Welcome back to the show. Today, I am gonna do something different and step into my discomfort zone by recording a solo episode around teachings from the river. So it’ll be a multi -part series that I’ll sprinkle in throughout my interview episodes. And I’m gonna start today. So because I’m very passionate and I’ve been using… teachings or lessons from the river in my coaching, in my kayak instruction for over two decades. And they’re so powerful as mental agility strategies to help you move from feeling disempowered to feeling empowered in any area of life. And I think it’s really beautiful and powerful when you cultivate a relationship with the river, with water. And it gives…looking at life through that lens can give you a different perspective. And when we gain a new perspective, it can help get us out of old ways of thinking and habit patterns, maybe break a cycle. And so, yeah, I want to talk about lessons from the river. And the first lesson I want to talk about is navigating rough waters. And by the way, if you are a whitewater kayaker, this will probably resonate pretty deeply.

And if you’re not, it will still resonate because the river is such a beautiful metaphor for life. So I invite you to continue to listen, even if you’re not a kayaker, and see what you get from this.

So when it comes to navigating the flow of a river or the flow of life, the only thing you can control is yourself. You can’t control the river, it’s too powerful. And in life, we can’t control life. We’d like to think we can, but ultimately we can’t control what happens. The only thing we can do is respond to what happens.

And so there are five strategies that we use in whitewater kayaking for river running. They are position, so the position of your boat relative to the flow and in life, like how are you positioning yourself? Are you positioning yourself as full of possibility? Are you positioning yourself as a victim?

Are you positioning yourself as someone who has a lot of agency? Right? Are you positioning yourself as generous? You know, how are you positioning yourself in life? And so with the position in a kayak, depending on what your goal is, the position will look different. And it requires having an understanding, of course, of reading water. And I think of that in life as an awareness.

So we all have blind spots for sure. And the more self -aware we are and the more aware we are of our surroundings and people, our ability to stay present can help us determine our position. And in kayaking, having a deep understanding of the flow allows us to better position our boats for success. The next one is boat angle.

So where are you going and what angle do you have to put your boat at to get there? And it’s not obvious for like, you know, when folks are first learning how to kayak, you think, okay, to cross the current from one eddy to another, just point, you know, on land, we can just look across the street and like walk straight across the street because there’s flow in the river. We have to actually…

place our boat angle facing slightly upstream to be able to maintain or not lose too much ground, right? Because the flow is pushing us. It also helps us also to stay upright, which is always more fun. And you may have, if you’re not a paddler, you may have seen this in animals crossing flow. If you watch ducks or any animal, deer,

swimming across a river, you’ll notice that they go at an angle, like at a diagonal. And so when you angle yourself toward your goal, sometimes it’s not like a direct angle, like from here to there. Sometimes you have to point upstream, sometimes you have to point downstream, sometimes you have to point across or into a feature. And so,

considering your angle is really important. Next is edge control. And so again, in whitewater kayaking, we don’t always wanna keep our boats flat. When we’re crossing current, we either have to lift our upstream edge or our downstream edge. And it’s counterintuitive because we kind of get attached to staying flat at first, right? Before we have an understanding that being on edge can actually be very stable, and especially when crossing currents. Like it takes a minute for our minds to wrap our heads around that. And so with that edge in life as well as how much of that edge do you wanna play, right? Are you willing to push your edge? Because if we try and keep our boat flat and we try and keep ourselves in our comfort zones,

then we end up flipping over. Like if we try and cross an eddy line with our boats flat, we just end up tumping over because the water is always more powerful, even in class one or two water. And so life and the river require us, if we want to navigate powerfully, requires us to play our edge. And then the more confident we get with our edge, then we start maybe even doing

more advanced moves or down river play boating stuff where we’re actually dropping our edge into the current so that the current helps stand us up vertically or do whatever your goal is. so playing that edge on the river and in life is so important. Then we have vision. And in whitewater kayaking,

You know, we talk a lot about don’t look at the obstacle in your way. Look where you want to go because the water flows around obstacles in the river and it never fails. You know, if there’s a rock in the middle of the river and you stare at it, you typically end up on the rock, which is, you know, if you’re trying to avoid it, you don’t want to be there. If you’re trying to do a river running move using the rock, then you’re stoked.

