'Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting'
- danstamm9
- Jan 29
- 3 min read
Focus on life lessons learned from high-wire act Nik Wallenda and his great-grandfather that Wallenda uses to block out what doesn't matter.
There aren’t many things that require life-or-death concentration quite like tightrope walking without a safety net. It has thrilled circus-goers for more than a century, claimed lives on camera, and made audiences gasp at seemingly impossible close calls.
How do the people walking that fine line avoid distraction to reach the ultimate goal?
Look no further than world-record-holding daredevil Nik Wallenda’s 2013 high-wire act where he traversed the Little Colorado River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park without safety equipment, balancing on a two-inch-thick steel cable 1,500 feet in the air.
In a video documenting his feats, Wallenda—one of the legendary "Flying Wallendas"—spoke of his great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, as his biggest influence. He shared this quote from the patriarch of the Wallenda family: "Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting."
Wallenda calls it "a lifestyle." He married a fellow daredevil and told Outside Television that he spends three to four hours a day, five days a week, on the wire. Having walked the wire nearly as long as he has been able to walk on solid ground, he has conditioned himself to stay locked on the goal.
"A negative thought comes in my mind, I nip it in the bud immediately," Wallenda said. "What I do is extremely calculated."
That laser focus was on full display during his 2013 walk across the gorge.
"Really, it's about focusing on the other side," Wallenda told TODAY. “Because it's so long, I'll actually look about halfway across, and I'll kind of change my focal point as I make my way across."
He made the walk without a harness or safety device to catch him. He insists this feels more natural because he doesn’t train with them—referring to safety gear as a "false sense of security."
‘No room for error’: Focus under death-defying pressure
"There’s no dress rehearsal in my business, but it’s extremely exciting," Wallenda told TODAY. "No room for error. Not in my job. You’ve got to be 100 percent on."
Think about that: being able to feed off the lack of a safety net. Then, add in winds blowing at more than 30 mph. Those gusts had the "King of the High Wire" muttering prayers during the quarter-mile walk over the gorge that took him just under 23 minutes.
I am distracted by the sound of the wind outside my window, yet here was a man with a daredevil bloodline, remaining perfectly centered.
"It was way more windy, and it took every bit of me to stay focused the entire time," he told CBS News.
He has the kind of focus so many of us crave—whether we are trying to do our taxes, write a term paper or just meal plan for the week. Heck, I would love to use some of that focus just to get my kids' lunches packed before school each morning.
Maybe it’s the death-defying nature of it all that can lead to ultimate focus and calm—as is evidenced by interviews Wallenda does while wearing a microphone and headphones on the rope.
Training to be mentally tough
Author Jason Selk, a performance coach who specializes in mental toughness, delivered a summation for Forbes on how Wallenda’s team prepared him for the walk. In his article, "Mental Toughness Helped Nik Wallenda," Selk offers advice for the "average Joes" amazed by the feat:
Know what you want and who you are
Do what needs to be done
Strive for your personal best
Maintain a positive attitude
The biggest takeaway for me? Practice how you plan to perform.
But Wallenda’s own words from his Outside TV interview may ring most true: “all of us should live our days like it’s our last.”
As I expand this project, I hope to speak with Wallenda about how he limits distractions to reach the other side—and perhaps with Selk about how those who achieve the nearly impossible can inspire the rest of us in our "normal" lives.
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