Video by Dennis Daletzki.
Extremschwimmer André Wiersig und die Ocean’s Seven | Sportclub | NDR Doku
Article courtesy of Freudenberg Sealing Technologies.
André Wiersig set a goal and achieved it in June 2019. He became the tenth person in history to achieve the Oceans Seven.
He had a conversation about drive, self-determination and the different kinds of thirst with Freudenberg Sealing Technologies, explaining what he learned from his struggle against high waves, currents and sharks and how it can be applied to one’s own life.
FST: How do you look at thirst, Mr. Wiersig?
André Wiersig: First, and foremost, it is a stimulus, a reminder to take care of certain things. There are needs that have to be met. But this immediately poses the question: would I like to eat something or am I really hungry? How strong is the stimulus, and how strong do I perceive it? I have swum through very cold water and I thought that I was cold. Today I don’t even consider similar temperatures to be cold. My sense of thirst is certainly no longer the same as it was eight years ago. I have moved to
another level.
FST: In other words, thirst, cold and hunger are relative?
André Wiersig: Our ancestors probably knew real thirst. What we experience today is at most a hint of that feeling. Once, during the running portion of an Ironman competition, I was on the lookout for cows on because I was ready to drink out of their trough out of sheer thirst. We have everything in our lives. There’s always hot water and food. Not only that – it is precisely the food that I like the most. Everything is there. Even information is endlessly available. Today we are living in our comfort zone. The question is: what do we make of our lives?
FST: You deliberately leave this comfort zone to travel around the world and swim across straits and channels that are thirsty or forty kilometers wide.
André Wiersig: Look, the sea is becoming a mere backdrop today. When people travel to the ocean, they swim in the hotel pool, not offshore. On your next vacation, head over to the beach and go into the water, and then swim straight out into the darkness. That’s how I start my crossings. I expose myself to nature. If you are out between the Hawaiian Islands, the water is extremely deep, the waves are high, and there are sharks, whales and poisonous jellyfish. You are completely in the hands of nature. I did have a boat accompanying me, but it couldn’t help me in an emergency. It couldn’t come too close due to the high waves. Otherwise, it would run me over.
To read the rest of the wide-ranging, lengthy article with Wiersig, entitled Just Get Out of your Comfort Zone, read on here.
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