The Drown-Proofing Test

There’s a part of Navy SEAL training called “drown-proofing” where they bind your hands behind your back, tie your feet together, and dump you into a 9-foot-deep pool. Your job is to survive for 5 minutes. The vast majority of cadets who attempt drown-proofing fail. Upon being tossed into the water, many of them panic and scream to be lifted back out. Some struggle until they slip underwater where they proceed to lose consciousness and have to be fished out and resuscitated. But some people make it. And they do so because they understand 2 counter-intuitive lessons.

The first lesson is paradoxical: the more you struggle to keep your head above water, the more likely you are to sink. The trick to drown-proofing is to actually let yourself sink to the bottom of the pool. From there, you lightly push yourself off the pool floor and let your momentum carry you back to the surface. Once there, you can grab a quick breath of air and start the whole process over again. The second lesson is also paradoxical: the more you panic, the more oxygen you will burn and the more likely you are to fall unconscious and drown. In a sick and twisted way, the exercise turns your survival instinct against you: the more intense your desire to breathe, the less you will be able to breathe.

Drown-proofing is actually a test of each cadet’s emotional self-control in situations of extreme danger. The ability to let go of control when one wants it most – is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. Not just for SEAL training, but also for life. Most people assume the relationship between effort and reward is linear. We think that working twice as long will produce twice the results. That caring about a relationship twice as much will make everyone feel twice as loved. That yelling your point twice as loud will make you twice as right. But most activities in life do not operate like this because most activities are complex and require adaptation.

In the drown-proofing test, the more effort you put into rising to the surface, the more likely you will be to fail at it. Pursuing happiness takes us further away from it. Attempts at greater emotional control only remove us from it. The desire for greater freedom is often what causes us to feel trapped. The need to be loved and accepted prevents us from loving and accepting ourselves. When it comes to these lofty, abstract and existential goals in life, our minds are like a dog which tries to chase its own tail. The more it chases, the more its tail seems to run away.

The only way to reach the surface is by letting ourselves sink. In other words, to achieve what we desire by giving up what we desire. Not out of weakness. But out of a respect that the world is beyond our grasp. By recognizing that we are fragile and limited. By relinquishing control, not because you feel powerless, but because you are powerful. Because you decide to let go of things that are beyond your control. You decide to accept that sometimes, people won’t like you, that often you will fail, that usually you have no clue what you’re doing. Lean into the fear and uncertainty. When you think you’re going to drown, just as you reach the bottom, it will launch you back to your salvation.