If you are feeling down, jump!

About five years ago, I finally lost the fight to keep an insurance brokerage business that I had started going. The final nails in the coffin were a devastating burglary and a motorbike accident that happened almost at the same time. In the process, my wife and I lost everything - except for a few suitcases of clothes that is. For a long time afterwards, I felt paralysed by despair and a sense of failure.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to look at my old life and began to wonder, how the hell did I end up in financial services anyway? I'd always wanted to be a writer, journalist, entrepreneur - never a banker or insurance salesman! What a waste of years I thought, I've blown my chances and there's no going back.

After close to a year of unemployment, my wife found work in a publisher, and every now and then was able to swing some freelance work my way. Another year passed, and I was getting work from two publishers and a freelancer. Dull, monotonous stuff it was, called datacapture, which is essentially retyping manuscripts into a format for typesetters to use to lay out text, as well as much more interesting, but infrequent PowerPoint presentations for book fairs and exhibitions. Though it gave me back a sense of self-worth to be at least partially economically active, I still saw little by way of a future for myself.

At this point, a friend of ours invited us to go with her and her young daughter to Knysna, which is situated on the scenic Garden Route in the southern Cape. Along the way we passed Gouritz Bridge, a metal span bridge some 68 metres above the Gouritz river. I noticed there was a bungee platform on the bridge.

Though I'd never wanted to do it before, something inside me told me I had to jump, I must jump, this act of calculated insanity will teach me something, and allow me to release something (other than my bladder). Somehow, I convinced my wife that I must do this thing, and she, who is dreadfully afraid of heights actually accompanied me onto the bridge, ashen-faced, along with our friend and anxious daughter.

The moment, I call it the Zen moment, is when you are buckled up and standing on the edge, with your hands behind your back holding the railings hard enough to crack bone, and you then have to will your hands to let go and put your arms straight out on either side of you, before leaping off the edge towards what seems certain death.

It is the moment that all other fears, doubts and perceived inadequacies are at once crystallised and condensed into a tiny, insignificant point. You see them all, even those that you hadn't even been able to acknowledge before, and you see that they are puny things in comparison to The Fear that is confronting you. In a strange, ironical way, you realise that if you don't face The Fear, all those lesser fears will regain their significance and perhaps have even more power and control over you in the future.

So I jumped...

Two months ago, I jumped again - this time off a 100m cliff in Zambia, near Vic Falls. I jumped to celebrate that first leap into the abyss, the one that I haven't completely landed from yet.

You see, my inner strength came coursing back in the skies above the Gouritz, I realised that I can overcome anything - especially self-imposed limitations. More importantly even than this, I regained the belief that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to as well. Within a year of that first leap, I started working full-time in publishing; doing work that I completely love together with a group of highly dedicated, professional people.