Sir Ernest Shackleton: Fought Antarctica and Won

“Shackleton had wanted to discover the South Pole but was beaten to that distinction. Instead, he decided to be the first man to cross the continent of Antarctica by boat (which was possible to do during the Antarctic summer).
 
Unfortunately, the crew of Shackleton’s Endurance ran out of summer, and their ship became permanently frozen in the polar ice.
 
Though the crew was able to wait out most of the winter, the Endurance didn’t. She sank, leaving the crew stranded on an ice floe. To make matters worse, the ship had drifted 1200 miles off course while stranded.
 
He didn’t give up
 
Shackleton packed his crew into three lifeboats as the ice under them began to melt and got them safely to Elephant Island.
 
Although Elephant Island was solid ground, it was still uninhabited and far from trade routes. Shackleton loaded four of the most necessary crew into an open-air lifeboat and set off for a whaling station 800 miles away.
 
There was no turning back
 
He refused to pack for more than four weeks, knowing that if the journey took longer, they’d be dead anyway. The boat reached South Georgia but landed on the side opposite the whaling station.
 
The water was too dangerous, so Shackleton took two of his men and made a 36-hour trek over a snowy mountain range to the whaling station.
 
From there he organized the rescue of all his men, without a single fatality among his crew.”
 
What Mental Resilience
 
What an amazing account of Mental Resilience – there are so many times they could have given up, but this man wouldn’t accept defeat and continued to fight to rescue his men. This he did and not one was lost.
 
During these exceedingly difficult times of Covid 19 it is easy to give up hope but if we do, we are finished. Without hope we have nothing. Our motivation goes as does our energy; our overriding thoughts are negative which bring on more negativity.
 
A vicious cycle
 
Very soon we are caught up in the vicious cycle of negative thoughts, negative action and loss of energy which leads to more negative thoughts and so it goes on.
 
The way out of this is to believe that there is hope that things will improve. As you focus on this possibility you visualise things getting better which makes you think more positively, take more positive action resulting in having more energy.
 
Shackleton could have easily given up hope and if he had you can guarantee that they would have all died. This is a wonderful example of someone keeping hope alive and taking action to fulfil that hope.
 
A face to face Masterclass
 
This week I had the pleasure of running my first face to face Masterclass to the directors of a large Accountancy firm in the North West. This was a great experience as this was the first face to face session in 7 months.
 
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the half day Masterclass which I delivered to these attendees of the Leadership Programme and so did they. The interaction was great as was the feedback. All the social distancing procedures were in place and it went very smoothly.
 
Online works extremely well
 
I am now incredibly happy to deliver face to face as well as online Masterclasses. I have noticed that the online Masterclasses have the same impact as face to face. I really enjoy delivering the Masterclasses on Zoom and with the mixture of videos, exercises, breakout rooms and techniques to work through the feedback has been consistently excellent.
 
Some companies have put training on hold for obvious reasons, but some are now realising that they can’t continue forever without outside input to inspire and lift their staff. These companies are booking online training with me and are incredibly happy with the results.
 
Thoughts for the week 

1. Do you have hope for the future?
2. How you answer this question determines how well you will survive the present crisis.
3. Remember Shackleton would have failed if he didn’t have hope.
4. This week see if you can start to develop an attitude of hope for the future. 

My books give some great techniques to develop hope and are available at https://jdmindcoach.com/shop/

Well that’s it for this week have a wonderful weekend and keep believing.
 
Warm regards 

John