just IMHO... how skydiving helps real life

[kelpdiver 2]

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I think, overall, it's been a positive influence for me. I know that in my line of work I tend to stay calmer during emergencies or crazy times than many people around me. Whether skydiving has done that for me or I had it all along, I don't know.

I think that skill is one that benefits from training. You'd always be ahead of someone who needed the bowling speech, but constant honing increases it.

For me, it proved most useful in dealing with unethical managers during salary negotiations of a contract conversion. I wasn't afraid to call their bluff, or to walk away from a mediocre job where I'd be resentful.

[ntrprnr 0]

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skydiving does very little for us in real life other than have people think we are odd, at best, or dangerous, at worst. t

First time I've ever disagreed with Tonto...

I'd say quite the opposite. Was just having this discussion tonight with a skydiver over Crabs and beer (soda for me, thank you, stupid marathon training,) at a local hole-in-the-wall Crab shack near Sebastian.

I am one of those people who is 100 billion percent type A. I work 23 hours a day, I always have my Crackberry, cell phone, etc., on me at all times. I'm always on the road for work, always working, always hustling. I run two companies. It keeps me busy.

That's what I used to do seven days a week. 24/7, that was me. Occasionally, I'd take an hour here or there for a run or something similar, but it was rare.

Then I started jumping.

At first, I jumped, landed, and checked my email. "What'd I miss?"

Then, I jumped, jumped again, and would check my email. And eventually I realized that email, clients, etc., they would all wait 10 minutes, if they needed to. And nothing would blow up. And if something did, it could be fixed when I landed. And never has a client complained. Because I'm still as 24/7 as I've always been - if they need me to be.

Today, I jumped, hung out at the drop zone, went swimming in the ocean, ate Crabs, drank Soda, and got back to my hotel. And my email was waiting for me. And nothing blew up. And nothing exploded. And the world waited while I skydived. And it was good.

Skydiving has given me the ability to just, sometimes, "let it go." To enjoy myself. To live. To not constantly worry that I should be on a call, or be working, or waiting on a client.

Skydiving lets me be me. It's lets me learn who I'm supposed to be.

Today I did my first head down exit, and held it until I was falling, according to my Neptune, at 203 miles per hour.

That was the most incredible feeling. You don't get that from a Crackberry or a fax.

I've learned to embrace that feeling. It doesn't come often. I can feel it, love it, enjoy it, learn from it. Grow with it. I can replay it in my mind when I'm having a shitty day, and enjoy what it does for me. I can remember it and se it make me calmer on a random Tuesday when client crap is pulling me in 20 different directions, or when I'm 20 minutes away from missing my flight to Tokyo and have some idiot TSA official anal-probing me because I looked at her wrong.

Skydiving has made me more complete - more aware that there's more to life than work. Nothing - not a woman, (haven't found the right one yet, obviously) not running, not my cats, not leisure travel - (you're talking to the guy who sold his first company and tried to take a year off, and it lasted 3 weeks before I got bored and left a beach in Thailand to come home) nothing - has made me realize that there's more than work - until skydiving.

I think, in the end, it comes down to this:

Skydiving, all the good and bad parts of it, has made me realize that life is fleeting. Life is short. Life exists for the blink of an eye. It's what we do during that blink that matters - we don't get another chance - and I've yet to meet someone who, on their death bed, was quoted as saying, "yeah, I should have worked more."

So I'd say skydiving has helped me in the real world more than I could have EVER dreamed possible.

203 miles per hour! Holy crap!! That's like, 2.3 times how fast you'd need to go for 1.21 Gigawats!!!

_______________
"Why'd you track away at 7,000 feet?"
"Even in freefall, I have commitment issues."

[pirana 0]

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You can blame an institution for all that you've learned. But everything you need to know you learned when you were 5. Putting these lessons to use elsewhere in life makes you think your institution is where it was learned.

Like you said : We should have already learned these things. Some of us will never learn.

Well, there are certainly some character attributes that get firmed up by that age, but I wouldn't call it "everything you need to know."

To use analogy, it's not hardwired; or you would never be able to change it without surgery. It's more like very deeply imbedded software. It's not information you know, it's more like very general instructions on how you interface with the world.

As far as the information that a person uses to execute specific behaviors, the #1 factor is the peer relationships. Many parents don't like to hear it (other than the ones who feel it gets them off the hook), but they are not the #1 unfluence on their child's behavior once their child begins socializing. It's the peer group (generally accepted, on average, to be about 50% of your adult character). Genetics, school, and parents make up most of the rest.

Basically, for most kids, if you get a look at their parents you get a very good idea of where their coming from. If you get a look at their peers, you get a good idea of where they are going.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[pirana 0]

Amen to that ntrprnr!

Went thru that cycle myself; glad for the experience, had a lot of fun, but great to move on.

I feel for people that don't hit that realization until they are 65 or something. A person's means of livelihood is an important part of life, but if it drives everything else - it's probably worth examination to see if it is robbing the rest of your life.

The answer could very well be NO. But don't make the mistake of not checking in on it once in a while. It's better to arrive at the end with few regrets and many cherished memories than the other way around. I'm aiming at a ratio of about 18 bajillion to 1.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley