Episode 29- Special Re-Podcast Lessons from the Storm

Hey, this is Rob with Stand Shore Coaching, and welcome to the Stand Shore Podcast. Hey, I did a podcast on my other show, or one of my other shows. Specifically, this one is coming from One Dive at a Time. That show is set up with a mindset Or with the target audience of veterans, scuba diving, coaching, and community. But I did a podcast over on that channel and I thought, man, it is so appropriate for this channel. So I'm going to go ahead and share that podcast right now. But before I do, don't forget that for the month of August, I'm running a special on a monthly coaching package that's $100 off. And I'll make sure that to include that link in the show notes. Hey, thanks so much for listening. And now here's that podcast from One Dive at a Time. Man, I really, really wanted to go boating today and diving, and it's been so long since I've gone out just for fun. You know, nothing scheduled, no students, not doing a working dive, no ESS certified, nothing to train on. Just me, the boat, a couple of tanks, and an awesome evening cruise around the lake. I was even waiting For all the ramp monkeys and jet skiers and everybody else to clear off the lake on a late Sunday afternoon. That way I'd have the place basically to myself. I was— the plan was I was gonna knock out a dive, late afternoon dive, and then knock out a night dive. And, you know, I, I realized something. I did actually do this a couple of weeks ago, but for me, being on the water feels like breathing. And if I'm not doing it often, I really start to feel off my game. So yeah, it, it had only been a couple of weeks, but for me, that is like a lifetime. In the summertime, I'm used to being in the water 3 to 5 days a week. It keeps me balanced out, keeps me— everything copacetic. I had already loaded up my, my gear. I visualized the ramp. I was already thinking about how the cool water was going to feel against my skin. Thought about floating there at neutral buoyancy with the sound of nothing but my breath and Bubbles, just that peace and that reset that I, I look forward to all the time. But as I'm starting to get ready, Brooks did the right thing and alerted me that there was a storm moving in. So I went to a couple of apps, I checked the radar. And it looked like nothing. I mean, it's like way out there, so far out it felt silly to even consider it. I figured I could at least get in a dive, watch the weather, take a service interval, make a call whether I was going to make a dive or head back to the ramp. And I figured I could make it back before that little blip on the screen. even got close. But there was something in me, something that was trained through years on the water, through weather courses that I did in my captain certifications, and through sheer experience of taking all that together. Something deep down told me to hold back. And so I did. And I'm not going to lie to you, I sat around here all afternoon frustrated. I kept thinking, you know, I could have gone, I should have gone. I watched the clock, imagined where I'd be on a lake at that point. I watched the sky, it was still blue. And I thought, man, I, I, you know, I, I'd be, I'd be heading to my second dive right now. And then out of nowhere, it hit. Just this monstrous storm. It came barreling in, wind ripping through, lightning popping off. I mean, it looked like flashbulbs at a concert. Got a little bit of sideways rain. The skies just looked and felt angry. I mean, it hit hard and it hit fast. And if I'd gone, I would've been right in the middle of it, out in open water, maybe even underwater itself. You know, best case scenario, I'm racing the wind back to the ramp in my little boat. Worst case scenario, well, let's, let's not even go there. And as I sat there listening to the storm, And listening to it pound against the house and the thunder around me, lightning popping off, I realized that there was a lesson that applies way more and way beyond diving and boating. And that was how many times in life Do we want something so badly that we ignore all the signs? And I'm actually going through this right now, and I've gone through it other times in my life, and I know you have as well. How often do we want something so much that it hurts? And that's a good thing, right? It's good to have that passion. It's good to have that drive. It's good to have that desire. But we ignore all the signs. We go against our values. We go against, you know, if we set up, you know, something up in a frame of what we want or that target, we begin to have scope creep. You know, a new job seems perfect, but you rush into it. A relationship that feels meant to be, but you're blowing past all the red flags. A business decision that feels exciting, but your gut's saying not yet. And that storm today, it's, it's a reminder that patience is often the thing that saves us from unnecessary damage. For me, It was a reminder that just because you can't see the danger yet doesn't mean that it's not there. Sometimes your radar, your intuition, your training, your experience is quietly telling you to wait. Because when it comes, it may come fast. And if you jumped in too early, You're going to have to fight just to get back. Now here's where it gets really interesting. You see, science has something to say about it as well. So often we treat intuition like it's this mystical, spiritual, gut-level guessing, but there's real neuroscience behind it. In fact, Researchers like Antonio Damasio, they've shown that intuition often comes from what's called somatic markers. I used to teach this when I did survival training, and if you read Lawrence Gonzalez's book. Beyond Survival. I think that was the book that he wrote in. But anyway, Lawrence Gonzalez, those somatic markers, those gut feelings that your brain's way of tapping into stored patterns from past experiences, your body is basically saying, hey, we've been here before. And last time it didn't go so well. Now, how that relates back into PTSD, I can't go into this in this episode. But just that intuition, it's not mystical, it's not spiritual, it's not magic. It's memory, it's experience, it's pattern recognition, and they're all working together below the level of conscious thought. Psychologists also talk about adaptive unconscious processing, and that's the mind's ability to analyze mounds of data. And it does it all in the background while you're focused on something else. When I looked at that radar and I thought, hmm, whatever, man, it looks clear, but I still didn't go. It wasn't hesitation. It was my brain integrating years of experience and training and education. It's analyzing things I've learned about wind behavior, barometric shifts, cloud movement, even maybe even in the tone of Brooks's voice. If you've ever had a moment where you just knew something didn't feel right and later it turns out you're spot on, Learn to trust that. That's your lived wisdom speaking up. And that's not just some soft skill or emotional fluff, some kind of mysticism, some kind of spirituality. It's actually data. And it's data that you can't always see or plot out on a spreadsheet. And here's the other kicker: our intuition tends to work best when we've slowed down, when we stop rushing, when we pause long enough to let those inner warning systems speak. That brings me back today. Yeah, I didn't get on my boat. I didn't get in my dive. I sat around on the couch. I ate nachos and ice cream, things I shouldn't be eating right now because I was bored and I was upset and I was mad and I was angry and frustrated and having a pity party about not getting— literally having a pity party that I didn't get to go out. And I haven't been getting to go out as much as I like to. But I did get something else. I got reminded that restraint isn't weakness. Waiting isn't laziness. It's all wisdom. And sometimes the most courageous thing that you can do is nothing at all. Because sometimes what you do is what you don't do. That's right. What you don't do is just as important as what you do. So if you're in a season right now where you're itching to move forward, itching to jump into that next thing, take a breath, check the radar, listen to your gut, trust that Wisdom that is there isn't always loud, and that's where coaching helps. That's where coaching helps to let you slow down, talk yourself through the data, take that breath, check out the radar. Because sometimes the answer isn't no, and sometimes the answer isn't yes. Sometimes the answer is not yet. Hey, that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you so much. Remember, as long as you've got air and scientifically backed intuition, You're gonna be all right. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special rebroadcast of One Dive at a Time. Again, that's my other one of my other podcasts that I'm running right now. You can always go and check it out on its own merit. I just felt like it would be very special. To share that episode over on this channel. Thank you so much. Thank you.