I was in San Diego last weekend in part to cross something
off my bucket list: learning how to surf.
I sort of learned how to surf. I
had a few decent surf rides, but I won’t be entering any surf competitions any
time soon.
My surfing instructor, Randy, told me I was a challenge to
teach. He didn’t mean it in a bad way
(although I immediately took it as an insult).
He meant that he was grateful for the challenge of trying to figure out
the puzzle of the way my brain does/doesn’t communicate with my body and help
me surf.
Randy kept telling me that I needed to stop thinking about
certain things and thinking in certain ways because this thinking was
preventing me from standing up on the board and surfing. However, I can assure you that there wasn’t
much consciously going on in my brain other than wanting to be a cool surfer. After I had returned the surfboard I
continued to think about what Randy had told me about my thinking. Maybe if I wasn’t actively thinking about the
things Randy told me not to think about, perhaps it was on an unconscious level
that I was thinking things that prevented me from succeeding. This makes sense because the things that
Randy told me were preventing me from surfing were the same things that I know
I struggle with in life.
I’m afraid of failure and I think about failure too much. Randy kept telling that I was thinking about
falling. He me that as long as I was
looking to the side of the board rather than straight ahead toward the shore I
was going to fall. If I was looking to
where I would fall, I would fall.
I am slow and too deliberate. Randy wanted me to stop thinking about it as
a bunch of different steps and just quickly push up, get my feet in the right
position on the board, and stand up.
Instead I took things slowly, one step at a time.
I need to feel in control all the time. I was taking it one step at a time because
pausing at each step allowed me to make sure I was completely balanced before I
went on to the next step.
I hold on to what I know rather than letting go of what is
holding me back. Even when I did manage
to get my feet close to the right places on the surfboard and get into a
somewhat upright position, often I failed to stand up all the way because I was
left hanging onto the side of the board for stability. I knew the board, I knew I was safe when I
was holding on to the board, so I held on in an awkward half crouched position. Randy told me to stop thinking about being
unbalanced and just let go.
I didn’t learn anything new about myself. I knew all this already and I was super
frustrated that it prevented me from surfing well. While my character flaws were evident in my
struggle to surf, some of my character strengths came out too. Wait for What I Didn’t Learn About Myself
from Surfing: Part 2.
