Jackson Kayak

June 2, 2004

Sometimes I get inspired to share my thoughts on life. If you aren’t interested, now is the time to sign off, because, for sure, I am don’t want to waste your time. There are two ways to live life, I have decided. One is to wait and see what happens, and one is to decide what you want to happen, and make it happen. This is certainly a very over simplified statement that doesn’t take into consideration things that happen due to accident, or circumstances beyond your control. However, even given ill fate or hardship, if you are alive and able, only death can prevent you from living the life you want. Even death may not be the end of your ability to control your destiny, but that is another subject that would definitely break my train of thought.

Let’s first get past the idea that I am preaching or feel like I know the answers to life or happiness. I don’t. I can best be described as ignorant, uneducated, of normal intelligence, and highly motivated primarily because I feel that I have a great chance of living a great life; if I do certain things, and feel a certain way. I also believe that most people are ignorant, uneducated, of varying intelligence, and the quality of their lives is directly related to their exposure to success stories of people, like them, that can motivate them. The motivation will propel them to do what is necessary to live a great life (as defined by them), and feel the way they want to feel, which is usually defined as happy.

Happiness was defined by Helen Keller as: “fidelity to a worthy purpose”, and it is a show stopper to me that success has been defined as: “constancy to a worthy purpose.” I drew the correlation early in my college career between these two almost identical definitions, but each defining completely different virtues. In junior high school we learn that if A=C, and B=C, then A=B. Therefore, happiness and success are the same. The other interesting thing is that what people define as success is rarely properly defined, nor is it consistent. Think of one item, one benchmark, one competition that you, at one time in your life felt like if you could just achieve, you would surely be happy. At what point did that goal of yours lose some of its luster? Usually right before or after you achieved it, or the moment you didn’t feel you would achieve it. This is a sad situation for most people in that they don’t experience success and true happiness because it is always one step away and is a moving target.

I have a theory that says; “Success and happiness (remember they are one in the same), comes from striving towards a goal worthy of your efforts. In that striving, your priorities must be in order so that you truly understand what goal you are actually shooting for. Everything in your life is a by-product of your life to date. So, for example, my goal was once to be an Olympic kayaker. I became one in 1992. I was 13th place, but wanted to win. I trained full time for another 4 years to try to win in Atlanta, but didn’t even make the team. In the entire process I became a slalom racer instead of a kayaker. Leading up to 1992 my goals were making me happy. After 1992, my goals became the end result instead of the process. My true goal, had I thought about it back in 1992, was to be a full-time kayaker with no need to work outside of kayaking. However, I simply raced headlong into another 4 years of training in one location and foregoing what truly made me happy, kayaking for pleasure. I was lucky that I didn’t make the Olympic team, in May of 1996, because the next day I evaluated my life and what I truly wanted to do and it was so clear. I woke up in Disney World with my kids and realized that until that point, I was truly unhappy with myself. It was not because I didn’t make the Olympic Team that year, but it was because I was selling out. I was a full-time kayaker, but not happy about it. I went from a six figure income to zero in one day as I shed 100% of my slalom sponsors and started to determine what, exactly I wanted to do. >From every point of view, I was a successful slalom racer. I was a national champion, an Olympian, and had made the team every year but one. I was also supporting myself, wife, and daughter as a slalom racer and kayak school owner. So, why scrap everything and start over? All I really wanted was to go kayaking on my own terms. I wanted to compete, primarily in freestyle and extreme racing, and I wanted to travel to do it. My “worthy” goal was to make a difference in the paddling lives of people everywhere, not just Washington, DC. My marriage to Kristine was even on the rocks from both of our unhappiness and lack of clear goals which included both a fidelity to a worthy purpose and constancy to a worthy purpose. For Kristine, a happy household became her goal. For me, I decided to make all life changing decisions based on the effect it would have on the quality of life of myself and family. Since kayaking daily at the highest level was, to me, my worthy goal I sought out freedom from the daily life of normal people. Dan Gavere lived in his motorhome and went from place to place kayaking. Kristine actually suggested to me that we could do that, as long as we were always together and I wouldn’t be flying alone to go kayaking without the rest of the family. 4 months later we moved into our first RV, after selling 90% of everything we owned and headed to Rock Island, then California. Our marriage improved instantly and our definitions of success became unified and understood by each other. I would provide my family with a lifestyle where we spent our time together everyday, and experienced things as a family. We also decided that anywhere I went, everybody could go, which meant living below our means to allow us to do the big trips together. Suddenly, I was experiencing success by anybody’s definition in my kayaking career. I was earning cash through sponsors, I was the most winning kayaker in my field, and we traveled full time to the places I had always wanted to go. Wavesport made me the boat designer and then brand manager which was my first test of my resolve to keep on my “constant path to success and maintain happiness”. They wanted me work at the factory, and to change my priorities to do demo days, and trade shows, etc., instead of compete in the Gorge Games, or go to Costa Rica for training, etc.. On the surface it seemed quite clear that if I didn’t change my priorities to match theirs, then my career was going to go downhill in a hurry. This is where I think most people goof up. In order to succeed and be happy, you must stay on course. That course is more of a priority list that determines what decisions you should make than a course with an end in mind. If your company asks you to make certain changes in your life you need to weigh them against your priority list and your “worthy purpose”. If it doesn’t jive, then you don’t yield and let them know that this isn’t going to work. As long as your company knows what your priorities are, exactly, and that you have the guts to “stay the course” then they will understand; you will either quit or be fired if they make any ultimatums that do fit your life choices. If it comes to that, congratulations, you will look back at that decision and be proud of yourself. If you sell out, and don’t maintain fidelity to your cause, you will be unhappy for it.

