What I have learned during my first skiing class
Somehow I have managed to live in France for 10 years and successfully avoid skiing. I would join my friends in the mountains, enjoy all the après-ski opportunities or simply write with the French Alps in the window but I never actually skied.
I tried snowboarding once 10 years ago and that traumatizing experience convinced me that my place was in front of the fireplace with a hot wine but definitely not on the slopes.
However, this year something was different. I started exercising regularly and it made me feel more open to other activities. I finally decided to give skiing a shot. You know, to be able to explain why exactly I hate it and why it is not for me.
I started thinking that my skiing experience would become my Bridget Jones moment. In the second movie she goes skiing for the first time in her life and ridicules herself. When I was walking/stumbling to the class in the morning, I was absolutely sure that was going to be me — unfit, clumsy, hopefully at least a bit funny. This was going to be my story. Suddenly my inner voice told me: “Come on, Eugenia. You are better than this. Think about how you handle pretty much everything in life. Think about how you wake up every day to go to CrossFit at 6 AM. Turn off the Bridget Jones in you. You are not her”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that movie but that was no time or place to be Bridget Jones. I straightened my back and decided I was going to nail it. Or at least do my best.
So there they were: the instructor, the mountains, a thirty-year-old and a pair of beginner skis.
I was trying to go down my first slope ever. It was gigantic and by the looks of it, I was going to be evacuated by a helicopter. In reality, we were in a five-minute walk away from the apartment, surrounded by three-year-olds.
“Oh my God I can’t handle this speed I’m going to die”, I yelled while snowplowing towards the instructor. I grabbed onto his arm and laughed. Can you imagine how many times a skiing instructor with 42 (forty-two) years of experience has heard this?
I was not a unique snowflake, I was just another beginner. The only thing I could do was listen to this man. He has decades of experience in something I want to achieve. All I could do was absorb the information he had.
“I’ll let you know if ever you exceed the speed of sound and it gets too dangerous”, he said and I just let it go. Later I checked on the app that measures your skiing achievements during the day — my average speed was 9km/hr. That is not even my jogging speed on a regular day.
Listen. Simple, yet another revelation. As soon as my attention was drifting away, and I thought that I had already figured out what the instructor meant, I would end up messing something up.
A few hours later it was time for my first ski lift. A five-year-old boy was sitting next to me. He looked very serious (all the kids on the slopes do!) and I felt like he was judging my thirty-year-old beginner ass. You know, for being a beginner.
That is when I had my next skiing-induced thought. You are always a beginner at something and it is totally fine. At any age, at any level, you can always start any activity. Somehow you have already decided you are doing to do it, so the only right way to go would be to own up, do your thing and have fun along the way.
“Go to that red pole, I’ll see you there”, I heard and the instructor disappeared. I straightened my back, took a deep breath and started moving towards my red goal. Suddenly I started feeling more confident — after all my legs didn’t shake for ten whole seconds. My thoughts rushed to how I was going to write a perfect Instagram caption about this whole experience. Next thing I knew my one ski went over the other one and I fell on my side. “Eugenia! You go where your eyes go!”, he appeared out of nowhere. It’s like he was inside my mind. The second I lost focus, I was no longer going towards the red pole.
I did the two main mistakes any self-help book will warn you about and they both came alive in a span of a few seconds. I started celebrating before I reached my goal and I lost focus.
This insight worked like a miracle. At the slightest hesitation with my focus, I would feel how I was losing balance. I had to physically snap out of it in order to avoid falling and bring my attention back to my goal. As a result, in my first three days, I didn’t fall a single time.
That was when I realized another thing — I started being too cautious. The first progress turned into my comfort zone: I was trying to ski on the familiar slopes and I was perfectly fine using the first moves I learned to avoid danger. Sure, I was skiing already but that wouldn’t bring me much progress for the future.
It is perfectly normal to fall. Not falling at all would mean I wasn’t experiencing all of it.
Still, I was trying very hard to stay on my feet when I heard: “Eugenia! You are going to have to relax, let it freaking go and enjoy the ride!”. I assume he figured out I was clenching my fists in my gigantic gloves. I thought that contracting every single muscle in my body would help. It didn’t. I tried to control everything around me: other beginners, snowboarders, children, speed, height, wind, and the thoughts appearing as a result trying to control everything.
That is how I let it go. I wasn’t going fall any lower than the snow — the risk of hurting yourself when you are just a beginner is very small.
I have seen all of these insights around articles, books, movies and I have heard them at seminars and conferences. I was amazed by how quickly they translated into my physical experience once I was skiing. And that’s when I realized one last thing. The second I was disconnected, maybe it was the air or maybe it was the fact of not having my phone on me, all the insights and progress started coming to me very fast. I was 100% there. By the end of the first week my average speed went up to 20km/hour and my maximum speed was 37km/hour. There it was, progress.
I didn’t get what I came for — a story on how much and why I didn’t like skiing. However, I got something better along the way — a new hobby and a story on how when you choose to do your best, you risk getting something way better than what you have expected.
