3 Lessons Absorbed From 3 Different Captains That Helped Me Navigate Through Life
Things that stuck with me throughout life aside from the job
“What did you learn throughout your career that transformed your persona?”
When we talk about careers as an employee, most of the time you’ll detect people referring to “the money,” or “the time aspect.”
Although these are very important elements, there’s at least one more thing that’s not been mentioned enough, and that is:
The value of lessons you learn throughout your career.
Lessons are very important and often, when they’re taught by a resourceful person, and those lessons turn out to be valuable enough to you, they might change you as a person over time.
Me? “I think when it boils down to learning, I never left theta phase since six years young or earlier.”
We are presented with an unbelievable, seemingly infinite amount of lessons throughout our entire lives. It’s up to yourself and only yourself to benefit from what crosses your path. Not everyone absorbs information and lessons at the same velocity.
Some of the reasons behind that are:
- Unwilling to learn — Fixed mindset
- Thinking they’ve learned everything already
- Being too busy, unaware of what has been presented — Unable to spot the value of certain tales and happenings
- Fear of change or progression — Afraid of the unknown and what others will think of them
- Feeling attacked by people who mean best and try to lift others (which are the minority — This explains the attack factor)
Surely there are more, but I found these somewhat the most occuring reasons. In our jobs often people feel offended by people higher in ranks too. However, most depends on how you approach life, how eager you are to learn new stuff, and how much you are willing to sacrifice and change your behavior.
Through my sailing career over the last 20 years, I’ve learned a lot of lessons besides the work at sea too.
I’d like to share with you three of the more important lessons I’ve learned from working at sea. Three lessons from three different captains contributed to changing my persona over the last two decades. These lessons had a direct impact on my daily behavior and therefore indirectly impacted both my “overall mentality,” and “my work approach.”
1. Trust Your Inner Self
This first lesson I held within already as a personal trait, on the job it leveled my persona toward another dimension. Something that reflected throughout my career until today.
This happened at the early start of my dredging career.
I must have been eighteen at the time. I just started to work as a deckhand on a vessel called “Galilei 2000.” Galilei as you might think, is referred to as the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science. “The 2000" refers to the size of the hopper capacity of the vessel. It was a well-maintained Chinese-built split hopper vessel.
As a young deckhand, I was appointed to do maintenance and assisting jobs on deck, inside the accommodation, and occasionally helping the engineers. We had an older captain. Let’s call him Captain I. The guy was a Fries (North of the Netherlands). He was nearly two meters tall and weighed 140kg easily. The type of guy who derived from the Vikings. He even had the highly applicable red-haired beard.
90% of the crew was shit scared of him. I wasn’t in particular (I had been through too much already to let my emotions be subjected to someone’s impression). However, something I did have a problem with was not performing well at my job.
I never finished high school. We can talk fairytales all we want about the present global educational system… And I’m not the greatest fan of it all, not then and not now.
That said.
“Starting to work early in life, without a serious degree means choosing a tough life path, learn to like the struggle that comes with it.”
While performing at my job, especially during the first decade of my career, I was extremely scared to underperform. Being afraid to fail leads to some interesting behaviors. One of them was that I didn’t listen very well. When someone said something couldn’t be done, behind their back I was still trying to make some things work.
One time I was assisting an engineer in stacking some stores under decks. We had done most of the job, but some tasks were left behind and the engineer told me that we couldn’t do this — for him it was impossible…
When the watch was nearly finished I was alone on deck and walked past the leftover bars that were too heavy and too long to stow somewhere. But I thought I gave it another try, and after trying different ways, finally I managed to stow those huge bars in a decent location.
One day later some colleague came to tell me I had to attend to the captain about that job from yesterday. I was a bit stressed about what he was going to tell me, because I didn’t really listen to what the engineer told me (and to be frank, this was an engine room job which I had myself interfered with).
“Captain I” must have seen me from the bridge trying to stack those long metal bars by myself. And he told me the following:
“Kid, never listen to what anyone tells you, don’t just mindlessly obey, always follow your own thoughts, it will take you much further.”
A Captain with 40 years of experience telling this to an eighteen-year young kid, increases your self-esteem significantly. Ever since I never arse-licked, mindlessly followed commands, or work suggestions without considering them thoroughly.
2. Put Others Before Yourself
This was one big psychological step that sculpted me into a sigma leader.
It said something like this:
“I and this guy together with Charlie (not the real name, but you get the picture) fixed that hydraulic gate valve already.”
It was early in my career while working on the dredging vessels.
I was still into the belief that I would score special points when we (Notice the “we”) performed a repair in world record time. Unfortunately, this turned out to be another fairytale.
One time after repair day we overhanded the watch in the presence of Captain A. I explained what still had to be done to the other watch, and what I had done together with the guys. Spitting this out unaware and off guard. When we are off guard our minds run on low friction modus and it’s then when you expose your true self, at such moments you are vulnerable.
You could see it as what happens during hypnosis too. When people are very calm, their subconscious mind speaks up but is also very absorbable to new suggestions. When you are exhausted or feel sleepy you’ll notice a similar thing.
I said:
“Me and this guy together with Charlie fixed that hydraulic gate valve already.”
