My 8 year old niece never fails to amaze me. She is the spitting image of her mother and is wise beyond her years. I’m not sure exactly why she is how she is. I’m guessing it’s just really her personality. She’s just like any little girl, her age, though. She loves everything pink, adores her Barbies and obsesses about ballet.
Recently, she joined the soccer club in her school. They met every Friday afternoons for 45 minutes at school and every morning for an hour for 2 Saturdays a month. This has been going on since summer and she’s decided to sign up for the whole year. I visit their home regularly, around twice a month, to catch up with her mom (my sister) or to just spend time with family.
Ever since my niece joined the soccer club, I noticed that she had become more organized than usual. For instance, she would arrive from school, put her things in order and change into “house” clothes, she would then ask her mom or yaya (whichever one was available) to time her for 30 minutes while she played outside with a neighbor, another 8 year old girl just like her or play with her Barbies. After that she would relax in the living room then proceed to looking at her books and notebooks and do her homework. On Saturdays when she has soccer practice, she would tell her mom the night before to set the alarm and wake her up at 6:30 AM so she could prepare and “eat a big breakfast”.
her mom was amazed at the transformation. I happened to get a chance to ask her how she learned to become organized, she told me, “I learned it in soccer. Coach said if we want to be good at soccer, we have to be good at life.”
Her simple answer made me realize that I had unconsciously adopted the discipline I gave to scuba diving into my own way of life. Because, you know, to be good at scuba diving, you have to be good at life. My young niece is a genius!
In this post, I want to talk about the 3 key lessons I learned about self-discipline from my experience while scuba diving in Cebu and of course, in other places as well.
Staying Fit, Prepared and Protected
Scuba divers are expected to stay healthy in order to be prepared and protected during emergency situations. I’ve come to learn that this applies to life, as well. We all want to extend our life spans for as long as we possibly can and staying healthy and fit is one sure way to do this. Being prepared and protected is also a great habit to practice. For example, a scuba diver never dives without first preparing. If in life, we are as prepared as a scuba diver taking his first dive, chances are, we would always know what we are dealing with.
Both scuba diving and life have the same kind of unpredictability, to practice habits that will keep us fit, prepared and protected is one way to live a longer and happier life.
This is probably every scuba diver’s mantra. In order to have a save, low-risk dive, scuba divers have to create a dive plan and stick to it in order to avoid many untoward mishaps. In life, planning is a habit that requires practice however and sometimes, life can’t be planned at all. However, I have practiced this in my own life. Ever since I started scuba diving, I’ve been more careful about the decisions I make and thought more closely about how my decisions would affect others.
Invest in the Right Equipment and Take Proper Care of It
The right equipment is every scuba diver’s lifeline. Without it, we would not be able to go on a safe dive. And this is just as true in life. A few months after I started scuba diving, I realized that I had taken better care of my cari! Ha! Which is usually something that I treat with nonchalance. I mean, I’m not a car freak, as long as it’s clean and runs well, I’m happy. But no, I realized that the “equipment” that we have in life or the things that allow us to live comfortable should be cared for properly once we purchase it.
So, you see, like my 8 year old niece, diving has really transformed the way I perceive things. It has taught me some habits of self-discipline that I didn’t quite have before I started scuba diving. It was scuba diving in Cebu that got me started with all of this and pretty soon I was diving in other parts of the Philippines… however, the three fundamental lessons I learned above are what has kept me safe and has allowed me to enjoy both life and scuba diving even more.
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