Episode 85: Built at Depth

Hey, this is gonna be one of those episodes I do for both Stan Sher Coaching as well as One Dive at a Time, which is my podcast that supports Neptune Warrior, because these are so closely aligned. Hi. Before we get into today's episode, I want you to think about your own journey as a diver, and not just about the certifications that you've earned, Or the number of dives in your logbook. I want you to think about who you are when things don't go according to plan, when visibility drops down to almost nothing or sometimes drops to nothing, who you are when conditions change, what are your You know, what's your comfort level, or what do you do when you're uncomfortable or uncertain or you can't see exactly where you're going? Because what I'm going to talk about today, while it's about becoming a better scuba diver and really mastering scuba diving, it's really about something that's much, much bigger. It's about what happens when we intentionally use diving In the case of Neptune Warrior, diving community and coaching, but in the case of Stay On Shore, using diving and coaching, but doing it over the course of an entire year to develop the person that's behind the mask. And, you know, there's a phrase that I've used in diving for years, and it's this: as long as you have air, you are all right. That doesn't— there's no guarantee That conditions are always going to be perfect. And sometimes, even like when the water's clear, sometimes when visibility disappears, sometimes the surface is calm, sometimes you're getting knocked around before you even go underwater. But becoming a better diver, it's, it's not about learning to dive Only when conditions are perfect. It's about, it's about becoming the kind of diver who can be calm, think clearly, adapt, and keep moving even, even when things just go to crap. But also somewhere along the way, I realized that this sounds a lot like life. Hey, welcome to Stan Sher Coaching. My name is Rob Anderson. I'm your host of the Stan Sher Podcast. Hey, my journey has been defined by 3 distinct chapters. Chapter 1 began with my time in the military, where I learned the true meaning of leadership and resilience in some of the most high-pressure environments. Then on to Chapter 2, I transitioned into corporate America, Serving as a learning and development professional and leadership coach for Fortune 500 companies. Now I'm in my third chapter dedicated to helping men navigate their own transitions, rediscover their purpose, and find what it means to lead with conviction in their second half of life. You know, one of the chapters I don't talk about in that intro is my chapter of being a professional scuba diving instructor, which I've done since 1999— I'm sorry, 1998, back when I was in the military, and then moving all that over into the civilian world, and then later on creating Neptune Warrior in 2016. Today I want to introduce something that I officially launched this weekend, but in reality it's been 10 years It's been 10 years in the making, and I've done this with a lot of different divers and students and clients. We, in Neptune Warrior, we built our own Master Scuba Diver program and eventually the Badass Diver program. And what I've got, what I officially launched this week, is a— it's a year that is dedicated to the Master Scuba Diver. Certification. And it's, and it's, it's a year of transformation. It's not just about it. It's not just about getting, about getting master scuba divers. Much, much more. And again, like I said a second ago, in 2016, I founded Neptune Warrior, which is an organization that uses scuba diving to work with veterans and first responders. And from the beginning, Neptune Warrior was founded around 3 pillars. Diving, community, and coaching. And diving gave us— diving gave us an environment where people could challenge themselves and develop skills and experience something completely different from everyday life. And we also had community. Community meant that you didn't have to go it alone, whether it was on a dive or the walk through PTSD or physical injuries or whatever happened to And then there was this component of coaching. Sorry about the wind there. I'm actually up at a campsite in Donnelly, Idaho. Pulled this out of my backpack to do it. Pulled out my iPhone to just do this podcast. Coaching created that opportunity to take what we did underwater What we did up on the dive site and ask a bigger question. And the bigger question was, what can I learn from this that applies when I go back into the world? What happens when I go back on land? What happens when I leave the dive site? And over the years, I've watched those 3 things work together. Then about, about 2 years ago, I began intentionally incorporating more coaching into my other programs, my open water scuba. Aquatic Awakening, Breathe, has always been focused around those areas. And something became much more clear to me, and that's that, again, starting from my own experience well over 10 years ago when I found Neptune, but that's scuba. Scuba diving is this incredible laboratory For personal development. Think about what diving asks of you. You have to manage your breathing. You have to maintain awareness. You have to communicate. You have to trust your training. You have to make decisions with incomplete information. You have to understand your own limitations. Uh, you're, you know, you find yourself in situations where you have to know when to continue and When to, you know, when to call the dive. And sometimes you even have to remain calm when everything is telling you to just freak out, just to panic. And those aren't just diving skills, those are life skills. It's way more than just collecting certification cards. And having that realization eventually led me to rethink The traditional path towards Master Scuba Diver. And like I said, with the Neptune Warrior, our Master Scuba Diver surpasses all the other agencies. I mean, ours is like— it's almost like getting a PhD in diving. And there's absolutely value in earning certifications and developing technical competence, but I wanted to build something that was well beyond that. And at first I thought it was just in the skills and the competence and the knowledge. I wanted something more than just take these specialties, go make these dives, get another card. What if we slowed the process down? And by the way, that is so counterintuitive to what's happening in the dive industry right now because, you know, for open water, geez, you can have an open water class Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're certified. You spend Friday night, Kind of in the classroom, you do online learning on your own. Saturday, you've got some pool time, you've got to the lake, you knock out a couple of dives, 2 dives. Sunday, maybe do some pool time, you go knock out 2, at the best 3 dives, and boom, you're certified. What if we slowed that process down? And instead of racing through the requirements, what if we deliberately spent an entire year Just developing the diver. And as we're developing the diver, what if we also worked on developing the person that sits behind the mask? And that's where this whole year of doing transformation comes in. It's not a transition program, it's a transformation program. And there's a, there's a huge difference. Transition