Conquering the ‘Impossible’

Conquering the ‘Impossible’

By Simon Hartley, co-founder of Success Engineers.

Chris Bertish, a South African surfer, arrived in Antigua this week, after a journey of 4,050 miles in 93 days and became the first person ever to paddle a stand-up board across the Atlantic Ocean.

Wow! That’s incredible. How do you do that? How is that even possible?

Well, I know it sounds obvious, but to achieve something this extraordinary, you have to really want to… I mean REALLY want to!

In his last “captain’s log” Facebook post he said, “A day I have been working toward for as long as I can remember … I’ve put everything on the line for this project for the last five years … everything!”

Before he even began the voyage, he needed to build the paddle-board.

It cost almost £100,000 and took six months to build. Even getting the funding and building the boat requires incredible dedication.

As he crossed the finish, Chris Bertish gave an insight into the mindset that made this record breaking achievement possible.

“We all talk about the challenges we have in life, and how we get through them…

One stroke at a time… one minute at a time… one hour at a time… one day at a time… one night at a time.

Don’t worry about the end goal. If I had been thinking of this end goal when I started out, I would never have got here.

Break everything down into little bite sized chunks. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Every single day I was going, ‘Just get through the next hour, I’m just going to get through the day, I’m just going to get through the night’. Every single day for 93 days was like that.

So, you know what… you can get through anything, if you just focus on that.

If you think like that, nothing is impossible.”

I suspect it’s not the first time you’ve heard these sentiments. But remember, it doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be powerful. Most people know this, but few actually do it.

So, once you’ve got the basic plan in place, and you’re clear on where you want head – what your direction should be – what would happen if you lived some of these three really simple principles?

“Don’t worry about the end goal”.

“Just focus on what’s in front of you”.

“Do that every single moment, of every day, until you get there”.

 

Thank you Chris Bertish, you’re an inspiration!