Amidst all of our work and ambition, let’s not forget about pursuing adventure and happiness. I speak professionally about eliminating distractions, regaining our focus, and creating possibilities. Jumping out of a plane helped me more deeply understand all three of those goals.
I have wanted to skydive for decades and finally made it happen. It was a long journey to get there, because of immense self-doubt and fear (more like complete terror) along the way. But after YEARS of overthinking, I finally made, yes, the jump. In doing so, I learned a tremendous amount about focus. And about myself.
Bucket list item: ✔️
Years ago, I promised myself that I would jump out of an airplane someday. It was one of those promises that was half-rooted in fear and half in knowing that the jump might not actually happen if I could just keep putting it off. It is easy to make excuses so that “might” not happen, would become "definitely" wouldn’t happen.
All it would take is derailing the jump long enough that I could convince myself that I just didn’t care anymore. But the thing is, I did care. This is something I had always secretly wanted, but just didn't think I could get the courage to do.
Distractions ruin possibility. I wrote a book about this very subject in which I talk about eliminating distractions, regaining your focus, and creating possibility through focusing on what matters most. It is all too easy to make choices throughout our days that throw us completely off track. With skydiving, it is easy to make choices that send us as far as possible from the task at hand.
Jumping out of a plane isn’t like ordering fries. You can order fries just about anywhere. But to jump out of a plane requires a list of steps, any one of which offers a chance to divert and change course. And how often do we divert from our intentions and focus? I know about that better than anyone. Having ADHD means constant potential diversions away from a main goal infringe on my achievements, and offer countless chances to get off track along the way that can prevent any goal from being achieved.
This is true with things as benign as answering a text message or driving to the post office. With my brain, as is true for most of ours in a highly distracted world, anything or any task is often instantly more appealing than the task at hand. Its easy to divert, change course, and get off task. In the case of jumping out of the proverbial perfectly good airplane, it is easy to see how literally anything sounds like a better idea.
I originally made plans to do this jump in the winter of 2021. I had taken the first big step and had actually called the skydiving place to make my reservation to leap from a plane on my actual birthday. I figured that would be an poetic way to celebrate or a truly epic way to perish. Happy birthday to me.
They told me that the jump was dependent on weather, and while I agreed, I was secretly relieved as I knew - living in the Northwest – that inclement weather meant that my out was almost secured. It rains here from November until June typically, so that meant that half the year could see my terrifying jump delayed around my February birthday, or better yet, cancelled entirely with a full refund. Fingers crossed.
As it turns out a combination of Covid and weather did indeed seal the deal on that first planned jump day. And so, with the jump postponed indefinitely, I went back to my life happy and relieved. It was enough to call the place and to plan the jump, right? I didn’t have to actually DO it, did I???
The skydiving center told me that they would hold my deposit as a credit for the season and that I could jump anytime I wanted. Did I really want to do this? They recommended the summer. I thought that this would be fine, though admittedly I was thinking sometime during the summer of 2056. I thanked them but immediately started to plan all the reasons I would be busy that particular summer, whatever summer they were referencing.
And with that intention in mind, to derail myself and not face my potential, that is exactly what happened. Once I had covertly decided to disrupt my own process, I manifested every single possible distraction to get in the way of the task at hand. Re-schedule with the skydiving place? I couldn't possibly. I'd run out of paper towels and needed to buy more right away. Like now. You see where this is going.
This led to the entire year going by without me accomplishing the single task I had set out before me. Call the skydiving place. Book a reservation. The jumping out of the plane part isn't the difficult part. Its the getting there. But I made it intentionally impossible, at every step of the way. Self-sabotage personified.
How often do we do that in other walks of life? We set out on a task that we know, or expect, will be challenging and then instead of rising to face the challenge or even see if it is possible, we divert or back up so far that we figure out a way to skip the challenge entirely?
I have a feeling we do that more often than we think. I know I do, even if somehow you don’t. The operative words here are "we divert." This is something we actively do. We turn away from possibility and make the choice to take the easy route.
The skydiving place called and let me know at the end of 2021 that I was running out of time for the year, and that I needed to redeem my deposit. I asked if I could have into 2022 and promised I would jump that year. They told me that would be no problem. No problem? I figured out a way to make it one. You guessed it: I made excuses all throughout the following year about why I wasn’t able to follow through with my bucket list plan.
Finally, they called in 2022 after the summer had clearly begun to end, and said the deposit really was expiring. I needed to schedule a jump time. I thought at first that I could just let the deposit go, and then do what seemed like the easy way out: tell myself that I would reschedule for an illusory “someday” which would conveniently never arrive.
