“Just One More Stroke”

“Just one more stroke”, said Adam Walker (see left), who went from novice water-lover to extreme ocean swimmer. These were the words of Adam in an interview with Richard Cole yesterday on BBC 4’s Saturday Live.  
How did he keep himself going when everything within him wanted to give up? Swimming in open waters for 11 hours, vomiting up because of ocean sewage, being stung to paralysis by a Portugese Man of War, unbearably cold temperatures with no wet suit 

- he say’s to himself, “Just take the next stroke…that’s all you need to do”.

This resonated with me so much, because I started Emerging Leaders as a total novice and after 10 years it has often felt like one of the intrepid swimmers Ocean swims. I have often thought that that is exactly how we have got to where it’s got to.  One stroke at a time. The days when you are working so hard to get these trainings up and running – the funding, the organising, the partners not answering your emails, the agreements made - followed by the agreements being ignored……oh, and did I say “the funding”?  Each stage has challenges – starting something, getting it moving, finding funders, getting on and off planes to deliver the training to make it happen, creating enough evidence of the impact of the training to draw other partners in, managing those new partners, finding the right team members, getting them on board, bedding them into their new roles, creating new programmes and tidying up old ones.

The wild ocean off the S.African coast of the Western Cape - home to hundreds of whales

Tim & Maz Walker

This morning I was moved to some very real tears as I watched on a Facebook video two of our team, Tim & Maz Walker (not related to Adam the swimmer!)  delivering an Emerging Leaders programme to a group of people under a bamboo tent in the middle of Madagascar!  I’ve never been to Madagascar but Emerging Leaders training is there. I can’t describe to you how wonderful that feels. I’m sure it’s the kind of feeling that Adam feels when he’s completed another Ocean swim.  What did my tears tell me? Never forget what it is that gives you joy in this ocean swim that we call Emerging Leaders. It’s easy to forget and when you forget, you lose your joy and when you lose your joy you lose your way.  

https://www.facebook.com/tim.walker.1441?fref=ts

My tears reminded me where my joy is and that I must have lost it in my business….but the tears reminded me where it is. Thank God for tears. The joy of seeing people who would never otherwise get a chance to learn - whether in their mud hut, bamboo tent, crumbled classroom, local tree - learning how to LEAD their own life and how to change the world around them.  

How can seeing someone’s life change, not bring you to tears?…….so as I head into another week and will inevitably need, at times, to say to myself “one more stroke”, I can do it with the joy of having reconnected with my own sense of mission in life. And that is precious.

- TW