Adventurer and public speaker, Mark Agnew, recalls being part of the first team to cross the Northwest Passage under human power

The moment we crossed into the Beaufort Sea, we made history. In 2023, my teammates and I became the first people to kayak the entire Northwest Passage and the first people to do it by human power in a single season. It was a feat that had evaded many other adventurers for years. When I returned to the UK, I was interviewed on BBC Breakfast, ITV and literally hundreds of media outlets. I won European Adventurer of the Year and we (The Arctic Cowboys) were named in the Top 10 Greatest Kayaking Expeditions of the Century (so far).

Had this happened in 2018, it would have been everything I’d dreamed of. But by the time I actually achieved the Northwest Passage, I’d long since changed my metric of success.

In 2018, I was rescued from the Atlantic for a second time. I was trying and failing to set the world record for rowing across the ocean. The double failure sent me into a tail spin and forced me to reflect on what it was that I meant by “being an adventurer” and how I was measuring success.

I came across a piece of psychology that said sportspeople only take part in sport for one of three reasons - performance, relationships or discovery. I’d become obsessed with performance.

I realised I’d lost sight of what I cared about - I loved adventures because I wanted to be immersed in wilderness and share that experience with like minded teammates - that’s relationships and discovery. I had no idea when or why I started caring about becoming a world record holder.

So, when I went to the Northwest Passage I explicitly said to myself, “I’m here for the wilderness and I’m here for camaraderie”. I enjoyed every single day because I was in the wild. The wind and the storms and the ice and the polar bear and the whales, that was the point of being there. The process was the point. It wasn’t some necessary evil between me and the finish. Yes, I still wanted the challenge of setting the world first, and that in turn helped build camaraderie because of our common purpose.

The goal facilitated the journey. Not the other way round.

I now go around the world giving talks to companies about building resilience and I always return to the same lessons - if you have intrinsic goals, rather than outcome based goals, you will be happier and more resilient. Why would you give up on a journey you love? Suddenly the outcome looks after itself. It counters traditional ideas of resilience, which centre around having the grit to keep going in spite of wanting to give up.

If I hadn’t failed, I’d never have reflected and remembered that adventure is not about where you start or finish, it’s about everything in between.