Diving, like any other activity, is 80% attitude and 20% performance. The attitude is a mix of our personality and mindset. It is based on our beliefs, values, and way of thinking. It determines which decision we take underwater.
The performance is a reflection of our attitude, is based on our practical experience, and aims at completing a task.
Having a positive attitude
Attitude is about fairness, determination, acceptance, and realistic expectations. We have to make a commitment to ourselves about the kind of person and diver we want to be, for our own good and that of the people around us.
Fairness
We should be fair to ourselves first. We must know and respect our body, mind, and spirit. Our equipment is an extension of our body, so we must take care of it as well. Respecting our limits and pushing them only in a safe environment is how we achieve that!
We must be fair to our teammates about our responsibilities towards them and respect their limits. They count on us.
If we don’t take care of ourselves and our equipment, we are not respecting our teammates.
We don’t want to be a liability for our team, but a good asset!
We must be fair to the environment we explore by studying it and preserving it. For example, buoyancy control and propulsion techniques are important to maintain a good level of efficiency, but also to avoid damaging the environment.
If we do not respect the environment we live in, we are not respecting ourselves or our mates. We are all in this together!
Determination
Our spirit must guide our mind and our body to reach our goals.
Every decision has to be made with our heart. We must do what is right and what makes us happy.
Most “rational decisions” are emotional decisions based on fear. Fear is something we must accept and live with, but it should not be our leading emotion! Love, not the romantic kind in this contest, determines what we really want; we just have to accept it and move forward. If we love scuba diving, we will do whatever it takes to achieve our objectives. It will be worth it even just for the journey!
We need to use our brains to plan our actions. Our rational mind is there to tell us how to do it, not what to do.
If we act just out of instinct or emotionally, it’s like having a lot of power and no control. Our brain will guide our heart to where it wants to go!
When it’s time to act, we must use our strong spirit and commit to success. We must be determined to do all the necessary efforts and sacrifices to complete our mission, because we know in our hearts that it’s the right thing to do!
Our brain is designed to make us expend the least amount of energy to survive, which is a great way to reach high efficiency. But when things get hard, there is no escape from hard work and sacrifice.
Our determination can be considered as the brute force that pushes our body and mind to achieve something we want with all our heart!
This is the short version: “Decide with your heart, plan with your brain, act with your balls!”
Acceptance
We must accept that we are all normal people, with normal reactions to normal situations, and extraordinary reactions to extraordinary situations. We must accept stress, fear, pain, and errors. If we accept them, we can learn from them and get better at doing what we love!
Acceptance can be very difficult, but within ourselves, we have the strength to accept that! One of the most difficult things to accept is the shame from not being able to control our fears and accept mistakes. If we treat our shame as an enemy, we will never get rid of it. If we treat shame, fear, and stress as a natural response to the environment, we will not need to get rid of them, and we will feel free!
Realistic expectations
Only realistic training leads to realistic results! We must prepare for the worst, but also the most probable outcome.
We must have great skills and a great plan. This will not prevent all mistakes, but it will reduce the amount and severity of our errors. We will still make errors all our lives, and we must be ready to handle them.
We want to evaluate the risks and have a plan A, B, C, etc.
Self-awareness and situational awareness are two skills that we want to work on. They will improve our survivability and give us a better idea of what to expect. The best way to develop them is to dive a lot and choose which parameters we want to focus on, one dive at a time. We cannot focus on everything all at once, especially at the beginning of our diving career.
Having realistic expectations is closely related to our acceptance of stress, fear, risks, and mistakes.
All this philosophical stuff is a mental workout that we must do on every dive, not just during training. We cannot expect to accept stress and handle an emergency like champions if we don’t constantly push our comfort zone and work on our emotions!
Performing like we mean it
Our performance is a reflection of our attitude. After making a decision, we must act with efficiency and avoid the pursuit of perfection. Efficiency is based on achieving a goal according to specific parameters; perfection is aiming at being the best to feed our ego, and will not benefit our mission or team.
Efficiency and effectiveness
Efficiency is the best compromise of our resources and skills, necessary to reach a goal, following specific parameters.
We might need to be time efficient, energy efficient, gas efficient, etc.
Our mission objectives must be put into context with all the other factors playing a role in our dive.
Effectiveness is the opposite of efficiency. It aims at one single goal in the best way possible, without making compromises. We want to be the fastest, most hydrodynamic, most precise, most powerful etc.
Effectiveness doesn’t take into account any other factor, and realistically, it will cost us a lot of energy to achieve a goal most effectively! Most of the time, efficiency is the best balance!
Perfection
Perfection is overrated. Once we are good enough in a certain field, there is no need to pursue perfection to please our insatiable ego! We can move on to the next topic and develop another set of skills.
It’s important to mention that “good enough” is not a 6 out of 10, but an 8/10! A survival skill cannot be underestimated, and we cannot stop training until we are good enough to survive without unreasonable negative consequences.
Aiming at perfection during training, trying to reach the impossible 10/10, is the only way to get an 8/10 and become good enough to perform in a real situation. Focusing on perfection during a real scenario will drive us away from our priority, which is to achieve our current goal! Imagine focusing on looking perfect when donating gas to a teammate, rather than giving priority to precision and time efficiency! Focusing on never reaching perfection can eat us from the inside and lead to unrealistic expectations! On the other hand, believing we are already perfect is the most self-limiting behavior possible!
Pursuing perfection is positive only when we embed a new muscle memory to operate automatically, without thinking about how to do it! It’s achieved during training, not in a real emergency! We train perfectly because we want to be ready, not to look perfect!
Everything we do sends a message about our behavior and personality. Every action is like a business card that says what kind of diver we are. It’s our responsibility to behave and perform properly, transmitting certainty to our teammates about our ability to complete the mission and be ready in case of need. Nobody cares if we want to be the best diver in the world, or how our ego feels about it. Only results matter, not intentions!
