By Tom Lancaster
On January 2nd, 2021, the day after the annual polar bear dip in Vancouver, BC, I made a rash decision that I had been plotting for several months. I committed to plunging in the ocean every day for the month of Jan.
It was a scary thing to commit to, because I didn’t know how I could achieve it. I travel around the city predominantly by bike, and I neither live nor work super close to the beach. I’m in the process of building a business and I had no idea bow I would fit the trip to the beach, a swim, the trip back to wherever I was that day and the time to get warm again into my busy schedule.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for a whole month. That it would prove to be too difficult and that having made a big deal about it on social media I would fail and have to deal with the shame of not completing what I started.
But I was also excited. What magic would come from this step into the unknown. As I headed to the beach that day, I recorded a Facebook live announcing the challenge, and at that time I anticipated a major struggle that might have some health benefits. Maybe some of my long term, niggling injuries would sort themselves out. Maybe I’d have more energy. Who knows.
The main reason, however, that it was important for me to commit to this ride, to taking the first step of going and getting in the sea that day, was because it was an opportunity to practice what I preach.
I work with my clients to help them realise impossible dreams. To help them navigate the unknown and create things that don’t exist, that there is no blueprint for.
I encourage them to take the first step, and help them to understand that the first step always reveals the second.
So I set off for the beach and went public. I was going in the ocean every day in January, because my intuition told me so.
Like any real adventure, this month of ocean dips has been a magical experience, but it has definitely taken it out of me. There have been highs and lows, lessons aplenty, and so much to take away from the experience.
One of the indicators of a good adventure is that at the end of it, the last thing you want to do is go on an adventure. Curtis and I talk about this with Al Benson in episode XX of our podcast, The Adventure Effect Live. One thing I can tell you for certain is that right now, as I write this on Feb 2nd, I have virtually no intention of trekking to the ocean for a plunge anytime soon.
Am I done with cold dips? No way. But I do need some time to integrate and allow the dust to settle.
Today, I want to reflect on the magic that arose from my 3 step plan for achieving this goal.
Step 1: make a decision and commit
Step 2: take the next step
Step 3: repeat every day
“The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, and can only be completed by consistently and repeatedly taking another single step.”
Step 1: Commitment
My good friend Tobias Hofmeister once told me that “synchronicity happens the moment a decision is made”. If you want to watch him talk about it you can do so HERE.
The first thing that happened when I committed to the decision, and posted that video on Jan 2nd, was a huge rally of support from my friends and clients. People were inspired to action simply by hearing that I was planning to do something they couldn’t understand.
I began writing this series of articles, entitled ‘“Lessons from the cold”, and for the first few days, I had something new to say every day about my experience and how it was shaping my understanding of resistance, fear, and forcing the mind to do something it doesn’t want to do.
People started telling me they were taking cold showers, that they had started projects they had been sitting on.
All of this put fuel on my fire and gave ME inspiration to show up again on the 3rd, and the 4th.
I started reconnecting with old friends and clients and colleagues that I hadn’t spoken to for years in some cases. People who were inspired to connect because they saw an article or a live video I posted.
I started to get comfortable talking live on camera, which meant that when, twice over the course of the month, I was interviewed out of the blue for CBC and Novus TV, I was coherent, clear and confident because of the practice I had had talking to you lovely people while freezing my nuts off.
I could go on and on about this, but the first step in the completion of this challenge was the decision to just do it. The decision to be open to magic and trust that the universe would conspire with me to make it happen.
Step 2: take the next step
I’ve talked about this a lot, but I can’t stress it enough. Our goals are like mountain peaks. It’s the reason we have a picture of someone looking up at the Matterhorn as our homepage image.
From the valley floor, we see the majestic heights we want to get to, we can imagine somewhat what it is like to stand on the top of that mountain, but from where we stand, it seems impossible. There is no path to the top. The sides of the mountain look vertical from here and there is dense jungle to get through before we even get to the bottom of the mountain.
But here’s the thing. Right now, standing on the other side of the valley we don’t need to know what the path is. Literally the only thing we have any power over is whether we take one step towards our destination, or we don’t.
What if the step is in the wrong direction? What if it leads me to a cliff edge or a dead end? These are questions that keep us paralysed. That kept me paralysed from committing to my ocean challenge.
The truth is that we are always making forward progress, even if we reach a dead end and have to retrace our steps. Because every decision we make, every step we take, teaches us something. We grow at every single stage, whether that growth is a step closer to where we want to be, or a deeper understanding of what won’t get us there.
And on that note, the first step will always reveal the second. The results of ANY action we take provide data, and the more data we have, the clearer the path becomes. As we get closer to the mountain, sometimes it becomes completely obscured from view, by the forest and the surrounding hills, but every time it pokes its head over the horizon, we see a bit more detail. We are able to start plotting a route to the top, with better and better accuracy.
And all we have to do is put one foot in front of the other, and look up every now and then to get the bigger picture.
Which brings me to:
Step 3: Repeat every day
The key to achieving the impossible is not figuring out what the one giant leap from her to there is. It is tiny steps, consistently over time. The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, as the saying goes. But we need to add to this.
The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, and can only be completed by consistently and repeatedly taking another single step.
Sure, we need to rest, to eat, to sleep, and all that important stuff. But consistency in taking tiny steps (an email to someone who may have information, attending a networking event where subject experts hang out, posting a video about what you are up to and what you need) is the magic formula.
People like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs didn’t achieve the things they did by having an amazing idea one day, and the next they were famous. They had ideas, they took action, they failed repeatedly but took lessons from those failures, and every day, they took what appeared to them to be the next step.
And the beautiful thing is that your intuition, your inner wisdom, your higher self, knows exactly what to do. And it will tell you, if you create the space for its quiet voice to be heard.
This is where meditation, yoga, plant medicine, coaching, therapy, self inquiry all come in. In the quiet moments where our thinking shuts down (in the shower or while driving are great examples) this is when we have flashes of inspiration.
It is so easy to discard this precious information as fanciful, or impossible, or whatever. But what happens if you follow that hunch, with one tiny step?