Approaching Challenges From a New Angle – October 27, 2002
If you’ve ever been to the ocean, you know how powerful riptides can be. If you get caught in one and try to swim back to shore against the current, you’ll soon become exhausted. But if you change your direction and swim parallel to the shore for a short distance, you’ll soon move out of the riptide and be able to swim to safety.
Sometimes in our lives we find ourselves struggling against powerful currents that just won’t quit. We fight back with our best efforts, but it seems no matter how hard we try, we just can’t make any progress. But if we can find a way to step back from our problems for a moment and look at new options, the outcome can be surprising.
In 1961 Chet Jastremski was a promising breaststroke swimmer at Indiana University, but he had a weak kick that held him back in competition. It seemed obvious that he needed to work harder on his kick, but his coach felt they should look at the problem from a different angle. They decided Chet should focus on modifying his stroke.
What they came up with was a radical departure from the prevailing swimming techniques of their time. The new stroke featured a continuous rapid turnover of his arms. The results are legendary. At the national championships that summer, Chet became the first swimmer ever to break one minute in the 100-yard breaststroke. Other swimmers immediately copied his new style and improved their times. The breaststroke would never be the same. By the end of his career, Chet Jastremski had set 12 world records.
We can’t always control what life will hand us. Even when we are certain where we want to go, there are powerful currents out there that can pull us away. Our happiness depends not on the absence of trials and weaknesses but on how we look at the problems we face.
Approaching our challenges from a new angle can make all the difference in the world.
Program #3819