Ready for luck
On Saturday I got home from 14 soul-nourishing days on one of my favorite stretches of beach in the world, north of Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I stayed with two of my best friends the first week and an extended group the second. Trips like this always make me learn something about myself — through the combination of sheer joy and the odd frustration of being in a different country — and this one definitely provided.
In between waves during a 4-hour marathon session on Friday, I overheard two women sitting near me:
“How was that last one?”
“It was good, I think? I forget. Yeah, I think I did two turns. I’m just thinking about the next one.”
Remembering past waves is nice, especially to the ego. How are you going to think you rip if you don’t have past waves to rely on? Enjoying the wave you’re on is exceedingly difficult; this is where practice and flow take over. But the next wave is the thing that keeps your attention.
(I wrote a piece for Campaign in 2017 about why The Next One is so captivating: “To our brains, newness is possibility and the potential for reward. Newness is unexpected and it screams opportunity. When our senses tell our heads some kind of reward might be coming, our brain cells are heightened and that makes us want to take action.”)
Surfers spend hours of our lives staring at lightly stirred horizons, thinking about The Next One. Probability and swell models tell us another wave will come soon, to someone, somewhere. And then we start to notice changes in water color, with blues and greens turning into deeper shades as swells stand up. All of those hours tell us where to paddle: fast and outside, down the line, inside, wherever the best opportunity to take off lies. And then we’re off.
I’ve been reading Andy Nairn’s Go Luck Yourself and enjoying his perspective on finding luck where you are. It’s an accessible read that’s full of case studies. I highly recommend it to strategists looking for that next little spark. The book’s thesis is that you’re going to need luck whether or not you like to think so, so you might as well embrace it. He writes in his introduction that “Chance often presents itself unexpectedly and requires and open mind to spot it.”
Having an open mind is fundamental to a successful relationship with surfing. Sure, you can stick to just the days when the reports say it’s going to be good. But the bulk of the rewards come from consistently being in a place where a wave might just swing your way: not looking at models, or in the parking lot, but consistently spending time in the brine.
Letting people into my workshop doesn’t feel natural to me and I can take feedback pretty poorly. I’ve worked hard on being more open because I know how valuable other people’s perspective is to making things great. I keep this note above my desk to remind myself that when I’m presenting something, I should think of it as 80% done — enough to bring a clear POV but raw enough to be finished by the whole team. And of course, that’s where the good stuff comes from.
Back home and re-learning how to use a laptop, I’m still thinking about the blurry glut of the waves I got. This one I got on Saturday before leaving for the airport was particularly good. But much more I’m thinking about The Next One, and trying to stay ready to get lucky.
