TED Rule 15

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Back in Kuala Lumpur. Since last post I did a nice tour of Bali. The island is beautiful, impressive landscapes, colorful culture, old temples… Maybe too many tourists, Australians in the South (Kuta) and Frenchs in the North (Lovina). I then came back to Kuta to sell my motorbike and enjoy the lifestyle. I would have stay more but it’s time for new adventures! I am now preparing my trip to Taiwan, then Hong-Kong, Beijing and Pyongyang. Following TED rule 6 I will have to learn Chinese, better to start now and look at manuals, dictionaries and online tools. Not going to be easy!

So I finally did it! I crossed Indonesia in motorbike, from Medan to Bali, a mere 6500km. On a 150cc bike, with no highways. You can check the map here (click on next to get the full trip) – it is equivalent to a Paris (France) – Tehran (Iran)… During the trip I also went on exhausting trek in the mountains of Papua (7 days), I climbed Gunung Rinjani in Lombok (3 days – from 600m to 3726m) and Gunung Batur in Bali (1 day – 1700m full of clouds).

Why did I do that? I must say I’ve never been really found of sport, especially the boring ones (running, cycling…) until I turn 30. But on my birthday I decided to run a half marathon, just to prove myself that I could do it, even with my not-so-healthy lifestyle. And I discovered two things:

For the first one I introduce Lewis Pugh. From Wikipedia:

“Pugh was the first person to complete a long distance swim in every ocean. He frequently swims in vulnerable ecosystems to draw attention to their plight and is best known for undertaking the first swim across the North Pole in 2007 to highlight the melting of the Arctic sea ice and for swimming across a glacial lake under the summit of Mount Everest in 2010 to draw attention to the melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and the impact the reduced water supply will have on world peace.”

Check his first TED Talk where he explains how he prepared to swim across the North Pole in 2007. Impressive.

The most important thing was to train my mind, to prepare myself of what was going to happen

Or as he says in his second TED talk “mind-shifting Everest swim“:

There is nothing more powerful than a made up mind

The way I get it is that in endurance or crazy physical challenges, the body will follow the mind. Going on a marathon or swimming across North Pole is not showing how fit you are, but how mentally strong you are.

The second thing I discovered is the consequence of that. And here I’m quoting back Tim Ferris (the inspiring guy from TED rule 6) in his last (excellent) book, “The 4 Hour Body“:

Running an ultramarathon can’t be good for you. I can’t imagine how it’s possibly good for your body,” I said.

I wasn’t biting on endurance. Running wasn’t my thing and it never had been. Brian MacKenzie laughed: “Good for you physically? No. But you’ll recover. And I assure you: if you run 50K or 100 miles, when you finish, you won’t be the same person who started.”

I thought for a minute, and that’s when I bit.

I’d seen a strange ripple effect dozens of times in the world of strength, but for some reason, I’d never connected the dots with endurance. Perhaps just as you haven’t connected the dots with some subjects in this book. After all, in a knowledge economy, what’s the value of deadlifting more or losing 2% bodyfat? Of hitting a home run?

In a word: transfer

Yes, achieving crazy stupid physical challenges makes you change. In the good way. It makes you mentally stronger, it proves you you can accomplish, in a very simple form: if you finish, you made it.

So I’m going to continue that way, and this is TED rule 15: take physical challenges.

Below some pictures of the Rinjani trek (more on facebook and flickr), and a video from an old prophet, Olivia Newton John…

Let’s get Physical!