This Surfing Lesson Can Pump Up Your Career

Alot harder to shake off a year of wasted effort than two minutes of paddling

Imagine being so driven by your love of success that you do not even notice your failures. How different would your life be? How much more could you achieve?

My friend has taken many pictures of surfers, and going through her wonderful images I realized that good surfers may have the answer to the fears that paralyze so many people. Surfers love riding waves so much that they barely notice their failures.

By failures, I mean the times that they fall backwards off a board, get slammed in the back by a wave, get sand up their nose and in every other orifice, or much worse.

I've only surfed a small number of times, but that's enough for me to know the feeling of falling into the waves and immediately turning around and heading back out to try again. There's never a choice, you just try again... because the rush of catching a wave provides an experience you can't match anywhere else.

Lots of people play it safe; they seek success only when there is a high probability they will not fail. In other words, they think the two outcomes dwell in different places. But this is only true if you set overly cautious goals.

In surfing - as in the lives of highly accomplished people - success and failure dwell in the same place. The best waves offer the most exhilarating rides, but chasing these rides brings surfers to the precise spot where they can suffer the worst falls.

If you dream big, life is exactly the same way. Once you decide to reach for dramatic success, failure becomes increasingly likely. But if that success is appealing enough, it should not matter whether you fail. Never for one moment should you consider quitting; you should simply get up and try again.

Here's the rub: in life, the time span "between waves" is far longer than in surfing. It's a lot harder to shake off a year of wasted effort than two minutes of paddling. But I don't think this is the major obstacle.

The biggest challenge is that most people set goals that are too modest to excite them. They aren't willing to immediately try again because they don't crave victory as much as surfers crave the next ride.

If you are still with me after nine paragraphs of surfing analogies, ask yourself this: are you setting your goals high enough that you are unquestionably willing to keep trying after 5, 10 or even 15 failures? If not, then you may have found the root of your problem.