s stopping you? A fear that you won’t do it – or a fear that you will?
Here, in the city, on the hill, I wander around a bit longer, lost in my reverie. I stumble around a bit. Re-engaging is always a hard thing to do after the excitement of a challenge like this. I don’t know where to start, I just know that my vision of the world is subtly or suddenly altered, and I can’t go back to the way that things used to be.
I tread heavily on the sidewalks, the thunder of my footprints out of step with my balanced articulation in the water, and then I stub my toe because I’m not looking where I’m going. A crack in the ground jumps out at me and my body jolts – I trip, stumble, crash, and fall, my hands bracing against the crooked sidewalk. My bag slams the ground and a drop of fresh blood springs from the rough patch on my hands, gritty dirt quickly embedded in my calloused palms. Just as quickly as I daze off, I’m brought back to life, to now, to the being of being. I sit on the ground for a few seconds and smile. A passerby looks at me peculiarly from behind his cup of Starbucks Coffee.
Just another hobo girl in San Francisco, being weird.
***
[READER NOTE: This is part of the collection of thoughts on swimming I’m working on building this summer about the time I spend in the pool and in the open water. This is an excerpt from the book that’s currently in progress. Have any comments, thoughts, suggestions or reactions? Like it, hate it, want to know more? I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. Thank you.]
Creativity, innovation, and brilliance: why do some people have it and other people don’t? Creativity and innovation are the source of new business ideas, excellence in entrepreneurship, and talented individual success stories. It would be nice to assume that creative people are “just talented,” and fall back on the assumption that “you either have it or you don’t.”
The truth is, the most creative people understand what it takes to be creative – diligence, persistence, hard work and perhaps a bit of a struggle – and tap into various sources of inspiration and known methods for productivity.
Behind every success story – from Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft, to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook– there is an individual or a team working hard and following these three tenants of productivity: they understand sources of inspiration; they know how to create moments where creativity can flourish, and they certainly understand that behind every creative idea is unwavering determination, productivity, and a whole lot of hard work.
Look around: there’s inspiration hidden in the people you surround yourself with.
My number one source of inspiration? The people and the networks around you. If you want to be inspired, just watch interesting people, follow talented businesses, engage in new activities, and commit yourself to learning something new.
Become a student of what you want to learn. People are inherently fascinating. Bruce Desilva, a novelist who teaches part-time at Columbia University, describes people as “endlessly interesting.” When asked what inspires him, he replied:
“People do. Human beings are endlessly interesting if you just learn to pay attention.”
In business, most successful ventures start with simple ideas about how to improve upon something that already exists. Red Box and Netflixtook movie rentals to the next level by changing the way that movies were delivered to the customer – offering an additional layer of convenience. The idea of renting movies was not new; how they were made available was changed in a way pleasing to more people.
Paypal and Ebay took the sales and exchange of goods and items to a new front by opening up a virtual marketplace and reconfiguring how we exchange money. Facebook and other social networking sites reconfigured how we think about networking – replacing excel networking spreadsheets with a system that manages our networks and allows “friends” to update and exchange their personal information with us – for free.
Pete’s Coffee and Starbucks Coffee are profiting wildly from the sale of a cup of joe mixed with varying amounts of sugar – not a new invention. Want to make a few dollars? Bottle some water or brew some coffee. Hundreds of companies are doing it. The premise is the same: people and businesses are inspired by the world around them. Each of these ideas began with several concepts that weren’t “new.” Most complaints are actually opportunities to make something new and better by fixing or improving upon something that’s existing.
Cultivate Great Moments for Inspiration.
How do you get that “ah-hah!” moment? In each human mind, we revisit our understanding of the world as it exists from time to time. The mind is the most creative during sustained, semi-focused activity. Here are a few moments that creative people use for cultivating great thinking:
Drifting off to sleep: the mind, as it settles and unwinds, often is the most creative during this “unplanned thought time.” Many artists and writers keep notebooks by their bedsides to capture these moments.
Meditation. Practicing putting the mind into a relaxed, free-flowing state has been shown to induce more creative thinking.
Exercise. Many marathon runners and elite athletes describe exercise as a “sense of focus beyond everyday thinking.”
Walking. Some of the greatest philosophers were known to have many of their conversations while walking.
On a more personal level, here are a few more things that help me to be creative:
Driving. If it’s not in traffic, I find that driving, out on the open road, particularly scenic drives or roads that are familiar to me — can really be a place to let my mind wander. I’ve taken to carrying a tape recorder in my car, to “write down” the thoughts as they float in and out of my brain.
Swimming and running help me think by reducing the amount of ambient noise and clutter surrounding me (can’t carry an iphone in the water just yet!), and letting me get into a different rhythm of thinking that’s more in tune to the strokes of swimming or the pounding pavement of running. Sometimes I carry my “dumb phone” with me while I’m running, so I can stop and send a short text message to myself if I figure out a new idea on the way.
Sitting outside or walking through quite, green spaces. Being in a garden or an outdoor setting is lovely. It helps me think. Finding the parks and spaces to think – in your city, rural area, or suburban area – and changing it up from time to time – can really help kick-start your brainwaves.
Watch Out For Places and Spaces That REDUCE Inspiration
Just as there are activities that are conducive to creative thinking, there are also sustained activities that are not advantageous to free-form, imaginative thinking. Activities that are over-stimulating or entertaining by their nature (watching television, spending time in front of a computer) can, depending on how and how often they are used, reduce the creative impulses.
Unfortunately, I don’t always think in the same free-flowing way when i sit behind a computer. (The irony is, that i’ll sit behind the laptop screen, wordpress framework in hand, trying to come up with a post, and these are usually the worst posts. )
Furthermore, interesting research by Modupe Akinola, a professor at Columbia Business School and Joe Forgas of the University of New South Wales, Australia, suggest that our dispositions and our emotional framework can influence our creative impulses. In “The Dark Side of Creativity,” Akinola finds that being somewhat melancholy can actually improve your creativity. The research suggests that a sad mood can make people better at judging, accuracy, and observing the world around them.
Our creative challenges need diligence, persistence, and focus. Sometimes struggling through an idea — and working consistently on a hard problem, absent from distractions, despite being tired or frustrated — can be when we find the best insights.
Finally: Putting the work behind the inspiration.
Not every moment of brilliance comes during a casual stroll on a beautiful sunny day without any effort. Creative people don’t sit lazily by a lake, waiting for the next great idea. Most great inventors and thinkers toil away at their ideas, producing new iterations daily, until they figure out something that works. Perhaps hard work facilitates a sense of angst or anguish – stimulating further creativity through some emotional strain, as suggested by the research of Akinola and Forgas.
Even the most creative people forget about the anguish of the process – how difficult it can be to create – after they’ve arrived at a solution or design that works. When the inspiration doesn’t come — and sometimes we have to create even when we’re not in the thick of inspiration — get outside, talk to other people, throw ideas around, read, look, question, and wonder.
And above all, iterate. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
People that are productive, putting their ideas to work, find successful ideas over time – through careful consideration, reflection, and hard work. Robert Sutton describes it well: “The truth is, creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it is about productivity. To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.”
