I recently went early morning lane swimming at a 50 metre open air pool.
I chose the slow lane as it had been a long time since I had swum any distance. Apart from realising that 50m seemed a very long way, I noticed how quickly I adapted to this new environment in the 40 minutes that I was in the pool. This included judging my speed versus the other five or six swimmers in the lane, working out whether I could speed up enough to overtake the person in front before I came head to head with the next on-coming swimmer; and the unspoken etiquette of letting a faster swimmer behind me go ahead at the change of ends.
I realised that all these adaptations had been carried out solely with visual cues, noticing what others were doing and adapting my behaviour accordingly.
It made me think about how we can adapt quickly in certain situations but in others we can feel very much out of our depth.
The adaptation to the pool was easy because we all had the same goal, which was to swim lengths, and each of us abided by the unwritten rules: being respectful of others personal space and sharing the same code of behaviour.
We can feel out of our depth when goals aren’t aligned, we aren’t clear what is going on, people are behaving in unexpected ways, we don’t understand the rules or others don’t follow them, or there are other external factors at play.
What are your thoughts about this?
What situations are you most comfortable in?
When do you feel out of your depth?