Make 5% your 100%

Hi friend,

last Saturday was Self-Leadership. The S. I asked you to catch yourself handing the wheel away, "I couldn't, because," "there wasn't time," and to take one piece back. To write it as an if-then and give the order in advance, while the calm version of you is still in charge.

If you did it even once, you already know the strange part. Leading yourself is quiet. Nobody claps. It's only you, keeping a small promise nobody would have noticed you breaking.

Today, the W - WHY. And it's the one I got wrong for a long time.

A few people have written to me lately. Out of nowhere, strangers, and underneath their messages was the same quiet question. Not "how do I do more." Something closer to this: who am I, underneath all of this? When the titles and the roles are stripped away, what is left?

I know that question well. It cost me seven years.

Nobody is going to tell you this about goals. I spent my whole life chasing one. Ten national titles in water polo. The tenth was the one I had promised myself, the one I carried myself through chemotherapy and radiation to reach. I got it.

And then, nothing. No fireworks. No answer. I had the thing, and I still did not know why I was here.

I thought the goal would tell me. It did not. That is the trap, and your disciplined, goal-driven self needs to hear it: the goal will not hand you your why. You can win and still be lost.

So I went looking. For seven years. I could not find it.

It showed up in the last place I expected. Not in the water. On a mountain, in the rain, halfway through the Mozart100. I ran the marathon, not the full hundred, and that day the race had turned into a mud fight. Soaked, filthy, legs gone.

On the summit, something landed. I am not a runner. I never was. I am a water guy. I had to climb a mountain in the mud to see where I actually belong.

And standing up there, cold and useless on land, I thought of Lake Constance. It was just a short thought that popped up in my mind.

After my cancer therapy I had read a book, "The Big Five for Life" by John Strelecky. It asks you to name your purpose for existing. Mine, once I could finally see it, was simple:

Viktor Frankl wrote that a person with a why can bear almost any how. I had spent seven years proving the reverse. All the how in the world, all the discipline, and no why to carry it. The moment I had the why, the how got lighter.

So I built something big enough to hold it. I swam the length of Lake Constance. 65 kilometers. Five people had done it before me. Nearly thirty had tried and not made it.

I did not choose it because it was reasonable. I chose it because it would make people look. Almost everyone knows someone with cancer, and almost nobody talks about it. It is a taboo. A swim that size gets attention, and attention is a door. That was what the why was for. Not the medal. The door.

That swim became the Alpine Seven.

It started as raising awareness for people living with an illness. It has quietly become something more. Helping people find the thing I could not find for seven years, and name it sooner than I did. The person underneath the performance. Because the why is usually hiding right behind them.

Quick reminder, in case you are new here. On the 22nd of August, we are all getting in the water on the same day. Our Community Swim. Any distance, ten meters or ten kilometers, whatever is yours. It is for NF Kinder. And these four letters (SWIM), one a week, are how we get ready. Not the body. The mind. Last week, self-leadership. This week, your why.

This week's experiment: find your why for the 22nd.

Not the goal. Not the distance. The reason underneath it. Why does this challenge matter to you, underneath the goal? Write it in one line.

Then put it somewhere you will see it at 5am, on the morning you would rather not.

And if you cannot find it yet, do not force it. Start one step before, where I had to start. Ask who you are underneath what you do. The why is usually hiding right behind the answer.

Next Saturday, the I. Inner Belief. Believing you can, before you have the proof.

You can't always choose the water. You can always choose the next stroke.

All the best, Bernhard

P.S. Want to swim with us on the 22nd? Any distance, from ten meters to ten kilometers. You can join here. 15 euros, every cent to NF Kinder.

P.P.S. Hit reply and tell me your why in one line. I read every single one.

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