What jumping out of a plane reminded me about fear

If I were to ask you, honestly, what your greatest fears are at this point, the ones that are really holding you back from doing something that you know that you’ve always wanted to do, but feel like you can’t, what would you tell me? As we celebrated International Women’s Day and achievements of everyday Women everywhere this week, after I tandem jumped out of a plane on Tuesday for the first time (which I absolutely loved) I found myself contemplating 2 things. No 1- with a little help, I actually just did that. And number 2 after 2 decades of working through some of my own greatest fears and anxieties and Coaching and Mentoring wise, supporting others to work through theirs, I couldn’t help but think about what a tragedy it is when (legitimate intuitions of when not to do something, at the wrong moment, until the right one aside) we buy into the well meaning lies that anxiety often has to tell us, in it’s well meaning attempt to keep us safe. And then based on those, we then don’t do something that we really want to do. Because we convinced ourselves that it’s better for us and others if we actually don’t. The fact that so many of the younger generations are also more riddled with anxiety than we’ve ever been, also tells me that we’re becoming hyper-phobic about actually coming face to face with our own flight flight response. And learning how to tolerate it’s activation….and how to guide and ride it in a healthy way, instead of letting IT ride you.

The tricky thing being, that the biggest things in life that we’re meant to do- the romantic partner with whom you’re meant to have a kid, the meeting of some expert or public figure that you’ve always admired that you’re meant to partner with, the illness that we can overcome, someone else’s basket of major life events that we’re meant to journey WITH them through,  the performance or speech that you're meant to give, the Leadership opportunities that will genuinely create needed change, equality and inclusivity, ALL of these things are going to put us out of our comfort zone and likely shake the living f#%$ out of our inner nervous stomach butterflies. So it helps if we can learn how to manage our nerves and overcome our greatest fears around them.

​And you might shoot the messenger for saying it, but it’s not anyone else’s, OR the Patriarchies job for us as Women to learn to overcome our own fears FOR us. A bit like the lovely guy Rob and the whole team, who took me through my tandem jump, they can train you, they can do their best to gear you up, be a gorgeous presence and make a psychologically and physically safe external environment in which you have the best chance of showing up as the best of you, while being supported through the anxious bits of you. But YOU gotta be willing to show up and do the inner work. And learn to manage your thoughts, manage your physical state and be able to tap your higher intelligence system, in order to help you bring forward and do what you’re truly meant to get done. So in this blog, I thought I’d talk a little bit about my sky dive, as a living example of HOW I applied the practices I teach and talk about in the first chapter of my book, on how to create our own sense of inner psychological safety and manage our state, so that we can best show up in communication, relationships and life, to best navigate this particular not-so-everyday experience.

Skydiving was something I always knew that I wanted to.  Ever since I’d been dreaming of randomly free falling as a teenager, and added skydiving to my list of outdoorsy adventure things that I wanted to do, I kind of always knew that I would. And more than that, that once I’d done it, I’d want to do it again.  I imagine that whether or not you do or don’t,  often depends how you found the actual jump and for what reason you did the first one, if you’d ever want to do it again. The unbelievable views, the fact that it really is a level 10 sensory experience, that ends with you never having felt so alive, an internal cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine and serotonin fuelled euphoria that lasts for at least an extra day and and half, that fact that everything you eat drink and experience after is about 1000% better, the immense amount of love and appreciation you have towards all humans after and  (even though it’s really your Tandem buddy who did the bulk of the work) the enormous feeling of achievement you get after, along with the sense of confidence, resilience and belief in anything being possible, are an easy sell. One will never be the same for having been through this experience. You’re now more confident and resilient because you did. But at the same time, you’re also, as so many of you keep telling me, jumping out of a perfectly good plane! I wouldn’t say I’m someone who’s scared of heights, more of that feeling of your nervous feeling overwhelmed and out of control. Which I’d had the wonderful past pleasure of experiencing during lengthy group physical and sexual assaults and drunk DV, and honestly, I’ve had grater panic attacks when romantic relationships got serious and sharing in group situations involving (again) public speaking. And jumping out of plane and falling at 190kph, ironically scares me a whole lot less than ever sleeping next to a drunk guy. Sorry, a little bit of reality there for scale purposes. But that being said, nervous system stuff is still definitely happening both pre and during your jump. So it was also an exercise in applying to ones own advantage, everything I’ve learned and taught from the almost last 2 decades about state management and mindset for flipping fear and anxiety, into a response that better serves us and our goals. Because, admittedly, all of it came in pretty fracking handy in that 5 minutes. 


