I promised some extracts from the new book to assist in explaining what Taming Tigers is all about. Here is the first extract.

Why Have I Written Taming Tigers?

The Ten Rules for Taming Tigers will bring you greater success in many areas, certainly. But that is not why I have become fascinated with them, tested them rigorously and now locked myself away to write them down for you. Let me tell you the reason: we all have a great story to write, a path to follow, one that is unique to us. Most of us never find out what it is because of the Tiger’s roar. That is a tragedy and I believe that Taming Tigers is one powerful route to avoiding that tragedy.

One day you and I may be in a nursing home somewhere. Let’s go there together for a moment.

You’re ninety years old. Your life is a little less frenetic. You have less paper left on which to write your story. You have less ink in your pen. You won’t be writing with the same vigour in those distant days as you can at the moment. Perhaps your biggest concerns as you wander off to breakfast in the morning will be: ‘Will I win at cards today?’ ‘Did I remember to put any pants on?’ and ‘Do I smell of wee?’

Wouldn’t it be devastating to look at that old character in the mirror – you – and say, after seventy or eighty years of sheer, incredible opportunity, ‘What was the problem? Why didn’t I wake up? Why didn’t I do it? Why didn’t I get involved?’ The question in the nursing home will not be ‘Did I have a great story in me?’ We all have a great story in us. It will be: ‘Did I write my story or did I let my Tiger dictate my story to me?’

What do you have to do today (that’s right, you and do and today – wake up, it’s happening now) to know that when you face that old man or woman in the mirror you can grin devilishly? To say, after eighty long years of opportunity and possibility: ‘I lived! I got out there and made an impact. I made a difference. I lived my live to the full. I wrote my own great story. I loved, I won, I lost. There is nothing to regret. I was awake!’

I have created and written down the Ten Rules for Taming Tigers because I firmly believe that each of us has a powerful story to write and that these Ten Rules liberate us to take our own decisions and to write it.

I believe that every person who looks back with regret and sadness at what might have been, who dies with their story unwritten, is a great loss to our collective story: to humanity. The impact of people at their daily work is the single largest influence on both humanity and the planet. You have a part to play. A story to write. Your story.

And your story will touch many thousands of others.

I believe that there is a clear, identifiable difference between those who will look back at a great story and those who will look back full of regret, or perhaps still be playing the resentful, deluded victim.

One set tamed the Tiger and acted. The others let the Tiger dictate their story to them.

Wake up! The Tiger has no teeth. It is a brilliant, powerful trick of the mind. Your mind. You are in charge of it. You can change it.

To learn more about Taming Tigers you can watch films about the book and each one of the Ten Rules here

The original book has been entirely re-written and is more provocative and challenging than before. It also goes deeper into the nature of the Tiger and the human experience than the original did, focuses more on our story at work and brings my British freediving record experiences into the narrative.

To celebrate, I’ll be publishing extracts from the book in my blog over the coming weeks.

Many people have been emailing to ask what the difference is and why I have re-written a much loved book. A good question. Here are the reasons:

I wanted it to be more inspiring, personal, fun and interactive! With web advances, we can now do that – for example each chapter has a film attached to it to provide encouragement (and you can see these now at www.tamingtigers.com)

Since 2008, I have learned a great deal about the Tiger and the Rules through my own adventures and experiences but also from our clients as Taming Tigers in Business has expanded.

I wanted to be even more open and honest about my experiences in battle with the Tiger in both racing and freediving.

In 2010 I set a new British No-Limits freediving record and become the first Brit to pass 100m on a single breath. This involved meeting the Tiger in new ways and this now runs alongside the racing experiment in the book.

I wanted to include a new and vital chapter on Understanding our Tiger and Understanding Ourselves – bring the enemy more clearly out of the undergrowth for the reader to better understand.

I wanted to include 4 new case studies:

First: the Tiger-taming experiences of Gary Hoffman, the former Chief Executive Officer of Northern Rock who got the bank back on track for sale and used the Ten Rules with his top 100.

Second: Dennis Narlock and his experience of leading his team from a difficult situation to great success using the Ten Rules as his guide (working in defence aviation).

Third: The story of a banking revolution being led by James Le Brocq, Managing Director of O2 Money – and the assistance that he has found in the Ten Rules as he leads his organisation into new, uncharted waters in search of radical innovation and a new customer experience.

