درسنامه اصلی

Kon-Tiki – Coaching Lesson

Hi, welcome to this month’s coaching lesson. Let’s talk about Kon-Tiki and the idea is that, perhaps, that film might inspire. So, as always, we want to relate this conversation and this topic to our lives somewhat. Y’know, it’s great to listen to a conversation about this incredible journey and even watch a movie about it, but part of this program involves taking useful ideas and applying them to our own lives, and certainly in the coaching lesson, that’s exactly what we want to focus on.

I think we can all agree that we all dream, we all have dreams, or at least we all did have dreams, at some point in our life we’ve all dreamed of some kind of adventure or some kind of great goal, something big, something inspiring, maybe something small. But we all have these kind of dreams. Now, it’s also true that in our lives, in our normal lives, our daily lives, that sometimes we get bored.

Almost everyone in the world has these moments in life where we get bored. Some people get bored more often or more easily, such as me, and others, not so much. But we can all get bored with life at times. And yet we also know that the unknown for most of us is frightening. Fear of the unknown is one of the big fears in general of human beings.

And it makes sense, if we think about why this might be so, we can think back to our evolutionary history and realize that, y’know, 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, that the unknown could be dangerous. It was safer for us to have a known environment. On the other hand, we also need some variety and we’ll talk more about that.

So we know that the unknown is scary but the unknown can also be exciting, right? We can find it exciting when we don’t know what’s going to happen next, when we’re not sure about the situation, about our lives, about what’s going to happen. We can have this mixture of fear and excitement. I experienced this myself, actually I’ve experienced this many times, but one time in particular comes to mind and that’s when I was traveling in Thailand during some protests, rather large protests.

The protestors called themselves the Red Shirts because they all wore the color red. They had different kinds of protestors in Thailand and they typically wear different colors. So at the time I was traveling, the Red Shirts were having a big protest. And the police and the army were kind of surrounding them and it was this big confrontation. The Red Shirts were confronting the police, the police were confronting the Red Shirts.

Now on one hand, this was a potentially frightening situation because it was unknown. Nobody knew what was going to happen. But there I was in Bangkok with half the city filled with protestors and the other half of the city filled with police and army. And I have to admit, I was curious. I had lived in Thailand for a long time and I knew that it was essentially safe. So I went out and I started walking around.

I walked through the police and the army areas and then I went into the protestor areas. I wanted to see for myself what the real situation was because I knew that the news would not give the real situation. The news is usually propaganda for someone. So I didn’t trust, so I wanted to see for myself. What were these protestors like and what was the situation on the police side.

And I found both sides actually to be very friendly. Everyone treated me very kindly and was very nice to me. So I stayed and I hung out in the protestor area until it started getting dark. And when that happened, suddenly the army moved in. They started pressing in to remove the protestors. And when they did that, the protestors started fighting. They started throwing rocks and some believe that they even had guns and were shooting.

And so I was right in the middle of all that and when that happened then the police started throwing tear gas and dropping tear gas onto the protestors, and me because I was with the protestors at the time.

Then, being insanely curious, I moved right up to the very front where the protestors and the police were fighting each other. And at one point, the police charged forward with their batons, those kind of sticks, and their shields.

And I was right there and I had to jump to the side as a policeman ran by me chasing some of the protestors and the protestors were throwing rocks and things at them. It was crazy. It was super frightening at the time, but also kind of exciting. I was both thrilled and scared. So I hung around and observed more of what was happening and then finally I left and went home.

It was a good thing that I left and went home because it turned out that later that there were some shootings and a few protestors got…a few of the protestors got killed and the police and army claimed that the protestors also had people with guns shooting at them. I didn’t see any of that but I’m glad that I left before any of that happened.

So this was quite an intense experience. And I’m not…I’m certainly not recommending that you go and do something like that. But it was an interesting experience and as I look back on it, mostly what I have is a feeling of excitement. It now seems like a very thrilling, exciting experience to me, now that it’s in the past. Now when it was happening there was a lot more fear involved as well.