moves you from one certification to another. From one card to another. Transformation is becoming something different along the way in a year. And this transformation program combines the path of Master Scuba Diver with a structured year of personal coaching and intentional development, which by the way, I'm already running. In Stand Sure Coaching, we already have a 1-year transformation program. All I'm doing in this is I'm adding diving as, as part of that program. You know, over that year, you're gonna dive, you're gonna train, you're going to complete specialty education, you're gonna gain experience. You're going to become way more capable and more confident in the water. But we're also going to use those same experiences for opportunities for reflection. Okay, so you have a dive where visibility suddenly drops, or maybe we put you in a situation where the visibility is already done. What happened internally when you couldn't see what was ahead of you? Were you anxious? Did you want out? Did you slow down, check your gauges, stay connected to your buddy, deal with what was actually happening? So let's metaphorically take the regulator out of your mouth and look at life. What happens when you can't see what's coming next? That right there is coaching. You know, I, I'm not going to tell you what the murky water means in your life. I'm going to ask you questions that help you discover what it means, because you as the diver are the classroom. And there's going to be other lessons, you know, things like buoyancy that teaches us about constantly fighting control. Navigation teaches us what happens when we lose direction. Gas management can force us to think about how we're using limited resources. You do a difficult entry, It can remind you that sometimes the hardest part is simply just getting into the water. Currents, you know, currents teach us about the differences between fighting circumstances and learning how to work with them. And last, you know, maybe, maybe something like a dive that doesn't go according to plan. That can become an opportunity to examine how we respond when life doesn't go Yeah. But here's something I want you to understand. I'm not trying to take every single dive you do and turn that into a therapy session. Well, because I don't do therapy, I don't do consulting, I don't do counseling. I'm a coach. Sometimes we're just going to dive. We're going to go out, we're going to have a good time, we're going to laugh, we're going to explore. Sometimes— a lot of times you're going to go do this on your own. We're going to do directed dives. Where you get an opportunity to go do something that you haven't done before. We're gonna experience some incredible places. We're gonna, we're gonna become better divers. We're gonna become in love with the water. You know, some days it might be a dive. Maybe it's spending a weekend in an underwater habitat. Who knows, right? The coaching doesn't replace the diving. It gives us another way to learn from it. A lot of people, they're like, man, a year? Seriously? So in my Master Scuba Diver program, I have people who've been doing that for over a year, sometimes 18 months. But it's over a year because meaningful development takes time. Anybody can get excited about changing something for a couple of weeks. A year? Hey, a year gives us seasons. It's going to give opportunities for great dives and horrible dives. It's going to give us clear water, murky water. You're going to have, both on diving and life, breakthroughs as well as setbacks. You're going to have times where motivation is high and times that you just don't even want to get out of bed and go to the dive site or Get up and do life. And that gives us something incredibly valuable. That, that is a huge valuable resource. Real experiences to coach around. By the end of the year, my goal with you is not for you to simply say, hey, I'm a master scuba diver. I want you to be able to look back at who you were when you started and recognize something else. That you live differently, that you dive differently, that you respond differently, that you know yourself better, that you're more comfortable when things aren't perfect, that you're more intentional about where you're going, and maybe most important, that you've learned that you can handle more than you thought that you could. It's all about the person behind the mask. And that's why I'm excited to finally make this an official program. I've been having— over the past 3 weeks, I've had divers that I've been working with, and they've asked questions like, should I become a divemaster? What's my next step? Hey, you know, I've had people that I've been coaching that were divers that wanted something different. So even though I wasn't going to launch it till next spring, I thought, you know what, it's time, it's ready. I've run enough of the pilot, it's time to do it. And what it does is it brings together the work that I've been doing for years, diving and coaching, and not as separate ideas, but as one intentional experience. And, and this is not about collecting certification cards as quickly as you can. It's about intentionally spending a year to be a better diver while at the same time intentionally developing the person that's got the tanks on their back. Because eventually every dive ends. You surface, you take the gear off, you go home. And the question becomes, what are you taking with you? So I told you in the beginning I was going to I was going to share an offer. And I always just want to be super clear about this. Here's my invitation. If you're listening to this and something about this idea is connecting with you, and if you want more than just another certification card, and you're ready to find out what can happen when you intentionally commit a year to becoming a better diver and developing the person Who's wearing the scuba gear. I want to invite you into this. It's a 1-year journey built around those pillars that got all this work going. We're going to develop your diving. We're going to build your experience. We're going to work through advanced, advanced specialties. We're going to create a you that you want to be around the process. And throughout that year, we're going to use coaching to examine what those experiences underwater can teach you about how you show up above the surface. If you're truly interested in spending the next year Not only becoming a more capable diver, but investing and discovering what diving can teach you about yourself. This is it. This is for you. It's 1 year, better skills, more experience, deeper awareness. I am super, super excited. To go and finally do this on an official basis, because I've been doing this as a bespoke. You know, people— we get into conversations with divers, they want something a little bit different, they want to do the Master Scuba Diver, or maybe they were doing Advanced. This takes it and puts it on a path of something I'm passionate about, and that's taking divers and using diving as a catalyst to become better people. And getting to where you want to be. Again, one year, better skills, more experience, deeper awareness. And you— and then we find a different diver coming out of the water than the one who went in. Hey, that's all I've got for this episode. Remember, as long as you've got air, you're all right.