“Can you put these thoughts into your surfing next time, instead if all the negative crap you kept coming out with last time, when you kept trying to get out back in action man height waves, lol!”

That was the response I got from my brother after my last blog tilted ‘Id rather not. Who cares what you’d rather not’

I’d rather not. (who cares what ‘you’d rather not?)

To which I responded –

“I’ve got a blog for that as well for those miserable times! (which is this one!)
But answer me this – do I ever quit? No. I keep going. A lot of the time I’m not happy and I moan and get angry. That’s reality. Positive thinking ‘happy all the time’ ideology is just bullshit. It’s not human.
But the question is what do we do to keep going. What resources can we create and pull together to say – Right now this is shit, but keep going. I may throw my toys out of the pram but I always pick them up and keep going.”

We all have an idea of what we want to achieve. An end result. We visualise ourselves doing that thing. We imagine how good we will feel in those moments. Our internal dialogue that lets us know, that when we do this thing, life will be amazing. As if there is no past and no future and only that moment in time that will somehow define or complete us…….and then we metaphorically step out onto the road and get knocked down.

Because conditions are rarely as we had pictured them.

Instead of the confident and successful image we had constructed of ourselves just moments ago, we all too often get it replaced with a reality strewn with doubts and insecurities. The polished result of our mental simulation evaporates and is replaced with a text book demonstration of inadequacy and incompetence.

It’s easy to imagine what we want.

It’s quite another to plan for all the variables and conditions that we will encounter in order to achieve it.

We create a heavily edited version in our minds of a product that, in reality is the result of a process that bares very little resemblance to its final ‘finish line finale’ that we perceived it to be like.

My brother’s above comment was about my recent attempt to improve my surfing.

Now I would love to be able to be able to magically ride waves. To know how it feels to travel through a tube, to touch the wave, to become in that moment a part of it. To look through and see the orange sunset waiting to great me on the other side as I pass through it and gracefully slide down onto the board in time to sit there perfectly poised to watch the sun go down only to be replaced by the gentle flickers of light coming from the flames of the fires alight on the beach, as the camera pans out on me like some sort of character from Point Break. A man a peace in the vast ocean, as though somehow connected – a symbiotic relationship ………that all of a sudden decides to smash my surf board into my face and me back into reality.

Because what I want to do – ride waves in this example – has nothing to do with what I’m going to have to do to make that a reality regardless of my preconceived visualisation.

This isn’t a simulation.

A mix of my skill set and the oceans behaviour today means that once again this is going to be more about flaying about in the surf trying to ‘get out the back’ in order to do what, as per my original visualisation, would be attempting to catch and ride a wave.

And even when I do eventually manage to get out, there’s no guarantee that I’ll catch a wave.

On the contrary, a betting person would wager its more likely that I’ll wipe out and then have to repeat the saga of a life boat man from days gone by and navigate my way through the relentless battering of the waves.

So already there’s an issue of pleasure and pain. Of the amount of hard work in comparison to reward.

Of the fact that we learn through repetition and at this rate, the likely hood of ever learning anything based on the probability of only getting three or four goes at ‘carving it up’ instantly starts to lay a shaky foundation for wanting to continue getting hammered. What’s the point?

And to add to the misery I applied sun cream to my head, which shortly after entering the sea, mixed with salt water and runs nicely into my eyes which stings in a way that inclusive of the sun’s rays feel like they are being mercilessly burnt by like a blow torch browning a crème brulee.

All this is nicely wrapped up in a ridiculous bow of advice from my brother, who to his credit is a competent surfer, but not so gifted in the art of when and what to say that may help someone who is clearly pissed off.

‘Just duck under the waves’ he says in a tone that carries with it a sense that perhaps I had somehow not recognised the bleeding obvious and is bluntly met with ‘I FUCKING AM!’
There’s nothing worse than people who mean well, giving you advice that you already know logically what you need to do, but are currently and clearly incapable of implementing as per the text book instructions at this moment in time –  otherwise, if you could, no doubt you would be doing just that and the need for the advice would not be needed.

As indeed it wasn’t at that time.

And this is normal human, erratic behaviour when we don’t get want we want and are therefore in an emotional state.

And everyone does it. We all throw our toys out of the pram.

We quickly become emotional. We become despondent, frustrated, angry and anxious. When things don’t go as we planned we have a tendency to want to throw the towel in and give up.

But what do we have that can allow us to dig in during these times?

What have we got in those moments to prevent us spiralling and having an emotional melt down?

What can we do to change the perspective on our reality that gets it more in line with our vision of what we want to achieve.