So what does this have to do with our topic, Kon-Tiki? Well, I think the general idea here is the unknown, and not only the unknown but risk and danger. Y’know, when I think about that movie and about, especially, the real-life people who made the journey. Y’know, they created this little raft and they just sailed, y’know, into the ocean with no, almost no control over their raft. It was an extremely dangerous thing.

They all knew that they could die. They were taking an extreme risk. And they believed that the adventure and the reward was worth the risk. And they had a very intense experience there. There were several moments when they thought, yes, indeed, they would be lost; that they probably would die. But then in fact they made it. And because they made it of course they became somewhat famous, certainly in their own countries, at that time. And somebody made a movie about them.

Modern life nowadays can feel very predictable. That level of adventure just is not as present anymore.

Y’know, we’ve explored most of the world now and I think modern people nowadays tend to be less tolerant of risk. They’re more scared of risk. And on one hand, this is good. I mean on one hand we have a safer world.

On the other hand, I think we’ve missed something, because in life, y’know, we discussed at the beginning of this video that we need certainty. And we can even imagine, y’know, why we evolved this way, to need a certain amount of certainty and predictability in our lives, because it was safer. It kept us alive.

But we can also imagine why we evolved to adapt to danger, because danger thousands of years ago was constant also for human beings. There was always the potential that a lion or tiger could attack us or that some other animal could attack us or that something could happen. And so we evolved to be sort of ready for danger and to deal with risk. And that’s why we have this kind of paradox.

A paradox is two seeming opposites that are both true at the same time. And the paradox here is that we need certainty and predictability and we also need variety and the unknown and risk. We need both to feel psychologically awake and alive and healthy. I think that in modern life we tend to emphasize the predictability and the certainty and we sometimes lose sight of our need for the uncertainty, the unpredictability, the unknown and even danger.

But we need both. We need some balance of both and every individual is a little different. Some people need a lot of certainty in their life and they’re scared of risk but even they need some. Because if we get too much certainty, too much predictability, life becomes kind of dead, too predictable is boring. Not only boring, but it sort of dulls our senses, dulls our mind.

Y’know, one thing I noticed during that moment in Bangkok where the police were charging and all the fighting is happening, was that my senses and my mind were sharp and fast, right? Because of the danger, of course, there’s this adrenaline that would come into my body. My adrenal glands were releasing that chemical. And when that happened, y’know, my mind just got really fast. I could see and hear things very, very quickly. I noticed things in incredible detail. And I felt extremely alive in that moment.

And that hints at, I think that experience hints at this need for danger in our lives, too. I’m not saying go risk your life and do stupid things, but clearly, as human beings, we evolved in an environment that was dangerous and risky.

And to a certain extent we need some of that to feel fully alive, to fully use our potential, to activate our potential because when the unknown comes, when surprises are coming and we don’t know what’s going to happen, especially if we perceive some possible loss or danger, all of our senses wake up. And we do indeed feel extremely alive and our minds work faster and better and our bodies do, too. And that’s why if we lack that completely, if we totally remove that from our lives, danger and risk and the unknown, life can feel very flat and dull.

Now, of course, on the other hand if we have too much of that, if life becomes too unpredictable, too risky, too dangerous, then we become completely stressed out. And we can become burned out and exhausted if we’re constantly worried and nervous all the time. So again, as always with life, we need this balance and we in fact need both elements and we have to find our own balance with these.

Sometimes in life maybe we need a little more predictability and we want that. And other times in life we need a jolt of risk.

There’s a basic saying in English, “No risk no reward.” And in many ways this is true that in order to have a bigger success in life, in order to do something that you have never done before that most others are not doing, in order to achieve some greater level of success, we usually need to take a risk. In other words, nothing certain, and if you try to succeed you always then have the risk, the possibility of instead failing, so the ability to tolerate risk is very important in order to achieve success, success with anything.

I mean even with just English, just by learning English and by attempting to communicate in English, you take a risk. You take the risk that you will make a mistake with grammar, that you’ll make a mistake with pronunciation, that the other person will not understand you. There’s even a small risk that the other person will laugh at you or become very impatient with you. In truth, that’s a very small risk.

