Fulfilling
your dreams and learning from your failures can help you overcome a fear of change or the
unknown, adventurer John Amatt says
WHAT HAVE you done lately?
Climbed Everest? Skied to the North Pole? Sailed
solo around the world?
No? Well, don’t feel too badly about
it. You may still qualify as an adventurer. Especially if you’ve had a baby.
"That has to be one of the great adventures
into uncertainty, the unknown, to say nothing of the physical trauma involved," says
John Amatt.
Amatt has turned adventure into his profession.
He’s been up Everest himself, incidentally, but regards that as his second greatest
achievement.
"Lots of people have climbed Everest,"
he says. "You’re only following in someone else’s footsteps. Now to be
first at something…"
He and two other climbers in 1965 blazed a
trail up the 1,500-metre (5,000-foot) Troll Wall in Norway, the world’s highest
vertical rock face.
Almost a mile straight up, like three CN Towers
stacked on top of each other," Amatt says. "I was 20 and it was a real gamble.
It took us 10 days in all to climb this face and if something had gone wrong there was no
one who could help us.
"It was one of those things that people said
simply couldn’t be done. Now it’s regarded as a classic climb and lots of people
have done it. It’s like the four-minute mile. Once the barrier was broken, more and
more runners achieved it.
Amatt, 47, is the founder and president of "a
unique educational and motivational company, dedicated to the development of effective
teamwork and personal peak performance.
Since 1983, the Alberta-based organization has
offered seminars "sharing adventure experiences as a powerful metaphor for reaching
the top in the challenging global environments in which we must now operate."
Amatt, who travels all over North America to
lecture, gives his own experience as an example.
"When I was a youngster growing up in
England, I was extremely shy and introverted.
"My father was a senior bank official and not
only was there never any necessity to take risks, our family was extremely concerned about
public image.
"It wasn’t until I started climbing
mountains that I was able to convert those adventure experiences into self-confidence and
self-esteem.
"Now I can speak without thinking twice about
it to 6,000 people at Radio City Music Hall in New York As a child, I couldn’t speak
to a stranger on the street if he asked me for directions.
The Canadian adventurer has also collaborated with
journalist Alan Hobson on a book, One Step Beyond: Rediscovering the
Adventure Attitude.
In it, members of Amatt’s organization talk
about their experiences and how they can be related to everyday life.
They include John Hughes of Halifax, who sailed
solo around the world and was the first person to deliberately sail around Cape Horn with
a makeshift mast; Mike Beedell of Ottawa, the first person to cross the Northwest Passage
using only wind power; and Sharon Wood of Canmore, Alta. - the first North American woman
to climb Everest.
"Sharon has also had two sons and
I’m sure she regards that as the greater adventure,’ Amatt says. "What she
is saying in the book is that we tend to trivialize daily life. We don’t realize how
difficult it can be and how adventurous."
The book - described as "about achievers, by
achievers, for achievers’’ - is intimidating at first glance. It contains
statements such as: "People with the ‘adventure attitude’ can endure
physical discomforts that border on the unimaginable."
But Amatt says he isn’t aiming to
foster a new breed of super people.
"What we’re doing in the book is
offering some realty amazing stories of courage and endurance and achievement, terrific
real-life adventure stuff. But we’re not suggesting that everyone is a potential
mountain climber or Arctic skier or whatever.
"We’re trying to use the adventure metaphor as
a way of developing a philosophy to overcome fear of change, of unpredictability, of the
unknown. Adventurers by definition seek out the unknown, the uncertain, the unpredictable.
"We’re looking at why they do this, what
they learn from it and how can those lessons be applied in everyday life?
"Adventure isn’t necessarily
hanging from a rope on the side of Mount Everest. Adventure is when you try something new.
"We’re certainly not saying, ‘Go
out and actively seek physical discomfort.’ But if you have a great dream, at least
begin on the path towards fulfilling it. Don’t simply say: ‘Oh, I can’t do
that.’ And don’t let anyone else say you can’t do it, either."
But what if you try and fail?
How do you define failure?" Amatt says.
"If you learn a lesson from a negative experience, you’ve come out stronger than
you went in. So failure is not the right word.
It’s a setback, "if you do the thing twice and
it goes wrong again, you’ve failed because you’ve not learned the lesson the
first time."
Amatt says his organization is expanding rapidly.
"We’re moving into the Pacific Rim
now." he says- "The reason for our success is that people are very fearful about
the future, especially as the turn of the century approaches.
"It’s a psychological thing. It’s
not just a new year, it’s a new millennium and it’s seen as a major step
forward. There’s a lot of concern about a rapidly changing world."
Amatt is optimistic. "We see a lot of people who aren’t
willing to be accountable for their own actions. They want to be bailed out, they’re
always looking for someone else to blame. But once you get over that attitude, human
beings can solve anything they face."
|
