Success!

You and I have every opportunity in life to NOT succeed…fail…not quite hit a goal. That is life…happens to all of us. What also happens to all of us is this…we sometimes succeed. Now, if my wife Linda succeeds at something, she smiles and goes on with her business. If I succeed, I write a book or a blog about it. This is a blog about a recent success. I will get to the book later.

One of my key messages of late has been for all of us to push out our long held limits and experience some additional adventure. Why? Because I think it gives us new confidence, brings joy to our lives and makes even more things possible. We all have our fears. My mission is to get myself, my wife, and…YOU…to push through those fears and see what we CAN do. It has worked well for Linda and I. It may well have worked well for many of my readers, but sometimes I do not hear about that success. Happily, I not only heard about that success lately, I got to witness it. Stoked!

I got a thank you note from a woman who had read my book, Suddenly Retired. She said it moved her to push out her self imposed limits in life. She also said she was currently on The Big Island working on that process. This is a serious woman, an executive coach by trade, and I could tell by the tone of her note she was going to have at the challenge.

I immediately wrote her back and simply said…”Have you ever gotten in the water with manta rays at night? If no, would you like to go out with Linda and I for a night manta snorkel off of a Kona based boat?”

You may have never thought about getting into the dark ocean with animals that are often 12 feet across or bigger, in water where you may not be able to see the bottom. Those who have never done it are often quite nervous when they first try it. Some are downright scared. Understandable…does not really seem like a safe thing to do. And, some can not get the thought out of their head that the harmless, but giant, mantas may not be the only an aquatic creature in that dark ocean that particular night (to which I would say…if it is an ocean, it has sharks…and my experience is that sharks do not like to be in the mix with the snorkelers, manta, boats and lights).

Linda and I have had the pleasure of swimming with mantas all over the world for decades. However, we both remember our first time…and we were both nervous. We swallowed our fear and did it…and it changed our lives. We wondered after that first trip, what else is out there that might be great fun if we just gave it a try? It put us on a quest to expand our own limits and we are still on that quest…and love it. That exploration has made our retirement years the best of our lives.

The lady on her own quest…said yes to the manta trip. She met me at the boat. I talked way too much on the way out to keep her from having time to be nervous (truth is…I talk way too much no matter what the situation). We got out there and scored big time with maybe a dozen mantas, most of them so close we could touch them, but we did not. She had a great time and made big progress on her journey to expand her limits. I call that success all around. So happy for her and so happy to see my words put into action by someone I had never met.

Find your “Manta Moment” and push out a limit in 2023. You will be glad you did. And when you are ready and happen to be in Kona, Hawaii, drop me a note and let’s see if I can join you on your first night manta snorkel…I promise you I will if at all possible.

Aloha and Happy Holidays.

Don Hurzeler