The short answer: Partway up the East Coast on my tour of every polo club in America, I fainted in Philadelphia, fell down a flight of stairs, and woke up face down on a cement basement floor. A few weeks later, still running on empty, I had two major falls at two different clubs. I sat up in bed crying late one night and seriously considered going home. Seth Godin has a name for that moment: the dip. I kept going.
How I got there
It seemed like there were a hundred polo clubs on the East Coast alone. Between driving, coordinating with clubs, playing, and running my business, I was spent. I pushed so hard for so long that one day I paid for it. In Philadelphia I fainted, fell down a flight of stairs, and came to on a cement basement floor.
That wasn't the lowest point. The lowest point came a few weeks later, when I tried to push through and keep playing. Weak and running on empty, I had two major falls at two different clubs.
Late one night I sat up in bed crying. My mom and a friend were both urging me to take a break, and I was considering it: going back with my tail between my legs, goal unaccomplished, to wait until the season felt right again.
What the dip is
In his 2007 book The Dip, Seth Godin describes the long, hard stretch between the excitement of starting something and the reward of getting good at it. Most people quit there. Godin doesn't say never quit. He says to know whether you're in a dip, which leads somewhere if you push through, or a dead end, which doesn't, and to decide on purpose instead of in pain.
A tour of every polo club in America was always going to have a dip. Nobody had done it before, which meant nobody could tell me how bad the middle would get.
What I did
I continued.
The tour went on for months after that night: New England, the Midwest, Wyoming, the Pacific Northwest, California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Texas, and finally Florida again in the spring of 2022. Some of my favorite days on a horse came after the night I almost quit: a lesson in Wisconsin where a coach told me to relax, relax, relax, two fast chukkers in New Mexico, and lunch in California with one of the best players the sport has ever seen. You can read the whole arc in what I learned trying to visit every polo club in America.
If you're in your own dip
A few questions worth asking, borrowed from Godin's framework and my own bruises:
Is this a dip or a dead end? If what's on the other side still matters to you, it's probably a dip.
Am I quitting the goal or the pace? Sometimes slowing down is enough.
Is my body telling me something? Fainting is not a motivation problem. If your dip comes with a fall like mine, start with a doctor and sleep, not a pep talk.
Who is saying stop, and why? The people who love you will often say stop first. Listen to them, then decide for yourself.
Pushing through and resting aren't opposites. I've written about rest as a strategy in what a sabbatical actually is, and it's the idea behind Sabbatical.
Polo kept calling me back, even from the bottom of the dip. If it's calling you, start with how I started playing polo, and follow what I'm building at PoloFlow. Polo, wherever you are.