Fourth, the incredible journey of Chris Stevenson the Brit who used the Ten Rules to leave a job that had lost it’s charm and find his dream role – and a new life in the Australian sun – and re-proved every one of the Ten Rules as he did so!

There were other reasons why I wanted to re-write the book for you:

Taming Tigers applies to all areas of life but it is predominantly used by people trying to achieve things at work. Feedback from the first book was that it would be hugely valuable if the book had more of a focus on helping the reader to write their story at work – and seeing how the Tiger impedes them in that vital environment. After all – our work should be the biggest adventure of our lives outside of family and friends. But for most people it is not. The new ‘Taming Tigers’ helps people to write an incredible story at work.

Finally, in our work with clients through Taming Tigers in Business, it is becoming ever clearer to us every day that work has changed forever. Yet most people have no idea what the change is all about. We have a privileged helicopter view across industry sectors and are let into our client’s leaders most closely guarded secrets. I wanted to share our insights with you in an Appendix on the changing nature of “work”, why change is so fast and why being led by our Selves and not out Tiger is important to a twenty first century career to thrive and succeed.

I hope you enjoy Taming Tigers 2.0!

Jim.

We are drawn to it. It creates certainty in an uncertain world. We crave knowledge of how the world works and the Rulebook seems to tell us. It may be a false certainty though. Is there much that is certain? That is why Rule 2 asks us to “challenge the Rulebook hourly”.

In other places, you’ll read about Rule 2 as “beliefs”. I think the problem is much greater than your or my “beliefs”. That’s why I chose to create the Rulebook. Families have “rules”, organisations have “rules”. When we see many people acting in accordance with a shared Rulebook, we call it a “culture”. Our beliefs are only one part of the many fictions that provide us with certainty through the Rulebook.

Let’s say you work for a newspaper that profits financially from front covers that reveal highly private, sexual misbehaviour and that sensationalise crimes in which attractive, innocent young people are the victims. Let’s say that you have persuaded yourself that this is vital and rigorous investigative journalism, conducted “in the public interest”. Let’s say that you start to believe that the value of such investigative journalism is so high that it justifies questionable practices; the very practices that you would consider splashing over the front page if carried out by a mortal rather than a god. Let’s say that your whole team and your leaders ALL believe that.

Let’s say that millions of people pay to read your “journalism” each week, that you could whip a certain section of society into a frenzy as a result of your work, that you could be given awards and a good salary and invited to appear on TV panel shows and hailed as a hero in the office as a result of your work.

Wouldn’t it be hard to contemplate that this was all a fiction? Wouldn’t it be hard to resist acting in accordance with such a well established Rulebook?

The rules of behaviour within an organisation act as a powerful a force upon us. They are a fiction that has evolved over time – but once believed in by enough people, breaking them carries real consequences for the community member. That is why cultural change is so hard to achieve. That is why children laugh at the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes – but it forces adults to adults to reflect upon themselves.

When we are tempted to take comfort in the collective Rulebook, it is important to bear in mind Rule 6 – There is no safety in numbers.

It must be very confusing to believe so strongly in the “important work” of “investigative journalism” into celebrity sexual conduct and then to find oneself in a police cell as a consequence. It must be little comfort in that police cell to know that many of one’s colleagues are also having dinner served through a hatch.

I am starting this series of blogs with a guest blog.

Lt Dennis Narlock of the US Navy and I met in 2009. He was in London for a Process Excellence Summit at which I delivered the keynote address. We met and we spoke and we have kept in touch since. He suggested writing a guest blog and I immediately accepted the offer. His words appear below. I hope you enjoy them – and please do leave Dennis a comment if he touches you. I found it courageous, inspiring and moving. His words are unedited.

Thank you Dennis.

The Power Within You

In April 2009 I was attending the Process Excellence Summit in London; There were many great workshops and speakers, each of which went through their presentations. Some of these were interesting and some of them were not. As the time slot for the keynote speaker approached, and with no better alternatives readily at hand I walked in and grabbed a seat to listen to Jim Lawless speak about Taming Tigers. I was not expecting much following a morning of power point slides and monotone speakers; I had in fact resigned myself to only give this speaker 5 minutes before deciding whether or not I would sit through the rest of his presentation. In actuality I need less than 2 minutes to make my decision to stay and listen to the whole presentation. That decision changed how I view myself and the world in which we live.