But it’s a risk and it’s certainly a psychological risk that we can all imagine. Oh, fuck, what if I make a mistake, oh…I’ll be criticized. And in school, of course, this risk can seem much bigger than it really is in normal life. The point is that by attempting to do something new, by attempting to communicate in English and to improve your English, you are taking a certain amount of psychological risk, the risk of rejection, the risk of failure.

It’s true in all aspects of life. Financially and in business, you can’t have a big gain, you can’t have a success in business without risking. I mean if there was…if you could do that then everyone would be doing it. If there was some sure guaranteed way to be successful in business, then everyone would do it.

But there’s not. There’s always a risk.

There’s always a risk that if you invest a certain amount of money in a business, in a stock, in anything, that you might actually instead lose money. It’s always there. Some risks are better than others. Some investments have a better chance of success than others, but there’s no 100% guarantee. There’s always an element of risk.

The key thing is to choose your risks wisely, not to avoid risk, not to avoid all danger because then we die inside if we try to eliminate it completely. That’s not the way to think. I think a lot of modern folks now, modern people, try to completely eliminate risk from their lives out of fear. But that’s a way towards very boring, kind of half-life, where you feel kind of half-dead.

The wiser approach is to accept that risk is inevitable and the fact that we need it, psychologically we need it. And so instead to choose risks wisely. On one hand, you can choose risks in terms of reward.

You can look at the possible reward and measure it against the risk and then choose the ones that seem to have the best ratio.

But…that’s a good approach by the way for business, but sometimes we just want to choose risks more for how enjoyable they’ll be because indeed we are programmed to enjoy risk at some level. That’s why we get excited if we go and do something like white-water rafting, for example, something I really enjoy. I love doing that.

The risk is quite small, it’s actually a quite safe sport. But there’s a lot happening, there’s always the chance you’re going to be knocked out of the boat into the cold water. It’s happened to me a few times.

You never quite know and there’s always the small possibility you could drown. It’s a small possibility but it’s there.

And so in the moment of going down the river and the big waves splashing and all of that, we feel thrilled and excited and alive because we do feel this element of danger and risk. And in this case, I think the feeling of risk, the perception of risk is actually bigger than the reality. It’s actually not so risky if you have a helmet on and you’re wearing your life jacket. But still it feels thrilling. Some people like jumping out of airplanes with parachutes on. That’s not my risk. I don’t like that but some people like it. Some people like rock climbing.

Or some people just prefer other kinds of risks. Indeed, like we have social risks as well, going up to people that you don’t know and chatting with them and starting up conversations and talking. I’m not so great about that one. But I know other people who do that very often and they get a kind of thrill and excitement from connecting with, meeting new people like that. It’s a kind of risk, too, a social risk.

So your homework, your action for this month is to take some risks, to introduce more risk into your life, intelligent risks. And you have to find your own balance, as I said. Some people are thrill seekers and they need lots and lots of that in their life and others need more certainty and just a little bit of risk.

Whatever your level, what I would like you to do this month is to just push it a little bit.

Take some new risks, some intelligent risks. Find that tolerance level for you and do something that makes you feel kind of scared and alive at the same time, that gives you a little bit of an element of danger, a little bit of a jolt of excitement, a little bit of the fear of the unknown. It could be social, it could be something physical like white-water rafting. It could be anything.

Give it a try. Push yourself a little bit outside of that comfort zone and then see how you feel. You may feel a mix of excitement and fear while it’s happening. But I imagine that when you’re done with it you’re going to feel more alive, more vibrant, more awake and that is the point. That’s what the story of Kon-Tiki tells me, says to me.

It says to me that there are risks in life worth taking and that taking them can be very rewarding.

Everyone has to decide that on their own. I encourage you to take a little step in that direction and do something a little risky. Do something more uncomfortable, something a little dangerous, socially dangerous or financially dangerous. Don’t risk all of your money in one investment, of course not. Take some little risks and see how you feel, see how that makes you feel.

Alright, as always, I look forward to hearing about your experiences on our social site, on our forums. So get on there. Tell us about your experience with taking new risks. I’ll see you there. Have a great day.

Bye for now.