Over the past year I have pushed myself to try to get to a new level with my skydiving. From the beginning, however, it seemed like the more I wanted to accomplish with a skydiving experience the poorer I performed. Two trips to the West coast left me feeling like perhaps I simply didn’t have what it takes to be the skydiver I wanted to be. Every time I was back in my element, however, with people I knew and less to prove, the skills would come back, along with my drive to see what I could do with them.
This past weekend I was at my third big-way camp of the year. The format of this camp had us changing where we were in the formation every two jumps. For the first two jumps I was in the base, which for my body type and experience is not a challenge at all. Next I was on the very outside of the formation, and completely out of my comfort zone. The purpose of a training camp is to give participants a chance to be in just this situation, with no consequences of failure. It’s a good thing there were no consequences, because at the first opportunity, I failed. I went low.
Story Time:
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the movie “Dumbo” all the way through. I certainly haven’t seen it in years, and for all I know it is horribly racist by contemporary standards. What I do remember is that Dumbo is given a magic feather that gives him his ability to use his oversized ears to fly. Later in the movie he loses the feather and is scared because he believes that he can’t fly without it. It turns out that he doesn’t need the feather at all, it was just a tool to convince him of what he was capable of all along.
Sometime this spring I lost my magic feather. This weekend I finally found it.
In an earlier post I quoted Kate Cooper-Jensen and finding your mindset from previous success. After I went low on the formation I sat myself down and tried to think about what was going on when I was experiencing success. I realized that when I was in my element I was having fun, and one way I would have fun was by making a small wager on the skydive. I would find a friend who was flying from the same place in the airplane to the same place in the formation as I was and bet them a dollar to see who could get there first. I didn’t know anyone well enough to bet them a dollar, so I told myself that if I beat the two people in front of me to the formation I would buy myself a cheeseburger and milkshake.
In the same earlier post I also quote Dan Brodsky-Chenfield about finding “the line” where you were not over-excited or too relaxed, but just right. I realized that I had only been focusing on relaxing. Maybe it was time to try to get to the other side of the line. Instead of humming a calming song, I would think about attacking the formation.
So I spent the flight to altitude thinking “attack” and “cheeseburger and milkshake”. When it was time to make the jump I didn’t go low. My flying wasn’t perfect, but I beat those other skydivers to the formation and didn’t go low. In fact, I wasn’t aggressive enough. I still hadn’t found the line, but I had found my magic feather.