By the time flight back to San Diego, California landed I had read the book from cover-to-cover. I was inspired, but my Tiger started to roar loudly and I began to doubt whether or not those 10 rules would work for me. After all I couldn’t quit my job and move to the country while still managing to support my family. My Tiger’s roar was loud enough that it was a full 3 months before I went back and looked at the book again.

In my quest to find out more information regarding an organizational success video that I viewed, I had read a book and discovered that the book’s author lived in San Diego, CA. Rule 5 popped into my head and I started to think about contacting the author to answer some of my questions. My tiger roared again, “Why would an author of several business operations books talk with me?” “Who was I to even think about contacting him?” I went to find my Taming Tigers book, and spent a short period of time re-reading the rules. Finally I emailed the author; my tiger roared back “At best you’ll get a short dismissal email from his assistant.” I walked away from the computer knowing my Tiger was right.

Thirty minutes later when I received an email back from the author, offering to speak with me via phone at my convenience I was paralyzed, unsure of how to move forward. I regained my composure emailed the author my phone number, and set a date and time for the following week. It was one of the most rewarding conversations that I have had in my life. I now talk with the author several times a year as I continue to improve myself as a leader.

The second aspect of that phone call was that I made the commitment to re-read Taming Tigers again and to incorporate the 10 rules into my daily life. I make liberal use of rule 5, not only to access those people in the world who can be of assistance to me but by providing assistance to others. I have used rule 6 to step out of the stands and share the 10 rules, openly discussing them with friends and colleagues; many of whom are now fellow Tiger Tamers.

For me Taming Tigers and the 10 rules have moved me to self-reflection as a means of achieving balance and clarity in my life. In today’s fast paced world it is easy to get caught up in what we are accomplishing as we seek to move up the corporate ladder or achieve some recognition. We focus our efforts on being connected electronically, never straying far from a cell phone, computer or television. It is easy to lose sight of our own story and who is writing it for us. The recognition of our story comes from self-reflection; for me that means taking the time each week to look back and what has been written, ensuring that it was I who wrote it and not my Tiger.

Clarity is the ability to clearly discern what I wanted to have happen yesterday, today and tomorrow. Balance is understanding that each of us does not go through life on our own; we have family and friends that journey with us. Applying clarity and balance through self-reflection allows each of us to tap the power within ourselves. To reach out and connect with others throughout the world who have broken free of the yoke placed on them by their Tigers. The power to taken the pen from the Tigers paw and begin to write our own story. Indeed this blog is an example of rule 4 and 7 in action; I have battled with my Tiger for the past week to overcome false rules about whether or not anyone would agree with what I have written. In the end, it is not agreement or disagreement that matters, for we all see the world in our own way. What matters is that we take control of our lives and remain true to the commitment that each of us will write our own story.

Dennis

The last blog was written in Sharm El Sheikh the day after failing the dive on the first attempt (see “Don’t Swallow Your Mouthfill” below for a description of how that happened) and the morning before the successful dive. The battle was still raging between the Angels and the Tigers at that stage. After the blog was posted I spent two hours practicing Kundalini Yoga and then went to the sea. I warmed up in the water with my training parter and coach Andrea (a male Andrea – he’s Italian/Swiss) for about an hour and then got onto the sled. I dived to 60 and then 80 metres to test the corrections in technique that I had made. I still had a lot of air in my mouth at 80 so we went for it and won. I had a fair bit of air at 101m still (without packing) so things look good for the next depth.

I will write about what happened in the sea and the dive itself over the next few days.

It has been very peaceful since Sunday and the feeling has been one of gratitude and contentment more than elation or celebration. The gratitude is to all the people who believed and to the sea. A number of people believed I could do it and took the trouble to tell me so and keep on telling me so. My gratitude to the sea is something very personal. Suffice it to say that the sea is a mystery, like so much of our planet, and it took care of me, as the planet often does. The contentment is that I set myself a goal that many (including me some mornings – never evenings – odd) thought impossible. I met the Tiger many times and in many forms, I followed the Ten Rules, all of them but especially Rules 2,3,4,5,8 and 9, and it worked. Thanks also to my partner Anita who came all the way to Sharm to support me – and who wisely went scuba diving with friends on the day of the record breaking dive rather than go through on Saturday what she had already been through on Friday!

