As an example, my wife and I have now arrived at a certain age and occasionally one of us will have a ‘senior moment,’ like when one of us says, “why am I staring into the fridge like this. There must be something I wanted.” Lots of people find this a cause of great anxiety – “OMG, I’m getting older,” they think, whereas I tend to find such incidents amusing, and I laugh at them. “Thank heavens I’m getting older,” I say. “Now I appreciate life to the full and I can do whatever I like.”

No matter how successful you might be in achieving your goals, if you keep getting hung up by what I would regard as trivialities, you are not free. To put it another way, if you still sweat the small stuff, you are not free.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful here. Of course if you really are seriously losing your cognitive abilities due to an illness, that’s not amusing and it’s probably much harder to reach that place of acceptance. But losing bits of your short-term memory as you get older is to be expected. And it’s no big deal really.

The other day I met up with a group of people, some of whom were fairly senior citizens, and though we’ve met at least half a dozen time, I can remember very few of their names, even though they have told me them on many occasions. That’s just how it is. But no-one seems to be in the least bit worried about it. I simply ask someone for the umpteenth time what their name is, saying, “sorry, I’m hopeless with names,” and more often than not, as they tell me their name again, they admit, “me too. Sorry, what was your name again?” C’est las vie. We both know perfectly well we will have to meet many more times before we remember each other’s name.

Something else, and this often crops up in Life Coaching sessions is the person who constantly berates themselves for some little tiny thing they get wrong. They get obsessed with trying to be perfect. You’re certainly not free if you have an obsession, because it drives your behaviour, your reactions and your anxiety.

“Look at it this way,” I usually suggest. “if you do 100 things in a day, and 99 of them turn out fine but one goes pear shaped, which is the one you focus on at the end of the day? Of course it’s the one you got wrong. That’s entirely natural, but to be obsessed by it, while forgetting or ignoring the other 99 things that went well is simply not reasonable or justifiable and certainly not a balanced view of reality. A 99% success rate is something remarkable to be celebrated, and yet you choose to obsess about the one thing you got wrong and can correct tomorrow.”

That is not the road to freedom. Acceptance is the only road to freedom

In the film, Bridge of Spies, attorney James Donovan (played by Tom Hanks) asked Rudolf Abel, the alleged KGB spy (played by Mark Rylance), who is accused by the CIA of various espionage related crimes against the USA, if he was not worried of being found guilty and sentenced to death. His reply was, “would it help?”

Now that’s what I call a state of true acceptance!

Here’s an extreme but real-life example. I once met a woman who was, in her youth, a professional ballet dancer. During the course of her work she met a Russian man who was also a ballet dancer, and after a short time they “fell in love” and got married. Then the problems began, for he couldn’t speak English and she couldn’t speak Russian. Even more problematical, he didn’t want to live in England and she didn’t want to live in Russia, he wanted children as soon as possible and she wanted children only later, after experiencing some career fulfilment

Now I ask you, how was that possibly going to work? Well of course it didn’t and within two months they were initiating divorce proceedings. They were obviously not suitable for each other. The only thing they had in common was a steamy passion and that alone is not enough. But how easily do we go astray when driven by youthful hormones!

There is another essential precondition, and that is the ability of each partner to love the other unconditionally, meaning you accept your proposed partner exactly as they are, warts and all, without requiring them to change anything about their true selves.

That does not mean your partner has free licence to behave outrageously or unconsciously. They might need to shape up and get their act together on some level so they bring something of value to the party. Here’s another example, a woman who met someone and they fell madly in love, but she could not cope with him being a drug addict.

The fact that she couldn’t accept that, and he seemed unwilling or unable to get help and change his ways, made them unsuitable for each other, despite being deeply in love. Eventually, when she realised there was more pain than happiness in this relationship, she ended it.

She’d learned a valuable lesson for, sometime later when she began another relationship with another man who turned out to be an alcoholic, she ended the relationship at once, saying “I don’t want this in my life.” Clearly this pair was not suited to a happily ever after scenario either.

The growth of her emotional maturity was fascinating to watch, for when she did eventually meet a man who she could accept unconditionally she said words to the effect of, “he’s a lovely chap but a bit boring.” There was something about the edginess of her previous relationships that had attracted her but now she was sufficiently perceptive to see that and break the destructive pattern.

The good news is, as their relationship developed and as they began to see some of each other’s hidden depths, they fell more and more deeply in love. Of course nothing is ever guaranteed in life, but this way they both realised they had a far better chance of developing an enduring relationship.

A certain maturity is required, for everyone has annoying foibles and both parties must be able to focus on the bigger picture, i.e. that their love for each other is the most important thing. So if you are looking for love and you meet someone, be honest and enquire of yourself, “can I accept this person exactly as they are – hook, line and sinker?”

I’ve been around on this planet quite a long time now and after many years of introspection and struggle, I believe I know exactly who I am at last. But it was not always thus. That’s why it was a tonic to read this from a young lad of 21 (when he began the voyage), someone clearly blessed with wisdom far beyond his years.

It’s hard to overstate this achievement because Guirec chose probably the hardest route imaginable. First across the Atlantic from France to the Caribbean, then straight North to the Northwest Passage, which is well inside the Arctic Circle, then South down the West coasts of Canada, the USA and South America to round Cape Horn, once more into iceberg territory, across to the Cape of Good Hope and then back North up the Atlantic Ocean to his home port in Brittany.

What’s more his only companion on this amazing trip was a hen – yes, that’s right, a hen, called Monique, who miraculously remained alive and able to lay fresh eggs even in the sub zero temperatures they encountered at both ends of the earth.

There are, however, one or two additional comments I would add to his assertion you can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it. If your goal is to be meaningful you also have to put your heart and soul into it, otherwise the exercise is meaningless – just an ego trip.

Of course no-one in their right mind would even attempt such an achievement if it wasn’t coming from their heart, but you’d be amazed at the number of people I’ve encountered in my role as a Life Coach, who haven’t searched their hearts before deciding on their goal(s), or who have ignored their hearts because what it tells them is too scary to even contemplate.

You ignore your heart at your peril, for that’s the road towards regrets when it’s too late. But you must also prepare and have a plan if you are to achieve something that everyone else says is impossible; and then you must take action, for without action nothing ever happens. That’s where the scariness can creep in if you let it. Decide honestly if you want it enough and if you do, take the advice of the late Susan Jeffers, “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. Never be in denial of how you feel, but don’t let your fear keep you stuck.

Also of paramount importance, dare to dream. Most of the really serious achievements in our world started with a dream.

If you are an imaginative person you may come up with many dreams, and some ideas are better than others. In such a case you must be sufficiently discriminating to decide which ones to act upon. That’s when you need a vision.

Young Guirec Soudee obviously had a vision of experiencing the world in all its extremes from a small yacht and he decided to act upon something that most people like me would only want to read about.