I’m a little obsessed with surfing.
Growing up on the beach, I coveted the sun-bleached blonde hair and bronzed skin of young men and women who rolled into my high school Chemistry class looking like children of the sea-god himself. (Ugh, they were gorgeous.)
Even though I only lived 5 minutes from the ocean, I told myself I couldn’t be a surfer girl. I had glasses, for one thing. How would I be able to see? Also, I was a terrible swimmer. So I would probably get on the board, wipe out, and die.
Logical.
I don’t know what it is about surfing, but the lure and the dream never left me. I continued to ogle surfers and I watched surf videos and I clipped surf images for my growing collection of surf-themed collages.
Surfing became the representation of all the adventure I wanted in my life but didn’t have the guts to go after.
Then I spent my junior year of college studying abroad in Sydney. Jettisoned from everyone I knew, literally 10,000+ miles from all that was familiar, I decided to throw out my limitations. Here, it seemed, I could become anyone. Including a surfer girl.
So I took my first surf lessons in long, low curls a few kilometers north of Bondi Beach. My board was about 8 feet long and practically made of styrofoam. There was zero chance I would die.
I panicked the first few times I paddled out toward the swells.
When I turned the nose of my board toward shore I was CERTAIN I was going to get bashed over the head and submerged for hours.
Fear was an active, electric impulse working up and down my spine, squeezing my throat and attempting to black out my mind.
But I took several deep breaths and forced myself to paddle until an inhuman surge lifted my board. The musculature of the ocean curled underneath my body and sent me scuttling toward the sand.
It took me several attempts to get up onto my knees.
As soon as I did, I fell off, got a nose full of water, and came up laughing.
Turns out the ocean is made of liquid. When you fall, it doesn’t hurt much.
I got up onto my feet that day. Only for a second, but I made it. After hours of falling and spluttering and throwing myself back into the water again and again, I. MADE. IT. ONTO. MY. FEET.
A few years later, I got back into lessons. I was living near my family on the Jersey Shore, working in corporate and deep in the throes of a gentle spiritual awakening. I even hung out with a group of surfers for a while and came thisclose to buying my own board.
Even though I live in land-locked Virginia now, I’m closer to the symbolic dream of surfing than I’ve ever been in my life.
Every moment I build this business feels like an adventure: a churning, beautiful, terrifying process that scares my pants off at least once a day.
Here is an image of one of the collages I made while I lived in New Jersey. As you can see, my library of surf imagery served me well.
The surfer you see catching air near the top? His name is Greg Noll.
Noll became famous in 1957, after he surfed a massive wave in Waimea Bay that even the locals thought was impossible.
Click here to see a 5-minute video that describes the “taboos and ghost stories” of Waimea that terrified surfers at the time.There’s a quote from an interview with Noll (now aged 78) and a fellow big-wave surfer. The author wrote,“…that’s how he did it. He’d get to some point where it was scary, then just close his eyes and keep going. Because his desire was greater than his fear.”
Can you believe that?
In order to have the courage to plummet down a 30-foot wave, Noll closed his eyes and charged ahead. Because his desire was greater than his fear.
This week, I’ve got a challenge to build your backbone and ride the wave of your dreams.
Go surfing!
OK, not really. I mean, GO SURFING IF YOU CAN.
But assuming you don’t have immediate access to a wetsuit, a board, and wild, wonderful waves…
Step 1: Choose one thing you’ve always wanted to do in your business, but it scares the pants off of you.
Reach out to a former client you’ve let linger for the last 6 months (or 12). Ask a “celebrity” in your industry for coffee or a Skype date. Block off an hour, sit down to write, and crank out and send that newsletter that you’ve meant to write for month.
It doesn’t matter what it is. It just matters that a) it scares you and b) you want it anyway.
Step 2: Take a few deep breaths.
Realize that nobody—and I mean no expert, no pro, no mega-star in your industry—has EVER been able to avoid this feeling. Each person that you admire once felt this fear. In fact, the fear is your guidepost that you’re on the right path.
Step 3: Taste your desire—why you want to do this.
Write it out in a journal, talk about it with your lover or a friend, or just meditate on an image of you living that desire first-hand.
Step 4: Do it.
Remember: your desire is greater than your fear. And you don’t have to hurtle down a 30-foot
