By Jarrod Jablonski

This is a remarkable gift.  Yet, despite this abundance, authentic experience seems increasingly rare. We have become exceptionally good at observing, but progressively less engaged. The amazing tools at our disposal make it easy to watch instead of doing, comment instead of contributing, and learn the language of an activity without the burden of long-term commitment.

In the process, it becomes easy to mistake exposure for experience and information for understanding.

Knowing and Understanding

Even those making a commitment to learning are only beginning the process. A student can memorize gas planning rules, emergency procedures, decompression principles, and equipment configurations; they can perform well in the classroom while explaining the logic of important procedures. These skills are valuable, and it is not my intent to marginalize this progress. However, we need to see these as important steps along our journey.

The real test comes when the environment becomes less cooperative—either in diving or in life. Unexpected challenges shape us, and they give us an opportunity to build the skills—both diving and life—that matter most. We rarely choose these difficulties, yet many of our greatest lessons are determined by how we react to them.

Diving can present countless problems. Visibility may drop unexpectedly as your teammate falters and loses track of the guideline. A diving buddy might be suffering from severe hypercapnia with a long decompression ahead. In life, we experience forced career changes, financial troubles, health crises, family problems, and so much more. Both life and diving are filled with challenges, and often the only control we have is how we respond to them. Sometimes, we need to react in seconds; other times, we have more time to deliberate. Either way, our intuitive response can offer insight into the value of authentic experience.

Daniel Kahneman explored many of these differences in Thinking, Fast and Slow. He argues that  experienced people often recognize patterns before they can fully explain them. Firefighters, pilots, surgeons, and cave divers may sense that something is wrong before they have consciously assembled all the details. This is not magic. It is pattern recognition built from repeated exposure to real situations.

Experienced divers notice subtle clues; for instance, they’re more likely to see the anxiety in a buddy before a challenging dive. Divers with experience have already developed strategies to reduce stress in others: When they notice a teammate’s discomfort, they may slow the pace, take time they do not need while performing a task, or emphasize eye contact to provide reassurance to their anxious dive buddy.

These judgments are difficult to teach directly, because they are built through layered experience. They emerge from participation, attention, feedback, and reflection.

A person who memorizes rules may function well when events unfold as expected. A person with authentic experience is better prepared when they do not.

Reality Is the Teacher

Richard Feynman famously argued that reality is the final judge of our ideas. No matter how beautiful a theory may be, if it does not agree with reality, then it is wrong. Divers encounter this lesson constantly. A student may have a mental picture of themselves in perfect trim until they review a video of their actual position in the water. A diver may believe they have excellent buoyancy control until they enter a silty cave passage. An explorer may be confident in their planning until small problems expose manifest weaknesses. One cannot understand their relative command of specific diving skills without the ongoing and escalating complexity of authentic experience.

Businesses operate in much the same way. Customers do not buy good intentions, regardless of the effort and passion put into a product or an initiative. The product or service either solves a problem or it does not. A team either executes or it does not. This is why authentic experience is so valuable: It’s the result of placing our knowledge, initiatives, and experience in direct contact with reality, and reality is the best teacher life has to offer.

Skin in the Game

Nassim Taleb popularized the phrase “skin in the game” to describe the difference between people who bear the consequences of their decisions and those who merely discuss them. Diving offers many examples. It is easy to debate procedures from the surface or argue convincingly in online forums. It is easy to criticize the decisions or actions of others when one is not carrying the burden of those decisions. The internet is filled with people who make a sport of such engagement, and they are rarely the people with authentic experience.

While the value of experience is unquestioned, we must also acknowledge the complexity this process can bring. There is a natural tension between gaining useful, challenging experiences and keeping dives safe enough to be fun and sustainable. Not all experience is wise, and not every risk is justified. Quite the opposite. Authentic experience should be gained with humility, testing boundaries progressively, and with careful consideration.

The more time we spend in consequential environments, the harder it becomes to mistake confidence for competence. The best divers I have known are rarely casual about risk. They may be bold, but they are not careless. They understand that experience is not a license to ignore reality. It is a responsibility to see reality more clearly.