The world and its leaders use one word to try to guilt people into giving up your convictions for theirs. It is called sacrifice. “Are you willing to sacrifice for your company/country/spouse/kids, etc.?” I call this the greatest single mind screw of all time. It wasn’t until I started getting interviewed by newspapers and TV a lot in the early 90’s right before the Olympics, that I realized what a terrible mentality people have for themselves. I was one of the favorites to win the Barcelona Games and the reporters always had one question for me, “Do you think your Olympic dream is worth all of the sacrifices you have to make?” Immediately, my response was, I haven’t made any yet. I loved to train for slalom and at this point in my career, racing, and training were my favorite things to do. I would respond with, how can you call trading going out late and partying for an early workout a sacrifice, if in fact you prefer to workout? The reporters still tried to drag it out of me, as if somewhere, deep down inside, I was sacrificing something. Everything you do will leave you with a nagging negative feeling, like you wish you were doing something else, unless you have a clear vision of what your real goals are and you are striving toward them.

So what kind of goals are worthy ones? Anything that allows you to live well for yourself, so you can give yourself away to others, is a worthy goal. For me, I try to live so that I can afford my wife and kids the opportunity to do the things that are important in their lives. Kristine lives in such a way that not only allows me, but helps me to achieve my goals, which includes helping her achieve hers. How does something like that work? My best example is that since the day we got married, everything that Kristine has ever asked me for, I give her. So what you ask? Well, she is 100% aware that I would never say no to her, so she has to be careful when she asks for something because if it is outlandish, she will also pay the price when there is no money for the other things we like to do. This only works when everybody knows what the others are truly dedicated to. Goals such as “earn $100,000/ year”, retire at age 50, win the world championships, etc. are NOT qualified goals that provide any happiness. I have won four world titles in freestyle and I am just as motivated to win another one as before. Why? Because my goal isn’t to win the world’s again, I have done that already, my goal is to be the kayaker I always dreamed I could be and live my life as the number one kayaker out there. So how does one live as the number one kayaker? Well, my definition of the number one kayaker is one that can live well for himself so he can give him/herself away to others at the highest level. I can only claim my niche here. There is plenty of room for other “number one” kayakers. For me, one important factor is to make my knowledge of kayaking available to all kayakers, so that they can “employ the writings(video) of others so you can come by easily, what others labored hard for.” (Socrates). I also feel that by designing the best boats for myself, that I want to use everyday, I can improve the paddling lives of others, as long as I make those designs available to them, hence Jackson Kayak. To start a kayak company to get rich and cash out is an empty goal, with no meaning, and will bring no lasting happiness. To create a kayak company to consistently bring the best designs to the market and to profit from it so that you, your partner, wife, children, and employees can all maintain an active happy lifestyle is something worth fighting for and that brings meaning to the endeavor.

