catching a wave and learning about life

I spent most of my life living in Los Angeles California, not far from the beach. And since we moved to California, I was in love with the ocean. The beaches in California are somewhat rugged, with deep blue oceans, cold water, clear skies, and especially strong waves, perfect for surfing.

I started surfing when I was 16, and even here in Europe in the Summer, I will go to the Atlantic Coast in France to catch a few waves. Now over the years, surfing has not only given me great physical pleasure. Surfing has also taught me some great lessons about life:

Being in the moment.
There were many times in California where I would surf before going to work. I would get out of bed, pack my wetsuit and my surfboard, get in the car and drive through a busy city, park my car at the beach, put on my wetsuit and paddle out through the breaking waves to get right to that part where the waves are about to break. Many times, I would often enter the water still thinking about a work project or my to-do list, but once I got past the lineup, I would look around and enjoy the surroundings. Behind me would be the Santa Monica Mountains. In front of me would be a clear ocean. To the left would be the sun going up, already warming the air, above me would be pelicans and seagulls, and in the water occasionally a harbor seal would pop it’s head out of the water. Sometimes even a group of dolphins would swim along and try to catch some waves as well. It was when I stopped, took in my surroundings, the sights, the smells, the excitement of catching a great wave that I was truly in the moment. I was not thinking about anything else, and this was an amazing, cleansing effect.

Embracing Failure.

Surfing can be a lot of fun, but to get better at it, you must be comfortable to fail. The only way to get better is to surf bigger waves, which can be very scary. The ocean, with its currents and strong, sometimes overpowering waves, can be dangerous. But even worse, there’s often lots of great surfers in the water, and you don’t want to look bad in front of anyone. when I was younger, the most frustrating days of surfing were those where I didn’t catch any waves because I was afraid to fail. But later in my life, I stopped caring about that, and actually started looking for the opportunity to fail. Surfing taught me that fear of failure is always a balancing act of reaching beyond my limits of what I think I can do, while at the same time trusting that I have the skills to do it well. And that it was in those moments of wiping out that I learned the most. Along the way, you make lots of mistakes. It’s what you find out about those mistakes that makes you better.

Commitment.
When you surf, it’s really a three step process. there’s catching the wave, where you have to paddle really hard to have the wave start carrying you forward. there’s the drop-in, where you feel like you have enough momentum to stand up and push yourself into the wave, and there’s the ride, where you’re actually standing up and riding the wave. Out of these three steps, the drop in is the most difficult part. Why is that? It’s because you have to do many things all at once. You have to go from laying on your board to standing in one fluid motion, and you already have to make your mind up about where you will go once you stand up.but the biggest challenge is that you have to commit, because there is always a moment where you can change your mind, and not take off on the wave. The problem, is that very often, if you are not clearly comitted to dropping in on the wave, you’ll either get sucked in by the wave’s momentum because you backed off too late, or you make a half-commitment without making up your mind about what you will do next, and you’ll definitely spend a lot of time under water. The lesson surfing has taught me is that once you “drop in” to something in your life, the outcome is often better if you stay committed all the way. for me this means staying focused, trusting my intuition, and my abilities.

So there you have it. Surfing has taught me many lessons about my life, but the three lessons that i reach back and think about these days are about being in the moment, embracing failure, and staying committed. Even though I live in Gent now and it’s difficult to surf, I will never give it up. There’s plenty of beaches to visit this summer, and I am looking forward to learning more from this master teacher in my life.

Photos by Mike Baird (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird)