Ep 67: (Scuba) Diving Into the Games of Life

"I'm disappointed in you…I have plenty of other men in my life that don't disappoint me"

 How would you have reacted if someone said that to you?

 Do you want to direct your life or do you want to be driven by circumstance? 

 I learned from my mentor, Jim Fortin, that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. I couldn’t find it to be more true than in my recent week of Scuba Diving here in Roatan, Honduras. 

 Today I talk about how actively deciding how I wanted my dive experience to go has allowed me to get to 22 dives and over 1000 minutes of dive time in an easy and enjoyable way. I've seen rays, eels, crabs, octopuses, sea horses, and a spectacular night time bio luminescent display known as the string of pearls.

 Even more amazing is how this way of being translated to dry land as well when an opportunity for confrontation arouse after I declined an invitation to do an advanced night dive from a woman I met this week. She told me, "I'm disappointed in you, I thought this dive would have been up your ally. Well, I have plenty of men in my life who don't disappoint me."

 How did I respond rather than react? Listen to find out!

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Transcript

Justin Wenck: 0:01

Welcome to the engineering emotions and energy podcast. I'm your host, Justin Wenck. Welcome to the show. So little teaser. How would you respond? Or would you react if someone said to you, What what feelings would come up like where would that wherever that hits you, maybe you wouldn't hit you in any particular way at all. So, where that came from, and how I handled it, is all coming up. But first, you're going to talk about some I'm recording this from Anthony's key resort in Roatan Honduras, I just completed my first full week of scuba diving. So I got certified in February in Monterey, which is, if you're not familiar with the California Water, because it comes south from, you know, like the Arctic is, it's cold, no matter where you are in Monterey, being a little bit further north than the sunny beaches of Malibu is really, really, really fucking cold. So you gotta wear seven mil wetsuits and hoods and gloves and boots and all that thing, and it's still still freezing. Whereas here, the water is consistent at four degrees. And oh my gosh, the amount of stuff I have seen in the past five days of diving, I've seen sea turtles, I've seen octopuses, I've seen a sea turtle,

