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“Kids need to be physically well and physically active to be their best selves,” says Silken Laumann, pictured here with her two children, Kate and William.
It was at a conference in B.C. last September that author, inspirational speaker and three-time Olympian Silken Laumann first heard the words that she says sums up her attitude towards learning: “To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
The quotation is from Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher and theologian, and was delivered during a speech at the inaugural Connecting for Change conference in Vancouver. Established to tap into the collective wisdom of some of the world’s most influential and respected leaders, the forum provided no shortage of inspiration: Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter were advisory board members, and the keynote address was delivered by the Dalai Lama. Yet it was the writings of the 19th century philosopher and renowned existentialist that stuck with Laumann.
“I thought about that quote and realized it describes what learning is all about—it’s about venturing into the unknown,” the 42-year-old said. “[It] reflects what I talk about in my inspirational speaking: the fear of unlearning.”
The words also resonate in a more personal way for Laumann, a woman The Globe and Mail has called “one of Canada’s most celebrated athletes”. Best known as a world-champion rower, Laumann won three Olympic medals during her career including a silver she won in single-scull rowing during the 1996 Atlanta games. But it’s a bronze medal she won in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona—a victory that came just 10 weeks after her leg was torn open by the bow of another boat during a training session in Germany—that she is probably best remembered for.
That unlikely and now near-legendary victory served as a kind of blueprint for Laumann’s career, both in and out of the water.
After retiring from rowing in the summer of 1996, Laumann quickly reinvented herself by acting on a strong desire to try out new things, including writing and public speaking—all at the risk of losing her footing.
“People ask me why I haven’t built on my rowing career by coaching athletes,” she says from Victoria, where she directs her business and charity-related activities. “The answer is that rowing was a great chapter of my life and now I’m enjoying new challenges. There’s so much else to do. And to do it, I’ve had to learn a great deal.”
Born in Mississauga, Ontario in the early 1960s, Laumann spent much of her childhood in the early suburb of Toronto participating in what we would call today “unstructured play”: running to and from school, organizing games of capture-the-flag with neighbourhood kids, and taking part in a wide variety of sports. She says now that this type of child-directed play laid the foundation for the Olympic-level fitness of her later years.
“My fitness was learned in a simpler time when kids played outside more and neighbourhoods moved at a different pace; when we used our imaginations to entertain ourselves and connect with our neighbours. My childhood experiences definitely enlightened my current thinking about movement and play.”
The power of play and the rewards of sports also provided an unexpected academic boost to the young athlete, when she began to struggle in the classroom. Laumann says she wasn’t a good student in elementary school and struggled with her reading skills. These troubles spurred her to work more diligently than her classmates and taught her that success is often hard earned. Also, her involvement in her school’s sports programs proved to her that she had the skills to succeed in another arena.
“My success in sports buoyed me and trickled over to my scholastic performance,” she said. “There’s a correlation between your belief in your ability to do something and your actual ability to do something, and those two things started working together. I learned that I could do well.”
Those early lessons in learning ended up shaping much of Laumann’s approach to life—both the Olympic and the everyday. More than a decade after stepping away from her high-profile athletic career, she continues to challenge herself with a busy schedule that includes writing, public speaking and charity work.
In addition to her role in the Canadian Olympic Association, she sits on the board of Nike Canada, is the board director for Ronald McDonald House Children’s Charities, and is chairperson of the International Board of Directors for Right to Play. That charity, which funds organized sports for kids in developing countries around the world, reflects a favourite theme for Laumann, who has two children of her own: nine-year-old William, and seven-year-old Kate.
It’s this dedication to children and the positive effects of play that served as the inspiration for Silken’s ActiveKids Movement, a non-profit organization that Laumann founded to help inspire city and community leaders to ensure children have opportunities to partake in active play. The same theme runs through her 2006 book Child's Play: Rediscovering the Joy of Play in Our Families and Our Communities, which promotes the kind of unstructured play she enjoyed as a kid for today’s children.
“Kids need to be physically well and physically active to be their best selves, and in order to engage in that activity they need a certain degree of freedom,” she says. “If they don’t have a connection to their bodies—if we’re only teaching them through their minds—we’re not maximizing their lives and their education.”
Silken’s ActiveKids Movement was founded in 2004 to help educate politicians and community leaders about the importance of active play for Canadian kids. In April 2007 Laumann testified at a parliamentary standing committee on health in Ottawa about the importance of using the 2010 Winter Olympics as inspiration for young people to get more involved in sports.
To visit Silken Laumann’s charity: Silken's ActiveKids To read more about the importance of play to a child’s life, see CCL’s Lessons in Learning article “Let the children play: Nature's answer to early learning”
Although she has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario, and plans someday to revisit her enthusiasm for higher education, for the most part Laumann says her most valuable knowledge has been acquired simply through living. For example, people often ask how she learned to be such an engaging public speaker.
“I learned by doing it badly,” she laughs. “A huge part of my learning with everything has been that practical side where I learn by doing and learn by making mistakes. By doing something unfamiliar and saying, ‘well that really didn’t work,’ and by supplementing that learning by watching other people succeed at the thing I’m trying to do, I’ve built all sorts of new skills.”
A large part of Ms. Laumann’s learning has come through reading other people’s work and through writing, especially journaling. “Reading and writing are very powerful. Reading because it’s a way to take in information, reflect on that information and be inspired by people’s ability to put abstract ideas or feelings into words. Writing because it’s one of the critical ways in which I practice, or put back into words, what I’m learning.”
Ms. Laumann writes daily in her journal because she believes the process enables her to recognize and name her feelings—to learn about and put her finger on the things that are bothering her and inspiring her. She has also found that journaling puts her in touch with her creativity. ”I’m a creative person, which is extremely important to me. It brings a lot of joy into my life. Writing is an expression of that creativity as are painting and playing the piano.”
Ms. Laumann says everyone needs to find his or her best means of becoming active.
“Whether a person accumulates university degrees and moves on to complete graduate studies—or learns, as I do best, through experience and experiment—everyone needs to develop the confidence to dare.”