“Self-awareness:
The ability to take an honest look at your life
without attachment to it being right or wrong.”
Debbie Ford

A couple weeks ago I had a random impulse to go Kayaking with my husband, we hadn’t done it in a long time and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. Being outside is one of my favorite things to do and living in Florida we are blessed with the most beautiful weather all year long so this went from idea to action in about 10mins. My husband said yes immediately, no hesitation, we ordered sandwiches, packed our beach bags and off we went.

The day before going in this little adventure I had gone to a Yoga class with one of my favorite teachers, I love her words and guidance during practice and also the insights I usually get during her class because of the way she directs our attention. That day we were using a strap to help us with a few exercises to stretch our legs and in the middle of this exercise she prompted us to notice how we were holding the strap. She said “where can you let go and loosen up a little? How we do things matter. How you do something is how you do everything and yoga is here to show us our tendencies” and there I was with the strap wrapped around my hands twice and holding on to it as if my life depended on it.

I immediately started laughing and I remember thinking in that moment how much this reflected many of the ways in which I was approaching personal transitions and changes. And, although during class my initial reaction was to laugh and adjust my grip I definitely left the class feeling as though this was maybe something I should pay more attention to. I was thinking “wow in which other areas of my life I may be doing this and how is this affecting the outcome of things?”

With the awareness of this tendency of mine I went to the next stage of solving this tendency”where and how do I need to adjust?” I definitely don’t want to hold on to things so tightly, I better start letting go of things a little. In other words, I wanted to make sure I changed this tendency of mine. I went over multiple areas of my life, created a mental list of the many ways I could possibly correct this behavior and this whole thing just stock with me until the next day…

Because it had stocked with me I posted about it on Instagram, after all I thought it was a great reminder to be mindful of our tendencies. And a few hours later we were heading towards the intercostal to rent the Kayak. We got in our 2 seat Kayak, I sit in the front and my husband in the back and we take off. I was starving so, 5 minutes in I opened my sandwich, ate my salt and vinegar chips, the day was beautiful and all was going well until about 40 minutes later.

By that time we had already moved quite a bit from the rental place and were leaving the intercostal and going more towards the ocean. At that point we start noticing that the kayak is very unstable and I thought it was normal because the waves were just more intense since we were approaching the ocean. So, my positive, optimistic “you can do it all” self kicked in and I start yelling to my husband to keep his core tight and to keep paddling. Then my husband says, “I don’t know… there is so much water in the Kayak, I don’t think this is normal” I turned my head to look back and the kayak almost flipped over.

We realize the Kayak is sinking and we need to get back but at that point we couldn’t even blink or we would end up in the water. We were about 300ft away from the mangroves and luckily the wind was in our favor so we made it to the mangroves in just a couple minutes. My husband manages to get out and his side of the Kayak is completely submerged at this point. Half of his body is in the water but at least the water is shallow enough that he can stand, at this point I’m quietly freaking out about possible alligators or snakes under the water. It’s funny how the survival instinct kicks in and you become hyper aware of all the possible dangers.

We are trying to make sense of the situation and we assume the weight distribution of our backpacks and food was not right and it was too heavy in the back so I get out of the kayak too and standing on the mangroves we try to flip the Kayak over to get all the water out. Didn’t happen. The Kayak was too heavy and it was going to be impossible to accomplish that. I tell my husband we need to call the rental place and have them help us because we are not going to make it back in that Kayak. I get back in the Kayak because standing on the mangroves was not comfortable and it was making me too nervous. But since the kayak is half under water I need to hold on to something to keep it afloat.

We get out phones out and I go to my e-mail to find the receipt from the rental place to get their phone number… we had no service. I finally get one bar of signal but the e-mail is not loading. My husband manages to get some signal after turning off his phone for a minute or so and we are able to get the companies phone number. No phone calls are going out so we turn the phone off and try the same trick again and it works! I call the rental company and I recognize the girl that had processed the rental transaction is the one that picks up the phone. She apologizes for the inconvenience and asks to go to the front desk so they can issue a refund… she is not understanding the situation. I tell her “oh… no.. I’m literally holding on to the mangroves as we speak, we can’t move, the kayak is not going to make it.” And she goes “ohhh noo, you need a rescue team?” and I’m like “YES, YES WE NEED A RESCUE TEAM!” to what she responded “ok, let me call my boss because I’m actually new here and I’m not quite sure what the procedure is in these cases”.

At this point I have been holding on to the mangroves for about 12 minutes that really felt more like 3 hours. We see 2 people come by with jet skies and I stop them and ask them to go around the corner (for whatever reason in that moment we thought the rental place was just around the corner) and tell the rental place where we are. Twenty more minutes go by and we still haven’t received the call or haven’t seen anyone else so my husband keeps thinking of ways to make the kayak work. I’m usually one that believes there is no stupid idea and every idea counts but not that day, that day every idea sounded stupid to me. I’m not sure if it was the fear of standing on the mangroves or the trust that someone was going to show up and help that I just wanted to hold on to the mangroves and wait for the rescue team. We try a couple of my husband’s ideas with very little luck so we finally decide to just wait.

My husband calls back the rental place and a guy picks up the phone and says someone is already on the way. About 40 minutes go by and we finally see the girl I had spoken to on the phone arrive with another kayak behind her. She was clearly struggling and she says “I’m so sorry for the wait, I never really Kayak” Not the picture I had in my head of a “rescue team” and obviously not her picture either. I don’t think this poor woman ever imagined that she was the rescue team when she mentioned it on the phone.

I finally let go of the mangroves and get in the other kayak and start paddling with my husband back to the rental place. We start laughing and sharing all the insights and realizations we had during this adventure. There were many but I’m choosing one specific thing to share here because it was so clear to me throughout out this whole thing. It was no coincidence that after my yoga class I had been stock with these thoughts about holding on tightly.

If you remember a few posts ago I talked about judgement and how that is the default of our brain, to categorize and filter information. Without realizing it, when I first had the realization about my tendency to hold on tightly, I categorized this tendency as bad which is why I went in this downward spiral to make a plan to change this. But, the thing is that that day in the Kayak and after waiting for almost an hour in the water to be rescued holding on to the mangroves because there was literally no other way out, I was reminded once again that awareness doesn’t mean labeling things as good or bad and forcefully changing things but instead as today’s quote says it, self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at our life without the attachment of it being right or wrong because you will never know when your tendencies will save you.

love, Nat.