What My First Week if Surfing Taught Me About the Learning Process

Two weeks ago Tuesday, I got on a surf board for the first time in my life.

And the following Saturday, after 5 consecutive days of practice, I rode my first proper wave.

I took away several existential lessons from the experience, and in this essay I share three of the biggest ones.

These three lessons don’t just apply to surfing, they apply to ANY endeavor in life.

Lesson #1: Seek to Disprove Your Inner-Coward

Since I was a child, I’ve never felt comfortable in water.

I have a memory of watching all my kindergarten classmates diving gleefully into the deep end while I sat alone on the bleachers.

We all started in the same kiddie pool, kicking and flailing our extremities while the teachers pulled our torsos through the water.

But by the end of the program, the only remaining flailers were me and some Indian kid who’s name I no longer remember.

I eventually taught myself how to do the basic strokes, but I still struggle to tread water for more than a few minutes without completely exhausting myself.

That’s why I always abstained from ocean sports like surfing.

I came to believe that my body possessed some quality that made me significantly less buoyant than the average person, and thus reasoned that ocean sports were too risky for me to get into.

But since diving deeper into psychology and learning how rationality actually works in the mind, I’ve come to realize that most “Reasons” are nonsense.

Rationality is just a tool your mind uses to post-hoc justify your motivations.

So whenever a reason for doing or not doing something pops into my mind, I try to remember to ask myself “Which part of my mind will achieve its goal if I believe this reason?

Is it my inner-hero, who principal aim is to bring out the best in me and everyone around me?

Or is it my inner-coward, whose principal aim is to steer me clear of anything that might damage my body or reputation?

Usually, reason serves the inner-coward, since the inner-hero doesn’t need a reason to take action.

I’ve always admired surfers, and I always had an intuition that surfing contained within its practice some of the most useful and universal life skills.

But whenever I had the opportunity to go surfing, the inner-coward always told me “It’s too dangerous — you’re too weak of a swimmer.”

As it turns out, my inner-coward is an idiot.

As soon as I had my first surf lesson, I realized just how ridiculous it was to make swimming skills a barrier to start learning surfing.

You start surfing in the shallow part of the ocean, where swimming skills are completely irrelevant. For my entire week of practicing, not once did I enter a point where the water went above my head.

Moreover, on the first day of practice, it became clear to me that I actually have several advantages in surfing.

I have a hyper-mobile lumbar spine, which made the critical move of arching the back effortless for me. Also, I’ve practiced popping up and staying balanced on my feet thousands of time through years of stand-up grappling in jiu jitsu.

So after a lifetime of assuming I has a disadvantage in surfing, it only took me a day to figure out I had a knack for it.

What has your inner-coward deceived you into believing?

What are all the ridiculous reasons it gives you to ignore your inner-hero’s call to adventure?

What bold steps can you take this week to prove your inner-coward wrong and make him look like a fool?

Choose your adventure, find your guide, then make sure you observe…

Lesson #2: Take Ownership Over Your Instruction

I always hated the word “teach”, because I find it triggers an attitude of passivity in the mind of the learner.

The unconscious expectation is that, as long as you obey your teacher, he will carry you safely to your destination.

But no one can take you anywhere — the responsibility is always on you to do the hard work of learning.

Like Morpheus said in The Matrix.

“I can only show you the door, Neo. It’s up for you to walk through it.”

It’s crucial to be humble and respect the wisdom of people more experienced than you, but you should never obey anyone blindly.

To progress, you need to marry your teacher’s feedback with your own observations.

At the beginning of each surf lesson, when we practiced the “pop-up” movement in the sand, I’d always isolate some specific nuance of the technique and ask the teacher about it.

“I notice you keep emphasizing that back knee bend — Why’s it so important? What happens if you don’t bend the knee properly? What about the arms? What should I do with those? When I turn, are my shoulders and head rotating as a single unit, or does the head move first?”

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, but be cautious about asking too many.

First, it’s possible to overthink your way into poor performance, especially if you’re generally a hyper-analytical person like me.

To avoid that trap, I try to limit my questions to specific sticking points I plan to troubleshoot that very session.

Second, when you’re in a group learning setting, no one likes the guy who asks too many self-serving questions without considering other people’s time and money.

To take ownership over group instruction, you need to give at least as much as you take.

Since I’m pretty aggressive with my information extraction, I try to pay attention to what other people are struggling with and ask questions on their behalf.

Most people don’t speak up when they’re unsure, so you’re doing people a huge favor when you can get their questions answered.

You’re also doing your teacher a solid by lending him an extra pair of eyes on people’s struggles.

I like to hope the extra karma will shield me from mama ocean’s wrath as I confront her ever more monstrous waves.

But she’ll probably still whoop my ass. Which is why I always try to to remember…

Lesson #3: Don’t Start Until You’re Committed; Don’t Stop Until it’s Fun

In my first few months learning Spanish in Mexico, I stuttered like an idiot and couldn’t understand anything anyone said to me.

For my first month of Brazilian jiu jitsu, I got twisted up and tossed around like a teddy bear in every single match, every single day.

In surfing, it’s Mother Nature herself who’s in charge of the ass-spanking, and since the Mexicans and Jiu-Jitseros didn’t take it easy on me, I didn’t have any reason to suspect that she would.

My expectation whenever I start learning something complex is that it’s going to suck… HARD.

The front end of the learning curve is always the steepest, and it’s way too easy to slide down before you get over the hump.

That’s why, before I start something new, I try to identify that first meaningful milestone where things finally start to stop sucking.

In language, it’s when you have your first flowing conversation. You understand enough to follow along, and the right words come to you fast enough to get your point across without killing the vibe.

In jiu jitsu, it’s when you get your first successful sweep or submission in a live match.

In surfing, it’s the moment when you can successfully pop up on your board and ride your first wave to the shore without falling.

Before I start a new activity, I talk to experienced learners to try to figure out what that meaningful milestone moment is and when I can expect to reach it.

It’s good to have the person relate their experience to you in direct story format. That way you can feed off of their emotion and use it to juice up your own motivation.

Lord knows you’ll need all the motivation you can get!

From talking to my surfer friends, I got the impression that I’d be able to get to the non-suck point within 5 consecutive days of lessons.

So that’s what I committed to.

I rented an airbnb within walking distance of a popular beginner surf beach (Baleal, Portugal), and I purchased 5 lessons up front from a surf school.

Turns out the 5 day calculation was precisely right, since at the end of my last lesson, I was able to to pop up on small green waves and even maneuver a bit.

When it finally clicked for me, I thought about that dreamy look I always saw on people’s faces whenever they talked to me about how great surfing was and thought “Aaaah now I get it!”

It really is a marvelous feeling to ride a wave.

It’s critically important to NEVER give up on something until you get that first big win.

That’s the moment when all the hard work pays off, so if you give up beforehand, you train your subconscious into thinking that “hard work doesn’t pays off.”

There are few beliefs as destructive as this one, so you should really be extra careful to not doing anything that programs it into your mind.

Don’t start until you’re committed, and don’t stop until it feels good.

Follow this rule enough times, and your brain will start to associate the pain of struggle with the joy of Flow.

And over time, you’ll continue to ride bigger and bigger waves in life.