Three Minute Leadership- Live It Large and Dream!
To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning
The lives of great people are the learning experiences from which great leaders grow. Diana Nyad, the world’s greatest long-distance swimmer from 1969 – 1979. One of her greatest accomplishments was her 102.5 mile swim from the island of Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida. On TED.com in October 2011, she shared her story about her thoughts as she approached her sixtieth birthday and what she did about them. She relooked at her life and how she had spent it. She said to herself: “I’ve only got 22 years left? What am I going to do with this short amount of time that’s just fleeting?” She wanted to get out of a “malaise” that was draining her life. Her response was to chase “an elevated dream, an extreme dream, something that would require utter conviction and unwavering passion, something that would make me be my best self in every aspect of my life, every minute of every day, because the dream was so big that I couldn’t get there without that kind of behavior and that kind of conviction.”
Looking inside herself she found an old dream, something she had tried when she was in her twenties, but not achieved – a swim from Cuba to Florida. The swim would take about 60 – 70 hours… without a shark cage. She had not swum in 31 years. The challenge of her training was difficult, but she prepared herself. On September 23, 2011, she was ready. She jumped into the water yelling in her mother’s French: “Courage!”
Two hours into her swim, she was hit by a box jellyfish: “And I was on fire — excruciating, excruciating pain.” She swam through the night, and the next day she was again hit by the box jellyfish – “And at 41 hours, this body couldn’t make it. The devastation of those stings had taken the respiratory system down so that I couldn’t make the progress I wanted. And the dream was crushed.” She left the water.
As she stood on the stage that evening in October she said of her experience:
“So now what do I do? I wouldn’t mind if every one of you came up on this stage tonight and told us how you’ve gotten over the big disappointments of your lives. Because we’ve all had them, haven’t we? We’ve all had a heartache. And so my journey now is to find some sort of grace in the face of this defeat. And I can look at the journey, not just the destination. I can feel proud. I can stand here in front of you tonight and say I was courageous. Yeah.
“And with all sincerity, I can say, I am glad I lived those two years of my life that way, because my goal to not suffer regrets anymore, I got there with that goal. When you live that way, when you live with that kind of passion, there’s no time, there’s no time for regrets, you’re just moving forward. And I want to live every day of the rest of my life that way, swim or no swim. But the difference in accepting this particular defeat is that sometimes, if cancer has won, if there’s death and we have no choice, then grace and acceptance are necessary.
“But that ocean’s still there. This hope is still alive. And I don’t want to be the crazy woman who does it for years and years and years, and tries and fails and tries and fails and tries and fails, but I can swim from Cuba to Florida, and I will swim from Cuba to Florida.”
Diana Nyad had chased her dream, given it her all and not succeeded. The passion and commitment to her dream, however, never died. She concluded her talk with a question paraphrasing the poet Mary Oliver. It is for all great leaders, one which they will answer with fire and passion in their souls: “So what is it, what is it you’re doing, with this one wild and precious life of yours?” They will find their… and be more than they ever dreamed they could be.
Have a beautiful day and a magnificent week!!!
Mike