For ten years, I was a competitive springboard diver. In fact, it was competition that got me into diving, rather than a desire to be a diver. When I was little, I used to compete all the time – even when my fellow competitors didn’t know they were in a race. “I win,” I would declare to my rather confused and understandably annoyed younger brother. I had finished making my bed or tying my shoes or getting dressed before he had, never having bothered to tell him we were competing.
By the time I was nine, this deceitful form of competition had become so prevalent that my mother gave me an ultimatum. I had until the end of that particular day to decide what sport I was going to take up, and I had to take it up as competitively as possible. We had just joined a pool, so that afternoon I joined both the swim team and the diving team. While swimming failed to catch my passion, my seemingly innate desire to fly meant that I fell in love with the strange sport that required me to throw myself off a fiberglass board and complete various tricks before trying to enter the water without making a splash. Not only did I love my initial experience of diving; I showed some promise, winning a state title my rookie summer. I was hooked.
Within a year, I had qualified for the East Coast Championships in my age group. This first major competition, which took place in Moultrie, Georgia, (and which thankfully excused me from playing a tree with one line in my school’s production of Robin Hood) was the first of many long journeys I would take for the sport. It was also where I established myself as a typical head case. After all the hype, all the prep, all the expense and all the driving, I dove the worst I probably ever had and finished dead last. And so diving began to transition for me from being a fun activity in which I could productively channel my competitiveness to being a forum in which I could work out and hopefully learn all sorts of broader life lessons. It also became the forum in which I began to work with my mother most directly.
When I was little, my mother was my mommy – she loved me and cared for me, and in return I loved her dearly. But diving provided the fulcrum by which she turned into my coach and my teacher. With a background in dance, Tai Chi Chuan, Alexander Technique and biomechanics, she quickly picked up the more technical and physical aspects of diving. Before long, she was a certified coach with USA Diving, working not just with me, but the Olympic Diving Team at the International Swimming Hall of Fame. What people – particularly the likes of seven-time head Olympic Coach Ron O’Brien and other major figures in the sport – quickly recognized, however, was that she was able to coach divers on more than just the technical and physical aspects of the sport. Her years as a disciple of Swami Muktananda had given her the ability to help others redirect themselves internally. Fiercely committed to being a head case, I proved a terrible advertisement for her abilities which, notwithstanding my own intransigence, nevertheless shone through.
And while I was always battling the mental aspects of the sport, I did have some success. I accumulated state titles, performed reasonably well from time to time at Junior Olympic meets and became well known in the mid-Atlantic, albeit as a hit-or-miss diver. My mother’s instructions – perhaps un-motherly given the normal concerns parents have with their children throwing themselves off diving boards – were actually quite simple. Let go of my thoughts and fears, use my will to put my attention in the center of my chest at the core of my being and just dive. Yet I resisted. Fiercely.
Immortalized on film was an incident which epitomized my self-sabotaging form of rebellion. After several instances of my trademark balking – starting the approach for a dive but stopping short of leaving the board – I was standing, poised to do a dive well within my ability. Each time I balked, my mother had said “Get out of your head.” And I rebelliously refused. Finally, she said – and it is audible on the film – “Stay in your head,” and I instantly did the dive. In retrospect, I honestly can’t believe how patient she was with me given how annoying I was.
When I was thirteen, I had an experience that I have revisited countless times and will revisit for the rest of my life. At a meet in Pittsburgh at which qualification for Nationals was at stake, for whatever reason I finally followed my mother’s instructions. I let go of everything, used my will to put my attention in the center of my chest at the core of my being, and just dove. For the first time, I found myself in “the zone.” Sportsmen often talk about this place where activity is effortless, consciousness is expanded, time is slow, and everything is both blissful and calm. I was in the zone for not just one dive, but the whole meet. And every coach came up to my mother and asked what she had done, as I dove better than I ever had and qualified with a high place for Nationals.
It was great, and wonderful. And I hated it. I had lost control. I could hardly remember any of my dives; only the experience of calm and bliss. My mind could not stand it. It had been ignored and shut down through that entire meet and it was determined to regain its authority. Sadly, it did so with a vengeance at Nationals and it was years before I experienced the zone to that degree again.
Diving was never really about diving for me. For all the conference titles, accolades and failures, the real purpose of diving was to teach me about life. Years later, I had a second sporting career playing lacrosse – a violent, full-contact field sport that could not be more different from diving. By the time I took up lacrosse, I had learned a lot more from my mother about what I had experienced in Pittsburgh more than ten years prior. So getting in the zone for lacrosse was far less elusive for me than it was for diving. And while my lacrosse days ended with a serious shoulder injury five years ago and no sport has taken its place, I actually find the zone more achievable now than ever.
The freeing experience in Pittsburgh, as well as many more in both diving and lacrosse, actually had nothing to do with the sport I was engaged in at the time. It had to do with where I was internally. For years, I was committed to my mind and the thoughts it generated, and I used that commitment to fight my mother’s coaching and teaching. Pittsburgh was a glimpse for me into what she was offering – an alternative and far more satisfying way of approaching the world.
Only now, nearly twenty years later, has the balance tipped to where I would rather experience that effortless activity, expanded consciousness, slowed time and pervading bliss and calm than to have my mind control everything. And only now am I really discovering that the experience of letting go and willing myself into the core of my being has nothing to do with a sport or any activity at all. It is my choice, and I can choose it all the time. When I am giving a talk, writing an analysis, negotiating an agreement, cooking a meal, cleaning my room, or even just sitting quietly, I can choose to be in the zone. Admittedly, I am far from the point where I have wrested control away from my mind enough to make that choice consistently and stay there all the time. But I know that it is a choice and I know how to choose it.
The zone is not the exclusive purview of sportsmen. While elite sports often afford athletes the discipline and intensity to let go and experience the zone, it is their internal state rather than their physical pursuits that produce that experience. Anyone who has experienced the zone – whether in sport, music, dance, or combat – would be crazy not to want it all the time. But most don’t realize that living in the zone is a possibility, and the controlling nature of the mind certainly works to obscure that reality.
Even out of the zone, I could, at times, be a decent diver or lacrosse player. Even out of the zone I can be a competent lawyer, strategist, analyst, negotiator, public speaker or writer. But my experience of life is so greatly heightened by choosing to be in the zone that it is worth the effort to continue to discipline my mind and keep making that choice to let go of everything and will my attention to the center of my being. When I do, I am better at everything that I attempt, but more importantly, my internal experience, regardless of the activity, is one of bliss and calm. Choosing to live in the zone means choosing to live life to the fullest. We all have that choice available to us all the time.
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