To understand ourselves, to be self aware, takes work.

Lots of it.
Lots of times in reflection, self analysis, diagnostics and explanations of others behaviour towards us and developing emotional intelligence to name a few, but most importantly, time in uncomfortable environments.
Becoming ‘wise’, of being more present, of creating a growth mindset when we currently inhabit a predominately fixed one is tiring.

‘How to’ can be learnt from a book, but it can’t really be understood.

That happens in the field.

To do so, we have to be willing to be vulnerable if we want to train our emotional capacity, and that takes courage especially when we are by default, controlled by the fear of other people’s opinions and the potential consequences of those perspectives.

I looked down at my desk today whilst listening to a relevant podcast, at all the post-it notes, my journal, the scribbling s on old envelopes, the notes on my white board, my phone notes, which are all conducive of this process.

They are all from the weeks thoughts and introspection’s on how I think and how, I have broken both these down and other people’s patterns in order to utilise and enable me to grow out of a old and negative fixed mindset.

It’s the volume and time I spend doing this that I know how much needs to be done and that it never ends.

But it works.

Not always as the marketing suggests, because much of my life doesn’t work and I don’t have a Ferrari yet 😜. But it works in the micro details.

The everyday areas that get overlooked but, when added up, eventually contribute to everything.

I often wonder if I’d be better off being ignorant to this type of thinking.
But what I do know is that every time I get an insight, a moment to catch myself and to stop, consider, re-calibrate and grow from that micro moment, I love it.

Growing our emotional capacity takes work, but it’s work spent in conscious resolution and growth rather than unconsciously in conflict and defence.

Comparison is only useful if it’s for acquiring knowledge.

Outside of that it’s usually a negative force that takes our focus towards asking questions around ‘what’s wrong with me?’ or equally as detrimental generalisations as ‘I’m better than them’.
Neither of the latter mindsets serve in helping us to develop our own individual potential or the capability (or indeed the desire to do so in others.)

With the best will in the world, we all compare ourselves with others. We judge ourselves as much as we judge everyone else. However hard we try, we are always going to have an opinion.

However if we can use those moments to reflect and be conscious of why we are thinking those things we have an opportunity to ask better questions.

If we are falling into a state of self pity of self degradation because of what someone else has done or got, its worth asking ourselves what they are doing differently to us.

Some people are lucky, but most of the time it’s because they are just doing something differently to us, that if we are willing to spend the time, we can emulate and get similar results.

And not only this but it’s also worth considering the idea that ‘one aspect’ of someone’s life in comparison to ours doesn’t create the totality of their lives.

Even the most successful people are struggling somewhere, often in places that we excel in, or have total freedom from that particular hardship.

Nothing is in isolation, so it’s worth pulling back from tunnel vision at times of judgement and see the bigger picture.

In doing so we can ask better questions and create better mindsets and behaviours.

I’m under pressure. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m anxious.

The doors have opened and it’s race to get into the pool before all the Scubbies – (scuba divers)- get into the water and break the clear glass transparency of the water with the bubbles from their tanks.

All of us freedivers want to be the first in. To experience the clear solitude of this cylindrical Elysium.

I’m trying to not panic. I’m having to accept I’m not going to be first in. I may not even get in before the scubbies.

It’s not a case of legging it into the pool and diving in. It’s imperative to stay calm.

I’m remembering all my training so far and how to deal with anticipation.

I’m using my breath work, of attempting to go slow to go fast. I’m not rushing. I refuse to rush. Rushing just fucks everything up.

I get into the shower to warm yesterday’s wet and cold wetsuit up instead of desperately racing to get suited and booted pool side.

Standing in the shower block, I’m even further from the pool, but I again fight the urge to rush, even though the time is ticking by.

I breathe slowly as I stand in the shower and slide the skin-tight suit on, making sure to align my arms into the sleeves better than yesterday’s hurried attempt, which ended up with one of the team having to blow down my sleeve in an attempt to inflate and then rotate the arm to realign it.

I’m done.

I exit the changing area and walk to the pool edge and some of our group have already taken the prime spot.

It’s the line for the deep dive. This is the Prime spot. No one else in the pool and 20m of aquatic tranquillity.

Again the familiar sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) builds up.

I’m missing out.  I want to be the first in, I want to be on the best dive, and I want to be first, I want , I want……

As all this internal acoustic interference from my internal child chatter bombards me and I attempt to close it down. I need to relax.

I remember the coaching talk from this morning breakfast pre dive prep.