My brother was right I was whinging.

I was pissed off.

I was working to a time frame and It was clear nature was working against me and I wasn’t going to be a big wave surfer today or any time soon, so the question is why stay?

Why not get out and cut our loses.

And it’s easy to sit here now and give advice. Memories are also edited versions of reality.

But at the time I wanted to quit as much as anyone does at these times.

So why and how didn’t I?

My first go to technique is I run a simulation in my mind of how I will feel if I get out.

How once my little hissy fit has calmed down and I’m sat in the car watching my brother out there surfing, how I will feel about myself.

How will I judge myself?

Will I respect that man?

How can I continue to work in this field if, when the going gets tough, I cry off?

That’s my initial main anchor to stay.

But even at this point I’ve got negative, self-defeating dialogue which often surprises people when I tell them.

It’s often there when I’m doing new challenges that are hard.

It’s obviously a protection mechanism but it’s an anxious duality that needs to be managed at these times.

Sometimes I get a break and catch a wave and I’m rejuvenated and desperate to go again.

But this is short lived and each time I get sent back to shore by a succession of waves the dialogue starts again.

The whiney voice that talks like a spoilt child. I want to surf not bloody swim. I don’t want to have to keep fighting through this just to get wiped out. I want to have more goes at riding waves……and on and on.

And then as I get tired and angry my favourite bit kicks in.

The bit where I’m to tired to be polite.

The bit where we are too tired to hold back and entertain that neediness and we snap and say what we think.

And that’s when the other part of me kicks in and I like it.

‘THEN FUCKING GET ON WITH IT YOU FUCKING WHINNY LITTLE BITCH!!!!’

I’m snapped out of my trance and now I’m somewhere else. I’m in the fight and taking charge.

I’m a Navy Seal in Hell Week getting smashed in my dinghy by the surf (which is actually really just my surf board). My drill instructor is begging me to quit.
I’m now playing the part of two people – I’m the drill instructor goading me to ‘fucking quit, ring the bell maggot’ and his spurs me on because I’m also the defiant recruit that says ‘fuck you, I’ll never quit, you will have to drown me before I give up!!!!…..’

And then it’s a different game.

It’s no longer about just surfing, it’s an endurance test to simply get from point A to B. Surfing no longer exists. This is now about my character. My will.

And this is the process.

This maybe my personal process and not yours, but the idea is the same of any outcome we desire.

There’s a shit time in most new endeavours or learning curves and certainly in any personal change work, that will certainly need a process to overcome the pit falls and to eventually succeed.

And it’s because of this process that we stand a chance of ever manifesting those original if slightly naive imagined outcomes.

We have to either love the process or find ways to tolerate it if we are to ever evolve.

In this case my coping strategy and my change of perspective increased my ability to stick with it and get out the back, catch my breath and attempt to catch a wave and stay up instead of calling it a day and achieving nothing.

Don’t get me wrong I was still pretty shit, make no bones about it. But I didn’t quit.

And even if I failed to get any waves or even get out back I knew I passed my imaginary Hell week selection and could leave the water with my head held up high.

And there will be days when even after this we will leave the arena defeated even after our best efforts.

It’s at these times we need to be able to look at the reality of what we wanted achieve in the time we had or the time we had dedicated so far to it.

Surfing takes years to master. And above all it takes consistency.

Both of which I’ve not been able to commit to.

The reason surf schools use big foam surf boards in the white water is because for novices, that the best chance they will ever get of experiencing surfing in the few hours’ time frame they get.

That’s really what I should do if my only precedence is ‘to surf’ once in a blue moon.

And if I decide to decline that offer, and cut it with the big boys,I have to dial back my expectations. To know that for the foreseeable future, failing perfect conditions, much of my time should be spent mastering the basics and forgetting the long game of surfing.

I should understand that today’s sessions is primarily going to be paddle technique, duck diving, positioning myself better on the board etc.

Granted it’s the nuts and bolts.

It’s not glamorous and often boring, but at least when we present ourselves with the facts of our reality instead of getting annoyed by the fact that we’ve allowed ourselves to stumble at the hurdles of our own bullshit, we stand half a chance of understanding what is required to succeed.

This is also the time to decide whether we want to go on.

Whether it’s where we want to spend our time.

It’s at the process stage that we need to make our decisions and whether we want to embark on this escapade rather than at the bells and whistles of the finish line.

The more we get to understand ourselves and how we create our realities and where and why we fall down, how we cope and manage in hard and challenging times, the more we stand a much better chance of carving through life’s waves and into a sunset of our making.