Keeping your head

So I went up to the whitewater course yesterday and had a great day of kayaking. When I went a month ago I was pretty scared, this time I was pretty comfortable. I knew the course and knew that I could handle it. That doesn't mean it won't humble me from time to time, but that I'm able to competently run the course. I worked on some ferries, eddy turns, and s-turns at the bottom, where the Race runs into the St Joe. Before they opened the gates to the Race it was pretty tame. I wasn't totally hitting my eddy turns right, but I was doing pretty decent. But once they opened the gates it was a different story. A good analogy would be stepping onto a treadmill set for 8 minute miles, while wearing roller blades. It's doable, but you'd better do it right or you are going down. I think I got flipped 6 times. But here's the thing, I rolled back up every time.

It was just a matter of how important being mentally prepared and taking time to think through your situation before trying to react. A few months ago on the Flatrock I hit an eddy line wrong, it flipped me, and I swam. I knew how to roll my kayak, I can do it pretty well. But mentally I wasn't prepared. When it happened, I paniced and I forgot my training and what I knew to be true. But yesterday I was ready for it. I rolled 6 times in some challenging currents. It wasn't really because my roll was any better than it was a couple of months ago, it was because mentally I was ready for it. Instead of panicing I set up in the position, counted to 3 to calm myself, and then rolled. I came up fine without a problem (except the time I was still in the eddy line and it flipped me again, but I rolled up again).

The same thing applies to life. So often we have one little thing go wrong and we let it mess us up. Our car gets hit in traffic, someone has cancer, we get laid off our job, someone we love betrays us. These are all bad things and are going to impact us. The question is how we are going to deal with it. Is it going to take us out? Or are we going to take a moment to collect ourselves, remind ourselves of what we know to be true, and then respond with what we know to be true? Maybe the question we need to ask is do we have something solid to carry us through the hard times? Do we know how to respond that will allow us to continue on safely?

I'm training on a whitewater course, and it's a pretty safe place to learn. But even on the course one of the guys that is teaching me pointed out that we have to keep an eye on what is down stream of the next obstacle. The hole in front of us may be our next concern, but there may be a hole just past that we have to deal with also. We're going to get worked from time to time, but we need to react to that right or the next hole is going to work us too.