Rich Wills’ Post

Transcript

Well, hello folks and welcome back to another quick edition of Olympic Perspectives. A little bit of a kind of a one to one series I'm doing with certain individuals where I kind of pick their brains. People from the world of sport have achieved some incredible things just to work out what we can take from them. And as you can see today, I'm absolutely thrilled to bits to be joined by Alex Gregory. Alex, I was going to start listing everything you've achieved in your life, but I think that will probably take around about 10 minutes of my time. But just to kind of be really brief, listen, multiple goals I think. 5 consecutive Worlds European golds, Olympic golds. Not to mention the all important 2012 gold which got you a gold post box. We must speak about that at some point. But some incredible things again, you know Paula Expeditions. Achieve achieved so much, there must be a fire inside of you that motivates you to do this. Something that we can all take from that when we're getting up in the morning and going into work to tackle that really difficult one to one. Where do we find this type of motivation? What is it? Well, great question to start. Goodness me, you're you're making me really think. But actually I think it's for for me talking personally, for me, it's less about a fire. It's more about an interest in things, the way we do things at the world. And and I think I, I'm lucky in that respect somehow, something my parents did, I think, particularly my dad, we spend a lot of time outdoors together. He was always encouraging me to be interested in the small things that we walk by, particularly that we walk by when we're adults and we forget we lose that childhood curiosity. And I can feel it now, you know, now I'm I'm a I'm a guy with a family, three young kids, stresses bills, life, business to build. You know, it's so easy to forget about the interests that we have, the things that we have. So I have to I'm now stop myself and make sure that I continue to do that. But in my earlier sporting life, which is what we're talking about here, I was going off on a tangent then. It was that that really inspired me and motivated me, interested me to pursue something. For a distance, For a far as I could get. Really. I think it was that, yeah, that curiosity. Love it? Yeah, that's. It's finding that one thing that really, really makes you curious. I guess. Because if it's if it's making you curious, there is something inside of you which wants you to learn more and understand more. So I suppose in those early stages of that sport in Korea, what, what was it that was really making you curious about thinking of getting into that boat and trying to be as quicker than anybody else? Well, at that time I was around about 1617 and I I wasn't that sporty. I wasn't that interested in sport. It wasn't really my passion. You know, I played sports at school just like most kids, but I wasn't particularly good at anything. And it was purely by chance. I won't go into the story now, but purely by chance I was. Encouraged to have give rowing a go around about 1617 and it was that moment there that that that that first moment. I realized that rowing specifically it wasn't a typical sport for me or I didn't see it as a sport. I saw it as. I couldn't describe it like this at the time, but I saw it as a massive jigsaw puzzle, 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and you have to get two pieces of that jigsaw puzzle just to be able to stay upright in the boat. Nevermind. Move the boat, never mind. Think about fast with opposition in the outdoor conditions down the river across the lake, never mind performing at your best while you're hurting. So it was that sort of exploration of myself and the the challenge of the the the activity that was ahead of me rowing that inspired me and interested me and kept me turning up and kept me going back. But I'll just add in here. It's very quickly. I wanted to pursue it and see how far I could get. But it took a long time. It took nine years before I won a race. You know, it took it was, it was a string of. Disasters. I called them at the time. Failures. I called them at the time. Now I I see them as. It's part of it, the learning experience. But yeah, it was a difficult first period I would say. I'm sure I love that kind of analogy. I'm picturing my mind now, that jigsaw puzzle, this multiple thousand piece, all of those failures as you just refer to them as those knockbacks, it's just another jigsaw puzzle piece, isn't It's just another one that's been slammed into place that first time you fell off the boat and went in the water and other jigsaw piece has been completed. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And and once once those two pieces are together, they're together and then you can start looking at the next stage. And no matter how the size of the goal, the extent of the challenge you're trying to get to, it's all about small steps, isn't it? And so for me, seeing it as a jigsaw puzzle just piercing the next piece together, it's allowed me not to be overburdened by this huge thing that I was trying to do. It allowed me to take step by step. Yeah, make the steps small and achievable I suppose. Yeah, You know, I can really start to see this now starting to grow on this sort of thing that that that kind of my listeners can take from this is that no matter how big that challenge is, it's understanding that every single step of the way something is coming into place that's giving you the motivation like. Saw puzzle does to pick up another piece and to work out exactly where is this going to go into the bigger picture. Really see that kind of ship and in somebody's mind to help them motivate themselves to get to the end of the working week or or to get to that deadline they might have. Halfway through the year it's picking up that jigsaw piece and like you said once they're together they're together. I think that's such a great great message to take on. Can I just jump therefore very very quickly to that kind of polar expedition side and and and rowing what what you did and and again kind of where did the desire to that come from where where was the motivation to go and do that. Well, I'm not going to excite you there. I'm going to say the exact same thing. It was that idea of exploring that interest in the world, using what I had. By that point, I had just finished my international career. I just finished the Olympics and decided to move on without really knowing where I was going, who I was even, or what I wanted to do. But I was interested in stuff. I was interested in the world and. This opportunity arose to go and explore the Arctic in a rowing boat. I know how to row, I can do it in that. So that was really the motivation to do that. And it was a. Horrendous but incredible experience. It's funny, isn't it? Sometimes the most horrendous of experiences, on reflection later down the line, are the ones that may be fulfilled us the most. Well, I think that comes back to what you were talking then about, about the jigsaw puzzles and the motivation. Nobody is motivated all the time. I don't, I don't think. I don't think we can be. It's it's it's not a thing. So when those jigsaw puzzles don't come together. It's that's OK. We need to accept that and justice. Keep trying to piece them together and we may go through months, years. In my case, it felt like years, eight years of. Not piercing the big you're getting the picture together and and but how do we keep that motivation going? Well, we don't need to keep that motivation going because we've got the passion, we've got the interest. We know where we want to get to, so motivation kind of doesn't matter. I think that's the way I look back on both the Arctic and the performance rowing side of my life, I think. Indeed, it's not like so insightful. Thank you so much. I've. I've loved that analogy. It's what I'm really going to start to build on and work on myself. That kind of that chicksaw analogy, I think that's been so insightful and certainly the people watch and listen to this will find that insightful too. So it's an Alex. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Cheers. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.