Unknown: 1:30

swim past

Justin Wenck: 1:31

an octopus, a lot of crabs, a lot of lobster, the most spectacular array of colorful fish, the coral formations. And last night saw the most spectacular display I've ever seen. It gets referred to as a string of pearls, but C's, Astro pods is what they're called doing their their mating. And this is happens during a night dive. And basically, everyone has to turn off all of their all of their lights. So you're there in the dark, and you start seeing one light, and then another light, and then a perfectly straight line, another one and another one. And it's almost like a lot of Christmas lights underwater. Because this is apparently what these Astro pods do as part of their, their meeting is the lineup and then somehow they they find their mate based on how they line up. And it's just the most brilliant straight lines. And if you move your hands around, you start to see because that I guess, gets them to buy a luminous if they get perturbed a little bit. So you start seeing like these little sparks basically, on your hands as you move them in the water. And it's it's just it's like it's it's like you're a magician, and this magic is just happening all around you and got to be swimming among the stars. That's how it felt like and then get up on the boat, and then look up and see just the most brilliant display of stars in the sky. And this was that was my last night, not last day last night because this is you're supposed to wait 24 hours before you fly out. And I fly out early tomorrow morning. And it was just the most amazing way to end it. And I've been so happy. And it's been so easy. And so many times you'll hear people tell you know how hard it is and how difficult and all these scary things that happen. And I set out when I got here going like, No man, I want this to be fun and enjoyable. That's my intention. I'm going to take all the good advice I can from all the fantastic divers because my friend, Ed has been diving for years and then the group I've been with is even more experienced than him and when they're like, Oh yeah, here's what's going to happen. And here's how you want to handle it. I don't go Hey, man. Don't you tell me what to do? I go. Thank you very much. That sounds like some some good information. So I do I do what to avoid the jellyfish when I get out of the water at night. Okay, let me let me give that a go. I'm sure they won't be a problem. And for me, they weren't a problem because I didn't want them to be a problem. And what I want to the theme of this podcast really is you know, we're his last podcast I talked about the various games of life and how we want to pick which game that we want to play to basically maximize the amount of fun because really, there's there's no winning winning, it's just how much do you enjoy playing it out. There's a lot of games to to participate in. This past week, I've been playing the game of become a really good scuba diver. And there's and then there's also the side game happening of meet a bunch of new people in a new location. And that's where the teaser of the comment the very poking comment that I got from from someone came from and you know, we'll get get to that. And so you've picked the game, then the question is Well, how do you want to play it to have the most fun. And there's always the option to make a game really, really, really, really fucking hard and miserable. And this, unfortunately, has become the default way that a lot of a lot of people play games, and a lot of people teach us how to play the new games, you know, oh, you're about to get that medical procedure. Let me tell you about how awful that was for me. And oh, I heard this other horror story that went even worse. So this is now going to be an incredibly frightening and nerve wracking game for you to play of have the necessary medical procedure. And in previous podcasts, I've talked about that. You don't have to play that game, you can play the game of this is something that has to happen. I'm going to make it as easy and as fun and enjoyable as I can. And I'm going to have it be quick. And I'm going to have it be as painless as possible. Like, there's statistics, and then there's where do you want to be in the statistics, I always want to be a statistical anomaly in the Wow, that's a it's almost miracle, you know, how little pain how quick, they got healed. That's what I've been deciding how I want to direct my life for most things. And that's what I did with the scuba diving. And the thing is, I'm learning. You know, my mentor, Jim 14, likes to say, you know, how you do one thing in life is how you do everything in life. And so I'm really starting to see that, you know, I had this intention for, you know, my diving, and that, but just because that's how it is with diving, it's hard to not do that when it comes to relationships. And so, you know, there's only so much diving you can do in the day. And so then there's the interaction. And so, you know, we're here in this beautiful resort island, and there's, you know, pools and there's other people, I'm with a group, and then there's other groups, so started, you know, meeting hanging out with this other group of like, really rock, it's really fun, amazing people, and, you know, start, you know, hanging out with them sometimes. And one of the, one of the group is this, you know, really, really amazing woman who's like, you know, certified dive instructor, and, you know, has, you know, all these other adventurous qualities. And, you know, it's very fun to get to know her and learn things. And, you know, she's like, hey, yeah, you should come to this Blackwater dive we're doing, you know, you go out like a couple miles, you know, in the middle of the night, and they drop you in on about a 50 foot tether, and then you get a little tether, so you get about your own 10 feet, and you're out there. And you know, you'll see some really amazing stuff that you never see, because it's so dark, you're so far out. And I think you'd really like that. And keep in mind, I'm at just done my first night dive ever in my life. And I only have about, you know, 1112 dives. Whereas, you know, most people I'm with are well over 100 dives into the 201. Guy and with his he's going to get us 400 dive today. And you know, so I go and ask them, like, you know, what do you guys know about these Blackwater dives, and they're like, Oh, my gosh, that I've done one, but I would not recommend it's just, it's like a bucket list item, something to do. But boy, it was not fun. I don't think I would ever do it again. It's pretty, it's kind of advanced, because there's a lot going on and wouldn't recommend it for you. And I'm like, you know, I'm okay. So, you know, the next day I, I told tell her? Yeah, I'm not. I'm not gonna do the Blackwater dive, just, you know, and she's like, Well, why not? Like, I don't