The other big question I am being asked now is “What next?”. The answer is: much deeper. Eventually this will need sponsorship to fund the logistical requirements of the dives. If anybody out there would like to discuss this, please drop me a line.

My daughter is doing very well. She is very excited about the record but, more importantly, is excited about getting back to school on Monday. Not a place she has been to very much this year, but a place that she really loves. I hope she has a wonderful year.

If you wish to contribute to Sparks, one of the UK’s leading charities funding research into cures for childhood illnesses, you can do so here: www.justgiving.com/Jim-Lawless-No-Limits

I hope you create a great last quarter of 2010 for you and yours and defeat your Tigers when they roar.

Over to you.

Jim.

It was ambitious to do it this soon but that said, we all thought I could do it and I have been to 100m in training so it was a disappointment for everybody. Still, we can try again today.

Seeing as many people will be new to freediving I thought I it might be helpful for me to explain a little about No Limits and what happens to make a dive successful. I’ll say enough to explain why the dive failed but not get too technical, don’t worry – keep reading. I’ll let you know what I got right and what I got wrong…

No Limits freediving has four important areas:

1 Breath hold (and conscious, deep relaxation is a big part of this)
2 Equalisation Technique
3 Mental ability to cope with extreme depth and difficulties at depth without stress/ability to cope with nitrogen narcosis at depth
4 Physical Technique (I am not going to mention this below)

1 Breath hold

I’ll not write about breath hold today other than to say that at the depths I am going to it is not an issue for me. I am happy holding my breath underwater for well in excess of three minutes and I will complete this dive in less than three minutes. The only exception to this would be if I lose the “mental” discipline in part 3. Then my system will start to burn up oxygen way too quickly and the breath hold time will radically reduce. This has never happened to me and I will try to explain a little about how I work on this in part 3 below.

2 Equalisation

Equalisation (in the way we generally use the term in diving) is the way we maintain pressure in the middle ear that is equal to the pressure being exerted on the eardrum by the sea. From the edge of the earth’s atmosphere to the surface of the sea is 1 Atmosphere (bar) of pressure. From the surface of the sea to 10 metres below the surface is an increase of 1 whole atmosphere again. Each 10 metres thereafter is another atmosphere. At 100m the pressure exerted by the sea upon the body is 10 atmosphere’s greater than on the surface – 11 atmospheres in total. This has a number of effects upon the body and I’ll only mention the most obvious – and the one that caused me to fail yesterday. There are some airspaces in the body that are unable to adapt on their own to the increase in pressure, notably the air space in the middle ear. The result is that the eardrum will be pushed into that space unless air is moved by the diver into the inner ear from the lungs via the mouth. Scuba divers and those with difficulty on aeroplanes will be familiar with all of this. If you fail to equalise as you descend, the pain in your ears will become so extreme that you will have to turn and ascend to relieve it. If you can bear it and you decide to proceed, you will burst your eardrums.

A freediver has a limited amount of air to use for equalisation and this limited supply is subject to two complicating factors. Firstly, as you descend, the pressure causes the volume of air to decrease. Maddie and I tried an experiment on a recent flight to demonstrate this. We drank a plastic bottle of water and then sealed it tight at 33,000 feet. As we landed we looked at it’s crumpled form triumphantly! The volume of air had decreased – the density increased. However – the size of the airspace that we are trying to keep filling as the pressure increases does not decrease – only the air we have to fill it with does.

In other words – as I descend, the air that I have to fill my ear space decreases, but I still need lots of it. When you see freedivers taking great gasps of air at the surface or “packing” air in, it is not for an oxygen supply – it is to get enough air to be able to equalise at depth.

The second problem is that as you descend, your lungs shrink. They are around lemon size, I am told, at 50m. They do not let air out in that state! If you have not got the air out by then, your dive is over. The pain in your ears will be so extreme that you have to turn as you will have no air to use to equalise that pressure from within.

So the way to deal with this is to get the air out of your lungs at around 35-40 metres and into your mouth. This is called “mouthfill”. Many pressures want to get it out of your mouth as you descend. Your mask will suck it out through your nose and your lungs will suck it back. So you seal the balloon of your mouth in three ways – leaving the fourth exit open. The mouth is sealed, the nose is pinched tight shut and the larynx and epiglottis seal off the trachea – the tube leading to the lungs. The Eustachian tubes, leading to the middle ear, are kept open and pressure is applied to the air in the mouth to encourage the air to escape – into these tubes and on to the inner ear. 

This is the area where my dive went wrong yesterday. I did not have enough air to equalise as the depth increased and I had to turn around. Why? Well, either I didn’t get enough out of my  lungs and into my mouth at 35m (this is possible and I’m working on that today) or I let some escape through inadequate control of my larynx on the way down (also possible and the other area of concentration today).

Now it’s quite tricky to control all of that on dry land in training. As it gets dark and cold – and the descent starts to get very fast – at around 70m, mistakes can happen. They get eliminated with experience but still happen to experienced divers from time to time. If air escapes into the lungs through a slight opening of the larynx, it is called “swallowing the mouthfill” a phrase which causes great hilarity for everybody except the diver who has just turned early!
3 Mental Ability to cope with extreme depth

This is a complex area. It is the most useful for many readers and for anybody wishing to engage in Tiger Taming. I will not cover it in detail in this blog or attempt to do it justice here. I will return to the subject and I will also cover it in real detail in the second edition of Taming Tigers.

Many people actively enjoy a good panic. They love to have “a stress” about something or other. They can, of course, learn to control this as anybody else can. If this is you, the first stage is to notice it. Ask yourself whether it is helpful. Then, if you feel it is unhelpful, to take a different track when the next stress stimuli occurs and the desire to seek attention begins.

Assuming that you do not actively enjoy a good panic, there is a clear and well documented path from stimuli to panic – google “panic cycle” and “breaking panic cycle” to see it in graphic form. But for the purposes of this piece, think of it is a points system on a railway. You control the lever. You hurtle along on the train and just before the points you see something scary on the track ahead – with conscious practice you choose ENTIRELY your response. You can look at 70m of water above you, at the misty blue surrounding you, feel the cold of the water at depth and think “S**t – get me out of here before I die!” or “Wow! I am the luckiest man on the planet at this moment!”

Of course, we don’t start with 70m or we’d all feel the first reaction. We take it slowly and enjoy working within and on the boundaries of our limits until our limits and boundaries expand. That may mean starting with 1m of water or 50cm, but there are many people I know who will never try that.

Also, we can practise with the “points system” in ways that are not dangerous to us in any way. I am a practitioner of Kundalini Yoga and completing my teacher training at present. In Kundalini Yoga, we often put the brain into a position where it approaches the “points” and can choose failure and defeat or to continue to success. We prove to ourselves every time we practice that we can (and often in the real world do) make the conscious choice to fail rather than to persevere through minor discomfort, or that we can push past yesterday’s boundary and explore new areas of our capabilities. Training of this sort is invaluable when choosing how to deal with potentially stressful situations such as freediving.  

And here, dear Tiger Tamers, is the thought for today.

Do we go to our limits, where the fear is, where the Tiger lurks, and experiment with the points system there. Do we exercise our ability to choose our reaction, the thing that most differentiates us from horses and dogs, to experiment with consciously expanding our limits? Or do we stay well back from that (mildly) scary place.

Go to where the fear is. That is where the growth is. That is where the answers are.

Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 10 video.

I hear that the X Factor has returned to our screens back in the UK. Autumn must be coming. Saturday evening is often an extended family evening in my world and so in the autumn an assortment of excited nieces, nephews, my daughter Mads, friends, dogs and so on always make sure we are sitting, opinions at the ready, watching the X Factor. There’s one part I don’t like. In the early stages those deluded souls who really believe that they have talent, wailing out a song in front of the judges and the camera – and the mocking nation.  They then give the judges that indignant, disbelieving stare and try to fight for their place, before exiting the room and breaking down in their their genuine disappointment and disbelief.

Who lets them get to that stage? How can people believe so wholeheartedly in something that cannot be believed in? More poor self-help books? Parents who can’t tell their children the truth?

