Even Champions Cry

Last year, I sat in the boat unloading my feelings of frustration on two young barefoot water skiers. I was struggling on the water trying to learn a new trick and it just wasn’t happening.  My first barefoot tournament was  a month away and I didn’t feel ready at all. I didn’t have a trick run put together.  Slaloming behind the boat was a hit or miss affair and I had no confidence in my skills.  It was like a domino effect: the lack of confidence translated to a poor performance on the water.  To top it off, Coach Swampy made me cry on the very first day of that week.  Nothing was working well for me.

So when I unloaded on the two youngsters who were training me, I learned about their own struggles on the way to becoming experts in the sport.  I  learned they both also had moments when they, too, broke down in tears.  (And just for the record, both occasions occurred with Coach Swampy. Just saying.  Bahahahaha!)

Not too long ago I received a message from a friend who said to me, “You make the barefooting look so easy.”  Then another message from a friend who said, “Wow, writing comes naturally for you.”  Yet another expressed surprise when I shared I was having a really down day. “You’re always so upbeat on your Facebook and Twitter page.”

The thing is, I have my struggles.  We all do. They don’t call it a journey for nothing. And the other thing is, people often see the end results of success but are unaware of the hard stuff that comes before the outcome.

Two and half years ago, I started writing a book with Keith St. Onge, the two-time World Barefoot Champion. When we started this book, we literally did not know each other at all. I had taken two half-day lessons from him at the World Barefoot Center in Florida. When we took on this project together it was a crazy gamble. I had no idea if his story was even worthy of a book. He had no clue if I could write.  I had not  published a book of my own.   Keith called his mother for advice; she was confident he should go ahead with the project.  Deep down, something propelled both of us to take a leap of faith and start writing together.

We spent hours on the phone with an interpreter translating everything while I took notes.  We once spent nearly an entire day on the phone and my hands became numb from the typing. Many mornings, I woke up at five a.m. to write before beginning my sales job. There were evenings when Keith would come in from an eight-hour day of pulling students and we tackled the book.  We spent several hours at a time at the local Crispers restaurant where I once fell asleep on top of the laptop.  Our spouses began to grumble about the “other guy/other woman” who was taking so much time away.

For two and half years, we wrote and we wrote until we ended up with a book that was nearly 400 pages long and had to cut it back. What unfolded was an incredible story of passion, goals, and dreams; and the ups and downs it took to succeed. And I learned, yes, even champions cry. In his book, Gliding Soles, Lessons from a Life on Water, Keith opens his soul and shares every lesson of triumph and failure.

So after two and half years, Gliding Soles isnow a reality. Keith and I are thankful we had no idea what we were getting into  for had we known, we might have given up before we even began.   The long hours and toil were well worth it as Dave Ramsey, Dan Miller, Tom Ziglar and Glen Plake are some of the folks who’ve endorsed the book.

While glancing through my notes recently, I came across a few paragraphs which we didn’t include in the book but the topic fits this blog post so well I had to share:

“Passion can burn deep down inside. I remember falling while I was training on the water as a teen. I began to cry. I tried to stop myself from crying before the boat crew came back to pick me up but they asked why I was crying. I could not answer. I just knew the passion deep down inside of me was like a ball of fire. I had failed to do the trick and paid the price in a fall, but I would not give up until I mastered it.

Passion is when you cry from failure and have no idea why, but you will do anything to figure it out and succeed. “

Yes, even champions cry.

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