And in his SFB Live presentation back in 2014, he shared what you need to continuously do if you want to advance in your field (and in things you enjoy doing).
As you may or may not be aware, I started surfing. And Mark actually who’s here as well, took me out surfing and followed me around with a GoPro. And that’s pretty much my second attempt at surfing. The first time was with Ezra as you remember, he took me out to reef, it was exhausting. Then the second time I went with Mark, it was incredibly tough. So I came back in, like as soon as I went out, I needed to come back in because I was so tired because you’re always paddling. You’re paddling out, you’re paddling to catch the wave. It was like, oh my God, I just want to stop paddling. And it’s not about more.
There’s really not a lot more you can do to become a great surfer other than time in the water. You have to start thinking about the mental game and the technique that’s involved. So it’s about upgrading, you have to upgrade your brain. And I’ve heard one professor talking about is your “necktop” computer. The good news is that pretty much everything you need is already there. You just have to reinstall the software, you’re upgrading your awareness, your software in the brain of what’s possible and you’re getting a better operating system.
If you think about computers from five years ago, they weren’t very capable. You got an iPhone, you upgrade the iOS to the newest software, the buttons look newer, it does more things. It’s the same hardware, but the software upgrades so that’s one part. So there’s mental but there’s also the physical upgrade. Again with surfing, the more you do it, the more you build your paddle strength. And even very fit people will tell you (and I’ve watched documentaries on this because I love documentaries), that even the fittest and top-level world surfing professionals say that it doesn’t matter how fit you are, if you don’t have paddle strength, you can’t get keep going back out to catch the wave. So what I found is building up the physical strength, regardless of what sport it is, it’s going to help your mental game because you have more concentration, you have more capability.
Basically, I had the mindset that no matter what I’m going to paddle out everyday, and the mindset was, I’m going to put on the wetsuit. And by the way, I have like a range of wetsuits to match my range of boards. Like the short, the long and the vest. So you’ve got to have the right equipment, of course. But then I put on sunscreen, and that’s some kind of trigger or anchor. When I smell that sunscreen, I know that the sea is coming next. So then I go down to the sea and I can smell the sea and I paddle in. My goal was just to get wet everyday because it’s intimidating looking down at the surf. My goal is just to get out and paddle out and to try and catch something back in. And even if I did only that, I was building up that habit.
I now have a habit of being able to go every single day and it’s exactly like when I started my internet marketing. And it’s so humbling to start something brand new, like as a 42-year-old adult to start from scratch. You got little grommets cutting you off every day after school and they’re just running rings around you, it can be discouraging to know that you’re not there yet. I look forward to a year from now, if I can just go out every day, fall off a few times and not kill myself, in a year from now, the odds are that I’ll be significantly better than this year.
So, you know, let’s see next time when we go to SuperFastBusiness Live, if I’ve improved. And I’m sure I’ll have a new board, so I actually reached different stages where one, I could actually stay out there for more than a few waves. And then I was able to stand up and then I was starting to stand up on the green water instead of the white water, and now started to go down in board size and catch bigger, more exciting waves.
And it really is the most unbelievable metaphor for what we’re doing here. So think about this now in terms of your business, which stage are you at? Are you at the unfit stage, or you can paddle out stage, or you can stand up stage, or you can stand up at the top of the wave, or you can go sideways, or you can go back up the wave and do a loop to loop and land it back? At which stage are you at? It doesn’t matter which stage you’re at in terms of where you’re going to be. Think about where you’re going to be.
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