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Last weekend I had a few Essentials students looking to move on to their technical training. This is where they will experience their first critical skills dives. Training dives that are run as real dives instead of the typical, “monkey see/ monkey do” dives. After you’ve passed the Essentials and have a solid base of the DIR skill set and understanding, it’s time for failure-based dives with real-time problem solving. There’s something interesting that happens often when I teach DIR to already certified divers. A diver shows up with hundreds of logged dives maybe, solid buoyancy control, and years of experience. Then, about halfway through day one, it happens… they breakdown. The frustration. The anger. The embarrassment. They’re struggling with something that is supposed to be basic, and suddenly they’re convinced that they “suck at diving.” But they don’t suck… They’re learning, and it’s my job to find that place in them where they can grow. And there’s a massive difference. It’s one of the most common things I see when divers start training with me. The breakdown. Because every other class has always been a success, a handshake, and a certification card. So, it’s understandable that when their skills breakdown… because now we are stacking basic skills together… Now that it’s not just clear a mask, hover with perfect buoyancy, or back kick across a platform… but rather get into position to help a diver share gas that requires you to combine all of these skills together…. Well now, when it doesn’t click right away, the instinctive reaction is… “I must suck.” But what’s actually happening has nothing to do with your ability… it’s your mindset. And that is what I’m really teaching with DIR, that is what the Mott Underwater Method really is. A mindset. I was recently turned on to a book called, “The Flip Side” written by Michelle “Mace” Curran by one of my current students. Michelle was a former U.S. Air Force Thunderbird pilot. She had a quote that really resonated with me, where she said, “You didn’t fail, you just got overwhelmed. That’s why we train.” She says when we approach anything complex, and for her it was flying fighter jets, with a fixed mindset… we see mistakes as proof that we’re not good enough. But when we shift to a growth mindset, we understand that mistakes are part of the process. It is the struggling that literally rewires our brains and bodies to adapt to new skills. My student had what most people would consider a successful diving background. He was experienced, competent, and comfortable in the water. But like many divers stepping into a higher level of performance, he hit that wall of frustration when the skills got tougher. Frustrated, he started to say things like, “I should already be good at this. Maybe I’m too old for this. Some people just can’t do this type of stuff?” But then, something changed. On a dive where so many things went wrong, and where the dive team had major mistakes, mistakes that could have been disastrous outside of training… we debriefed the dive in detail, we sat down and watched a video review of how things developed underwater and how they got themselves into this situation… that’s when something clicked. He had recently read Michelle Curran’s book and began to see his dive training differently. Mistakes became feedback. Challenges became puzzles. And that day, he said to me, “that was one of the greatest days of education I’ve ever had.” Not because everything went perfectly. But because he’d finally stopped measuring his progress by perfection and started measuring it by awareness, consistency, and control. That’s growth mindset in action…underwater. Michelle Curran addresses this beautifully in her book The Flipside when she discusses the relationship between competence and learning. Curran’s “flipside” idea is reframing failure not as a verdict but as a signal that you are in the learning zone. There’s an inherent paradox in what I teach. Unfortunately, in order to really learn how to dive… to really absorb and implement DIR principles effectively, you need to already be a fairly accomplished diver. You need solid foundational skills, awareness, and the capacity to work on multiple things simultaneously. To some of you reading this, that right there might sound like a pretty good diver, but really… that’s just the beginning. Experienced divers have grown accustomed to feeling capable in the water. They have certification cards, and a lot of them. They’ve built confidence over years and hundreds of dives. When they suddenly find themselves struggling with new procedures, unfamiliar equipment configurations, or a different approach to team diving, that confidence takes a hit. The fixed mindset whispers in their ear, “If I were actually good at this, it wouldn’t be so hard.” But that whisper is a lie. A fixed mindset assumes that your ability is static. It assumes you either have it or you don’t. When experienced divers encounter difficulty in a DIR course, the fixed mindset interprets this as evidence of inadequacy. “I’ve been diving for five years, and I still can’t maintain trim during a valve drill. I must not be cut out for this.” This thinking is not only wrong, but also actively harmful to learning. It transforms every struggle into an attack on your worth as a diver rather than what it is… a natural part of growth. The growth mindset, by contrast, recognizes that skills develop through practice and