Just like with public speaking and performance, pre-preparation is important. Loading yourself up with an understanding of how it will all work on the day is essential to reducing your last minute reasons for worrying ON the actual day about what you’re meant to do when and how it will work. Reading blogs educating you on what the experience is like, listening to the drivers and staff telling you about the extensive list of highly regimented safety protocols and practices that the company and staff enact, learning that you actually go up with a backup parachute strapped to your back and learning about all the weather and atmospheric conditions that they’re checking (that they absolutely will cancel you several times in a row if they ever deem its not safe enough up there on any given day, for you and the staff,) can all help with building trust in the process and the team. Learning how many jumps these guys or gals do a day too, and how many they’ve done over their careers, also goes a way to reassuring you that you can definitely do this even once.  Coming early and watching the previous jumpers also helps you get a sense of what to expect, helps you learn by observation and instills a bit more confidence in what you need to do to have a gentle, cruisy, easy landing. 


Then watching and mentally and or physically rehearsing your way through the instructional and safety briefings while you’re waiting on the ground at the jump site, pre travel to the plane, also helps to drum it into your muscle memory and your brain, what to do and when on the jump. And then, while you’re waiting, every so often, recalling and then going through and rehearsing it again, keeps building pathways to lock it in. So that by the time you’re up there, and experiencing during free fall, the intermittent mix of holy shit and this is awesome, when your Tandem guy taps your arm, or tells you when it’s time to do anything, you’re quicker to respond.  Just like waiting backstage before a performance, or before you’re going on to speak, and as Rob says in my video, how you manage yourself in the waiting, is often the trickiest part. Once you’re on the plane, there’s always a next thing to focus on, before you’re out the door and it’s actually really happening!


For me, I feel like, the first time, even with all the training in the world about what to expect, during the actual jump, your mind is still slightly preoccupied by the process of connecting the dots of how it actually applies, IRL during the experience, as well as learning through experience how to best state manage your mind, your breathing, your body and your connection with your tandem buddy during the different phases of the experience, in order to best ride the waves of energy, navigate the aerial environment technically and keep it truly an enjoyable ride for you both. Personally, I can see how there’d be huge benefit in actually doing it more than once, now that you know what to expect. Conditions of any given jump would be different. But knowing too, that just like going to the gym, and or exposure therapy, every next time builds both skill, mental and physical resilience too.  




Then there’s how you manage you, or at least how I managed me, during the jump. After a few cancellations, I wasn’t fully emotionally invested yet, until we were on that plane. And seeing as, on my first day of coming on site and our jump having got cancelled while the previous group where up in the air, I fully surrendered to that it really was happening, once I was staring at any open door and watching, with the same military grade precision with which the whole thing works like a well timed, well oiled machine, instructors ahead of Rob and I, jump out. And then I actually got more excited, in the direction of about 50/50 of “fuck yes” and “oh fuck!” But first, getting ON that plane, with the smell of aviation fuel in the air was actually somewhat familiar and oddly comforting, having grown up with a bunch of Engineers and Farmers, synonymous in my head with happy memories of getting around on Ag bikes, bonding over fixing things in the shed, bike and car racing and airshows. Given that they taught me how to do so much stuff and be so fiercely independent, it’s a rare moment in life (until I returned to theatre, film and television for work at least I the last 2 years) in which I’ve not been equally physically skilled to most Men around me in career or life skills. So the number of moments in life, where I actually get to make like Barbies’ being in awe of Kens’ playing guitar at the beach have often been few and far between. But dare I say it, there was something nice about going up with a bunch of Guys, who once again, I could lean into letting them take the Lead in teaching me something I’m genuinely super excited to learn to do. Are you noticing all of the positives that I’m acknowledging along the way? As opposed to looking for unnecessary reasons to freak myself out? That’s important. Because then you’re far more full of smiles, trust, anticipation, awe and gratitude, when we finally get to dangle out of a plane, drop out and do it.


