The number one rule of scuba diving is don’t panic.
If anything goes too badly underwater you’ll die. Plain and simple. Yes, dauntless pioneers have refined the science of breathing underwater so that you can enjoy your tropical vacations with little need for concern. But that doesn’t mean scuba diving comes with a harmless and welcoming environment. It’s only safe as long as it’s controlled.
The water won’t kill you, but losing your air supply will. If you lose your air, your limbic system will begin to trigger survival responses which, left untethered, send you into a panic. At this point, with your neocortical brain completely out of commission, you’ll typically invent one of three options.
First, go to the surface. Go as quickly as you can. Swim for the safety of the surface like your life depends on it, because it does.
Second, steal air from a diving buddy. I don’t mean teasingly pull it from them for a quick breath. I mean rip it from them in a frenzied tussle of silt clouds and tangled cordage.
Third, take a breath.
All of them will kill you.
Obviously taking a breath underwater will cause you to drown, this is not hard to understand. It should also be clear how fighting your friend for their air supply is a bad idea. But how can heading to the surface kill you?
While diving, your body is subject to extreme pressure from the weight of the water above you. You just don’t feel it because the air in your tank and lungs matches it. The pressure causes more oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide to dissolve into your bloodstream the deeper you go. If you rise to the surface and undergo an extreme pressure change too quickly, those gases escape, boiling your blood. Oh, and if you forget to exhale on the way up your lungs will explode.
But this is an absolute worst case scenario! You can very safely go diving under nearly all circumstances, I’ve just given you the extreme one. Is it really worth worrying about something that virtually never happens? Even if you do lose your air supply, the situation does not have to be life threatening. It’s entirely manageable if you know what to do and you can stay calm.
The enemy is fear. It’s not the water, not your faulty air supply, and not the explosive laws of physics. You just have to stay calm so you are able to think. Your neocortex must be engaged. You cannot allow the fear in your limbic system to take control.
Alright, if the fear is going to kill you, why did your body panic? You panicked because you’re afraid to die. In a great twist of irony, your fear of dying caused your death. Don’t be afraid.
The self-sabotaging cycle of fear is easy to recognize unless you’re in it, and the reason is simple. Any time a situation presses against the boundaries of your safety, whether the threat to that safety is real or imagined, your neocortical brain shuts down. You stop thinking. Your ability to coherently perceive the world and make a logical interpretation of it is completely handicapped.
But fear does not exist to serve you in the long-term. It’s an evolutionary development derived from a time when everything was trying to kill you, and survival required a quick reaction. Through intelligence, guided by wisdom, man has subjugated the dangers from which these fears were derived, you need fear them no longer.
Why then do we fear? We’re afraid of social disapproval, afraid of divorce, afraid of financial ruin. None of these things exist in the present moment! If something has not happened, your fear will give you anxiety that will cause it. If something has happened, your fear will give you depression about the fact that you can no longer change it. Both will cripple you.
If you are still reading this book you’ve heard about the many diverse ways in which the fears I had internalized from society ruined me. Why was I unable to grow my business? I was afraid to fail. What kept me back from becoming a digital nomad earlier on in life? I was afraid to lose my identity. What drew me to Mary and to the slander that she laid upon me? I was afraid to be seen as a predator. What caused Selena and I to sit in an unhappy marriage for so long? We were afraid to be alone.
Do you understand? Fear is the cause, not the effect. Fear comes first and your destiny follows. If you are afraid you cannot be loved you won’t be. If you are afraid to fail in business you will. If you are afraid of social rejection you’ll be ostracized. Unto he who hath shall more be given and unto he who hath not shall everything be taken. He who hath has faith, and he who hath not has fear.
Karma is not a mushy, spiritualistic, soft idea. It’s a literal, observable phenomenon that the fate of the world and everything in it turns upon. The world will give back to you whatever you give to it, and if you give the world fear it will destroy your soul in return. No private jet, penthouse suite, or sailing yacht can save you from a hell of your own making. But you can choose to trust yourself and give the world faith.