‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’, so the adage goes. No amount of planning, preparation or forethought can be sufficient to anticipate the vagaries of real life when the rubber hits the road.
I’ve had time to reflect on this statement quite a bit in the last few days.
Outside of my working life, one of my passions is freediving; the practice of holding one’s breath for extended periods of time in order to dive deep, or far depending on the particular discipline. I’ve been a freediver for around six years now and people often ask me how I got into the sport. My answer is that I’m not really sure. I was looking for a new challenge and having been a scuba diver for over 20 years I’d wanted to test myself so looked around and found a local club.
Gradually, through training and constant incremental uplifts I began to improve and took part in my first competition later that same year, placing in the top 10 in the UK which, for me felt like a huge success and gave me a platform on which to build a plan to take that to the next level.
Covid put a significant dampener on those plans, but the overall direction (to improve on previous results) remained the same. I didn’t set a specific target for myself other than to improve as that was an aspect of myself that I was curious about; how far could I go?
Fast forward to 2024 and my training had been going really well. I’d been making steady progress and pushing personal bests in my chosen disciplines (most competition diving in Northwest Europe tends to be based in pools and centres around duration and distance rather than the traditional depth competitions which are reserved for warmer climes). The national competition was approaching in early March and, along with my fellow club athletes, I was confident that I’d do well, with the potential to medal for the first time.
Then with a week to go, I came down with a fever and high temperature. I sweated it out, but the plan was to rest up and a week should see it off in enough time to still be ready to compete on the weekend.
The fever passed but, in its wake, I was left with a tight chest and a sense that I was only shallow breathing where I should be capable of drawing full breaths. A trip to the local hospital and a battery of tests later confirmed that I had a partially collapsed lung and pneumonia. There would be no diving until the week of antibiotics worked their magic and that was that. All the planning, the preparation, months of work, all gone and there was nothing I could do to recover it. You could say I was a tad miffed.
So, I made a choice… I adapted the plan.
Rather than sit around and feel sorry for myself (the overriding emotional response I had to wrestle hard against), I decided to go along anyway and support my friends and coach some of the newer divers for their first competition. Yes, it would be painful to see people achieving what I had previously planned to myself, but this wasn’t just about me. I’m part of a group of people who’ve trained hard over the weeks and months leading up to this event, and I was being selfish to think everything was wrecked because I couldn’t take part.
Despite being persistently out of breath (I’d have been a liability in the water) I was able to coach three divers to achieve personal bests, and even witness some of my friends achieve new national records which I know I would have kicked myself had I missed.
What’s the lesson here? Yes it’s true, FIXED plans can easily be derailed and hindsight’s a wonderful thing for telling you what other eventualities you should have planned for. But the important element is to remain FLEXIBLE. Adapt your plans, bend with the wind, and be ready to face whatever life throws at you with a smile. If I’d stayed with my original (and ultimately unworkable) plan, I’d have missed out on so much. Remember, it’s just another dive, and there are plenty more to come.