I am always concerned that I am deluding myself at the start of a business or sporting project. But I think that there is a difference between the Tiger – saying “No way, forget that!” and our common sense saying “Really? are you sure?”. And I think that the difference is to be found in the intention behind the questions we ask ourselves. If the intention is to avoid the thing, albeit with an intellectually sound reason, then we are in Tiger territory. If the intention is, with a genuinely open mind, to carry out intelligent enquiry of ourselves and our challenge, to accurately assess the odds and to decide if we can accept the downside – and whether we desire the upside, before moving into new waters, then it is common sense at work and not the Tiger. 

This is not restricted to members of the public on the X Factor. I’ve heard it argued, for example, that those who ran Lehman Brothers and RBS had moved from “Tiger-battlers” to self-delusional. I know neither gentleman so cannot comment. It certainly applies to the decisions that you (and I) have made in the last year at work and at home and in our relationships.

Of course, the time for research and planning comes to an end, we take a view and we act, we commit. Thrilling. There is still, of course, a great deal that we can do to influence the outcome at this stage, it’s not over. Yet on one level it is. Once the commitment is there, it’s hard not to see it through (even though different paths than those planned may have to be taken). But the commitment is tinged with doubt until the thing is done. That is what keeps us battling our Tigers every day – keeps us innovating, caring, taking bold actions and making bold calls to scary people – the tension between the confident commitment to completion (self belief – the good self help books are correct that it plays a part) and doubt that it can be done (self doubt).

And of course, that is where the real battles are fought. Where the story of our lives is really written. In the silent, brutally honest, terrifying battles with our Tiger.

“I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
But Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”
(Leonard Cohen – with thanks to Phil Joslin for highlighting them to me on a very miserable December day)

We are either a few days away from the end of this project or a few weeks, depending on what happens over this weekend. My deepest training dive so far has been to 95m and I am off to train again in around 2 hours. Enough for the UK record if I can repeat it under record conditions over the weekend – but not the target.  So the self doubt is still there and the demons continue to battle with the angels. It’s the first conversation in my head in the morning. It’s in my dreams during the night in bizarre forms. I have no idea if it can be done, but I believe it can.

I’ll leave you with a quote from David Remnick’s extraordinary biography of Muhammad Ali, “King of the World”. It gives me comfort that even the best – and seemingly most self-confident – have intelligent doubt but push through it.

Ali (then Cassius Clay)had been making a lot of noise about the ease with which he would win his first big bout, a meeting with the terrifying, proven and much heavier Champion, Sonny Liston. Nobody seemed to believe that Ali had a chance of lasting a couple of rounds. And even Ali had room for “maybe”. It wasn’t over til he left the ring as victor.

The day before the fight, in the privacy of a hotel room after a noisy weigh-in, a reporter had the courage to ask Ali, who was staring silently out of the window:

” “Cassius, all these things you’re saying about Liston, do you really mean them? Do you really think you’re going to beat this guy?

Ali replied: “I’m Christopher Columbus … I believe I’ll win. I’ve never been in there with him, but I believe the world is round and they all believe the world is flat. Maybe I’ll fall off the world at the horizon but I believe the world is round.”  ”

 Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 4 video

It is 12.36 and the temperature outside is around 35 degrees Celsius. I am inside. The temperature brings challenges. Sunburn and heatstroke are among them but not a concern to me. I only go into the sun during the day when I have to to travel. When I am in the water I wear a wetsuit with a hood and boots. My face is exposed but that is in the water from the start of the session til the finish. I breath through a snorkel, head down, or I am diving.

The heat makes you sleepy and slow. It’s not laziness or getting into a holiday vibe (I’m not in a holiday frame of mind at all). It’s the heat. A friend arrived from the UK on Saturday, went to bed at eleven that night and woke up at noon on Sunday wondering what hit her. Something about diving deep also makes you sleepy. On training days I am usually unable to stay up beyond 9pm and I wake up at 8 or 9am. It means that you can sit down to write a blog and discover with amazement that it is time to prepare lunch! I’ve been here for an hour and only written a couple of paragraphs. How can it be?

Dehydration is another risk from the heat. For example, I lose a couple of litres each night in sweat. I refuse to sleep with air conditioning on because of the effect of the dry air on my sinuses (and the resulting difficulty in equalising) so night time can be a very steamy affair – for all the wrong reasons. So by the time of writing this in the early afternoon I have drunk around 3 litres of water with rehydration salts. That will continue til bed time so my intake will be around 6 litres for the day and I buy the pharmacy’s stock of salts on each visit. He must think that I have the most incredible case of tummy trouble.

