Penguins & The Natural Trust Fall
As I sit in South Africa contemplating the 3 weeks I’ve spent in this amazing country, a poignant lesson comes to mind. During my trip to South Africa this month, I spent a morning at the Boulders Penguin Colony and Boulders Beach on the Eastern Side of Cape Point. The African Penguin colony is a national park, and then there is a public beach near the colony where you can swim amidst gorgeous rock formations and penguins. I was mesmerized watching the hundreds of penguins go about their activities from burrowing nests, to sunning on the beach, to going out to sea, to landing back on the beach.
A lesson in leadership struck me in watching the penguins and taking a quick swim myself after viewing the colony. When the penguins waddle across the beach to enter the sea, the spectacle is fantastic. The penguins are awkward on land, struggling to move their bodies toward the water where they can fly. Some penguins continued their struggle well into the surf and depth of water before plopping forward and flying away. Other penguins would no sooner hit the water than they would gleefully plop forward and wait for a wave or the tide to draw them into flight. They weren’t concerned that the immediate choice wouldn’t immediately lead to flight. They knew flight would come and trusted that being on their bellies is what they are made to do and that their environment would support them in achievement. They willingly prepared to fly by completing a Natural Trust Fall forward!
In 2009 I completed a year-long leadership program through The Coaches Institute and one of my goals for the program was to embrace “easy” and stop making things hard. For some reason, I’d been operating from the perspective that “achievement” had to be hard. And, even when “achievement” came easily, I felt compelled to complicate it or make it hard so that it would be fulfilling. What a fallacy. A wonderful lesson learned in leadership that put “flow” into my life throughout and after that year in a way it never existed before. An ease in leaning forward and into things that might be uncomfortable to embrace what I’m made to do.
The penguins were a brilliant reminder to lean into easy and trust that falling forward will work out better than holding back in the struggle. Ironically, when I walked back to the swimming beach and entered the Indian Ocean for a swim in frigid water, I kept wading in. Well beyond where I could have fallen forward and started swimming. It was a struggle walking over icy rocks against the current. I was afraid of the cold, and the irrational part of my brain tried to bamboozle me into thinking that wading in slowly would be less cold! Hilarious really. What I was doing was difficult. My body isn’t made to wade in water, it’s made to swim. Like the penguins. When I was nearly up to my chest I thought for a moment of the penguins I had just been watching.
And, I dove in.
Exhilarating.
Easy.
I wonder in your life where you have the opportunity to stop the struggle, and embrace what you are made to do and be.
Lean in, fall forward, and fly
African Penguin, Boulders Penguin Colony, South Africa