I had the privilege of seeing Glenn Singleman and Heather Swan present recently at a Microsoft conference on the Gold Coast. Glenn has been a long time business success story and extreme fitness freak, while his wife had been less fitness focused but equally successfully in business. Heather tells a story of how a heated conversation between herself and husband Glenn resulted in Heather becoming a world record holder. Glenn, always challenging the standard, was preaching about changing the way we think and how doing so can give us the chance to achieve greatness. Heather had had it with Glenn’s righteousness and challenged him to apply this wonderful theory to his completely unmoved wife.
Twelve months later, Heather had gone from an overweight 40 year old corporate mum, into a world class extreme base-jumper. Six years later she base-jumped off Mt Meru, India (6672m), to set a new world record, breaking the previous record as held by Glenn, by around 700 metres.
Glenn stated that the most significant element of the training regime was to eliminate ‘I want’ from their vernacular. ‘I want’ was just noise.
His point was that ‘I want’ has no validity. We either will, or we won’t. ‘Wanting’ is crossing fingers hoping that a miracle falls into our lap – it is ineffective, and lazy.
Heather rubbed out ‘I want’ from her conversations.
She then jumped off a six and a half thousand metre cliff to set a new world record and turn the rock-climbing/base-jumping/skydiving world on its head.
