One of my favorite things about skydiving is that it doesn’t require a great amount of physical strength to do well. The sport is almost entirely mental, which is why it is a great metaphor for life. It is also why performance psychology is so important.
Story Time:
A fun competition among skydivers is called “scrambles” where teams are created by drawing names from a hat. The teams then compete against each other to see who can successfully make a set series of formations in a single skydive, scoring one point for each formation. One of the first times I participated in a scrambles event, I ended up with a team that was destined to win it all. I was a pretty good skydiver, but the rest of the randomly selected group consisted of world champions and world record holders of various types.
For the first jump of the competition the formations were pretty simple, but someone was in the wrong place for one of them. We got zero points for that first jump, and spent most of our time between skydives blaming each other, instead of preparing for the next round. By the end of the day we had accomplished only one thing: coming in last place. We had all the skills but none of the teamwork, and we were obsessed with our success.
A few years later at another scrambles event, my friend put together a team of her own, skipping the random part. Her plan was to only do the first skydive, and then have fun and do silly things instead of formations. We completed the first round and scored three points. For the rest of the day we had fun with silly exits and rodeos. There are a lot of fun things to do in skydiving besides make formations, and we tried a lot of them. The real shock was at the end of the day, when we came in first place! Our team captain was absolutely furious, as winning was not in the schedule.
I thought a lot about those two events and how they turned out. In neither case did our plans work out. Or did they? In the first case we were sure we were destined for success, and when it didn’t come to us on schedule we resorted to pointing to each other and assigning blame. In the second case we accomplished our goals, since our goals were not the scoring formations, but tube exits and rodeos.
Sometimes I will see a friend who is learning to skydive start to really struggle with some element of the sport. It might be their exits or their landings, but they very quickly fall into a rut where they feel like they can only do it “wrong” and get frustrated. It can be hard to watch, so I will often step in and remind them why they are skydivers: “Remember, you are here to have fun. This isn’t your job, at least not yet. Go make a skydive where your only goal is to enjoy yourself. I bet your landing will be just fine”
If your goal is success, then you might achieve it and you might not, but you probably won’t have any fun along the way. If your goal is fun, though, then you will probably achieve it, and you might even have some success along the way.
Me
This is just as true with skiing or high school soccer as it is for skydiving. We perform at our best when we are enjoying ourselves. See Ted Lasso S2E5.
Author’s note: Could somebody remind me of this next time I’m at a skydiving event?