want to, there's other things I want to I want to do, I don't want to do that. And I can tell she was really disappointed. She really wanted me to go, which. And then she said, like, I really thought this would be you know, something right up your alley. I'm disappointed with you. And that hurt. I was like, Oh, no, even though I haven't, you know, this person for a week. But there's still that when someone says I'm disappointed it can get to that part of who else have I disappointed in my life, right, you know, important mentors, parents, things like that. And this is really where, you know, well, how how do I want this interaction to go? Because you know, me 10 plus years ago, it would have been, oh, let's let's argue this out. Like, I am not a disappointment. Let me explain to you and let me make you wrong so that I can be right. And I don't want to go there because I don't want to fight because a there's there's nothing to fight about really, right. What's I don't want to do this thing. She wanted me to do the thing. So I just said like, well, I'm I'm, I'm a disappointing person, I guess. And, you know, that's just that's just who I am. You'd have to get used to it if you want to hang out with me. You know, most of that mostly joking. And then she says like, Well, I have lots of men in my life that are not disappointments. So kind of too bad for you. And I just said, well, then that's that's terrific. I'm glad you got some great people in your life and she kind of had enough It was like, well, I gotta get going to go get ready for the Blackwater dive in like, all right, take take it easy. As it was just kind of, you know, one of those where I was where I ended up being more disappointed that, you know, she would have this reaction. I wasn't angry. I wasn't. And I, cuz, you know, one of the things we've talked about on the show, in previous episodes is forgiveness, where if someone you know, wrongs you and you feel angry or upset, then you need to practice forgiveness. One thing that I've been told often is what once you start practicing forgiveness long enough, that at some point, you no longer really need to forgive. Because the saying I'd heard, I think it might have been a Neale Donald Walsch saying is, you know, a master doesn't need to forgive because a master understands. And I'm not saying that I'm a master in any way. I'm just saying in this one instance, I understood. So I didn't, I didn't even get mad. And it was just like, she really, she really wanted me to go. And it hurt that I didn't go. And so she kind of like lashed out. And I was very happy that I didn't, you know, lash out, you know, in kind and just sort of escalate and make things. It was one of those when I you know, cuz I like to, like turn a little game tape of how could I have handled that better? Instead of being kinda like the more jokey, I really wish I would have been like, Hey, I yeah, I get it. It's, it's disappointing. And that's really cool that you'd like me to go and, you know, I'm just not going to go and you're really cool person. And another activity I'd love to hang out with you just this is not it's totally okay, that you're not happy with it, I wish we would have had a little bit more like that, then you sort of like joking it away. Yet, you know, we're living we're learning are finding ways to do better. Just like in scuba diving, there's, you know, I, you know, make mistakes there. And it's like, oh, I could have, could have done that, that better, I should have done, you know, worked on my breath control more than, you know, inflating or deflating the amount of change my amount of buoyancy that way. So, you know, how you do one thing, that's how you do everything. And so just that, like, Oh, I want to thanks to be relaxed and easy, and you know, not stressful. This one situation that in the past, and, you know, would have been really stressful for me, like getting criticized, like I yeah, I spent so much of my life to do things to not be criticized, right, like, you know, getting advanced education, like, you know, being nice being being nice to people driving the right kind of car, living in the right kind of place all these things to please other people. And just the fact is that if you're living your life, you're going to disappoint people, you're going to disappoint a lot of people, yet, the most important person that you want to avoid disappointing, that's yourself. So in that situation, I might have disappointed her. But I didn't disappoint myself, I was very proud of myself. For being firm. This is what I can do, this is what I can't do. And I don't want to get you know, I don't want to get in an argument over something that there's not, there's nothing to argue about it just to differences of opinion happens all the time. If we can't figure out how to not argue about differences of opinion, then it's going to be a rough, rough ride. We've all probably had a lot of experiences like that we see it, you know, and other people will see it on the news, things like that. And I'm at a point where I'm, I'm just opting out, man, because I want to, I want to be the director of my life, I want things to go smooth, I want things to go easy. I want things to be enjoyable, you know, I want to I want to enjoy an enjoyable, paradise like experience. And I want you to do too. And that doesn't mean you got to go scuba diving. Although if you do hit me up, you know, I got some great recommendations. Now I would say I officially do not suck at diving, getting better and better every day. But you know, these ways of, of coming up with new situations, they apply to any situation you want to tackle. So yeah. curious, how would you have responded to that situation? And then how would you like to respond? If you're in a similar situation, and you know, so find me on social media, Justin Wenck, w e and ck, I'm on you know, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. And then you want to send a little email podcast at Justin Wenck. calm. And remember to subscribe. If you'd rate me five stars. I would love it. If you're like, not so good. The audio quality's kind of gone downhill. I recognize that I'm traveling so I do not have my lovely Shure microphone with me as I'm doing the best I can with the best they got and you know, we'll get the audio quality backup when I am back in the US and get all my good equipment. But you know, feel free to let me know I will listen to you on the On the email or the social media, so you know, let it out. Just tell it Tell a friend, tell a friend. You know, don't have any friends tell a stranger. They say don't talk to strangers. You're not a kid anymore. So it's okay. You can talk to strangers. You can take care of yourself. It's okay. And tell him about the show. All right, everybody. My next stop will be Billy's so should be doing a show from there as well. So until then, good day.