Life Lessons I Learned From Bungy Jumping

And now I never have to do it again!

It was the first morning of my post-graduation celebratory New Zealand group tour, and we were gathered around the breakfast table getting to know each other. Bungy jumping, first commercialized in New Zealand, was on everyone’s list of must-do activities. Except mine. Never in my life had I ever wanted to bungy jump. Sky diving, yes, sign me up! But something about throwing myself off a bridge, as opposed to a plane, was scarier. Maybe because the ground is so much closer, or because I had this idea that bungy is for adrenaline-junky types, which I am decidedly not. Nope, not interested in bungy, I told everyone. Not my type of thing. A day later I found myself standing on the jumping platform of Kawarau Bridge, the original bungy jump. I peered down at the turquoise water rushing by 43 meters below, trying to convince myself to take a swan dive while the guy behind me counted down from three.

Just two weeks before, I’d walked at my PhD graduation, and I had two panic attacks during the ceremony. What should have been a celebration was one of the worst experiences of my life. Later that evening I couldn’t even keep food down, all while trying to entertain my family and dissertation advisor. Awful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Here I had finally accomplished what was, without question, the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. I finished my dissertation and defended it successfully while operating with what felt like the rubble of a nuclear explosion in my brain. I’d done it. The problem was, I didn’t want to continue on in academia. I didn’t want to do anything. All ambition, enthusiasm, and motivation I’d ever had for, well, anything was gone. My life felt like it was already over, all my chances used up. So I went to New Zealand.

I’d actually won the trip – on a whim I’d entered a drawing a travel blogger was doing to advertise her group tours, and what do you know. It felt providential, like the universe was awarding me for all my hard work. Hell yes I was going! But no bungy jumping, definitely not. Maybe some kayaking and hiking. That stuff’s peaceful, and what I needed was some calming time for rumination about my future. Nope. Wrong. I didn’t know it then, but what I actually needed was something big. Something scary to push me out of my comfort zone. As I boarded that plane in Orlando and settled in for a long haul, little did I know that within 36 hours I’d be standing on that Kawarau Bridge platform with bathroom towels and a huge rubber band strapped to my ankles. Bathroom towels, you guys. They use plain old bathroom towels to pad your ankles. Somehow I just couldn’t get over it. What do they do when they need new ones? Head to the local Target?

So there I was, looking down at that turquoise water, and the guy behind me was shouting out the countdown. It was one of those defining moments when you make the decision to do it…or not. And in that moment I realized that I didn’t just need to find a new direction – I needed to change everything about my life. I had to take that leap into the unknown. That moment contained the seeds of what would come after: reconnecting with my creative spark and starting to write fiction again, my coaching business, and a feeling that maybe I haven’t used up all of my chances yet after all. Here are some of the lessons I learned that day and in the intervening days that have helped me move my life forward.

Trust your instincts, but listen to your intuition.

Bungy jumping goes against every natural instinct. It’s just not an evolutionary advantage to want to dive head first off very high things. I didn’t even want to do bungy! That is, until I did. I was suddenly possessed by the idea that I had to do it. What my instincts were against, my intuition was pushing hard. Instincts are fear-based. They’re what tell you to avoid walking through a dark park at night. Instincts are important, but their mechanism of action is negative. Intuition has a positive mechanism of action: it will tell you what’s right for you specifically. It’s what encourages you to forge ahead even when nothing is sure.

What makes us feel alive is challenging ourselves in BIG ways.

During my darkest days I got used to doing the bare minimum to get by. I didn’t have the energy or motivation for any extras. I spent years living that way, thinking I was protecting myself for further trauma that challenging myself could cause. And I don’t think I was totally wrong. I really wasn’t in any shape to handle the kinds of things that happen when you put yourself out there. But if we remain in our comfort zone, life becomes rote and uninspiring. And for creative people like myself that causes death of the spirit. Sometimes we need something really big to shake ourselves out of it. Bungy jumping didn’t solve my problems, but it showed me I was capable of responding positively to hard things.

Distraction cures worry. Really. 

In the hours running up to my bungy jump, my fear was almost surreal. I could not imagine how I would be able to do it. But when my attention shifted to something interesting (there was a lot of interesting stuff in New Zealand!) I completely forgot about what I was about to attempt. In those moments of distraction I felt calm, engaged, and content. My brain kept trying to make me feel like I had to worry about the bungy jump because my brain thinks it can control outcomes by worrying constantly about them. But the brain is like a young child who gets distracted by shiny objects. I fed my brain some interesting stuff, and soon enough it forgot all about bungy jumping…until it remembered again.

Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get through it.

I didn’t want to do bungy. Not before the jump, and certainly not in the long minutes of waiting in line to do it. I definitely did not want to do it when I was standing on that platform – check out my “I don’t want to be here!” smile and my death grip on that handle. You guys, that was one of the scariest moments of my life. But you know what was worse? Having to defend my dissertation. So when the guy counting down behind me got to one, I put my arms up over my head and dove.

You better believe I screamed as I went down.