What’s your superpower?
“Lucky you. Not everyone gets that lucky!” people often write in the comments—obviously referring to the yacht someone gave us, the attentive guidance “from above,” and the fact that we were born into a family of oligarchs ( just in case you’re wondering: none of that is true ).
Yes, not everyone gets that lucky. And now I’ll tell you how to become one of those “lucky ones.” Save this life hack and read it whenever you feel yourself deflating.
A lucky person can make themselves spend the first five minutes doing something they don’t want to do
It’s not true that if you’re doing what you love, your eyes sparkle around the clock. Even the thing you love most can make you so lazy you feel sick. The gurus of spectacular success say that your life’s work charges you up first thing in the morning. Hurls you out of bed and spurs you into action.
So where are you supposed to run if you wake up in a so-so mood? After a quick stocktake of your head and body, you gloomily conclude: if your only dream this morning is to hibernate in woolly socks in front of the TV, then what does that make you? That’s right—a loser.
Tristan da Cunha
Good news
It’s not that bad. Personally, I know of only one reliable combination that had me bursting with energy and feeling fully rested at five in the morning, ten times out of ten. Write down the ingredients:
It’s light by 7 a.m.,
It’s between +20 and +23 around your blankets,
and...
you’ve been a raw foodist for at least a couple of weeks :).
If that combination left you dumbfounded, put a plus sign in the comments and I’ll tell you about the time I was a raw foodist.
Everything else (apart from the combination described above) works for me with varying degrees of success. I noticed this last winter in Tierra del Fuego , when there were 30 centimetres of snow on deck, the solar panels had to be swept clear or they would collapse, and condensation was streaming down the walls... (we wrote about it, remember?).
And there you are, lucky you, waking up at seven; it’s dark until ten, it’s +10 in the yaranga, and the work you love—an expedition most people can only dream of—does absolutely nothing to kick you out from under the blankets.
You don’t feel like making yourself happy at all. Writing a book, sewing a sail, making cocoa for your beloved family’s breakfast, repairing the engine yet again... You don’t feel like doing any of it.
And even the legendary Cape Horn , which you’ve rounded four times, looming alone as it tears through the fog just 50 miles to the south, speaks to you not of daring dreams but only of the fact that there will be no warmth or light until Africa .
Or everything really goes dark when “we’re setting off tomorrow,” and you have to get up, as our captain likes to do, at three in the morning at the alarm. At moments like that, once again you dream of cosy slippers in front of the TV in our Gingerbread House :).
Another tale for the same collection—about feeling too lazy to do what you love—comes from our former life, when we used to race from Novosibirsk to Sheregesh every weekend. After lights-out at two in the morning, we had to get up at seven to make it there when the ski lifts opened. And for all 30 snowy weeks of the year, I prayed that our guys—the captain and his friends—would lose their nerve and decide to go later instead of making opening time. But the guys were unyielding. True “lucky ones,” capable of getting their backsides off the sofa. Which meant I had to drag myself to the mountain through the blizzard and my tears too.
Only to fly downhill afterwards, singing with happiness at every turn. Because flying down a mountain through powder on a snowboard is seriously wonderful.
And now—the second life hack in the “I’m lucky” concept
A lucky person goes where it’s frightening
And don’t believe they enjoy it. It freaks them out. Clammy fear locks up everything inside; the lump in their throat makes them feel sick. They want their mum to pick them up and make all of this stop. Because they’re scared.
That was all I felt throughout my first season at sea. We started in winter, and by spring we had crossed the Mediterranean from west to east. By the end of the journey, our young sailor had turned three. It was just as frightening when we decided to head for Cape Horn instead of New Zealand or an atoll on the equator.
Winter in Tierra del Fuego
Who wants to join us lucky ones? Make a note in the margin:
A “lucky person” isn’t someone born brave and motivated in an oligarch’s golden cradle, raring to go from half past five in the morning. A “lucky person” is someone who cries but does it anyway; who clenches their teeth to stop them chattering with terror; or who feels lazy but pushes on. Someone who is afraid but looks for a way to save their mind from stress and their body from death. All you have to do is stick it out for five minutes; then you’ll get into the swing of it.
And then your reward is a life unlike everyone else’s. Freedom and wind in your sails, features on Channel One (and on the second channel— also Channel One :)), victories at national awards , concerts in stadiums and doctoral dissertations, the Arctic Circle and the summit of business success. And the life of your dreams.
On the 37th parallel
Do you know what the 2014 version of me desperately lacked when we were starting out?
Even one post about how terrifying it is to start a life on the ocean when you have children. About how fear keeps you from breathing calmly, and how to cope with it if you refuse to admit defeat. And nowhere—do you understand, nowhere—on the internet or in private conversations did I come across a single word saying that I wasn’t the only fool and weakling, that someone else was just as scared.
How much a story like that would have helped me!
I’m that very “lucky one” who found a way to cope with fear, seasickness, learning to work as a team, and a sense of utter loneliness. The one who overcame psychosomatic illnesses and nevertheless set out to sail around the world with her children. We have a whole arsenal of these stories for every possible situation. And now we can help those who are struggling too.
Do you ever need help? Are you afraid of change? What gets in the way of your dream most of all? Shall we talk?
Lady Mary off the Antarctic continent