…would I want to do that?
That’s the question I asked myself as Bob gestured excitedly towards this boulder in the middle of the surf, saying I could swim there.
I had been running around with my dog on the beach when Bob noted I was wearing jeans on a balmy, 72 degree (22 C) day. Why?
“Because it’s cold!” I replied. I’m always cold.
“Oh, you’re a cold person – I know how to take care of that!” he replied.
That’s because Bob is a teacher of ocean swimming. And the ocean is cold!
But before I knew it, Bob had launched into a speech about ocean swimming. His passion made him seem a little crazy – aren’t we all? – but likeable.
“My ocean swimming classes have three levels…”
“You can see the ocean life just under the surface!”
“There’s a special body suit you can wear.”
“It’s great exercise!””
But to be honest… I was really stuck on the cold thing. And learning how to do the butterfly stroke in the ocean just didn’t really set my imagination on fire.
Bob named a lot of functional benefits, but I think what he and his students are really after are the emotional – and possibly even spiritual – benefits.
Like the magic of being in the ocean and connected to a whole other world on our Earth… one which is there all the time just under the surface.
Bob talks a lot about the “what” – ocean swimming – and not nearly enough about why – why I should push beyond my fear of being cold and jump in.
It’s exactly what coaches and other experts do.
Gosh, they LOVE to talk about coaching, or business planning, or nutrition plans or exercises, and spend very little time telling anyone WHY we would want to do it.
I’m not down on coaching. I’ve had fabulous experiences with my coaches, and I talk about it often.
But I don’t have any more interest in coaching, per se, than I do in ocean swimming. I was simply interested in making my day-to-day life look more like the life I’d been dreaming of.
And my coach took me on a hard journey! Transitioning yourself to a new version of you is not easy. It was a lot of water up the nose and cold and jellyfish stings and scary boats and fears of getting bitten by something.
Oh wait, that’s ocean swimming. ;)
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