The second you go from (for no more than a few seconds) sitting still, looking up, with your legs dangling out and under the plane, to having rolled out, and that charming momentary zero gravity gut drop happens, as you as a Tandem pair, start to accelerate over the next 12 seconds or so, up to terminal velocity, at maybe 190kph/120mph (if my memory of university 1st year physics serves me well, due to your combined weight and several environmental factors) there is a very distinct moment where you take an instinctive deep breath.  While your body gives you the natural equivalent of what I imagine feels just like getting stabbed with an epipen. And every single part of your nervous system registers it all at level 10 volume, as you get hit with a burst of energy and exhilaration. And an additional chemical cocktail of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin, also progressively kick in too, as instinctively your body figures it better get you physiologically high as a kite for the 5 minutes it’ll still take to the ground. In order to stay on track to having your mind blown by the colours, the beauty of the view and the excitement of the journey, this is a really great point to consciously remind your mind of a few basic facts:


FACTS

1. You’re not dying, you’re voluntarily tandem skydiving. Which is fun and cool and normal.
2. There’s a guy you’re harnessed to, and he has done this tens of thousands of times before, several times a day and still also looks totally cool and normal
3. The harness you’re wearing and holding onto right now, has a parachute in the back, and you’re connected to a guy with another parachute. So you have at least 2 parachutes at your disposal up here. One under his capable control. And if for any reason, you’re still dropping at a certain speed, by a certain altitude, no stress, the one strapped to your back is going off anyway.  (Touching and feeling the pressure of your harness against you, is the cue that fast tracks that remembrance.) 

After decades of practice at home and at work now, what I didn’t have to remind myself of though, was breath work, meditation, yoga, chanting, drama and singing.  Muscle memory and the programs I’d built into my neural pathways practicing all of those, almost immediately took over and mediated fight flight mode. And I very very quickly, so much that it too felt automatic, I breathed out, reminded myself to relax into it and let out a whoo of excited energy or 2 and relaxed into the free fall. Models of the fight flight pathway and the fork in the road point at which one can choose to channel the energy in either direction, freak out or elation, popped into my head there alongside that, that to vocalise and focus on how fun this was, and pull my attention back out, was my choice in that moment. All this happened in seconds, before Rob reminded me about arms out like a bird for the free fall. 


Five minutes flies by when your loving it. But 5 minutes is also a period in which you have time to think a lot of thoughts. So its also helps to make sure that the ones you have best serve your experience . Some random thoughts that came to me next (in the higher dimension support system sense, I’m going to be honest with you, that they came in more voices, than just own):


During the free fall:

“OMG, this is epic. I’ve been in the city too long that I nearly forgot how much I love to go fast! More than that, WTAF has happened to me, as a farm girl, that I was amazed by the site of cows on the way to airport? Girl, you gotta move already.”
“Breathe, relax!”
“It’s so much easier to breath than I thought it would be.”
“Oh yeah, arms out, attention out.”
“It’s so damn clear!”
“The weather is soooo nice up here!”
“Feel the sunlight.”
“Check out the beach. Man, this view is epic!”
“How stunning is the water? The colours!”
“How beautiful is the sky?”
“Hey smile and wave, you’re on camera.”
*Admires Robs proficiency is free falling, timing, filming, instructing. He’s got this down to an art form. 


No, actually, my life, or the people I love, did not flash before my eyes and I did not once have 1 conscious thought about dying. The connection that I attempted to make with anyone who was invested in me doing this, was via the camera, in the moment. Between that, I was just being in the moment, having a tremendous amount of faith in these guy’s and gal’s system, and leaning into my faith in (having asked for a little help from my own multidimensional/spiritual support system to make for an easy ride for me and Rob) that support, hence in my head, there was no need for any of that. TBH, I had long ago made peace with the face that I can think of a LOT worse ways to go out than this...and when its your time, its your time, regardless of whether you're in a car, or on a plane, or jumping out of one, so why waste energy you could be using to live and love on worrying about it? It could be the extra 3 months I had in the end to contemplate it, but in that respect, I had a clear head already for the jump.  Because I’m such a feeler of things, pre-programmed instinctive physiological responses on the other hand, were my greatest concern going into this. BUT those you can manage.


The more you practice being exposed to your own fight flight activation, the more you trust in that you’re only ever 1 out breath away from turning the intensity down a few notches. And one refocusing thought, to redirecting your attention off of your nerves and what’s scary, to either what you love about this. Or to putting your focus on what (like the gorgeous beach) or who (like, um, the guy you’re safely attached to, or that camera) you could be engaging with instead. I say again, attention out and into the present moment. Until, in the repetition, you're automatically going to the positive, at work, the chance to be of service, you've become more resilient in being used to the internal activation and then you have the available internal bandwidth to do and enjoy the thing, whatever the thing is.



