Being underwater

I was always a terrible swimmer. I mean “walking at the swimming gala, struggled to get even my 50m badge” terrible. And basically, like so many things, it was almost entirely a matter of mentality: I don’t want to be underwater.

In recent years, I’ve become more and more interested in confronting these silly mental blocks in my life. So swimming made sense as an early one to confront.

I started with breaststroke, because (pathetically), I could keep my head out of the water. Then gradually got more confident, then got some goggles and managed to start swimming length after length underwater.

Swimming, right? Not difficult.

But there was one realisation that really changed things. My childish anxiety was telling me I wanted to be above the water as much as possible, where air is and where I can get out.

In fact, the opposite is true — to do a good job, I actually need to be underwater as much as possible.

Once you let go and keep your head down, you can see the floor move by below you and get a sense of speed. Your body and rhythm won’t let you drown. And even a glug of water won’t kill you.

Once I realised this, so much became clear and everything became so much easier. There’s something about this that reminds me of other areas of life too.

Understand the real challenge and you can lean into it properly. Understand that you are at work or providing a service precisely because of all the annoying things that go wrong and unexpected stresses that occur – that’s what they pay you for. But that’s probably what you are good at. That’s what the job IS.

Perhaps this is a cognitive echo of David Foster Wallace’s great “this is water” speech, triggering somewhere in my head. But it describes something worth remembering.

Now, front crawl.