Instead, I made a bold choice and scheduled a date. Sure, it was a date at the very end of the season, like so at the end of the season that one thing going wrong weather-wise would cancel the whole thing. But if that happened, it would still count as an almost-jump, right? At least I could tell myself that I kinda, sorta, pretty much almost tried?
The jump day got closer and closer and eventually arrived. I was terrified. I got into my car and started driving the 45 minutes north to the facility. About half an hour into the drive they called me. They said that there was a 50/50 chance that we wouldn’t be able to dive because of the potential for cloudy weather that day. Amazing! This was it! My relief and exit strategy literally dropped into my lap! They told me that if I wanted to cancel or postpone that they would honor my credit for another day.
I paused for a moment and I wanted so badly to say yes to cancelling. Instead, listening to my core, I told them I wanted to go for it. I was this far into my drive already. More importantly, I knew the truth. I wanted to try this. I wanted to go for it. When we lie to ourselves and figure out ways to get out of our dreams because they are scary or intimidating, we will always inevitably find a way. But deep inside we know that have been dishonest with ourselves.
At the dive center, the availability for excuses intensfied. The dive itself is a bizarre experience. You sign waivers first, which indemnify the skydiving facility, its pilots, friends, grandmothers, and pets against any lawsuits resulting from the, and they name each one, million-and-one ways you might die while doing something this ridiculous.
Then you meet an instructor. The instructor seems sane, but haven't they opted-in on spending a life risking their lives vs gravity, along with anyone who happens to be physically attached to them? I typically question such a person immediately.
The instructor shows a video of happy people not dying in those million-and-one ways. Then they, the instructor, has you suit up outside and stand near the plane which is going to take you up but not bring you back down. Nothing about this feels normal.
Most people I meet are out of their minds after the last few years, myself included. We all are a perfect amalgam of mental distress or anxiety for one reason or another. And yet, for some reason, in the moment I most need to trust another person, I decided to put my faith in a person who jumps out of planes for a living. How is that rational? The instructor tells you everything you need to know for a successful jump, but my brain is screaming no at every turn.
Every step of the process feels overwhelming. Every moment holds an opportunity to quit. Afterall, no one is making you jump out of plane. It is entirely me against me, with no audience. In this case, I decided to keep going through the motions, figuring that if I did, I would either succeed and have a perfect jump to tell stories about later, or, you know, die.
After you get the skydiving suit on, you’re led to the plane. When that plane takes off, that’s when things get real. You quickly realize that there’s no jetway and arrival gate at the other end of the flight. There’s no snacks or chime at ten thousand feet to let you know that you can take out your laptop and watch the episodes of Better Call Saul that you downloaded for the flight. You’re going out the door.
And that door is right in front of you. In my case, it was a 5’ by 5’ door on the side of the plane, with each of the tandem pairs (each jumper strapped to their instructor) sitting facing the back of the plane in rows. I had paid extra, $50 for another 5000 feet of free fall (making my altitude 13,500 feet), so I was going to be last to jump. I figured, why not? Hitting the ground at 120 mph or hitting the ground at 200 mph is basically the same thing. I was near the cockpit with my back to it, and could see all the jumpers and instructors ahead of me getting themselves ready.
There was a red light above that open door and when it turned green, the first pair of jumpers would make their way toward the door, and then leap. I watched six pairs before me fly out before the plane rose to 13,500 feet for my jump.
It is an odd thing, flying in a plane with a door open all the while. That’s not supposed to happen. Nor is the experience of watching all the other passengers on your flight leave through the side of the plane. Also, quite unusual to say the least.
I was once flying from a corporate event at which I’d been a keynote speaker when the plane door depressurized and we had to make an emergency landing. That was a treat. But this was different. This was intentional, and everything about it felt weird.
What I kept thinking to reassure myself was that there was no mathematical way, absolutely no possible chance, that the six pairs of excited people before me, the ones who had already jumped, had all jumped to their deaths. No way, right? I'd looked up the statistics on skydiving and there's one death per 200,000 jumps. Basically a mathematical zero. So, if the chance of that extremely low probability for fatalities, skyrocketing suddenly to a 100% death rate was unlikely the case then maybe, just maybe, I would actually be ok?
I asked my instructor if anyone had ever just said “no” and that they weren’t going out the door. He said that in 2000 jumps, only one had. My mind raced. Did that mean that 1999 other people had died doing what I was about to do? No…it couldn’t mean that? Afterall, the instructor has been strapped to each of those other people, and he seemed quite alive. But had he survived this 2000 other times? I started to rationalize myself back into clarity, and oddly, calm.
Then it was my turn. I inched up to the door and let my legs hang over the edge and out the open portal like I was a kid sitting on a picnic bench. Talk about not normal: dangling ones legs outside a plane flying almost three miles above the landscape.
