Operate at Depth: How to Stay Calm When Everything Goes to Hell

Most people crack under pressure. Not because they are weak, but because they have never trained for depth.

In scuba diving, you don’t just descend to 100ft and hope for the best. You plan. You check your gear. You control your breathing. And when things go sideways, you trust your training. Life under pressure works the same way.

When you dive deep into the ocean, everything shifts. Light fades. Pressure increases. Gases that keep us alive at the surface become toxic. You cannot rush. You cannot flail. That environment only allows calm, clarity, and deliberation.

But depth isn’t just physical. It’s mental. In life, just as in diving, the deeper you go, the more in control you need to be.

Depth of thought means reflection over reaction.

Most people stay in the shallow, chasing novelty, speed, or easy wins. But the real breakthroughs come when you ask questions, explore nuance, and sit with discomfort. Depth means resisting distractions. You ditch the autopilot for intentional thinking. You operate with care.

Depth of character means integrity under pressure.

It doesn’t show up on demand; it gets revealed when stakes are high, when no one is watching, or when there is an easier option available.

Depth of experience means mastery, not dabbling.

Anyone can start something new, but few stick with it long enough to go deep. It means you have seen the ups and downs, absorbed the stories and experiences of others, and kept going through boredom, failure, and doubt.

Why does depth matter?

Because the surface is crowded, noisy, and reactive. The people who are building meaningful things aren’t playing on the surface. They go deep. They are the ones who make tough calls, stay calm in the face of adversity, and build lasting impact.

Shallow and deep operating modes

I used to think being busy meant I was doing something important. A modern-day warrior fighting climate change. Back-to-back meetings. Always reachable. Obsessed with zero inbox. I was operating at full speed, constantly in motion, always “on”.

Like the Red Queen tells Alice:

Then came the pressure, and I cracked. Not once but multiple times.

A lost client. A deal gone sideways. A toxic boss.

Last year, I had just taken a rare week off, and when I came back, I got mobbed for it. No acknowledgment of the results I’d delivered, just subtle jabs and public pressure to make me feel guilty. I didn’t know how to push back. I just took it, kept my head down, and tried to work even harder.

That moment exposed me. I wasn’t operating with depth. I was reacting. I had no space, no boundaries, no tools to handle real pressure. And the truth is, most people don’t.

Since then, I’ve been building something different.

Borrowing from years of diving shipwrecks, I call it deep operating. It’s focused work. Systems that protect my clarity. Habits that allow me to breathe when things go sideways. And boundaries that make space for recovery, not just output.

You can’t build pressure tolerance by reading about it. You need to live through it. You need to train for it every day. Because when pressure hits, you won’t rise to the occasion; you will fall back on your training.

Lost at Sea

I dive most weekends in the Northeast US, exploring a region home to over 5,000 known shipwrecks.

Two years ago, I was diving the Stolt Dagali, a relatively easy wreck off the coast of New Jersey. Stolt is a popular site: it is accessible, well-traveled, and not too deep. But even in familiar territory, pressure has a way of testing you.

I was swimming along the wreck near the sandy bottom, enjoying the unusually warm water at 130 ft. I spotted a few objects nearby, maybe five to ten feet away, and decided to investigate. Perhaps today was the day I'd find something interesting?

I was confident. Maybe too confident.

The objects turned out to be nothing, just metal junk. But when I turned back toward what I thought was the wreck, I was met with a thick wall of silt. My vision vanished in an instant. It looked like the static fuzz from those old, bulky televisions – what we used to call TV snow.

For context, the visibility in the open ocean is limited to 10-30 ft even on good days. On bad days, you might not see your buddy even if they are right beside you. This time, I could barely see my own hands.

That’s when the panic started to rise.

Every cell in my body, every instinct in my monkey brain screamed at me to move fast, to escape. But in wreck diving, that’s exactly how people die. You flail, lose orientation, burn through air, and a small mistake ends up becoming a fatal one. I've heard the stories of those fatalities. I’ve studied the debriefs. I made a different choice.

I stopped moving. I was completely still. One breath. Then another.

I turned back to the object I came to investigate. I recalled how it was positioned relative to the wreck. Then I pulled a spool from my drysuit pocket, something I carry for such situations. I tied it to the object and began moving towards the direction I believed would take me back.

The key, if you are ever lost when diving, is to not get more lost.

Divers call the first moment of disorientation the “point of most lostness”. It’s the last place you can trust. If my guess was wrong, I could always follow the spool back and start over. But guessing without anchoring myself to that point would mean burning through my air while swimming into nowhere.

That moment stayed with me. Not only because I stared death in the face for a brief second, but because it reminded me how easy it is to lose your clarity in the dark, even on a dive that feels routine.

The solution isn’t panic. You don’t power your way through pressure. You breathe through it. You fall back on your training. And you trust that the way out is calm, not speed.

How to Build Depth

Depth isn’t a personality trait. It’s a skill. And like any skill, it’s built through repetition, awareness, and exposure.

Here is how to build it above the surface.

Practice Controlled Pressure

Seek out stress in small, intentional doses to build immunity.

This is how divers train for emergencies. Drills, repetition, and scenarios that build muscle memory. The same works in life. Try:

• Cold exposure (showers, ice baths)

• Physical training (lifting weights, cardio)

• Public speaking, sales calls, or any setting where you’re a little uncomfortable

Remember, the goal is not to avoid pressure, but to function inside it.

Control your breathing, own your response

Your breathing is the first thing that goes out the window under stress. Reclaiming it means you can approach the situation with calm and clarity. Try:

Box breathing¹

A structured breathing technique that helps reset your nervous system and sharpen your focus. It also helps if you have trouble falling asleep at night.

Inhale for 4 seconds.

Hold for 4 seconds.

Exhale for 4 seconds.

Hold for 4 seconds.

Repeat for 1-3 minutes.

Why it works: Regulates your breath and slows down your heart rate, helping you return to a calm, focused state.

Physiological sigh²

This technique mimics a natural pattern your body uses when you are trying to calm down, such as after crying.

Take a deep breath through the nose.

At the top, take one more short breath.

Exhale slowly and fully through the mouth.

Repeat 2-3 times.

Why it works: Double inhalation increases oxygen uptake. The long exhalation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, calming you down.

Schedule deep work, guard it aggressively

Shallow operators react. Deep operators create space to focus and respond.

Each day, choose the one thing that deserves your full presence. Then give it everything. No phone. No multitasking. No half-in.

Over time, this becomes your default. Read my deep dive (ha-ha) on this topic here.

Final Word

Operating at depth isn’t just about staying calm. It’s about choosing how you show up when things get hard. Most people default to shallow mode. They react. They run. They spiral.

But you don’t have to.

You can train for depth. You can practice clarity. You can build the kind of internal stillness that holds steady when the room fills with noise. Or when the silt clouds your vision.

As Eminem said:

That moment will come.

The wreck will silt out.

The meeting will go sideways.

The pressure will rise.

When it does, don’t panic. Breathe. Trust your training. Operate at depth. 

1  https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing#benefits

2  https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/breathwork-protocols-for-health-focus-stress