Consequences have a way of sharpening attention. When decisions matter, we tend to observe more carefully, think more critically, and learn more deeply.

Experience Is Not Enough

Of course, experience alone does not guarantee improvement. A diver can repeat the same dive for years and gain little insight. A person can spend decades as a manager without becoming a better leader. A person can remain busy for a lifetime without becoming wise. Being familiar with a task isn’t the same as learning from it. Authentic experience requires engagement.

Anders Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice provides useful insight. Expertise does not develop merely from repetition, but rather from focused effort, feedback, correction, and continuous refinement. The most capable people are not simply those who have done something the longest. They are often those who pay the closest attention to what the experience is trying to teach them.

How can we shape our experiences in ways that enhance our capacity and enrich our lives? We might complete a dive and ignore the difficulties. Or we might celebrate the fun while exploring areas of improvement. What challenges did we confront? Was our communication clear? Did the team maintain consistent awareness? What should we do differently the next time we dive?

The same dive produces very different learning opportunities depending upon the quality of attention and the deliberation we bring to the experience. This is equally true in business and life. Rancorous meetings, frustrating projects, complicated relationships, and disappointing failures all offer lessons—but only to those willing to examine them honestly.

Reflection Converts Experience into Wisdom

John Dewey is often summarized as saying that we do not learn from experience alone; we learn from reflecting on experience. That distinction is critical because building authentic experience provides useful raw material. However, careful and purposeful reflection shapes this experience and maximizes the value we derive.

Experience provides the raw material. Reflection reveals the lesson.

This is one reason Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) has always insisted on a detailed, useful, and comprehensive debrief, including the use of video. A good debrief is not about blame or self-congratulation. It is a structured attempt to look objectively at the dive and to understand how we performed and how we might improve. Done properly, it transforms a dive from an event into a lesson.

The same rule applies to business evaluations, sports training, and personal reflection. Without reflection, learning becomes haphazard. With reflection, we can develop our perspectives and maximize both our learning and our personal development. This is where authentic experience becomes powerful. This is how such experience develops into wisdom.

Worldly Wisdom

Charlie Munger often emphasized the importance of broad mental models and what he called worldly wisdom. His point was that better judgment comes from understanding patterns across many disciplines rather than viewing every problem through a narrow lens.

This idea has always resonated with me. For me, diving is not just about going underwater, although I do love this part of the experience. For example, exploration can involve geology, physiology, logistics, engineering, psychology, leadership, communication, risk management, planning, equipment, and teamwork. A diver who looks at only one dimension will miss the broader system. An entrepreneur who studies only business may miss important lessons from exploration, aviation, medicine, or sport.

The broader our experiences become, the more likely we are to recognize patterns that repeat across disciplines. The more widely we engage with the world, the more these patterns become visible. This is why authentic experience is not limited to underwater adventures. It can be found in building a company, raising a family, teaching students, managing a conflict, learning a craft, or exploring a new environment. What matters is that we participate honestly, pay attention, and allow the experience to change us.

The Modern Problem

Modern life tempts us toward secondhand experience. We can watch people travel instead of traveling. We can follow the success of others instead of building our own success. We can watch people post about health and fitness without changing our lifestyle. We can watch the lives of others rather than filling our own life with the richness of challenge.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with observation. It can inspire, educate, and prepare us. Teachers matter. Books matter. Technology matters. Information matters. But observation has limits. Nobody learns buoyancy control by watching videos. Nobody develops leadership skills by reading quotes. Nobody builds resilience by avoiding difficulty.

Observation can prepare us for participation, but it cannot replace it.

At some point, every diver must enter the water and learn for themselves. This is not to say that we should avoid learning from others. Quite the opposite. Good instruction can accelerate development enormously. But instruction is most powerful when paired with real participation. A teacher can point the way, but the student must still walk the path.

Tools and Judgment

The modern world gives us increasingly powerful tools. Endless media channels provide more content than can ever be consumed. Communicating from some of the most remote places in the world is now possible. Artificial intelligence can answer most of our questions and do more and more of our work. These tools are remarkable, and when used well they can be liberating. But they do not eliminate the need for judgment. In fact, they increase its importance.