Captain A immediately responded:
“You meant Charlie, this guy… And you didn’t you?”
At the moment I didn’t get it, I was too focused on myself and the speedy repair performance. The response got stuck in my head for another day until I finally understood what “Captain A” meant.
Today it’s still stuck in my head.
Throughout my life and career, I’ve repeated this so much to myself that I’ve reprogrammed my firmware into putting others before myself, that on the job sometimes I even exaggerate about certain people in a positive way not even referring to myself because I don’t care.
“Repetition backed with a willingness to change results in self-reprogrammation.”
This is one of the best lessons I’ve learned that elevated my persona in a great manner. Instead of feeling slightly attacked or insulted, I’m extremely grateful for this lesson. It’s something I apply whenever I write a post like this for my readers, it’s a lesson I try to teach our kids as well.
3. Turn The Tide In Times Of Rush And Chaos
This last lesson I learned later throughout my career as I started to spot more details in certain people’s behavior. It has much to do with a form of patience.
“Relaxed or highly patient people are relaxed for a reason”
You would be surprised how much people enjoy seeing other people busy. Most will correlate this business with productivity. Most of the time there is a reason behind people who act quietly or calmly.
Therefore it’s important to turn the tide in situations of chaos. Captain T was very capable of handling such situations.
We were planning to fair out and perform one more job just before bad weather would come in. We were in a hurry. At this moment captains were just relieved, and Captain T called a stop and said to not go out and perform the job at this given moment. Everyone was surprised, even mad a bit. In short, bad weather came in early and we had to postpone the job activities for at least one week.
Close call and a great decision, although most didn’t agree with this.
Afterward, nobody said anything about the preventive act, no one ever does when problems, incidents, or accidents are prevented.
“Great decisions leave no traces, they’re seemingly invisible.”
When you can remain calm in moments of arousal or chaos, you win games. It’s a very simple strategy yet only a few can work their way out like this.
As you can tell the first two lessons I’ve learned very early in my career, but I think about them daily. They had a serious impact on who I am and who I wanted to become as a person aside from the character I wanted to become as a worker.
The Difficulty Of Working A Job At Sea
Unlike what most people think, working at sea isn’t all that hard in particular. Often it scares people due to the heavy labor. But in reality, it goes like the tide, sometimes labor demand is very high, and other times there is a low tide or standby time.
The Physical Aspect
Often deckwork requires some force, and performing weightlifting and basic exercises for the last 20 years has definitely helped me to prevent injuries. You can note this one as an additional self-lesson. Working out enhances your proprioception and trains your ability to perform complex movements while on the job.
In the past, I’ve heard people say things like:
“I can’t workout after 12 hours of work, or “I’m already working enough that I’m not going to exercise additionally”
See, the thing is that these people miss out on the point entirely.
It’s not about becoming stronger per se, it’s not about setting record time during repair days (Although this can be fun), or proving that you can win a CrossFit competition. It’s about being in control over your movements, working on and around your weak points, recruiting more underlaying (smaller) muscles, and reinforcing your mind-muscle connection.
This approach will result in how capable you stay over the long run.
The Psychological Aspect
Over the last couple of years, I noticed that this part is where most struggle.
The biggest hurdles are people who don’t recover enough, most of them don’t take rest and sleep seriously, and are sucked into an infinite work wheel.
Other aspects like having a poor home situation, and being locked up on a vessel can create a huge mental impact over time.
Working at sea requires you to step up your mental game
A lot is going on when you work abroad on a vessel. To be frank, you’re living on an Island for a few weeks, and the thought alone can be very toxic for some.
- There’s the actual job
- Be prepared to improvise in unexpected situations
- The requirement to stay focussed and watch each other’s back
- Know what to take from the correct persons to not overwhelm yourself
- Being in control of your psyche, knowing when and how to switch your mind from home to work status
- Be disciplined enough to not be sucked into certain situations onboard, and respect each other’s personal situations
While all of this is going on, you have your home situation where life never stands still.
Take This
The hardest part of working abroad at sea isn’t the physical aspect as most would think or claim, it’s the psychological element.
1. Captain I
“Kid, never listen to what anyone tells you, don’t just mindlessly obey, always follow your own thoughts, it will take you much further.”
He made me aware of learning to be self-confident
2. Captain A
Captain A immediately responded:
“You meant Charlie, this guy… And you didn’t you?”
What I said prior:
“Me and this guy together with Charlie fixed that hydraulic gate valve already.”
When we think something, we say it, when we say it out loud most likely our actions will follow. Over time we will incrementally transform toward that new person.
Put others before yourself
3. Captain T
Captain T called a stop and said to not go out and perform the job at this given moment.
“Great decisions leave no traces, they’re seemingly invisible.”
Calling a stop to a situation, or telling to not do something can reflect even greater than acting.
Turn the tide in times of rush and chaos by controlling yourself and staying calm.
All of them I find highly valuable to share with you and teach to our kids.
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Thanks for reading this post!
Throughout this post, I didn’t use real names to keep focus on the essence of the lessons rather than on the figures, and out of respect I would state something inappropriate, although I don’t even think anyone would mind.
P.S.:
I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind. I like to inspire and energize my readers by writing.
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