More gut feels and breathing happens as my guy deploys the parachute. But my thoughts are that, for something that is meant to be about 3G’s worth of deceleration due to wind drag as the parachute pulls you away from the Earth’s pull and you slow down to maybe a more chill 24kph/15mph?, that felt far more gentle than I actually expected it would, having seen it on film. On this day at least, then it gets really peaceful, quiet and calm. You notice where all the others are more easily, now that all their pretty parachutes are deployed too. And you relax, admire the view, in my case, interact with the camera, chat and feel the feels of this epic, level 10 experience. At this point you’re feeling the breeze, but breathing and sounding no different to if we were sitting at a cafe table, chatting at the Boathouse. You’re just hanging and chatting, while your guy is doing the timing, steering, navigating, pattern maintaining and filming….and let’s not forget, you’re off your head high on biochemistry still. Then there’s a bit more breathing and relaxing into the intermittent turns downward towards the landing site, with more moments of stillness and admiring the view in between. Before we start the landing phase and going through landing instructions.


And I become really glad for the 4-5 days a week of yoga and boat poses, that holding my legs in boat pose as we come down feels very normal.  But then rather than me coming in legs out for a butt slide landing, Rob set us up for a standup landing, where you kind of just hovered there, getting lowered to just above the ground, and then he asked me to put my legs down and I quite literally just stepped straight back onto the ground. In a manner that I had a momentary flash in my head of a scene in high court England or France in the mid 1700’s, with all the chivalry and grace of having a gentlemen hold your hand, while you stepped out of a very high carriage. It was a little bit more of drop for him, as he unhooked and landed a few steps back. I take a moment to connect with and feel my feet and legs rooting back to the ground and breath energy into fully re-inhabiting them. (Your body definitely feels like its done some work at that point.) But an immense sense of achievement starts to hit, that you really just did that. Then you see the bit in the video where Rob and I chat. And that’s that. They pack up the gear, you walk off together with some others who just landed, bond, celebrate, take selfies, take your gear off, in what would be best described as an altered state of consciousness. Get a text about your footage and then getting ready to go back to life.


After picking up my gear and saying goodbyes, I went for a quick wander down to and stood on the beach I’d just watched from above (the tiniest bit disappointed to no longer be a bird above it,) before checking the train times back and departing with enough time to make the train at North Wollongong back to Sydney. But that entire beach walk and then walk back, was 30 mins of little triumphant laughs, smiles and exclamations of “holy shit!” Followed by messaging a lot of people on the way back to share and check in. When I got back to Sydney, I dropped by Harris Farm in Mosman on the way home, where every human seemed to be mirroring my energy back and smiling back at me along the way. Then pretty much danced with earphones in the 10 min walk home and up the stairs of my current building. Hardly slept that night and didn’t come down until about 2pm the next day…at which point, I imagined, as I suddenly slumped on a table at the library, that I looked a bit like Jim Carey in Yes Man, mid sunrise run, after he finally comes down off all that Red Bull. No further productivity was even remotely possible until I went home and had my nap. Also, absolutely no muscle or bodily soreness the next day. The day before the jump, I’d done a 30 min workout with dolphin planks, burpees, boat poses, sit ups and pilates 100’s that worked my abs way harder than skydiving seemed to. That’s NOT to say it didn’t feel like your body had worked hard when you landed on the day.


But that was my journey. And I loved it.  And I’m glad I followed my inner calling to do it. It was so very worth the wait for the right conditions and the right day and the lovely people I got to share the day with. And very grateful to Rob and everyone’s help at Skydive Australia/Wollongong for their help with making that happen.


