Look for the hero inside yourself
I’ve spent the day at an international conference on post office networks. The event finished with a session entitled “The challenges of leadership” when were addressed by an inspirational guy called Pete Goss.
I confess that I’d never heard of him before, but he turned out to be an old-fashioned hero: a Cornish farmer who became a Royal Marine and then an ocean-going sailor and more latterly a polar explorer.
He told us the story of his participation in “The Vendée Globe non-stop, single-handed Round the World Race” in 1996 when, after receiving a distress call from the French sailor Raphael Dinelli, he immediately turned his boat around and battled for two days against hurricane force winds to reach Dinelli and rescue him.
To risk your life and save a life is obviously a very special experience and requires incredible courage. Later on the same trip, Goss was forced to operate on himself without anaesthetic and just a few basic instructions to repair ruptured muscles around his elbow. What a guy.
You can check out his biography here and visit his web site here.