Laughing your way to success!

Like most everybody I have hobbies. Things I like to do in my spare time away from my professional life that take my mind and body on a sense of vacation. One of the things I like to do and spend a lot of time on is snowmobiling. Not only is it a great way to enjoy the long cold northeastern winters, bond with close friends, explore new areas of the vast outdoors and work your body out, it’s also a great way to push yourself to learn new things and have goals.

While I was out riding this weekend I was trying some new turning techniques; this particular day I was trying some counter steering turns (Turning the handlebars & skis the opposite way than you want to turn-while leaning and initiating the turn in the direction you want to go). It’s actually really hard to balance your weight and the weight of the snowmobile in the particular depth of powder you’re in and get a turn to stick the right way, so it takes a lot of persistence to get. Being that I am more interested in the back-country/deep snow style of snowmobiling I’ve had my mind on learning these types of techniques for a while now.

I was using my GoPro camera for the first time getting different angles of it to watch later and learn from. While out there practicing I fell a lot.. sometimes getting frustrated but then I remembered.. the goal of what I wanted to learn how to do was far more important to me than the feeling of giving up and wishing I did it. Eventually, I realized after falling that this was quite hilarious and I started laughing as I was walking back to the sled. I think I laughed because I realized I was almost there and even though I was still falling off not getting my balance right, I knew I was so close.

Why am I telling you this? Because I realized there’s been many times in my professional life here at Space Age where I’ve gotten frustrated with something that wasn’t working and when I would fall I would tend to shy away from the task and make it less of a priority because it wasn’t working how I wanted or as quick as I wanted. After my realization this weekend of persistence and laughing off the disappointment of failure, I’ve revisited some things that were not working for me and I’m making them a priority again. Because I hate “What If”. Eventually you WILL get that damn turn to work and feels sooo good!

So get out there, whether it be in your personal or professional life, go out and push yourself to laugh those failures off, get back up and throttle it out!

You didn’t think I’d tell you about it and not show you right?? The fall – The laugh…

The sheer enjoyment of getting back up and getting to my goal…

And finally a bonus video of another fall, because you might not reach your goal the first time, or the second time.. or even the third time you try…