A Mindset of Adventure is a Portal to Success

A Mindset of Adventure is a Portal to Success

I am heading out on a month-long adventure racing sailing yachts in the Caribbean. I’m excited and nervous. While I have done a lot of sailboat racing over the decades, this is new. 

The boats are bigger and more complicated, the team is unfamiliar, and the environment is new to me. (Details about the sailing adventure at the bottom of the blog)

The enticing thing about adventures is the uncertainty about what the experience will be like.

While I have hopes and expectations of excitement and exhilaration, the reality could be very different. There is a lot that can go wrong on a sailboat racing around the rocky islands of the Caribbean in heavy wind and exposed seas.

But enough about me.  

What’s cool about an adventure is the mindset that accompanies it. Taking chances, embracing risk, accepting failure, and persevering to overcome obstacles are essential for any successful adventure. 

This same mindset will also ensure your business success.  

If we think about the development of our business and serving our clients as an adventure, we can shift our perspective and build the necessary mindset, strengths, and skills. 

Let’s look at some of these. 

Adventurers are always in action.   While they spend time reflecting and making decisions, they act on those decisions quickly and decisively. They do not sit on the sidelines stuck in the resistance created by discomfort and fear. Successful REALTORS® overcome the resistance they feel to do the uncomfortable work of business development and negotiating with and on behalf of clients. They do the actions. They don’t just think about them.

Adventurers are passionate and obsessed with their goals.  Their goals are clear, well defined, and founded in deep personal meaning. There will be obstacles to overcome, and goals that are muddled, vague, or come from an outside influence, won’t have the power behind them necessary to overcome these inevitable challenges.

Obsession with a goal feels like a belly full of fire.  

Adventurers gather quality information.  For the sailing adventure, I’ve been studying the weather, the currents, the boat details, and reaching out to sailors who have been successful in these waters to get as much local information as possible. This will continue up to and during the race. Successful REALTORS® are obsessed with gathering the pertinent information that their clients need to make good decisions.   

Adventurers are mentally tough.   In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth makes the case that perseverance is one of the most significant predictors of long-term success. There are times of terrible discomfort in sailboat races, both physically and emotionally. Sometimes quite extreme and doing whatever it takes to get through these challenges is essential for success. Building and growing your business will have many painful challenges, and getting through these is the right of passage to get to the top. A client shared her recent Peloton experience with me and how it is helping her in these challenging times. She’s athletic and was describing a 45-minute workout at max output, “I almost died, and then I felt better.” This is grit!

Adventurers dance with the tension between being confident and being humble.  They believe in their own resourcefulness, strengths, and skills while simultaneously operating within their reality. You can’t pretend to know how to sail a race boat, climb a mountain, or hang glide.

REALTORS® who pretend to know what they are doing will struggle every step of the way because mediocre never earns a place in the world of social virility.  

Adventurers trust their intuition.  The world throws complex challenges at us, whether we are testing the wilderness or building something remarkable, and the untapped potential of intuition is a significant source of important information. While sailing the open ocean, I often sense a rogue wave or some other threat, and by trusting my intuition, I can avoid the danger. In business, it’s essential to be in tune with your intuition to avoid legal traps, time wasters, energy vampires, and other risks to your success.  

Adventurers are ethical.  Ethics is more than just right and wrong. It’s also about taking responsibility to be highly skilled at what you do, accepting the inherent risk in your actions, facing the consequences, being deeply committed to your values, and learning from every experience.  

Adventurers celebrate their achievements. While they are obsessed with their big goal, successful adventurers and successful businesspeople appreciate the bits of joy and wonder along the way. This curiosity about what will happen, including the challenges, gives them access to a greater range of potential solutions. 

You don’t need to hang off the side of a mountain or forge a raging river to benefit from an adventure mindset. This mindset can help you build the courage, perseverance, and resourcefulness to achieve anything you desire.

More About the Sailing Races.

My adventure begins with navigating travel. Between COVID tests, delayed and canceled flights, and the ever-changing entrance requirements to foreign countries, I imagine an adventure mindset will be beneficial right from the beginning.

I arrive in Antigua to prepare and practice for The Caribbean 600, which begins on February 21st. This is a classic long-distance sailing race of 600 miles around the beautiful Caribbean Islands. Strong winds, unpredictable currents, and rocky shoals make for challenging navigation. We are expecting 80 boats 600 competitors from over 30 countries. I am joining a group of intrepid adventurers, many of who have been sailing the oceans for many months onboard Panacea X – a Salona 45. You can learn more about the race here.  

I then change boats and join a different crew for the delivery of Il Mostro, a Volvo 70, from Antigua to St. Maarten. Once there, we will train for several days before the Heineken Regatta, which is another, not to be missed, bucked list sailing race. While The Heineken Regatta is known for its competitive racing, it’s also known for the party. With COVID, I expect that this aspect of the regatta will be significantly diminished. Racing in this regatta against some of the best and fastest yachts in the world is a lifelong dream for me.   

Here are some links if you feel like following me:

 February 16th – 25th – Panacea X – Facebook Page 

February 26th – March 8th – Il Mostro – Atlas Ocean Racing Facebook Page

Both Facebook pages will supply you with tracking information to follow the races when available.

Here is a video of the team preparing Il Mostro for the delivery to the Caribbean for the racing season.