The light above me was red. I had a moment to collect myself. But this is hard to do when you’re sitting on the edge of infinity. Then, in an instant, that red light turned green. The instructor said, “Ready?” And I guess I was. Out the door we went.
There is a solid second during that first moment of free fall where every four-letter word you’ve ever learned or imagined goes through your head at the same time. You feel like you’re falling suddenly out of control. But then you realize that this is exactly right. You ARE falling, though with a tiny bit of control, and this is exactly what is supposed to happen.
You remember and follow the instructions in the training video, and stretch your arms this way and your legs that way, and you try to make sense of it. But the wind is extreme and the noise is extreme, and as the world zooms closer at a gazillion miles an hour, there’s no way to make any rational sense of it. It is all just truly and completely awe inspiring. You have just jumped out of an airplane.
You just assume the parachute will be fine. But even that isn’t a clear thought. All you can think is WOW. It is an experience of utter and complete awe and fascination. Think pure joy mixed with absolute freedom. Because there's one clear thought amidst it all: there's no going back. Down is the only way.
Gone are the rationalizations and planning and excuses. You’re just entirely in the moment with no alternatives. It’s not like you can just call your friend instead and divert course and go out for a pizza. Or take a quick bath and then go to sleep. You are falling out of an airplane…and that’s all you are doing.
What an incredible lesson in focus. There is one thing to do. Fall. There are still countless potential distractions, even in that moment. Some would suggest more than ever before. Is that a cloud? Am I higher than it? Is that the earth beneath me? Am I really falling out of a plane? Can people on the ground see me? How fast am I going? I can't believe I am doing this. Nonstop thoughts…but nonstop focus too. You are totally completely in the moment and the most incredible part of it is that you are fearless amidst it all. Even the aforementioned thoughts don’t have time to form and actually distract because they are overshadowed by the singularity of the task at hand. The falling.
And that’s the thing. I wasn’t fearless because I am superhuman, or because I was jumping solo. I was fearless because I had done it. I had set myself up for this. I had stepped up to the moment and actually trusted in the process and followed through with it. For sixty seconds I got to experience a total clarity of focus and specificity of intention. The jump. The falling itself. That was one of the greatest parts of all of this. I set up a situation, followed through with it, and was seeing where it would take me by being fully immersed in it.
After the free fall, when the instructor pulls the ripcord, the parachute bursts open into the sky. The experience changes completely in terms of the noise of the wind and intensity. There is instant silence and you are floating, not falling. Once that parachute deploys, you know that you're likely not going to die. The possibility of the instructor cutting you both free with scissors seems unlikely. Maybe he really was telling the truth about surviving those 2000 jumps.
I’ve only experienced silence like this when scuba diving. This tells me that being on the earth, not above or below it, is entirely distracting. I had time to contemplate the experience on my float to the ground.
Finding our focus comes from stripping away distractions. When our intentionality is razor sharp (in my case falling or diving, but realistically when we just set distractions aside and exist in the moment) it is truly remarkable to discover and embrace the experiences that can flow to us and through us.
When your feet touch the ground, its like being reborn. Landing that day after five or so minutes of parachuting was incredible, and you can see it in my face in the photo when I stood up for the first time, not the least bit dead. In his book Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, author Jon Kabat-Zinn discusses how a sense of mindfulness or paying attention to the present moment, on one’s purpose, provides a framework for us to avoid distractions. That was the skydiving experience through and through. It forced me to pay attention to the present moment.
What other gifts await when we keep our minds focused on the present moment and the task before us? When we set ourselves up for the reality we want, even if it is scary, and even if it involves big risks? I hope we each get to experience a sense of joy like I did when I made that bucket list item, previously so feared, something that I had accomplished and checked off my list instead.
I realize now that I need to keep that freefall mindset solidly in place in other aspects of my life. Keeping focus, maintaining immediacy, and being in the moment and letting distractions zoom by, instead of carrying me along with them is a path to a truly awe-inspired and powerful existence.
As I take the stage to speak in the months and years ahead, these are lessons I will be carrying with me. More jumping out-of-a-plane stories will be coming soon to a keynote speaker stage near you! I look forward to applying ideas from this experience to the lives of listeners everywhere I go. Experiencing that freefall mentality and learning to play with gravity was an experience in how to elimiate distractions, regain focus, and create possibility that is definitely worth sharing.
PS: if you’re in the Seattle area, contact my friends at Skydive Snohomish. They are incredible.
About me:
Greg Bennick is the author of Reclaim the Moment: 7 Strategies to Build a Better Now (Wiley 2024). He has made his living as a keynote speaker and performer since the age of thirteen years old. He likes coin collecting, Thai food, and cats. He writes his own About Me sections after his articles. Find out more about Greg at www.gregbennick.com.
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