We keep training to the same time every day. We meet at 3pm and are in the water by 3.20. We warm up with three dives to complete a static breathold (a hang) whilst holding onto a rope at around 10m. On the first dive I cannot hold my breath beyond one minute thirty and my confidence always gets a knock. By the third dive I am comfortably over 3 minutes and feel self belief return. Then I’ll gently and very slowly swim down the line to 40m and back as a final warm up.

Feeling confident and at peace in the water, it’s time for the urgency and aggression of the sled. I’ll usually dive three times in a training session. Going to the deep, dark places that I am visiting every day, it is not wise to make too many trips for a number of reasons. You can store up problems. Each dive follows an identical, disciplined, pattern of preparation and each has a clear training purpose. Each one is analysed when I return to the surface. Time, sensations, technical features and how they were executed, equipment, etc. The third dive is the big dive of the day. But never so big that it is likely to fail and so far I have not failed a third dive. By “fail” the dive, I mean that we set the big goal of the day onto this dive. It will be the most testing. By now, pathetically, I am getting incredibly tired and I am dreaming two things – showering and getting out of my suit and the sticky drink. Yes – the big reward! A FANTA! And out here you can also get Blackcurrant Fanta. So I have a fridge full of both flavours back home. Just get the big dive right and you can go home for a Fanta!

The Rules protect me from the sun, protect my sinuses, protect me in the water, protect my brain and confidence from the big hit of taking on too much on the third dive and failing, make sure I am properly warmed up physically and mentally before going deep, ensure that my day has a routine so that my food intake and sleep can have an undisturbed routine. Oh – and there are Rules about food buying a preparation out here that keep your basic health in order. Those are very rigid. For example, there is no way that I would eat anything prepared in a restaurant during a trip out here to train – I just don’t want to risk three days out of the water and diminished strength for a week. I (or close friends) cook!

So Rule 9 is playing a massive part out here. But the part that it started to play began in January when I took on the challenge. It is strange looking back how the challenge shaped the Rule 9 Disciplines and Basics, these in turn shaped my lifestyle and this in turn has given me a shot at the record (only a shot at this stage, still no guarantees). For example, drinking, smoking, eating meat, drinking coffee or caffeinated drinks (OK – I probably fail on this about 4 times a week…) has been taboo. Diet has been pretty strict – but the challenge has not so much been of restriction but of making the time to buy and prepare healthy balanced meals – day in and day out. Daily breathing exercises and the daily practice of Kundalini Yoga have also been vital but incredibly difficult to fit in to a work and family schedule!

Whilst I have not hit my goal yet, signs are good and the journey has been incredible. I put that down to the following of Rule 9. The other Rules have all played their part. But Rule 9, I am beginning to conclude, may be the most important in effecting a major change. And a major change was required to get me even to the level that I am now diving to. And for all of us, success will be a “change”. We will need to move from A to B to create the success.

Of course, the Tiger stops us from taking on the disciplines and basics with a lot of Rule 2 excuses!

I won’t have the time to do them…
People will think I am odd if I…
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…
I probably couldn’t make it anyway so there’s not a lot of point in putting myself through…
Life’s for enjoying and I couldn’t enjoy it without a pint or three!
Discipline is for the kids, I don’t think I need it at my age…

If the Tiger is, generally, protecting us from something – what could these Rule 2 Rules be protecting us from?

Well, you can answer for you. For me, my Rulebook was protecting me from:

You might not succeed – and you might fail publicly if you raise sponsorship in advance for SPARKS
It’ll take a lot of work and commitment – do you have the time and is it worth it? Especially if you fail?
It is scary to make a mistake at 100m
You will have to make time in your schedule to …
You will have to invest some money in flights and so on and turn down work whilst you are overseas – and there’s a recession on you know!
Others will tell you it cannot be done and be quick to knock the attempt

The question for you and for me is this: Is what the Rule is protecting me from worth more to me than the adventure of living my life?

If that makes you want to challenge the Rulebook, It’s some Rule 3 work followed by bringing those Disciplines and Basics into your life. Rule 9 again.

