What I Learned about Happiness from Watching a Celebrity Swim with Sharks

26 May What I Learned about Happiness from Watching a Celebrity Swim with Sharks

It’s 2019, and I have happened upon a video of Will Smith’s Facebook Bucket List Challenge to swim with sharks. The self-described mission for the bucket list is for Will to travel the globe taking on “insane” challenges, and to “punch fear in the mouth.”

I watch as a muscular Australian man named Aaron Ferguson sits crouched, head in hands, back against a wall.

Will Smith standing nearby, looks down at Aaron and notices that he is shaken. This doesn’t sit well with Will.

“Anytime an Australian is scared, that makes me nervous,” Will clowns directly at the camera.

In the next moment, though, Will snaps, “Stop acting all scared, man!”

Aaron looks up, annoyed, but does not alter his protective posture. Will heats up, “C’mon man! This is not Australian of you acting all scared.”

Will and Aaron are together in the Bahamas for cage-free shark diving.

This international-celebrity-Action-Hero-actor and his bad-ass Australian personal trainer appear visibly frightened about the task that lies before them.

These men are struggling with fear, not yet punching it in the mouth!

The honesty of this hooked me. I just had to watch the entire 21-minute episode.

But, I never expected that by the end, I Would Learn Something about Myself and about Increasing Joy in Life.

In this scene of the episode, Will and Aaron are on the boat anchored to practice dive in the very spot they will return for the real dive the following day. Before the practice, the ship captain shows a video of how different that scene will look when they do return.

In the video, more than twenty sharks surround the boat. From the boat, someone is throwing bloody meat into the water to them.

The captain points at the screen and discusses the scene as if it were not spectacular.

He says that tomorrow they must first “jump through those lemon sharks….”

Only after jumping through the lemon sharks can the other, even more, chilling encounter begin—swimming with thirteen-foot-seven hundred pound tiger sharks at the bottom of the ocean.

The scene is so tense and the danger so obvious that I feel nauseous watching even in the comfort of my own home.

It begins to dawn on the captain that this hurdle spooked his celebrity guest. He puts a hand on Will’s shoulder to soothe, saying, “You guys are gonna be okay.”

Will pulls away from the man’s touch, his face flushed, and says, “I feel you.” Tone calmer than he appears, Will adds, “It’s just a lot of sharks to jump through.”

Aaron Erupts Out of His Crouched Position.

“I don’t feel you at all!” he barks.

He shakes his head–incredulous. “Everybody’s just nonchalant!”

Yelling now, he bellows:

“Like—IT’S. A F***ING. SHARK!”

Given Will’s fame and multifaceted achievements and his proclamation in this video of a life-long fear of sharks, Why do this?

Will, who had just turned 50, addresses this question. He acknowledges his history of achievement and accomplishment of his dreams. But, he says, “I’m still seeking—I know there’s more than that.”

In other words, Will was facing a place of Not-Knowing-What-Was-Next for him.

To know what it is that lies ahead for him, Will says, he hopes to be led by “Divine Wisdom.”

Then he adds that he is concerned that his “fear of the unknown” could block him from being able to discern that wisdom.

Therefore, Will is actively facing fears of the unknown aiming to remove fear. He does this SO THAT the future will not be determined solely by his past choices and dreams.

This struck a chord with me, reminding me of the dilemma I faced when I was a burnt-out, overworked lawyer. [Read about that here.]

For a time, I was stuck in the muck of stress and living life from should’s. I feared making a change to my situation because I could not see any other choice.

My life was being lived wholly based upon my past dreams and choices.–

In short, I was living out the very consequences Will was actively confronting his fears to avoid.

That memory lingered as I returned to the video to watch Will and Aaron in a scene, where it is the next day and they ready themselves to move toward their life-threatening goal. On the boat, Will is realistic about his feelings and his higher aspirations behind this challenge.

He says, “I hate being scared.” Surprisingly, though, he follows that with,

“You can’t be happy if you’re scared.”

The Simple Connection Between Fear and Happiness in that way Had Never Occurred to Me!

I continue to mull this comment as Will and Aaron get wet-suited up, joke around, and Will triumphantly reminds himself to confront his fear. I hold my breath as they then take the plunge.

In this underwater ballet, Will shakes his head in disbelief as a large tiger shark swims by him, rolls its large eye back in its head, and opens its mouth displaying spiky teeth. Will stays put, without harm. By the end of this scene, the men are stroking the sharks like pets, rubbing their underbellies.

Emerging from this scene onto the boat, Will now fully embodies his Action-Hero self.

While pre-dive, Will was tense, and irritable, post-dive he is exuberant in his victory. His joy is obvious as he fist bumps Aaron and everyone else on the boat.

Dazed with emotion, his feet hardly seem to touch the ground.

Will Emphasizes:

“YOU DISPEL THE FEAR—- MOVE IT OUT. So You Can Enjoy Other Things.“

Looking out over the ocean, Will shakes his head. “Before, as beautiful as this is….I couldn’t enjoy it.”

Now, as a result of dispelling his fear, he muses, even the sharks seem beautiful to him.

~~~~~~~

Will’s declaration reminded me of the Last Day I Worked as a Lawyer. When I went to sleep that night, I had an extraordinary dream that I was flying.

In it, I felt free and joyous. Some say that flying dreams occur when we have risen above something that made life hard and heavy. At the time, I supposed that the dream personified relief, like how a person would feel once a boot was no longer pressing down on their back.

Will’s words about removing fear and its impact on happiness, though, brought a different perspective to those experiences decades ago.:

To summarize, these are the new perspectives I gained about myself and about happiness from Will’s shark dive challenges:

FIRST: When I Face and Act Beyond a Fear, I Have More Room For Joy.

I now see that my exuberant dream and the joy that persisted even afterward was because I had taken a bold action despite my fears and prior choices.

This was that Moving-Fear-Out that Will described.

It did seem to leave actual space inside of me. Then, the space filled with joy.

Very quickly, my life changed, bearing little resemblance to the life I lived as a lawyer. Rather than the drudgery and dreariness of my burnt-out lawyer days, life became enlivened, animated with an active social life.

I even fell in love.

It was like Will said,

“When you push the envelope, the rest of life gets more enjoyable.“

SECOND: There Are No Trivial Acts of Bravery.

Like putting money in your bank savings account, each small act of bravery matters, building muscles of courage for bigger and better challenges ahead.

Will did not simply decide one day to go jump in the wide-open ocean to play with sharks without protection. He planned for it, trained for it, and sought advice from shark experts. He used all those small steps to build toward the large leap.

Likewise, long before any seed had been planted in my mind to leave my career, I began taking baby steps aimed at making my life feel better.

Results from those smaller changes showed me that behaving with greater care for myself did not up-end my life.

And, to the degree that negative consequences happened, this too emboldened me. I saw that I could weather storms.

Small victories added up until one day, I had a sufficient reserve of courage—and mental clarity—to make my own big leap.

And lastly, I Can See: That What looks like

Extraordinary Leaps of Courageous Action

Towards a Better Life

Actually Stand on the Shoulders of

Unseen Preparation

and

Inconspicuous Smaller Acts of Bravery.

And THESE Allow Greater Space for Happiness into Life.

What do you think of Will’s advice? Let me know what you think. And, please SHARE it if you liked it!