All In Your Head
In 1914, a small ship sailed into the icy Weddell Sea, on
its way to the South Pole. It carried a crew of twenty-seven
men, and their leader, Ernest Shackleton.
But unseasonable gales shoved the floating ice together and
the temperature sank below zero, freezing more than a
million square miles of ice into a solid mass. And they were
stuck in the middle of it. They had no radio transmitter.
They were alone.
For ten months the pressure increased until it crushed the
ship, stranding them in the middle of an icy wasteland which
could, at any time, break up and become a sea of floating
ice chunks. They had to get off this ice while it was still
solid, so they headed for the nearest known land, 346 miles
away, dragging their two lifeboats over the ice.
But every few hundred yards they ran into a pressure ridge,
sometimes two stories high, caused by the ice compacting.
They had to chop through it. At the end of two backbreaking
days in subzero weather, they were exhausted. After all
their hacking and dragging, they had travelled only two
miles.
They tried again. In five days they went a total of nine
miles, but the ice was becoming softer and the pressure
ridges were becoming larger. They could go no further. So
they had to wait...for several months.
Finally the ice opened up and they launched the boats into
the churning mass of giant chunks of ice and made it out.
But now they were sailing across a treacherous sea. They
landed on a tiny, barren, ice-covered, lifeless island in
the middle of nowhere.
To save themselves, they needed to reach the nearest outpost
of civilisation: South Georgia, 870 miles away! Shackleton
and five men took the best lifeboat and sailed across the
Drake Passage at the tip of South America, the most
formidable piece of ocean in the world. Gales blow
non-stop-up to 200 miles an hour (that's as hard as a
hurricane)-and waves get as high as ninety feet. Their
chances of making it were very close to zero.
But determination can change the odds.
They made it. But they landed on the wrong side of the
island, and their boat was pounded into the rocks and
rendered useless. The whaling port they needed to reach was
on the other side of the island, which has peaks 10,000 feet
high and had never been crossed. They were the first. They
didn't have much choice.
When they staggered into the little whaling port on the
other side of the island, everyone who saw them stopped dead
in their tracks. The three men had coal-black skin from the
seal oil they had been burning as fuel. They had long, black
dreadlocks. Their clothing was shredded, filthy rags, and
they had come from the direction of the mountains. Nobody in
the history of the whaling port had ever been known to enter
the town from that direction.
Although all the men at that whaling port had known about
Shackleton's expedition, his ship had been gone for
seventeen months and was assumed to have sunk, and the crew
with it. The whalers knew how deadly and unforgiving the ice
could be.
The three ragged men made their way to the home of a man
Shackleton knew, followed in silence by a growing crowd of
people. When the man came to the door, he stepped back and
stared in silence. Then he said, "Who the hell are you?"
The man in the centre took a step forward and said, "My name
is Shackleton."
According to some witnesses, the hard-faced man at the door
turned away and wept.
This story is incredible, and if it weren't for the
extensive verification and corroboration of the diaries and
interviews with the men on the crew in Alfred Lansing's
account, Endurance, it might easily be disbelieved. The
story is true, and as incredible as what I've told you
seems, I've only given you some highlights.
Shackleton went back and rescued his friends on the other
side of the island first, and then after many attempts to
get through the ice, on August 30th-almost two years since
they'd embarked-he made it back to that barren island and
rescued the rest of his men. Every man in Shackleton's crew
made it home alive.
Fifteen years earlier, a different ship got stuck in the ice
in the Weddell Sea-the Belgica, led by Adrien de Gerlache-but
they didn't do so well. During the winter in the Antarctic,
the sun completely disappears below the horizon for
seventy-nine days. Shackleton's crew endured it. But the
crew of the Belgica grew depressed, gave up hope, and
succumbed to negative thinking. Some of them couldn't eat.
Mental illness took over. One man had a heart attack from a
terror of darkness. Paranoia and hysteria ran rampant.
None of this happened to Shackleton's men because he
insisted they keep a good attitude, and he did the same. He
once said that the most important quality for an explorer
was not courage or patience, but optimism. He said,
"Optimism nullifies disappointment and makes one more ready
than ever to go on."
Shackleton also knew that attitudes are contagious. He was
fully aware of the fact that if anyone lost hope they
wouldn't be able to put forth that last ounce of energy
which may make the difference. And they did get pushed to
the limits of human endurance. But he had convinced himself
and his men they would make it out alive. His determination
to remain optimistic ultimately saved their lives.
And it can achieve great things for you too. It comes down
to what you say: Either you say it's hopeless or you say it
can be done. You can never look into the future to find the
answer. It's in your head.
Excerpted from Adam Khan’s book, Self-Help Stuff That Works,
a collection of powerful principles to help you accomplish
more in your life and feel better doing it. Check out
reviews and a sample chapter at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0962465674/lighthousesound
Write to Adam at mailto:adamkhan@aol.com