But typically if you’re trying to avoid the rock, but you stare at it or you’re trying to a line or a wave and you stare at it, you’ll end up there. And that’s because where we look is typically where we go. And so it’s important to train ourselves to look where we wanna go and not focus on the obstacles in our way or the challenges in our way. That doesn’t mean ignoring or burying our heads in the sand or being in denial of challenges, obstacles, right? It means acknowledging the obstacle because you want to know, in Whitewater, it’s very important to know where you don’t want to go so that you can folk and acknowledge that. And so then you can focus on looking where you want to go and then positioning your boat, having the right boat angle, deciding on your edge, right? And keeping that vision. And so in life, where are you looking? Where are you putting most of your attention and awareness? Are you really focused on everything that’s wrong in your life? Or are you looking at where you want to go and maybe what’s right? Even if it’s like small increments and celebrating small wins. And then we have momentum. Some people like to say speed.

When I’m teaching kayaking, I don’t like to use the word speed because I think that one of the biggest mistakes I see paddlers make is over paddling, paddling too hard, especially coming in and out of eddies, crossing currents, and it messes them up. If we’re going full bore without considering position and boat angle and edge, we’re gonna flip over, right?

too much emphasis on speed. And when you think of that in life, when we want things to happen too fast or sometimes we jump into things too fast, it can backfire on us or we get disappointed, right, or resigned. And so in whitewater kayaking, same thing though, if you don’t have enough momentum, then you’re at the whim of the current, right? Then the current has more power to

push on your boat, sink your edge, sink your tail, whatever it’s doing because you don’t have enough momentum. So that’s kind of like, again, staying in our comfort zones, not getting enough momentum. And sometimes that means like, we try something once or twice and we don’t get the momentum that we were hoping and then we give up. So small consistent actions over time really make a difference. So it’s not about going super fast, but rather going as fast. And it’s not about going super fast. It’s also not about not going fast enough. It’s about

going as fast or a little bit faster than the current. So matching the current. And again, it takes a deep understanding or presence with the flow. Now, there’s been times in my life where I have gone full -born to something and it’s paid off. So I’m not saying that it’s all black and white, right? Again, what’s your goal? know, sometimes getting moving and going fast is like a way to get moving.

I also think that in our culture, sometimes we think like, that person is successful and like we think they achieve that overnight without realizing that it, you know, they’ve been matching or going a little bit faster than the current, just keeping a consistent pace. You know, and then there’s some times where it’s important to take advantage of opportunities and speed up. And there’s times when it’s important to slow down, right? And rest.

And that’ll be for another episode, talking about how the flow of the river works and how there’s always opportunity to go and to rest. I’ll leave that for another episode. So just to recap, when it comes to navigating the flow of life, when it comes to navigating the flow of the river, right? The only thing that you can control is yourself. And you can think about these tenants of whitewater kayaking.

How are you positioning yourself and your mindset? What’s your angle? How are you setting your angle? Are you playing your edge? Are you looking where you wanna go?

And are you matching the momentum of the moment? Not going too fast, not going too slow and creating opportunities with consistent action over time, consistent momentum over time. So I hope that these tenants that are part of Whitewater Kayaking have been helpful for you in navigating and maybe having a different perspective on navigating the flow of the river, of navigating the flow of life.

And with my coaching clients, always at the end of a coaching call, I like to have them commit to a few actions that they’re going to take. And so my challenge for you is what is your commitment for the next week, two weeks, month, or what’s your commitment coming out of listening to this episode? You might be committed to, you know, assessing your position or your angle, or maybe you’re committed to playing your edge a little more.

Or maybe you’re committed to getting really clear on where you’re looking, where you’re focusing your vision. Or maybe you’re really committed to getting started or increasing your momentum or maybe decreasing your momentum. Right? So think of, I challenge you to choose and don’t you don’t have to choose all of them, right? Maybe choose one thing or two things that you want to commit to andI’d love to hear how that commitment plays out.

You can tag me on Instagram, @annaclevesque. You can send me an email, Anna at mindbodypaddle .com. I’d love to hear from you. And also thank you so much for listening to my solo episode and for, if you love the podcast, thank you for listening. Thank you for leaving a review.Wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether it’s Apple Podcast or Spotify, I really appreciate you and look forward to being with you next episode.