Embrace the suck!

By the way, I believe, ‘embrace the suck’ applies to every aspect of a life well lived and we will talk a lot about ‘embrace the suck’ in my Explorer series.

Embracing the suck – being able to persevere, endure through the hard stuff, just ‘get on with it’ in the face of whatever live brings – is a critical element of living my life.  Nothing ever goes 100% the way you thought it would – in that variation is the power and the rhythm and the essence of life.  It’s where the good stuff lives.

In the context of Offshore Yacht Racing, it is something you have to be prepared to do, potentially, multiple times during a race.

My colleague and friend Barry and I talk about the concept of ‘embrace the suck’ quite a bit.  It’s become a bit of a shorthand we share when we are faced with doing challenging stuff at work.

Barry’s previous experience in ‘embracing the suck’ comes from his time in the military leading men into harm’s way in some of the most challenging of conditions – weather, complexity of the mission, the risk profile of the mission.  This is the extreme edge of ‘embrace the suck’.

What we do at work is nowhere near that level – but the concept still applies.  How do you take adversity, challenge, perseverance and ‘the need to get through’ and ball it all up into something you just go and ‘do’?  That’s ‘embrace the suck’.

Offshore ocean racing can have elements of embrace the suck that can be life-threatening, not to the level of Barry and his men in combat, but you are putting your life at risk when you sign up for offshore yacht racing.

So, there are levels of ‘embrace the suck’.  At the outer edge of ‘embrace the suck’, when there is a real element of danger and fear that have to be loaded on your shoulders, this is where transformation happens.  In this transformation is where I find the lifeblood of living.

When the suck gets bad, the adventurer, finds another gear.  That suck, and the need to find another gear, is a HUGE part of the appeal for me in offshore racing.

You can feel it when things are starting to get rough.  Weather.  The sea.  Adversity starts to set in.  It starts to build, and I feel the fear and uncertainty.  You clip your tether on your deck vest to a lifeline on the boat — and then you just get on with it.

Maybe it’s storming or the wind has suddenly risen or we’ve had something go wrong on the boat.  I just lock down my mind and focus on the moment.  Focus on whatever I need to do to be present and be part of the solution.

This is the element Barry and I talk about a lot.  Digging in and digging down to harness the power needed to just ‘get on with it’.

When you are offshore racing and it becomes time to embrace the suck, there is nothing else in the world but the task at hand.  No work thing or social media or problem you’ve been stewing over — just clean, clear focus.  That locked down mentality can be happening in the middle of adversity and misery.  It is all consuming, and when you come out the other side, for me, it’s also incredibly cathartic.

Getting to the other side of the suck is when I feel my batteries for life starting to take on a full charge.  It gives me the ability to dial back into my daily life and acts as a pivot for how I think about daily life – work and personal.  I can be staring down a challenge or a problem and I afford myself the perspective to say ‘this isn’t nearly as bad as that last suck’.  That pivot makes me so much more effective.

For me, I think a big part of having the physical and mental capacity to find another gear and get on with whatever is happening in the suck is also because I’ve got miles on the body and time on the clock.

This is what RestlessUrban is all about for me.  Life is just now starting to get really interesting.  We have the experience and the fortitude to wring every bit of life out of anything that comes our way.  What brings you that reset?  Is there more to life for you that you need to reach out and grab — to ‘embrace the suck’ — to get to your most fully charged self?