The Beginning

Rowing is Life… was morphed first from the streaming series Ted Lasso, a show about an American football coach who was hired by a soccer team in England. The wife became sole owner in their divorce proceedings, and she wanted to tank the team to destroy her ex-husband's favorite thing in life. During one episode the team acquires a new player, Danny Rojas, whose personality is always fantastically over-the-top, happy to be alive. He always ran onto the field yelling "Football (soccer) is LIFE!!" Something about his character stuck with me.

Sometime later I'm golfing with two friends, and I hit a great shot and yelled GOLF IS LIFE! Anyone who has ever golfed knows golf can be like life… one moment you're on top of the world because your 180-yard 6-iron landed a foot from the cup, and the next moment your drive on the following tee shanks 70 yards left into the water… after which I'd mumble, golf sucks!! I've hit both those shots…

And so it goes, the ups and downs of life… of golf. It wasn't long after that, whenever the three of us were golfing, you could hear from 100 yards away one of us yell GOLF IS LIFE! The other two immediately knew a great shot was just made!!

Then I start rowing with SRQ Masters, and I begin to see even more lessons of life in the sport than in golf. Rowing develops persistence, perseverance, leadership, confidence… so many traits required for a successful life. It tests you and reveals your character, and if you're willing, it has the ability to reshape your life in ways you wouldn't have imagined when you set out looking for an exercise program to lose a few pounds and be active outside.

I began saying to a few of my rowing friends, Rowing is Life! Rowing began to have such a huge positive impact on my life that at times I'd catch myself standing at my kitchen island after practice feeling so good I didn't know what to do with it, so I'd write down some thoughts — philosophical ramblings about all the great benefits of rowing. Then one day I'm laying on the couch when an idea crosses my mind. I wonder if rowingislife.com is available? I tried to buy golfislife.com a while back, but that was taken. I grabbed my phone, searched for the rowingislife.com domain, and to my great surprise it was available — and for like 11 bucks.

I immediately snapped it up, knowing only that I should do something with it. That something is this: my endeavor to share my thoughts and passion for a sport I found by accident — a sport that, if you'll truly see it for what it is, has the potential to remake your life from wherever you are now into something that transcends anything you could have imagined… IF you let it.

In the big picture rowing can provide accountability, goal setting, focus, consistency and more… in the moment by moment picture it can be as small and simple as a real practice of the well-known Japanese proverb: "Fall down seven times, get up eight." Where every stroke is an opportunity to fail and try again, and to do so every three seconds or less. A never-ending search for perfection. A personal effort to be your best — and if you're not at your best today, as we all can be, then it's an opportunity to DO your best in light of whatever the reason you don't have your A game. For it is the effort that makes the difference; it's the effort that builds character and champions.

It is the effort that builds character and champions.

Coach John Wooden of the men's UCLA basketball team had a philosophy that was not to teach his players that winning is everything, or the only thing — or one might say even important at all. Wooden taught his players to only do their best with what they did have on any given day. He knew a ball could bounce off the rim and straight into the opponent's hands from sheer luck, or it could get tipped into your own goal by an opponent fighting for the rebound — neither of which you could take the blame or credit for. You cannot argue with the results Wooden's teams achieved by living what he taught:

Championship Records

• 10 NCAA National Championships in a 12-year span (1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975).
• 7 consecutive NCAA titles from 1967 to 1973 — a streak no other men's Division I program has ever surpassed.
• 12 Final Four appearances.
• 19 regular-season conference championships.

Historic Winning Streaks

• 88 consecutive victories — the NCAA Division I men's basketball record for the longest winning streak, spanning 1971 to 1974.
• 38 straight NCAA Tournament wins, undefeated in postseason play for multiple years during their title runs.
• 98 straight home wins — a near-impenetrable home-court advantage at Pauley Pavilion.
• 4 undefeated seasons — perfect 30–0 records in 1964, 1967, 1972, and 1973.

Wooden knew some days fate smiles on you, and some days, no matter how you try, fate looks the other way. BUT IF YOU ALWAYS do your best, then you can walk off the court — regardless of the final score — head held high, confident you won the only battle that counts: the battle against your lesser self. The one who is constantly begging you to take it easy, saying it's okay to coast, everyone does, you have a cold, a sprained ankle, you're not back to 100% — or any one of a million other excuses.

If you give in to any of those, you lose. And if you lose too often, then losing becomes a habit — and habits are a bitch to break. Did you ever hear someone say, "Oh, I'm sorry, force of habit"? What they're really saying is, "The reason I just did that is because my habit of doing it is so strong it overrode my conscious understanding that I shouldn't."

Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with saying: "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny." Making the point that even the smallest seeds planted in our minds ultimately determine the entire outcome of our lives.

We are all constantly in the process of making and breaking habits. Are you someone who can't be on time? It happens once, and it's not your fault — a tree fell over the only exit to your development and it's a mile from your house, so you don't know until it's too late to do anything about it. Then another, and another, and pretty soon you're the person who is "gonna be late for their own funeral." Make good habits and your life run almost on autopilot to success. As they say, 90% of our daily actions are performed subconsciously by habit rather than conscious thought. Rowing demands good habits, and good habits will carry you when you're temporarily weak of mind.

So what is it? It is as complex as it is simple...