The greatest lesson you will learn in life

My nine year old son Jack came home from school recently and told me that he had been too afraid to give a presentation to all of his classmates. This inspired me to make this video.

I wanted to tell Jack about the greatest lesson that I had learnt in life and how I had discovered this. I found this out for myself when I was 10 years old and I was learning to dive.

The idea of diving fascinated me. I had seen the diving boards at my local swimming pool and the thought of voluntarily leaping from the top board head first was both exhilarating and terrifying. The problem was that I wasn’t good with heights.

This video outlines my childhood experience of learning to dive and how I overcame my fear of the dreaded 10 metre diving board. It was the most valuable and formative lesson that I ever learned.

Huge thanks to Manchester Aquatic Centre for giving me permission to make this film!