And to be honest, I have always really enjoyed the basics and disciplines and always felt really great as a result. Haven’t you?

Over to you!

Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 9 video

Think of it like driving a car. You are free to use all of your attention and creativity to avoid a collision when the moment comes – but when you were a learner you would have used all of your attention to remember which pedal was for breaking with. It is there in Rule 9 of the Ten Rules. It was brought home to me again, breathlessly, yesterday. “Create disciplines, do the basics brilliantly.”

I have taken on a challenge this summer to raise funds for SPARKS, the children’s medical research charity. Taming Tigers have supported SPARKS since 2008 but this year, for personal reasons, it became even more important to do something to support them. The challenge involves freediving on a sled (like in the film “The Big Blue”). It is great fun, very challenging and pretty technical on various levels. Yesterday, the sled taught me a lesson: Make the process second nature before you try to perform at the next level.

I was training on a new sled which had just been built. Once at the maximum depth, before the ascent to the surface can begin, I have to shift my grip to the bar where my feet had been for a safe ride up. This is a new move that comes with this new sled. I had not perfected it. Having descended to a relatively shallow 30m, I inflated the balloon to take the sled and me to the surface – and let go of the thing in order to change my grip. It whooshed up to the air and light above – without me – before I secured my new grip. Not a big deal at 30m, just an unexpected swim back up. But a decidedly big deal at the depths we are aiming for.

There is always a simple procedure to follow to avoid problems. In rock climbing, you never let go of the rope when your buddy is climbing, you handle the rope hand over hand. In No Limits (sled) freediving, you never let go of the sled – you travel around it hand over hand. Of course, if you’re worried about remembering that , you cannot focus on the things you need to focus on. In fact if you’re “worried” about anything when you are freediving, you may as well give up. Adrenaline is not your friend down there.  So making the procedure second nature allows you to perform. Perhaps it is illuminating that the world’s greatest freediver, Herbert Nitsch, is a commercial airline pilot in his “spare” time. We all like to fly with pilots who follow the correct procedure and save the moments of creative genius for a crisis.

But this is not easy to do at work. It is not always apparent what the process is that you need to perfect.  If it is apparent, it may well be boring and repetitive to master it. It may be dull to work it out once and for all and manage the delegation of it in order for you to move on to play the main game with all of your attention. That is partly what differentiates a champion in my opinion. They take the time to identify the processes and then invest the time (and tedium) to perfect them – or delegate them properly. And so they create the space to perform. This is rarely sexy stuff, it is mundane, behind-the-scenes work, but it makes the difference. One of my sporting inspirations needed more sleep and relaxation time in his long and full day. He spent hours on the road each day. So he hired a driver and sacrificed the significant cost of that to perform at a higher level in the main game. Process delegated, time won back. Relaxation time acquired, game improved.

What are the processes that need tweaking for your organisation so that the business evolves into a performing, creative entity rather than a having to invent the basics from scratch every day. What are the processes and procedures  and tasks that you, personally, could perfect or delegate in order to become a more instinctive player of your main game. You will be rewarded for your effort in spades.

Over to you.

Jim.

PS – If you’re not sure what your main game is and how well you currently perform at it, don’t panic – but do take seriously and make urgent the task of discovering the answers.  We are not “employees” any more. We are all mini businesses. It is wise to know what business you are in – and strive to thrive at that.

“Claude”, said the frenchman to his colleague, without looking up from the computer screen, “will you look in this man’s passport for him, he has forgotten who he is”

“Who am I” is seen as one of those big questions. Perhaps it needn’t be. Perhaps the size of it depends upon which side of the lens we are looking through. Looking at it from my side of the lens, I might wrangle with who I am and who I want to be with the help of a therapist or a business coach or a mate in the pub for many happy self-obsessed hours. The reality, though, is that those observing me from the other side of the lens are often well aware of who I am. It’s the sum of the things I have done and the promises I have kept.

Moving around to their side of the lens for a few hours is not nearly as much fun. But it is very illuminating as to who I really am.

I think that this works just as well when evaluating myself as a leader or discovering what my brand truly stands for.

Over to you.

Jim.

Click on the image to view the Rule 3 video

Click on the image to view the Rule 9 video