that difficulty is NOT evidence of failure… it’s evidence of learning. The diver who struggles with a new skill isn’t proving they’re inadequate; they’re proving they’re pushing into new territory. This has been my problem with the big agency way of teaching for decades. The overwhelming majority of dive instruction operates on a model that says you can learn everything you need in a weekend. Get your Open Water in three days. Add Advanced Open Water in two more. Tack on a specialty or two in an afternoon each. Tech Diver??? Give me one week…. This approach creates an expectation. An expectation that diving skills should come quickly and easily. If they don’t, something must be wrong with you. But real diving education doesn’t work that way. Especially DIR. Especially the Mott Underwater Method. It’s a systematic approach to diving that requires rewiring habits, building new patterns of thought and movement, and developing a level of team coordination that simply cannot be rushed. When you step into this kind of training after years of diving a different way, you’re not just learning new skills. You’re often unlearning old ones. You’re breaking down movement patterns that have become automatic and rebuilding them from scratch. That takes time. It takes patience. And yes, it takes being okay with feeling like a beginner again, even when you’re not. You need to embrace this beginners mind. This is the critical distinction that experienced divers need to internalize, being new at something and being bad at something are not the same. You’re not bad at DIR diving because you can’t perfectly execute a valve drill on your first day. You’re new at it. You’re not a poor team diver because you miss a bubble check or lose awareness of your teammates’ positions. You’re learning a new way of diving. That is my job, the hard work that I must put in for you. To show you what’s happening outside of your own perception and how you can grow. Not just to watch you do a skill perfectly. Growth happens at the edge of your ability, in that uncomfortable space where things don’t come easily. What I offer at Mott Underwater that differs from most instruction is simple… it’s time. Time to struggle. Time to practice. Time to fail and try again. Time to let new patterns sink in, not just intellectually but into your muscle memory and your intuitive sense of the water. This isn’t because I’m particularly patient or kind (though I’d like to think I am). It’s because real learning requires it. The human brain needs repetition and time to consolidate new skills. Your body needs practice to build new patterns of movement. Your team needs hours together to develop genuine coordination. You can’t shortcut this process, no matter how talented you are or how much experience you bring to the table. So, if you’re considering DIR training, or if you’re in the middle of it and feeling frustrated with your progress, you have to know that the discomfort you’re feeling isn’t a defeat, it’s a feature. It’s evidence that you’re in the right place, working on the right things. Be patient with yourself. Be honest about where you are in the learning process. And most importantly, be willing to be a beginner again. The beginner’s mind is poised for the growth mindset. This is the most important skill you can bring to your training. Don’t waste time trying to show up already knowing how to do everything; just be open and ready for growth. Because the divers who progress fastest aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones who struggle, accept it, and keep showing up anyway. Are you interested in learning more about The Mott Underwater Method of DIR diving? Contact me to discuss training options that give you the time you need to grow as a diver. 
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10/8/2025 0 Comments When The Pressure Is OnInside of the shipwreck the water is calm, it’s inviting when compared to the washing current outside.
We go in. The darkness consumes us. Our lights although powerful are absorbed by the silt and the steel. A guideline reminds us of our exit while our bubbles slide up the walls like glass beads heading to the surface which is actually toward the bottom of this upside down shipwreck. All it takes is a poorly controlled kick, someone’s fin brushes the bottom… a century of rust and silt come bellowing down and in one breath, your entire world turns to brown… it’s all you can see. The visibility vanishes. The space that had felt huge becomes claustrophobic and tight. The instinct to move, to escape, to “do something” immediately echoes off the steel with a loud pulsating urge to move and breathe fast. But we don’t rush. No one spirals. Hands find the line, signals are exchanged, and the team moves slowly and deliberately, following the plan we had practiced over and over again. On the surface, you might think, “We really rose to the occasion down there.” But that’s not what happened. In reality, we didn’t rise at all. We fell… we sank, to the level of our preparation. It’s not just a catchy quote. It’s a reflection of how human beings actually behave under stress. And understanding this principle is key to becoming a capable and confident diver. It’s why continued practice after a course like The Essentials of DIR Diving matters so much. It is why a deeper grasp of Human Factors transforms not only how you dive, but how you think… before, during, and after a dive. Experience Shapes What You See In his article, “The Importance of Experience”, Gareth Lock explores how experience, awareness, and decision-making interact under uncertainty. He poses four questions that every diver… and really, every human under pressure, must wrestle with: 1. How do we know what to pay attention to? 2. How do we know how much attention to pay to that task? 3. How do we really make decisions in uncertain situations? 