“And the best part? I still suck. I know that I have a long way to go. But for the first time in my life, I don’t care.” Photo: Robb Wilson
“Not to sound too deep or weird, but I think that the times when you really appreciate surfing are the times you’re really sort of becoming one with nature. Surfing’s as raw of a sport as it gets.” – Kelly Slater
I didn’t grow up with what you would consider the typical Aussie experience. In fact, I grew up inland. I was, however, a water baby, and was always more at ease in the water than running on land, which led to my fairly successful (but not amazing) adolescent swimming achievements.
I won everything there was to win in local swimming tournaments but never quite excelled at state or nationals where competition really got tight. I was a big fish in a small pond, and I liked that.
I spent my childhood holidays practically mesmerized by the ocean. My tool of choice was either a bodyboard or nothing – a lot of the time, I preferred to bodysurf like a dolphin. I didn’t take up a surfing until I was 15 or so, paddling out with my eldest brother, not really knowing what to do, and falling with every attempt. But surfing didn’t become a big part of my life until my 30’s.
As a child, I rarely set about achieving anything with a growth mindset. Challenges came easily to me. I stuck with activities at school that I was good at (such as public speaking, or logical tasks like science or maths) and shied away from the ones I was interested in but never excellent at, like languages. Grades were important to me, as they got me what I wanted but were not important enough to want to really try. I was a smart kid, just lazy and unengaged. Now I know that what I lacked was a growth mindset. I didn’t want to try, because trying meant possibly failing, and failure meant taking on the label of a failure.
As I later went into the military, again I looked to stick with topics and areas that I could tackle with minimal effort. I achieved my university education with a “P’s mean degrees” attitude, where 51% on an exam was 1% wasted effort. This was a bravado to cover up for my fixed mindset.
As was the case earlier, in my military life, I was able to do a good enough job with minimal effort to kickstart what could have been a promising military career. I loved the art of soldiering but was easily bored and distracted behind a desk. I was married to my first wife, had a secure job with a good income that would increase every year and was doing well. There was only one problem: I was miserable.
My work with The HALO Trust was probably the first job where I was given enough responsibility to really get dirt under my fingernails, to challenge myself, to learn hard lessons from my many mistakes, and finally be held accountable when I tried to employ a 51% effort mindset. I was on a roll, and enjoying the full experience of life spent learning.
I was able to creatively solve problems in extremely complex and stressful environments. Defusing landmines required absolute focus, presence, and a reliance on gut instinct to keep you safe. I was given the role of implementing a completely new method of clearing mines, and not just doubled, but quadrupled productivity of clearance overnight. I was in love with my job, and it showed.
Becoming a personal trainer ruined all of that. This is a profession that can be highly superficial. Quite often, the most confident looking trainer will get the most business, regardless of ability. I have found this profession to have many very dedicated people, who are passionate about exercise, but simply without any solid idea of how to apply that passion sensibly. Many seem happy to do what EVERYONE else is doing. Often times I have made up an exercise, only to see it copied on the gym floor ten minutes later.
This is why I then became a CHEK Practitioner. This was a group of trainers, who wanted to be better at what they did for a living, through intelligent lifestyle design, and more functionally based exercise. This system has been an amazing foundation for my current knowledge. And while I do not agree with everything they teach (like Chakras, dousing or the healing power of crystals), I would not be where I am today without it.
Surfing has been the greatest education of my life. Of everything that I have done, from my early swimming career, through university and my management and leadership training, my experience as an Infantry Officer, my subsequent life as a humanitarian de-miner, and then finally as a personal trainer, the ocean has been my muse to draw all of these areas into focus.
You can’t out-tough the ocean. There is no room for bravado. You can’t fake it ’til you make it. If you want to surf, when you start out, you will suck. If you want to get good, you have to keep trying: 99% practice, 1% theory. Surfing requires a growth mindset, which translates into every aspect of my life.
Waiting between sets and those long periods when there are no waves has taught me patience. It has taught me to be less attached to material things, more in harmony with my environment and its natural high and low tides. It has also taught me how to seize those rare moments when they come – when I drop everything to surf.
Paddling into waves even 2 feet bigger than my comfort zone has taught me how to deal more comfortably with risk and fear. Every surfer knows that it is when you hesitate that bad things happen. Being constantly exposed to that fear has taught me how to harness it, to be more comfortable with it, and how to use it to my advantage through sharpening my focus and presence.
Assessing the swell and watching how the wave patterns change has helped sharpen my decision making. Making my way down the face of the wave teaches me to follow my natural intuition, to not be rigid, to make high speed decisions, and to feel my body adapting to the subtlety of each wave.
The ocean has taught me great humility. And if I am not prepared, if my nutrition, fitness, and mental focus isn’t where it should be, it has the ability to exhaust me more than anything else I know.
It is the ultimate addiction for my addictive personality, and has helped me overcome my life long battle with sugar. I also now have completely lost the desire for alcohol. There is no sugar rush on the planet that I would substitute for surfing glassy waves.
It has also been the source of some of the greatest pleasure, joy, presence, and achievement that my life has ever known. And the best part? I still suck. I know that I have a long way to go. But for the first time in my life, I don’t care. It is the struggle that is the important factor, because each wave provides the instant gratification that I seek, while giving me a long term mindset.
But more abstractly, it has made me more patient with my clients, more focused in how I structure my day and what I achieve with it, a better communicator, more in touch with nature, more creative, a better husband, and a better person.
If you have any questions for Ash about his store, email him at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com, or check out his website at www.weekendsurfwarrior.com
