For adventure, I love diving and spearfishing. This year my first dive of this season was an interesting one. On my first dive, probably about 20 minutes in, spearfishing, I eyeballed a yellow jack at about 11:00. Yellow jack is great for sashimi, delicious, and as I’m lining up my speargun, all of a sudden, out of my right eye at 1:00 was a seven-foot bull shark swimming my way and just casually crossed my path. I slowly visually followed it, keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn’t do a U-turn, and kept on going.
Immediately, I caught my composure and realized, to keep my heart rate down, breathe slowly, and don’t show fear. And for the next 15 minutes, I pretty much chuckled in my regulator, “Holy crap, what was that?” I’ve never been that close to a bull shark in that type of situation. The most important thing was for me to just remain calm and realize it wasn’t there to hurt me. It just happened to come close, and it was my perception of the situation that caused my calm or fear. As it was swimming away, I was just amazed at what an awesome creature it was. However, as it was swimming at me, I would add that I was pretty intimidated.
Now, as I thought about this, I thought of an old book that I read a while back, 1989 it was published, Swimming with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive. It was written by Harvey Mackay, one of the old greats. It’s a great book with sub-titles, Out Sell, Out Manage, Out Motivate, and Out Negotiate Your Competition. Now, this is an old book, however, I encourage you to read that if you’re in management, leadership, or sales, you’ll get a lot of good tips.
I share this because close encounters of the gray kind, in business, in life, you’re going to have situations that are going to arise that are going to put you in a potentially stressful situation. It’s how you react to it that will determine the outcome. If I was scared, panicked, freaked out, who knows, when that shark passed me, he could have easily taken a U-turn because he sensed my fear. But because I stayed calm and amazed at the situation, pretty much in awe, he kept swimming. In business and life, it’s not what happens, it’s how you react to it. When I look at close encounters of the gray kind, I look at that as a gift from God that I could witness amazing creature in his environment close up. Did it get my attention? Absolutely. Understand that any adversity that comes your way or any situation that you aren’t ready for, embrace it, hug it, and value it because there’s a lesson in there for you. And most importantly, stay calm, stay clear, stay concise, and move forward.
Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive. Harvey Mackay. Give it a read.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com