This summer my tribe took a 'staycation' in Cape Town at a friends house in Hout Bay. Being close to the beach I wanted to get in the water and as there is no surf break on this beach I thought I would try a SUP for fun. I borrowed an inflatable SUP and pumped it solid and headed out onto the water. That's when the intense learning started ..............
An inflatable SUP floats, it has incredible buoyancy but, I can tell from the experience, it does not offer stability. It is not a floating raft or barge. It would be equal to trying to stand on a lilo in an open pool, only now on the ocean. Challenging would be the understatement of the holidays. Balancing required absolute focus on twitch muscles in the legs and this is where I found the comparison to entrepreneurship.
Like running a start-up organisation, riding a SUP has many external influences of its own; wind, waves, foot position, focus, attention and dolphins. Yes, dolphins which act to distract and were the highlight of the sessions.
What did I acknowledge in learning to SUP in comparison to running a start-up organisation? Firstly, if you try and find your balance on the board with no forward movement you are going to fall off. Period. Fact. Does that resonate with you in business? We are all sometimes guilty of constantly countering external influences and not moving our projects forward, often feeling trapped dealing with the issues. Keep your business and your SUP moving forward and therefore under momentum. Then comes the second critical learning; you will go where you look. If your attention is on the nose of the SUP, I can guarantee that is where you will end up as you disembark without style into the Atlantic ocean. Look forward and focus on a way-point and with forward momentum you will travel to that point. When I recognised this simple attention to keeping my eyes forward, not looking to my feet to read the board movement but trusting my legs, bent at the knees, to counter the board movement I took off across the bay. Enjoying a session with sand dolphins swimming under and around the SUP.
Lesson learned; keep your organisation with forward momentum, trust your natural ability and continue to look forward with an objective in the distance because you will travel to that point. You will arrive where you put your focus.
Enjoy your SUP experience. I am having a blast.
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