Looking 4 Adventures

Let’s set the scene, shall we?

I’ve written about The Art of Letting Go of things that might not be for me in a previous blog post. You can read about it here: The art of letting go

My previous experience when trying out diving was rather suboptimal. I was anxious, the things I learned didn’t click properly, and I felt rather overwhelmed and incapable than anything else.

There’s a reason and a solution

I always had performance anxiety when I felt observed and I was not met with patience. But then again, my delayed processing didn’t do me any favours there either. The pool also felt rather claustrophobic in hindsight, and I wish I had been met with more encouragement.

After some anxiety and a lot of encouragement by Bas and his instructor Nikki I tried again. At some point in the past I was told I should try everything three times before giving up, so I did.

This concept of trying things 3 times is very neurodiversity coded because rejection for me sometimes comes from a place of discomfort, of fear of the unknown and not of the actual unwillingness to do something.

It wasn’t “me being bad at diving”,  it rather was a mismatch of teaching, environment, and nervous system.

I realized that when I have an instructor that shows me that I am capable and encourages me to just try instead of giving up, I start believing it myself.

What this week brought me

Let me be clear, diving might not be for you, but what I just learned in my week in the Maldives literally changed my life.

Up until this point, I still thought diving just wasn’t for me. And then the liveaboard happened.

We had booked a liveaboard in October before I failed at doing my Open Water Course, and up to the day of our arrival in the Maldives I half expected to spend a week reading, taking baths in the jacuzzi, lying on the sundeck and listening to 20 divers raving about Manta Ray encounters, shark booping, octopuses and how they are the absolute coolest animals on the planet and how the current felt.

I was wrong! Because as soon as we boarded I was met with Ibrahim who was like: Hey, I can get you your Advanced Divers Certification if you want to, and to my own surprise I said yes.

The first night on the ship was rather an unpleasant starting point because I got so sea sick I barely slept and in the morning could not keep a thing in my stomach. But even with my stomach complaining like no other and my energy levels being rather nonexistent, I boarded the tiny boat with Ibrahim after more or less successfully attaching my BCD and my regulator system to the tank and off we went. Maybe it was the: ugh, I’m sick and I don’t care anymore attitude that made me much less anxious.

Ibrahim taught me more in 65 minutes than I had learned in 2 days of trying to force myself through one confined water dive after another. My processing had kicked in, and I eagerly learned, no, soaked up every single piece of information I could get out of him.

He encouraged, he gave praise and I forgot about my stomach and the lack of energy.

There were a lot of lessons and learnings after. I found comfort in following him like a lost puppy, I found comfort in a group, I realized that the anxiety before jumping into the water had to do with my problems with transitions. I screwed up here and there, like I forgot that my dive light might need charging before a low visibility dive and learned from it. At no point was I told I would suck at something. “This is a learning experience!” He said afterwards and I vowed to myself to always keep my dive light charged.

I have a lot to learn still. This is a work in progress. But can you imagine everything you can soak up in learning about sea creatures? Can you imagine I learned how different fish can be identified? I got so excited about seeing Sweetlips and Clown Triggerfishes and Baby Clownfishes and there’s a whole ocean I can make my special interest out of. And all it took was patience, some laughter, some encouragement and to try again.

Because in the end, even if I process things slower sometimes, there’s a whole well of knowledge that wants to be soaked in, and what else are we than predestined for learning? My weirdly wired brain must be good for something, right?