Technology makes historically complex dives relatively easy, but divers must still make good choices and be ready to manage problems. A business dashboard can display endless performance metrics, but leaders must still make decisions and guide their teams. AI can develop projects or write code, but someone must shape the results into something useful for humans. Someone must still bear the consequences. 

Closing Thoughts

Looking back, many of the most valuable lessons I have learned came from situations I would never have chosen. The lessons came from difficult dives, failed plans, uncomfortable conversations, damaged relationships, and unexpected setbacks. These were moments where reality challenged my assumptions and brought valuable insight.

At the time, these experiences were frustrating, scary or sad. Some felt like tragedies, others like lost opportunities. In retrospect, they all brought with them a chance to enrich my life. Authentic experience teaches in a way that is impossible to replace. It allows us direct exposure to reality. It forces us to test assumptions. It reveals weakness. It develops resilience. And, perhaps most importantly, it teaches humility.

Information can point us in the right direction. Teachers can accelerate progress. Technology can expand our capability. But none of these things can fully replace authentic experience.

The diver who repeatedly enters unfamiliar places develops a perspective unavailable to divers who stay in familiar surroundings. The leader who guides teams through uncertainty sees patterns invisible to those who have only read leadership books. The true entrepreneur, whether successful or not, learns lessons that cannot be fully communicated through case studies or podcasts.

This is why authentic experience remains so important: It changes us.

Not automatically and not simply because time passes—but because experience, when combined with focused attention and careful reflection, develops judgment. And judgment cannot be outsourced.

Judgment is ultimately the product of authentic experience, thoughtful reflection, and a willingness to engage directly with reality.

The modern world offers endless opportunities to observe, but genuine participation remains comparatively rare. Yet participation is where growth occurs. We must all push beyond our comfort zone. We must stop preparing for life and start living it. Because authentic experience does more than teach us about the world. It teaches us about ourselves.

In our next article, we will examine the role discomfort plays in personal growth and performance. Comfort can be seductive, but meaningful development often occurs at the edge of our capability. Whether in diving, business, or life, the willingness to embrace discomfort may make the difference between long-term success and a lifetime on the sidelines.

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Enjoyed this read? Here are more stories that tie into it.

DIVE DEEPER

InDEPTH: Training, Practice, Experience and Judgement, by Mark Powell (2021)

InDEPTH: Why Expert Divers Might Not Make The Best Instructors. What You Can Do To Improve Your Teaching, by Gareth Lock (2021)

InDEPTH: Compliance Provides An Illusion Of Safety In Diving, by Gareth Lock (2023)

DAN / Alert Diver: Situational Awareness, by Divers Alert Network / Alert Diver (2011)

British Sub-Aqua Club: Human factors in the world of diving – video, by BSAC / Mike Mason

Frontiers in Psychology: Deliberate Practice and Proposed Limits on the Effects of Practice on the Acquisition of Expert Performance, by K. Anders Ericsson and Andreas C. Pool (2019)

Gary Klein: RPD, by Gary Klein

Farnam Street: The Pursuit of Worldly Wisdom, by Farnam Street

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Jarrod Jablonski is an accomplished explorer, tireless researcher, prolific author, and dedicated educator whose projects have taken him to some of the most remote environments on Earth. Trained as a geologist, his expeditions include world-record journeys below 150 m/500 ft, cave penetrations exceeding 15 km/10 mi, and continuous underwater immersions lasting more than 30 hours. He is the founder of Global Underwater Explorers (GUE), Halcyon Manufacturing, and Extreme Exposure Adventure Center. GUE is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing aquatic exploration, conservation, and education. He also served as a principal architect in the creation and launch of Deep Dive Dubai, the world’s deepest diving facility, which offers unique underwater experiences and has provided world-class diver training to thousands of students from around the globe. He remains deeply engaged in international research and exploration initiatives and continues to contribute as an author with dozens of publications, multiple books, and numerous articles to his name.