4. How do we know we made the right decision? These questions form the backbone of situational awareness and sound judgment. Let’s look at how they play out underwater, and how The Mott Underwater Method, DIR Diving, and Human Factors make all the difference. 1. What to Pay Attention To Underwater, the environment bombards you with information… light signals, silt movement, gauge readings, currents, sounds, your breathing rate, your teammate’s position. All of them working hard to steal your awareness. The experienced diver doesn’t get lost trying to see everything. Instead, they see what matters. They’ve learned to filter out the noise that isn’t relevant at the moment. That ability doesn’t come from natural talent, it comes from repetition, feedback, and mindful practice. When the pressure is on, you won’t invent a new way to filter the noise from a new problem. You’ll only notice what your preparation has taught you to notice. 2. How Much Attention to Pay Focus is a limited resource. Spend too much of it on one task and you can miss something critical elsewhere. You can’t lock your attention away on the one task at hand when you’re diving. Through training and simulation, divers learn how to balance that attention. How much to devote to buoyancy, navigation, communication, and monitoring. This is calibration, and it’s built through deliberate, repeated experience. When the pressure spikes, the diver who’s practiced this balance maintains situational awareness. The one who hasn’t, loses it… and that can be disastrous. 3. Making Decisions in Uncertainty Every dive involves ambiguity, there is always some trust and assumption, a bit of hope. You rarely have perfect information. you have patterns, hints, and probabilities. The more experience you’ve built, the more patterns your brain can recognize. This is why failure based scenarios are so important in the Mott Underwater Method of training. Navigation is so much more than looking at a compass to stay on course… it’s all the other stuff. Knowing that you can and most likely will lose track and being prepared for that, having seen enough scenarios that your intuition becomes informed. Under stress, you won’t build a perfect plan from scratch. You’ll fall back on the patterns you’ve seen before, the mental “movies” you’ve watched in re-runs. That’s why repetition, simulation, and debriefing are critical parts of real preparation. 4. Knowing You Made the Right Decision The last question Gareth poses is perhaps the most important: how do we know we made the right decision? We know because we reflect. Because we debrief. Because we create space to analyze what worked, what didn’t, and what we missed. Without that reflection, without that feedback, our learning is suspended. We end up repeating the same mistakes, assuming that survival equals success. But survival is just the start. True progress happens when you actively close the feedback loop. Situational Awareness- A Pillar of DIR Situational awareness is not just a buzzword. It can’t simply be memorized. It has to be burned into your soul underwater through the Laws of Intensity and Effect. And even still it is fragile to outside forces, no matter how well practiced you are. Outside forces like- Cognitive load: when you have too many tasks competing for attention. Fatigue: when the situation or environment mentally or physically exhausts your overall perception. Automation: when you fall into a mindless routine and miss obvious changes. System design: when simple communication or equipment use is taxed and now an easy job becomes complex and confusing. Good preparation isn’t just about drills. It’s about managing these limits, designing your dives and systems to keep awareness alive when stress climbs. This is why The Essentials of DIR Diving becomes so important for any diver who wants to take ownership of themselves underwater. The Bottom Line When the visibility drops, when equipment fails, when time and gas start slipping away, unlike the fable suggests… you will not rise to the occasion. You will fall to the habits, awareness, and decision-making patterns you’ve built through your training and experience. That’s why continued, critical-skills education isn’t a luxury, it’s Essential. Your Next Steps If this resonates with you, take the next step in your development as a diver: Join my next Essentials of DIR Diving class — build the foundation that holds steady under pressure. Attend the next Human Factors in Diving course — learn how humans actually make decisions, communicate, and err. Work with me one-on-one through coaching — refine your skills, strengthen your preparation, and build the confidence that shows up when the pressure is on. Because when it all hits at once… the visibility, the current, the stress, your gas, your time… you won’t become someone new who rises to something better. You’ll become exactly what you’ve prepared to be. |
James Mott
James has been a PADI instructor since 1998 and was one of the original 10 instructors for UTD Scuba Diving in 2009. Archives
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