A Thousand Mistakes To Happiness
Photo courtesy of Pepe Gonçalves
The pace around the whitewater stadium has steadily picked up all week here in Pau, France where I am with my 16 year old daughter. She is a rookie competing in a very BIG race this week.
French day workers and volunteers have taken this sports facility and transformed it into a gala event venue of which any PGA Championship Tour would be proud. Except that you don’t want to be slicing a golf ball here as it will end up in fast moving and treacherous water.
The Pau Pyrenees Whitewater Stadium is host to the week-long prestigious Whitewater Canoe Slalom and Wildwater World Championships which gets underway on Monday.
Grandstands, high-tech camera platforms, supersize video screens, and tent villages have risen up amidst the autumn colors and crisp air here in the French Pyrenees Mountains.
With Paris recently selected as the 2024 Olympic host city, this World Championships is set to be quite the spectacle. Everything must be top shelf and point perfect. The *suits* will be on hand.
Selling to Itself
The World Championships is forever an agent that sells big ideas. So much energy will be spent here this week selling to a crowd that is already its customer, in other words… selling to itself.
I’m in awe as I sit here and witness cases of superb Champagne being wheeled into the VIP tent, which in itself is a massive, regal-looking structure perched over the race course finish line.
If I were still the CEO of USA Canoe Kayak, that tent would have been my official “office” for the week. It would contain the same feelings and sounds of who is selling, who is buying, and who is not buying and instead is there just to drink the Champagne.
There will be the same political conversations, the same gripes, the never ending pulse of those trying to climb to the top … by the way, did you know there is a race going on outside?
VIP to Riverbank
As I walk along the whitewater course, I overhear conversations amongst the coaches.
At one point during a practice session, a coach I’ve known for many years but with whom I hadn’t spoken to in ages suddenly turns to me and says, “Even the bad teams are good now.” I smile.
I’m at this practice session for one purpose: to watch the decision making of the athletes on the whitewater course. As you know by now, I pay attention to course correction, the mistakes… and the athletes’ responses to mistakes.
There are approximately 30 athletes in this particular one-hour practice session. They are the cream of the crop of a couple hundred paddlers who will compete in various categories this week. This group has a few hours remaining to get their *act* together. And this is why I’m here. To better understand how the finest athletes in a sport correct their mistakes, in real time, when the clock is ticking down.
When your life does not go as you hoped, how do you correct the error?
Believe me, it’s not easy to paddle well on the churning rapids of this man-made channel. This is probably the most difficult course on the entire whitewater canoe slalom circuit. The currents are the fastest and always seem to be pushing you and your boat just about anywhere except where you want to be. Moment-to-moment micro-problem solving is a premium skill here.
There are small course corrections that get fixed very quickly. To the untrained eye, they hardly look like a mistakes at all.
Then, there are the big mess-ups, the ones that start small but grow out of control very quickly.
From rookies trying to survive, to veterans in contention for a medal:
- Do they blow up, make a scene, and get out of their boat?
- Do they focus, through their entire run, on a mistake they made at the start?
- Do they reset and move on?
All of the above.
I created distance from my past role as an executive in the sport for moments like this. To be free to watch and listen. To be an observer with a beginner’s mind in search of new wisdom from the trickiest source I know — the river.
Reset
In my years working in the leadership side of the sport, I never had time for the small, important details. I was too busy caught up in the game of buying and selling what happens beyond the river.
But over time, I discovered that just like the river, business and life do not exist to buy and sell.
Yes, you can sit there in the tent, drink the Champagne, and suffer a lifetime of buyer’s remorse.
Or you can get back into the current, correct your mistakes, and find your flow.
The clock was ticking down, the lessons from the river were with me… I made the decision to reset and move on.
With gratitude,
Joe
Hi, I’m Joe, the owner of 5 With Joe Performance Coaching. My clients are leaders, organizations, and teams who utilize my Olympic Gold Medal performance strategies and 40 years of navigating whitewater river rapids to streamline decision making and actions when engaged in complicated river currents of business and life.
The best way to interact with me is though Sunday Morning Joe, my weekly newsletter that explores the art of improving performance, overcoming challenge, and aligning with purpose for Sunday readers in search of more depth and motivation. Subscribe HERE for free.
