To become a surfer, a person needs practice and a certain amount of perseverance.
But a surfer, to become a human, needs to go through several stages and show considerable awareness. In my experience, a lot of people get stuck halfway.
Do not you understand what I mean? Sit down more comfortably, I’ll tell you now.
Everything around enthralls a person: passages and falls, the road to the spot, and the people everywhere.
This fact is advertised by all surf schools, promising that you will have a lot of fun regardless of your class, income, religion, and experience. And they don’t lie; they are.
This stage can take longer if you rarely catch waves, say, two vacations a year. In this case, every time is almost like the first, but the “honeymoon” ends sooner or later.
It happens faster for those who prescribe at sea or ocean and surf regularly throughout the year.
The next phase is characterized by the fact that negative notes appear in your skating in addition to joy, delight, and pleasure.
And here, in all its glory, your personality “blooms” and manifests itself.
It even happens that, for example, a person doesn’t want to go skating, he doesn’t go, and he scolds himself for it, from the series: “Well, what the hell are you a surfer if you see waves and don’t want to ride!” I have seen this more often in girls, but also in guys.
There are too many people, they behave like stupid freaks, and besides, the waves are shit, and the board is a log.
Another option could be a negative attitude towards others or the ocean itself. If experienced surfers are around, they ride too much and don’t give you waves.
If there are a lot of newcomers nearby, they get stupid and get in the way. The bright sun is blinding; the legs are numb in the cold water, the longboard does not turn, the shortboard does not rake.
A mind prone to accusation will always find something to find fault with. Destructive waves are, if you think about it, generally nonsense.
One way or another, people who have fallen into this phase begin to skate “on difficult schools.” Maybe not all the time and not every time, but surfing is painted in different shades in their life.
A person has an idealized concept of how it should be in his head, and every discrepancy between reality and this invented standard causes an adverse reaction.
Maybe stormy may be quiet, but it is not the external manifestation that is important, but the internal one, that the person at the moment of this reaction does not experience the pleasure of surfing.
It is generally accepted that surfing makes a person better. So I’ll say this: surfing reveals a person, squeezes out all the shit that was hidden. And if you notice this shit in yourself, admit it, and start working with it, you can become better.
Public coming out: I’ve been in this phase for a long time. And I was sure that this was normal. It’s okay sometimes to feel anger, anger, frustration, resentment in the ocean.
And then it turned out that no. I cannot precisely answer the question of how this happened.
At some point, I saw a different reaction in a person, which made me look at myself from the outside: here I am in the ocean, angry, and this is not cool.
Therefore, if conditions develop, so I do not get pleasure (and this objectively happens: challenging waves or too many people), I begin to go ashore instead of getting angry.
Even if I swam 15 minutes ago, it doesn’t matter even if I fly away tomorrow.
It was not easy to learn. Changing your reaction means physically rebuilding your brain, building new neural connections, and waiting for the old ones to die off.
So patience and determination came in handy. But I got a colossal bonus. Emotions do not disappear at all; they are replaced.
For example, a student dropped me. I thought that the only option was to get mad that he ruined my wave, but it turned out that I could be glad that a person was delighted with what was happening at that moment.
The waves do not end, mine will come to me, but the mood remained good and even became even better.
Having experienced joy instead of anger for the first time, I was stunned: “Why it was possible so ?!”
The moment of this cognitive restructuring for me was a transition to a qualitatively new level of surfing.
I didn’t skate better in terms of technique, but if you recall the quote from Phil Edwards, “The best surfer is the one who gets the most pleasure,” the leap was giant.
You have heard a hundred percent of the phrase that if you cannot change the circumstances, change your attitude towards them.
It does not mean anything until you realize that it can be done, that it is possible. But as soon as you have such an experience, there are no barriers to experimentation.
Why do I live? To rejoice and have fun. And thanks to surfing, I know it’s possible. I sincerely wish everyone to know this.
