“Why is a day only 24 hours? Even 30 wouldn’t be enough” — that is how fast things kept piling up, my head and body both over capacity.

Meaning to enjoy it all, and then noticing the exhaustion had stacked up until I was close to bursting — has that ever happened to you?

I know full well that what matters at times like that is organising everything and deciding what comes first. And even so, everything justkeeps scattering, and I wonderhow I am supposed to spend the time.

Organise it? Throw it out? Cut it back? Stop doing it?

Whatever I agonise over, there are still only 24 hours — which means it is not only work, but who I spend that time with, that starts to matter.

There was a time I could never turn down an invitation and showed my face everywhere I was asked.

That had its own fun, but once I fell for the world of motorsport and found the joy of being alive in driving a rally, the whole compass of my life — what I actually live for — shifted away from work or play, to driving rallies.

The record of a motorsport woman driving a life: the challenge to 14,000 km, Peking to Paris
05.05.2022
Sumiko Kokonno, who lost a breast to cancer — the Peking to Paris 14,000 km Motor Challenge 2024, taking on life …
/introduce
Everyone keeps travelling the journey called a life. Of course there is nothing wrong with a calm, safe journey that takes no risks. But you can also choose to take on an outrageous adventure. Further education, work, sport, art, starting a business — anything at all. An adventure, I think, is the dream or the goal inside you. And however small that dream or goal might look to someone else, dreams and goals are not large or small. The only question is whether you want to take it on — whether you seriously want it to happen. Tell someone about an “adventure of a life” like this, and you will sometimes be denied, or mocked …

Driving a rally naturally needs money, and needing money naturally means working. But grow the business and you lose more time to it, and end up unable to join the rallies you love — a contradiction, a paradox.

Inside that paradox, right now I am filling every spare minute with part-time work. I have my main business too, of course, but I have chosen to turn the hours everyone else is asleep, or resting, steadily into money.

It is all, simply and entirely, in service of one thing: finishing the rally (laughs).

That I can pack in that much work and feel no stress from it at all is because I am free.

The biggest trick to staying free, for me, is listening to the voice inside — the “this feels good” or the “something’s off” — and following it.

Listen honestly to that voice and everything starts to feel enjoyable, and from there all that is left is to push straight ahead towards the goal.

“Enjoying it” makes everything work out

Even so, there are times even I lose sight of what I actually want, caught up in my own lack of confidence, or pride, or worrying what other people think.

Anxiety comes flooding in too, over stopping something, or letting something go.

Cling to the rope of safety and you feel no fear, no dread — you can live an unchanging life, keeping everything as it is.

But let go of it, boldly, and a rope you never saw while gripping the safe one appears — a rope that only ever appears once you let go.

And that is when you notice: the rope you had been clinging to so desperately turns out not to have been needed at all, you would have been fine — and the new rope in front of you is thicker, bigger, more supple and stronger than any rope you had ever gripped before.

So I mean to keep choosing to let go, sometimes, from here too.

And what decides the moment? Does it feel good, or does it not?

Getting better at listening to your own heart!

So that tomorrow too, I can move forward with a smile!