What about failure? Look at my career and you will see that I have “failed” in most of my attempts. I failed to make the US Slalom team the first 4 times I tried. I then failed to ever win the world slalom championships or the Olympics, both were my goals. I trained for 4 more years and failed to even make the US Olympic team for the second time, even though I was a clear favorite. I failed to earn enough money to support myself and family from 1984-1995. During those 11 years I borrowed money, pawned off tents for diapers, stood on street corners to earn gas money, knocked on doors to get help from neighbors, and spent a small inheritance on new slalom kayaks and training camps. I was the perfect example of a financial ruin and loser. I was over $100,000 in debt at one point. My goals were all very specific ones and I would have gone forever chasing a dream that can never come true, because the moment I won a slalom worlds, I would have been left with nothing to strive for, except to do it again. Was I happy? I was, because I was striving for a goal that I felt was worthy of my efforts and I never achieved it. Luckily, I discovered that I just wanted to be a kayaker, before I achieved my slalom goals. That kept me from ever becoming disgruntled in my career. Just last week, I won every round at the Reno Invitational, only to finish second. I won every round at the last world championships and was poised to win it all, but ended up 4th and didn’t even get on the awards stand. The year before that I had the highest scores in the Pre-worlds but ended up 5th. My career is full of failures that take me down a notch on the happy scale since I get pretty focused on that goal at the moment. It usually takes me about ½ of a day to remember what my real goals are and how I am still on track and the loss will have little to no effect in the long run. Kristine is really helpful on that task. She has little tolerance for me feeling sorry for myself when I lose something. She is also not impressed that I started defining second place as losing, oh well. She has her eye on my goals best when I get down at all. I have had many other failures, some that are better known than others. One of the things I wanted to do to “live well for myself, so I could give myself away to others” was to develop the World Kayak Federation into a machine that pumped out high profile events, trained the worlds kayak instructors to teach in a way that turned beginners into kayakers, and turned current kayakers into better ones, and finally to develop whitewater parks around the world to increase the total amount of usable whitewater for everybody. What I found was that the conflict of interest in competing in my own events would eventually be big enough that I would have created a situation where I have two mutually incompatible goals. With whitewater parks, I would be spending tons of time in places where there is no whitewater, then when it was done, I would be moving on to another place with no whitewater. Finally, I love to teach, and still do WKF instructor courses today. It is alive and well in concept and even in practice with the information available to everybody. However, I am not planning on making it my primary task. For these reasons, the WKF is not a business, that is “in business”. It lays mostly dormant and simply represents, to me, what kayaking could be for everybody. On the outside, it looks like a failure. To me it is a start down a path I am not ready to take. Owning a kayak company fits perfectly and smoothly into my goals as a kayaker.

My dad provided me with a few rules that I think made it easier to get my life on the “happy track”. Rule number one was, “NO COMPLAINING”. Annoying things should either be taken in stride, avoided, or eliminated. Complaining only shows your weakness to yourself, and others. To complain is to accept an annoyance as something you can’t deal with mentally, and to lower the chances that others can enjoy themselves. Take it, fix it, or avoid it, but don’t complain about it.

Rule number one, the second one, was “NO ARGUING”. He let me know that you can’t win an argument. You can only pit somebody else against you and have them dig a trench to defend your attack. You can disagree with somebody, state your position in a non threatening way, and let them know that you intend to come to some kind of agreement, even if it is an agreement to disagree. Arguing is simply a lack of self-discipline when it comes to working with others, and it rarely causes happiness.

Somebody once told me also that your goal in life was to think, feel, and act in harmony. This means that if you think you want to be a kayaker, feel like being a kayaker, and are a kayaker, then you are firing on all cylinders. If you think you want to be a doctor, feel like being a kayaker, but are a lawyer, then you will have internal stress for sure- just FYI, easily fixed.