One of my favorite stories of the Olympics comes from sportscaster Charlie Jones who interviewed the athletes of professional rowing teams before and after the competition. The questions he asked them ranged from: what do you do when the other team is pulling ahead of you, what do you do when you break an oar, or when the winds are howling gale force against you? To Charlie’s surprise, several of the athletes had the same response to different questions. They told him simply, “That’s outside of my boat.”
After receiving identical answers, Charlie asked a rower to explain what they meant by “that‘s outside of my boat.” The rowing team had been trained to diligently stay focused on the task at hand, to their immediate surroundings and to put their energy only on the things they could control - within their boats. They had realized that thinking about what was outside of their boat only distracted them from their goal, and “that which is beyond our control is not worth our time or energy.”
The professional rowers of the Olympics are not in the competition thinking about the choppiness of the water, or rather the crowd is watching or how fast the other team is or the varying rates on their home loan or if the cost of gas will go up in the middle of summer. Every ounce of their energy is honed into the present moment and each row stroke they are making. And does it work for them? As successful athletes, they won enough races and became fast enough to compete in the Olympics. You tell me.
This story made me think about my own life and how much I often worry about things that are outside of my boat. And I understand more and more that in order to feel effective in my life, I have to choose to spend my energy on things that I can control. Because I want things to go well for others, I often am giving advice or wondering the best way they should approach a problem. And yet, no matter how caring I am, I simply cannot row their boat when I am sitting in mine. I have no affect whatsoever on which direction their boat goes.
To me, following news stories is very much the same concept. If I get caught up in a horrible violent event that happened, and spend most of my spare time dwelling on how awful it was for the individuals and families involved, I am not watching where my own boat is headed, and the energy I may have had to plan where my journey might go next has already been spent. If we spend our lives in other’s stories, we end up half living their lives while not truly living our own. Worrying, dwelling and staying in the stories of others doesn’t really help them, and doesn’t solve anything for them. That’s an area where I am always going to feel helpless. So why go there?
I don’t watch the news because I choose to stay out of the drama of strangers, and because I don’t want that helpless feeling. (I also find it overwhelmingly negative and disturbing.) Instead, I save my time for my friends and family and the people in my community - the people I can really know, work well with and make a difference for. I can’t help captives, I can’t find missing people, but I can take the grocery cart back for the little old lady next to me in the parking lot. I can slow down on the road to let the person who has been waiting to turn have space in front of me. I can make the baby in the grocery line laugh, I can treat my friend to lunch and I can hug the regular customer in the café whose loneliness might border bitterness without touch. I can volunteer to help a friend move, or share my lunch with a hungry co-worker. There are so many ways for me to interact with my fellow rowers - the people in my little circle where I have the power to make a difference.
This story also made me reflect on how I am getting better at letting past events stay in the past where they belong. When I have a hard week at work, or when I have had a disagreement with others, my mind tends to return to that and go over the situation several times. Even when I have closure over it. When really, that uncomfortable situation is in the past, so why would I choose to make the present uncomfortable by rehashing it? And I am not aware of any kayaker, sailor or Olympic rowing team that could paddle forward while looking behind them. As a white water paddler, out on the river, the minute I look behind me in a rapid, its over. I stop going where I want to, stop moving forward altogether and usually loose control of my boat and end up wet. Using this analogy helps me see that thinking about the past really doesn’t help me move forward and that by doing so, I loose my control over the present moment.
I invite you to reflect on the “Its outside of my boat” concept as well. Are there areas in your life that you spend your time an energy outside of your boat - focusing on things that you cannot control? Are you familiar with the limits of your own boat, and how could you get more involved with the others in your community?
Charlie’s story of the Olympic Rowing Team is an inspiration to me to let go of trying to control things outside of my boat, to stay present, keep calm, keep moving forward and enjoy the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment