WEBVTT

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Okay. I'd like to present a hypothetical idea.

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A way to practice taking risks, because after all, practice makes perfect. Right?

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So I want you to picture a stadium. The biggest stadium you've ever seen.

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and it's got a huge arch over the top of it, a hundred meters high.

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Now, most people think that that arch is simply there for supporting the structure.

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But I have this belief that that arch is also there so that we can tie a rope to the top of it,

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we can stretch that rope
all the way to the rim of the stadium

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and do a huge rope swing all the way across.

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And better still, we can do that in a kayak.

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But wait! What if the rope breaks? You could die!

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Okay, maybe you didn't ask that question. But I'm pretty sure that you did ask,

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"What's a professional kayaker, and what's he doing on our stage?"

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I haven't done much to change the world,
but I have made a career

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out of exploring remote rivers.
And the rivers taught me

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just about everything I need to know.

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Growing up in South Africa
was a good life, but a simple life.

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No TV, no video games, but I did have a kayak and a river.

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I had the disadvantage of having very few kayak mentors

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to teach me what could be done in a kayak, but I had the distinct advantage

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of having nobody to tell me what could not be done.

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I remember as a young teenager, hearing about a French rafting expedition

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that had attempted to take on and navigate the world's biggest rapids, on the Congo River.

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I saw this old photocopy of the Paris Match magazine,

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and this was the last photo ever taken of them. Right about the same time,

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I saw an old newspaper with this photo of Marco Begni kayaking off a waterfall near my house.

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If you look at the top left of the frame, you'll see a kayak there.

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I clearly remember walking into the kitchen and saying to my parents,

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"I'm going to kayak down that waterfall one day."

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And my dad said, "Well, son, if you work hard and practice,

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maybe one day you'll be good enough."

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About ten years later I found myself kayaking off that very waterfall.

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And about 15 years later I found myself standing next to the Congo River

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on the very same spot where that last photograph was taken.

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Now I think the best way for me to introduce you to my Congo expedition

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is to play the trailer to the film that I made about it. Have a look.

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Some call it a calling. I think of it as an obsession.

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Inga. World's biggest rapid. Almost every attempt to survive it causes death.

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I've been kayaking my whole life. But when is enough enough?

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I first heard the story, and seven people died having their attempt.

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Now I've waited half my life for my turn.

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All I have to do now is call a team of the best, put my friends' lives on the line...

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I've definitely been struggling with it. I've woken up quite a few mornings

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and just almost felt like calling the boys and saying,

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I just don't know if I'm in for this one.

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This is the obsession: to release yourself by accomplishing the goal.

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Or by being stopped by something outside of your control.

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But once you start this journey, even if you don't want to go, you have to.

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(Energetic music)

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You can run all the big water you want, but how do you prepare for something that's never been done before?

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In a place where help is not on its way. Congo.

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A place where experience is just a word.

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The lesson that we learned today is not to fuck with these rapids.

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FIsher messed up because he got off to the side where whirlpools form,

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where all of this stuff goes down out here.

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I may have had the closest call of my life, but I didn't come here to die.

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I came here to win.

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(Helicopter noise)

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(Music slowly builds)

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-Steady bro!
- Fuck, they're not gonna make it dude!

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(CONGO: The Grand Inga Project)

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All right, so. Spoiler alert: we survived.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So what you just saw in the introduction there, is

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even us extreme sports guys feel trepidation as we approach a new challenge.

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And in this case, it was fearing that if we took the next step,

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the voyage itself would take on a life of its own, and drag us along with it.

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It would be like faring out into a huge river with a strong current, and you can't stop.

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It's a commitment.

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So how, then, do we prepare for something that's never been done before?

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In my profession I have a small box that I start with that has five tools in it.

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My equipment: I make sure I have the right gear.

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My physical well-being: I make sure that I've prepared physically for the task.

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The location: I make sure that I'm in the perfect place to do what I do.

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And once I've checked those three off, I use those to develop the other two,

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which are the skills and the experience.

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But you can't use any of these tools until you demistify risk.

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We can mitigate risks purely by understanding them, and the way that we understand them

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is that we take a seemingly impossible idea and we break it down

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into little digestible parts, and we look at each step individually and see if that is attainable.

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What happens then is what we're doing, is that we find that many of our fears are unjustified,

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and very often we find that what's before us is far less risky than we thought.

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So... (coughs, lowers tone) give me a second. Might need some applause here.

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(Applause)

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So you know, as humans, we are not inherently risk averse.

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We evolved by taking risks, so it's okay if there are risks in what we do.

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We simply need to understand those risk, and once we understand them,

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we're ready to take the first step. So let me show you what I mean.

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Let me show you how I put that to use every time I look at a rapid or a waterfall.

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As I paddle up to the top of a waterfall, the first thing I do is climb out of my kayak

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and I walk down the side of the river and I look at the pool below.

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That's my goal, that's where I want to be.

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And it's only then that I turn back at the rapid, and Oh my gosh!

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If I look at the whole rapid it's far too daunting.

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So what I need to do is break it down into smaller chunks, into individual moves

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and see that I can do each move individually, and only then do I figure out how to link those moves together.

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So let's zoom in on this photograph. If I would have shown this top part of the rapids

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to even an intermediate kayaker, they would say, "Okay. Well that looks fairly chunky, but it's good to go."

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And if I showed them the next part, they would say, "Oh, that's a pretty straightforward job. Yeah, let's go do it."

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And if I show them the last part, they would say, "Okay, it's pretty spectacular but it's a straight shot.

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You don't really need to do anything. It's good to go."

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You'll have to take my word for that.

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But the job is not done there. Once we cut a problem horizontally,

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the next thing we need to do is cut it vertically.

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What we're trying to do is establish the path or line that we're likely to be on.

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And the reason that we're doing that is to eliminate the parts of the rapid that don't affect us.

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The parts of the rapid where we will not be.

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Because if we do that, then we can look and see if there are any deadly features.

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If those deadly features are in the eliminated part we never have to think about them again.

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And if those deadly features are in our path, and they're unavoidable,

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well then we don't go. It's far too risky.

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That's how extreme sport works. Sorry to disappoint you guys.

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So imagine you're walking along a trail like this. You're walking along and you've got a cliff on your left side.

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You're thinking about what you're doing while you walk. You're not thinking about the cliff the entire time.

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It's only if you turn towards the cliff and start approaching it that it becomes a real danger.

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And then you stop.

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Okay, so how do you know if you're on the right path, and what happens if you're on the wrong path?

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Well, in kayaking there's no turning back. So what that teaches us is not to panic when things go wrong.

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When the unexpected occurs we have no choice but to solve the problem and keep on moving.

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But fortunately, as in life, if we zoom back just a little bit, perhaps to where we haven't yet

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climbed in the kayak and made the commitment, we get to see that very often

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we can start down a path, realize we're on the wrong path, turn back and reset the plan.

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Let me show you what I mean. (Laughter)

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Have you ever heard the cliche, "never give up"?

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Well tonight we're canceling it. We don't say that anymore.

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From now on we say, "Don't give up too easily."

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On this particular trip, our plan was to use a rope to rappel down into the base of Victoria Falls

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and kayak through the rapids at the very base of the falls.

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Once we got down there, we found the unexpected.

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The wind and the spray from the falls themselves were so strong that it was impossible to kayak,

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so we had to fall back on to our contingency plan and climb a hundred meters back up the rope

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and cancel the whole idea.

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But guess what? The TV show we were making about it turned out great,

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and we got this photograph. We gave up but we didn't have to feel ashamed of it.

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if you refuse to give up on an idea, then you inhibit your ability to experiment.

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But if you're willing to give up after a good effort, then when you do give up

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there's no reason to feel guilty.

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Okay, so I think that now you're starting to get to know me a little bit, so I think that we're ready

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to talk about the stadium idea again.
How do you guys feel now?

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But wait! What if the rope breaks? You could die!

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The rope is not going to break, and here's why.

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Right from the start, we're going to use a rope that is thousands of pounds stronger than it needs to be.

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So we've used the right equipment to eliminate the problem and we never have to think about it again.

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We've eliminated the "what if" factor. It's called "pointing positive".

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We can now focus on the how, and in this particular case, the more important question is,

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"How long does that rope need to be to make sure that we don't hit the ground on the way down?"

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And once we're finished, how are we gonna get from the end of the rope back to the ground?

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Now, with a few simple mathematical calculations, these are pretty easy problems to solve.

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So we're ready to go. Are you guys ready? All right, let's do it.

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(electronic music)

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(Wind noise)

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All right. (Applause)

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I can see you want to do that, don't you?

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All right. So when we imagined this idea, first of all,

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the idea sounds crazy. But once we break it down and demystify the risk,

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then we suddenly find that it's so safe that this very swing has now become a fully fledged commercial operation.

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Yes. You too can go to Durban, South Africa. You can pay your money,

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and you can go and do a giant rope swing across a stadium.

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You can take a leap of faith. And hundreds of people do.

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And guess what the most common thing that they say is afterwards?

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"Man! It just really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I feel as if "If I can do that,

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I can do anything!" And guess what? They're absolutely right.

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So right now, we all live always at the edge of uncharted waters.

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And no matter that they're something meaningless like kayaking down a rapid,

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or meaningful like changing the world, the principle is always the same:

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We need to buck up and add our piece to the puzzle.

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It reminds me of a quote that I heard once.

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I was in the deepest gorge in the world, in Tibet.

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One of the boys ad-libbed a quote out of a book called "Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden.

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And I'll give you just one line.

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"Ive always wanted to sail the seven seas, but I can't afford it. What these people can't afford is not to go."

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End quote.

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Thank you very much, Athens!

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It's been a pleasure and a privilege. Good night!

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(Applause)