Be an [athlete]
I went to Acadia National Park a few weeks ago. I am an outdoorsy person, and Acadia has always been a place I wanted to get to and explore.
Acadia is beautiful and rugged. I hiked about 30 miles over the course of my five days there. Acadia is also very wet. It makes sense with being on the Atlantic coast and with many lakes, ponds, and creeks. Many trails traverse through wet areas, and boardwalks have been built to elevate hikers above the water and mud. Presumably, this is also to protect the wet microclimates within Acadia. However, we still want to be able to explore. Using the term boardwalk to describe the elevated wooden sections of trails is an overstatement. They are walkways made out of boards but are still very primitive. The boardwalks are uneven and without railings. These are not what is typically thought of as a boardwalk in a touristy and high trafficked area. Acadia gets 4 million visitors, so the quasi-boardwalks on some trails have an essential role.
The boardwalks at Acadia naturally become wet too. The boards soak about the water and become very slippery. Some of them are more like sliding on than walking on. The combination of unevenness, instability, and slickness makes some boardwalks challenging. In some cases, you can see footprints where people abandoned the boardwalks to walk in the more predictable and stable mud. This defeats the purpose of the boardwalks, but I also empathized with the hikers who had left the boardwalks in certain places.
One trail was predominantly a challenging boardwalk out to Mary Lake from the Bubbles trail. The boards were loose, worn, and sometimes had gaps between them. I almost slipped and fell several times as I started to make my way on this trail and the boardwalks. Realizing I was likely to fall, I had to take a different approach to navigate the boardwalk. I had to transition from being a hiker to being an athlete.
Hiking is repetitive, and I wouldn’t say you need to be an athlete. Being athletic helps with endurance, pace, comfort, etc. when hiking, but as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other on a trail, you are a hiker. The boardwalks at Acadia, especially the one to Mary Lake, called for being more than a hiker. They called for being an athlete. I had to change my mindset and perspective about what I was doing to handle the boardwalks better. As I started a new boardwalk section, I learned to stop and remind myself to be an athlete. This meant being lighter on my feet, more balanced, and more flexible. These are not the thoughts you must tell yourself when hiking. But boardwalks called for being something different. They called for being an athlete rather than a hiker. Once I could slow down and shift my perspective from being a hiker to an athlete, the boardwalks became easier and more enjoyable to cross. I knew that being an athlete was different than being a hiker. Still, when I consciously changed my perspective, I could make the mental and physical change from being a hiker to being an athlete for a more enjoyable and safer experience.
My experience of being an athlete and not just a hiker during my time at Acadia caused me to recognize there are many times in our lives when we are operating as one thing, with one perspective, when we need to perform as something else. The hiker-to-athlete shift is more straightforward than other shifts we need to make, but it seemed more complex at the time. I had to keep reminding myself to be an athlete when a loose board would give way, or I hit a particularly slippery spot. We must be aware enough to transition our perspective and resulting mental, physical and emotional actions to something different. And most of these transitions are more consequential than from a hiker to an athlete.
Mothers and fathers must transition from being a parent to being a spouse. Being a parent is different from being a spouse. Students have to transition from learning about one subject to another. Being a mathematician is different from being a writer. Being a friend is different from being a lover. We are asked to do different things, but we often do them without accounting for any transition in mindset or action to do them differently and better. It may be an athlete mantra at Acadia. At the same time, hiking is a mantra that anyone can use to transition to a better performance state. Be a/an [insert the appropriate perspective]. I have learned a powerful tool.
Try it out. When you have to switch context from one thing to another, or you are struggling with something new, slow yourself down and say to yourself be a/an [whatever it is, you need to be that period]. Being a cook if you don’t cook regularly can help you become a better cook. Being an artist can help you become a better artist. Being a leader can help you become a better leader. Telling ourselves to be something is the first step in being that thing. You won’t go from being unable to make a hard-boiled egg to a Michelin-star chef, but you will be better. Telling yourself to be something causes your mind and body to process what it means to be that thing. In my experience at Acadia and when I have used the technique since, it has been reinforced that if you tell yourself to be something, your mind and body can’t help but act more like that.
Positive self-talk isn’t an epiphany. What is lacking for many people, including myself, is the ability to slow down and have the consciousness to change our mindset and actions to allow us to perform better situationally. All of us have different dimensions and experiences in our personal and professional lives that require us to perform differently and better. I referenced students above; what about founders of companies? One minute they have to be a recruiter, the next a salesperson, the next an investor pitcher, and so on. If a founder goes into each of these situations with the same mindset and actions, they aren’t likely to perform as well as they would like. This is true for everyone in every profession, which is why white space is so important.
While hiking in Acadia, I had the time to reset my perspective to be an athlete when needed. For many of us, our daily work and personal lives need to afford this luxury of space and time to reset our perspective. Still, we need to make the time and space if we want to perform at our best. To shift and adopt a different perspective to better perform a task, to have an improved interaction, or to learn something new, we need time to adjust to the new perspective. Endless meetings, errands, and content consumption don’t afford the time and space to reset our perspectives. Set aside the time to allow yourself to reset and adopt a new perspective. Few of us can transition from one perspective to another in a moment of need without time to reset. Being an athlete or any other change in perspective can’t take place without your mind, body, and soul taking on the attributes of the new perspective, and this takes time. The kind of time when you are standing at the edge of a boardwalk on a trail in Acadia.
I’m not more of an athlete than I was before Acadia, but now I know that when I need to be, I can call on myself to be more athletic. I also know I can be more of anything I need to when I need to…powerful. Maybe this approach will work for you too.