My coach tells us ‘Set the first dive up right, as it will dictate the rest of the days dives.
Get it wrong and the day’s dives are likely to be shit in one form or another.’

I stand in the prep area of the pool where some of my group are warming up on the shallow water ropes doing the right thing and warming up nice and slow.

Again I glance up at the couple already on the deep dives. ‘Fuck, I just want to get over there’ I say to myself!

Stop. Regroup. Backup. Focus.

Set the first dive up right.

If I don’t wrap this up now and get my head straight, the day could be a disaster.

I close the loop of vision down to my immediate area and away from the other divers out in the middle.

I need to stop feeling like a dog in a car who knows he’s just arrived at the park and is desperate to get out and run.

I buddy up and agree to do a warm up on the shallow rope.

I breathe up and go down the rope, equalising as I go and attempting to quieten my mind.

Everything needs to be brought into this moment and nowhere else.

There is nothing else. No needs, no expectation, no future pacing. My mind begins to calm as a stand at the bottom of the rope.

I come up and safety my buddy, and then attempt to go again, but the feeling of ‘this is dull’ is starting to leak into my psyche.

I go again, to go through the motions, but I’m still not quiet in my head. I’m still barking in the back of the car to be let out.

And then I see one of the seniors simply sit down on the floor of the shallow shelf we are stood on.

It’s no more than chest deep but enough to fully submerge a person sitting down.

It was reminiscent of how I set up my breathing sessions up at home. Sat on the floor with my back against the radiator.

It was the perfect setup for what I needed.

I took a breath and sat down holding onto the railing behind my back to keep me held under water.

I gazed out at the 360 degree view opening up before me and felt as though I was sitting inside a giant HD television watching an underwater film on freediving.

I could see my friends at the rope I initially wanted to be on, but this time I was still.

Just a silent spectator looking out, almost with a sense of being invisible but at the same time all seeing.

Everything slows down and I check in on how I feel.

It seems as though I’ve been sat here a while, but I can feel I have more time to just sit and look out.

I come up and say nothing.

I allow myself to let the calm do its thing, rather than interrupt it and chatting on the side lines.

I wait a while, breath up again and sit down to dose up again on the stillness.

It feels quite surreal.

I’m sitting in an underwater viewing gallery, not breathing and feeling totally calm as the sense of de-concentration kicks in, where I can see everything, but focus on nothing.

I come up and I’m ready. I know I’ve set my first dive up right for the day. I can just feel it now.

The sense of missing out has gone and is replaced with a sense of having all the time I need.

I don’t need to test it. It shows me. In this moment I’m not racing to get anywhere. I no longer have the sense of missing out and that sense of needing to accomplish something significant.

In these moments it’s the sense of peace that saturates me and it’s that feeling that I want more of.

So I slip over the side and into a sunken oversized rowing boat that’s sits under water just below where I am stood. I sit inside it and peer over the bow into the 20m void and just watch.

It’s a flow state. And right now it feels timeless.

It sets me up and keeps me calm, but only until I later leave the comfort zone of my experience, or when the little voice breaks through unexpectedly and disturbs the silence with a challenge of going just a bit further which tips me off this sense of equilibrium.

And it always will. This is not permanent.

But each time this happens we climb back on the line.

Each time we climb back on, the lines gets a bit longer as we grow and our experience expands our knowledge of the things that, up until falling off, we had never felt before.

We also need people around us to snap us out of the detrimental trances we all live inside of at times – to pull us back so we can re-calibrate and move forwards before we do any serious damage.

This isn’t just about freediving. It’s just a metaphor for every day.

If we set up every day right first thing in the morning, then it’s more likely to determine how the rest of our day goes.

It’s never going to be fool proof or perfect by any means.

Some days just kick the ass out of anything we try and do to salvage them.

Then we just have to accept that just going to bed and trying again tomorrow is the only way back!

But by setting each day up as a habit, it enables us to build more mental muscle.

We are more likely to recognise and then react quicker to when we are spinning out.

By learning techniques to set our day up we will respond and resolve stressful situations much more effectively and in a much quicker time frame.

By setting up our day we train ourselves to focus internally rather than what we can’t control externally.

But setting up our day takes work.

It takes time. It takes commitment and willingness to experiment. To find better, faster ways that work specifically for us as individuals rather than some generic idea that’s been generated all takes effort. It takes failure to go further in the end.

But if we can do this – to set up our day first thing – we stand a better chance of staying present in each moment rather than being anxious that we are not somewhere else.

Set your day up and see where it takes you.