If I just wrote a book about creating greater psychological safety in communication, and the first chapter is on creating our own inner sense of psychological safety and state management, well I really just put the methodology of the 1st chapter to the test under challenging conditions, and it proved sound advice for someone with a history of anxiety and remnants of trauma, let alone anyone with a nervous system.  (If you would like a copy, it’s nearly here. As it’s been a very slow financial start to the year, so I’m just seeking some advice on whether to pre-sell it or ‘go fund me’ it to get it over the line to the finished product. But If you want to receive copy, do send me an email, so that I can keep you in the loop.)

get in touch about my book

​Anxious thoughts can seem well meaning and logical. When they’re based on a sincere intuitive, higher intelligence/multidimensionally guided feeling, or knowing, that is trying to warn us to prevent an unnecessary injury, that might have been about to happen when we say or do something 30 seconds from now, there is a very real validity in that. And often a whole heap of "life" blocks that go with it. Engines not starting. Internet crashing. The post that won’t post or the application that won’t send. The funding that hasn’t arrived yet, until it’s the ‘right’ time. Because it’s not the right time. Until it is.


But, when we over think our way into a state of “what if’ing” about potential risks, projections or rejections that might have zero factual foundation in real life, if we’re not careful, those anxious thoughts can become like the prison bars that end up lining the cage that becomes our comfort zone. The one that we could just remove a couple of the bars from, and step out. But we won’t step out of to go after what we know in our hearts that we really want. Other times, its the one that we choose to still stay in, when someone comes and waves at us through the bars, and points to the door, and the set of keys that are sitting in the door we forgot was there. But we choose to point to the thought that is each bar, and site it as a reason why we can’t come out. 

Some example cage bars:

“Thanks, but I haven’t had enough experience yet, I think I’m under qualified to take on the role, and i’m worried I won’t be able to handle it and I’ll fail, I’ll let everyone down, so I think that you should go with someone else. It’ll be better for everyone else that way.”  [Self rejects the promotion opportunity or project.]
“Really? Because it seems like you have another type and I’m not her.” [Self rejects, before she can be rejected by the guy she likes.] 
“I doubt they’d ever choose me. “ [Self rejects the Mentor or Teacher, before she can possibly be overlooked for someone else.] 
“I can’t afford to do it. Or maintain it. So I better not start it, in case I can’t deliver and then have to cancel again”. [Self rejects ones capability to overcome the necessary challenges to getting it done and uses potential failure to deliver, to justify not starting.]
“Nobody wants it, what’s even the point?”  [Self rejects her idea or wisdom, before putting it to market to test.]
“It’s not safe to walk outside at night.” [Buys into a fear that is not even real. But for some reason, people keep telling each other anyway.]
“I can’t handle crowds.” [Self doubts the capability of ones own mind and capacity to manage ones own nervous system.]
“I’m just not an exercise person.” [Avoiding the perceived discomfort of activating the nervous system]
“I better not try and speak at that event because I might pass out.” [Avoiding chances to get better practiced at managing an activated nervous system]
“Someone else knows the subject better than I do.” [Self rejects own life purpose and wisdom]
“I’m totally happy being single and independent.” [Self rejects so that doesn’t have to risk abandonment,, pain or rejection]
“Oh I could never jump out of a perfectly good plane….” Are you getting it?


There may be very legitimate health or practical reasons why it might NOT be advisable at certain times to do some of those above things. And some of them may not be in everybody’s life purpose tick box plan, which might be why the no urge towards any given one of them. But a lot of those are also examples of us self doubting in our capability in our being able to take on and handle a whole lot more than we might think we can. 


How often in life, are we actually letting anxieties’ seeming well-meaning logic, talk us out of doing the very things that we came here to do, for all the wrong reasons? We might avoid some discomfort in not doing it. But then nobody benefits from the gifts and wisdom that we have to share, the art that we might create, or the change that we we're here to facilitate.  Then we don’t align with and meet that right person, or people. And we miss out on that tremendous amount of joy, purpose, fulfilment and achievement that is also waiting for us on the other side of our fear. Because we managed to convince ourselves that it’s better for ourselves and others that we don’t try. And that becomes the greatest tragedy of all.  


What good is not taking the leap of faith to protect other people, or ourselves, if it costs us ALL the rewards, the quality of the experience, and the joy of being alive?


External circumstances, inequalities, systems, yes, can be very real barriers. But so can our own minds also be our greatest enemies at times, when we let fear and discomfort dictate our realities and cut us off from remembering what we’re truly capable of. We might need a few extra tools in our belt to help manage our mind, our bodies and rewrite our own inner story of psychological safety to help us get the job done with greater ease and grace. But after this week of all weeks, I reckon we’re all capable of SO much more than we give ourselves credit for. Don’t you think?


Until next time….. 

Nat xx