“When we transcend the fear of failure and terror of the unknown, we are all capable of great things, personally and as a society,” Jill Heinerth writes towards the end of Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver. “We might not always know where the journey will lead us. We might feel a burden of difficulty, but all paths lead to discovery.”

It was nuggets like this, neatly tucked into an autobiography filled with wild adventures from her 30-plus-year as a cave diver and underwater photographer, that made me want to have Jill Heinerth on GQ’s Airplane Mode podcast. Who better to help us explore this season’s theme of confidence than someone whose job requires her to go to Antarctica to dive under glaciers?

Even though you likely won’t need to know how to handle 28-degree glacier water—shout-out to all the glacier divers reading, though—you’ve likely had moments of feeling overwhelmed or panicked or scared in the face of uncertainty. Jill’s survival has depended on effectively managing those moments, deftly navigating the tightrope between calm response and abject terror.

Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned from a life spent deep underwater that will most likely help you in your journey on dry land: what surviving countless underwater emergencies has taught her about business success, how to calmly ease your way out of a panic spiral, and why everyone should treat themselves to the empowering high of a two-day freediving class.

Do you still get nervous or scared before a dive?

Always. And I think that's important because it means that I care about the outcome. It means that I care about getting home safe. I don't want to dive with people that aren't scared, because they don't have the same appreciation for the risk we're taking on. But I think that's how you get a chance to have a remarkable opportunity for discovery, is to step into the darkness.

I really think that when you've got that tingle of fear and uncertainty, it's where you have the opportunity to do something you've never done before.

Was that something you had to learn or is that something innate?

I absolutely had to learn that. I grew up in a very traditional family that would've liked to see my tick off the boxes: do well in school, go be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, and—I don't know how this supposedly fits—but then go have a family and children. I did the exact opposite.

I was in my 20s making the most money in my life, even to this day, in advertising. I didn't dislike what I was doing, but I love being outdoors and I knew that I needed to find a way to work outdoors, and be free of schedules and bosses and things like that.

I moved to the Cayman Islands with a suitcase full of dive gear, thinking, okay, “I'm going to have to learn how to be an underwater photographer now.” I had dabbled, but I had no formal training in underwater photography. And the best way to become an underwater photographer is to just start doing it. I had the confidence that I could just take one step towards what I was really dreaming about.

It's really hard to solve huge problems in life. It's really hard to figure out how to solve global climate change. It's really hard to figure out how to become the CEO of the company. It's really hard to figure out how to become a cave diver that makes a living. Those are too big. It's really big to figure out how to survive when you're trapped in an underwater cave, and the line is broken, and you can't see and your buddy's panicking, and she's stuck, and everything's gone wrong, and you think you might die. But, in all of those cases, we always know what the next best small step is towards survival or success.