Changing Gears ⚙️

As we make our way through our days, we inadvertently find ourselves changing gears. Professional work-related gears make your speech more formal and imbued with jargon. Family-related gears could make you more loving and forgiving (or otherwise depending on your family circumstances). Netflix-and-chill gears numb your brain and lower your heart rate.

Depending on your lifestyle, you’ll have your own set your gears that help drive you. The more you use any given gear, the bigger and more lubricated it gets through reinforcement. Gears are never in stasis. Some gears get larger while others get smaller or disappear altogether. A new gear might pop up every once in a while. Some gears are genetically encoded, some are acquired by observing others, and some can be created intentionally by willful practice.

I was about 15 years old when our team’s fitness coach pointed out that my resting heart rate during the beginning of races was not just significantly below average, but the lowest he’s ever come across. For context, the start is usually the most intense moment of a race. There’s so much to gain or lose, and it all depends on your ability to react to the starting lights and how you position your car going into the first corner. The first turn of the first lap is statistically the riskiest part of the race, in which the proximity of cars is as high as it gets. The coach highlighted that I could increase my performance in this early stage of the race by raising my heart rate. An elevated heart rate helps speed up reactions. If your heart rate gets too high though, that’s not ideal either. He proceeded to guide me through techniques to raise my heart rate, and thus I came to learn about the size and prominence of my ‘chill-out gear’.

Over the subsequent decade of racing, I’ve deliberately introduced a ‘get-worked-up gear’. Nowadays, during a competitive race, I find myself letting out a loud roar from inside my helmet for no apparent reason other than to keep myself worked-up. It’s all about finding that optimal balance between relaxation and focus. If I’m too relaxed I lose focus, and if I’m too focused I lose relaxation and become tense.

As a kid, I’ve always dreamed of competing at the highest levels. Although I excelled at various sports, motorsports has always been the only sport I’ve pursued competitively. Now, as I enter a new chapter, that’s finally about to change. Freediving unlike any other sport I’ve come across, its essentially competitive meditation. Who can relax the most? Who can excel at silencing that voice inside your head? Who’s able to face the (seemingly uncomfortable) urge to breath with the most equanimity?

I started freediving about a year and a half ago, and the deeper I go the more I learnt about myself. Initial progression came with ease, but I inadvertently found myself carrying over my ‘get-worked-up gear’ from racing. Shallow waters are forgiving, but the depths are relentless — I’ve learnt this through multiple injuries. You can’t go into a boxing ring with the same mindset you’d use to play billiards. Similarly, I can’t use whatever default gears happen to be running at a given time for a task at hand. I need to mold my gears to serve their purpose as well as possible.

Nowadays, I make a conscious effort to bid farewell to the ‘get-worked-up gear’ that has served me so well over the past, while nurturing my ‘chill-out’ gear towards for continuous growth. To truly make this happen, I can’t limit my practice solely to times when I’m physically freediving. It needs to be much more than that; a lifestyle change. I consistently ask myself questions …

• While walking: How can I keep my muscles as relaxed as possible?

• When facing difficulties at work: Is my internal state of mind as calm and composed as it can be? If not, why?

• Generally when dealing with life: Why am I taking myself so seriously? As Stephen Hawking put it, humans are “just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting round a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” Tim Urban also helps get the same point across, “There are 100 Earth-like planets for every grain of sand in the world. Think about that next time you’re on the beach.”

I began feeling the ramifications of this decision soon afterwards in my daily life. Most of them are very positive. I couldn’t care less what others think, and rarely feel a need to justify my actions. Occasionally my wife might get disappointed because I’d simply let something slide as opposed to standing up for her, but she’s come understand which gear I’m in.

I have a close friend that’s unlike anyone else I know. He’s part robot part human. He runs on nothing but ‘company-growth-gear’, and anything that impairs its smooth functioning will eventually get destroyed. Even when he’s playing a game or messing around, deep down I think the only reason he’s doing so is because he believes it’ll help him maximize long-term growth. His every move needs to be adding to the size and momentum of this single gear. When something isn’t doing so, he feels it in the form of pain. He’s an unstoppable man on a mission.

What gears are you running? Why?