This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Banff Mountain Film Festival, showcasing a handful of films with themes centered around adventure, social justice, environmentalism, creativity, and the human experience as a whole. This two-night festival is an immersive experience that allows me to connect with myself and my community, and gives me a space to gather inspiration. The organizers of this festival take great care in showing a diversity of films: from drone footage of skiing almost sure to put you in a hypnosis, to rare polar bear sightings, to personal stories of ingenuity and risk-taking. I walked away from this experience with my soul feeling full and alive, ready to walk a path of both challenge and adventure.

The films this year shook me to my core, to the point where I knew I had to write about them. One of the main themes that stuck with me throughout the experience was the idea of inspiration and where it comes from. Maybe you get most of your inspiration from music. Maybe it’s through having deep discussions about issues you care about. Maybe it comes from being immersed in nature. Whatever the source, the inspiration that fuels our inner creativities is completely personal and subjective.

One of the films that really stood out to me is called Creation Theory, which features one of my favorite alternative indie artists Griffin Washburn, better known as Goth Babe. The film went into a deep dive on the original source of creativity, going all the way back to the beginning of our universe, even drawing in some physics concepts such as the theory of relativity. It emphasizes the importance of the “observer” relative to space and time, stating that without the observer’s unique point of view, both space and time would cease to exist. After reflecting on this this I realized there is this paradox that even though the size of the universe makes us seem so insignificant, we are also the “observers” that give meaning to spacetime. We also have this unique relationship with the universe that gives us creativity and the gift of self-expression. Our creative potentials are the direct byproduct of the birth of our universe, and when we tap into our natural surroundings, we unlock our full capabilities and enter the “flow state”, which professional skiier Robin Van Gyn defines as “personal melting”, where once you are in this state you seemingly get “transported to a different time or different place”. The film explores this phenomenon by sending a team to a remote location in Iceland to study the connection between sport and music as an example for how different creative expressions can be drawn from the same source. Goth Babe wrote a full EP album for the sake of this film, and in one of his songs “Surfing in Iceland” he so beautifully sings

”Don’t try and be in control, it’ll never turn up”

meaning that in order to fully enter this flow state, you can’t force it upon yourself. Just like the ebbs and flows of the universe, you have to fully let go of expectation and let things happen. Only then can you enter with graceful chaos into a world of limitless creation.

Once you’ve found your inspiration and are in your flow state, there really is no limit to what you are capable of with the right amounts of dedication and persistence. This is evident through another one of my top films shown this weekend, called Wild Waters, featuring Nouria Newman, an elite kayaker from France. Finding her inspiration from wild and remote places, she kept setting bigger and bigger goals until she became the first woman to free-fall down a 100-foot high waterfall in her kayak. Even after suffering a potentially life threatening injury, she kept persevering until she reached her goal.

Another film features a woman named Stephanie Case who tells the story of her journey ultramarathoning a 450 km race in Italy, while managing a campaign called “Free to Run” with the mission of supporting girls in Afghanistan. She tells her story of how she used both her running and her influence in the UN to help these girls be able to pursue sports and advocate for their own rights as women. These stories of women in sports are especially inspirational to me because it proves what women are capable of and pushes me to achieve my own personal goal of running a marathon, which now seems like a cakewalk in comparison.

While watching these films gives me the impression that humans are limitless beings, others tell me this is the opposite of the truth. Another film shown is called The Process, featuring climber Tom Randall who set out to accomplish a seemingly impossible challenge of both climbing and running, consisting of 15 rock climbs, 42 summits, and 142 km in just 24 hours. Part of this includes completing the Classic Rock Challenge, which is a beast of an endeavor in and of itself. As part of his training, Randall sets out to do the Classic Rock, and on his first attempt he beats the world record but nearly collapses from heat exhaustion in the process. On his second attempt, he again beats the record, but almost puts himself in a near-death situation on one of his climbs. These sobering experiences made him realize he so often pushes himself way too close to the edge of what he is comfortable with, and thus decides to back down from completing his original 24-hour challenge. I have the utmost respect for people who set extreme goals and follow through with them, but watching this film reaffirmed to me that it is also equally important to define your own limits and to know when to back away when things fall too far out of your comfort zone. Nonetheless, as both a climber and a runner, Tom Randall is someone who now inspires me to keep setting goals, however big or small.

Now we go back to the idea of inspiration. I get a lot of my own inspiration from storytelling. These films inspired me by telling incredible stories of the human experience to encourage me to keep being creative, chase my dreams, and maybe make a difference in the world in the process. I now encourage you to ask yourself: what inspires you? What fuels your soul? Whatever that thing is, let it guide you to your own “personal melting” and your most powerful form of self-expression.

”Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness – one where we perform our best and feel our best. It also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: What is the meaning of life? Flow is what makes life worth living.” - Steven Kotler