6 keys to weathering life’s storms

On 10 November, Isabelle Joschke, sailor, was, for the second time, at the start of the Vendée Globe, a famous solo race around the world, aboard her sailboat MACSF. She tells us her navigation secrets to face adverse conditions even on dry land.

From managing your stress, to listening to your body, to facing your fears, The Marine Adventurer shares with us the assets needed to seize your own helm, even in the midst of a storm.

Knowing yourself well, an essential asset

“To be able to give your best, you still need to stay connected to yourself. I lost this connection at a very young age, having been trained to take others as my only reference and forgetting that my first reference was myself, with my strengths as well as my limitations. Our society urges us to always be “on task,” “on top,” and we suppress the less “positive” parts of ourselves. I was expected to become a “winner,” and in order to do so, I would have to forget my weaknesses, my fears, my doubts. But success came every time when I did not forget any part of myself. Even by accepting to see my faults, I accepted to see my strengths and find my way through them. ,

save money and take care of yourself

, Getting hurt is not necessary for success. Pushing forward and resisting pain can help you go faster, but not very far. In a race, knowing how to act fast is an essential prerequisite: you must be able to anticipate, adapt and make decisions quickly. But in the long term, it is important to know how to save money. It took me a long time to learn to relax, sometimes to slow down and heal, and to prepare for what came next. This is a form of knowledge that takes a long time to learn, but it is priceless. Taking care of myself has helped me find clarity. I can reach my full potential. To weather the storms, you need to be able to know how to settle down, receive care, and take care of yourself. ,

trust your body

“The more my brain gets lost in stress, the more useful my intuition and instincts become and the stronger they become. However, for me, their messages come through the body. It took me years to reconnect with my body: walks in nature, sensory activity, Pilates… I also discovered incredibly effective treatments. Especially “perceptual pedagogy”, a kind of global body-mind preparation, which, by combining sensory gymnastics, manual work on the fascia and meditation, allows to refine perceptions. Enotherapy also helps me a lot. It is a form of hypnosis where the body works to free itself, by releasing long held tensions and emotions. Many other practices help me bring physical perceptions back to center: meditation, cardiovascular coherence, singing in all its forms. Whenever I can feel the flow and connect to something bigger than myself, I seek new paths. ,

Learn to control your stress

“Stress is a vicious cycle: The more stressed we are, the less we sleep, and the less well we eat. And the more stress we put on the body. The first step is to recognize the vicious cycle, accept the idea that we are in it, then take the time to get out of it. A big task for me was to differentiate between current stressful situations and reactivation of old traumas. At times, I felt intense, unreasonable stress. Over time, I realized that I was reliving a stressful situation that I had faced in the past. Thinning and softening all this is a long way, but it is fundamental. With each new storm, it is this storm that has to be faced, not the other. ,

accept your fear

“I denied fear for a long time. During my first Vendée Globe, I put it aside so as not to weaken myself. I made some good comebacks and was very happy at that time. But today I know that this is not good in the long run. In fact, I was doing violence to myself, which takes a lot of energy. The only possible way out of fear is to recognize it and overcome all the emotions it produces. Don’t rule out risk either: you can’t protect everything. Fear of collision on a boat increases the risk of collision due to accumulated fatigue from not sleeping. We must recognize the risks and our fears, but not play into them. Where fear is present, there is a door to open. ,

free yourself from your expectations

, The possibility of winning requires accepting the idea of ​​losing. To reach your goal, the whole art consists – as in Zen archery -, once you have set your intention, of forgetting it and letting all effort rest. The opposite of what we are taught: to lose sight of the goal and accept not achieving it, to accept failure and let whatever happens pass us by.

I can testify that my most successful races were often the ones where I left with a feeling of being too tired, not adequately prepared… not having achieved the objective. I had forcefully forgotten it, I Had got away from it. When renunciation is complete, something is mobilized from within, which does not come from the mind or the will: something that is given by itself, often at the last moment, a renewed energy, a mobilization organic. ,