Treading water is learning to stay calm with nothing solid under your feet. You’ll use that skill far from any pool.

Panic comes from the absence of ground rather than from danger itself. Treading water trains something strange and specific: staying functional while nothing underneath you is fixed, breathing at a normal rate when every instinct says to fight. That exact situation turns up in rooms with no water in them.

When the next uncertain stretch arrives, waiting on a result, a decision, a conversation, use the pool version. Slow the breathing, make small movements instead of big ones, keep your head up. You do not have to find ground to stop sinking.