Do you want to ride the surfboard or the inner tube?
Posted on August 08, 2017 by Thom Huntington, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.
It's good to be able to take life as it comes and go with the flow, but it's also important to have a plan to steer yourself towards what you love.
You get to choose. Do you want to ride the surfboard or the inner tube? You need time on each one to make the other ride better.
With the inner tube, you can relax comfortably with a big goofy grin and no particular agenda. You don’t have any control which way you go, but most of the time the scenery is beautiful, the weather is good, and the ocean is calm. When things are good in the inner tube, life is really good. Stress is low and joy is high. But when the weather changes, the current could take you way out to sea where you might get pummeled by storms, swells, and bitter cold. It’s really important to be able to take life as it comes. Sometimes it’s beautiful, and sometimes we need to weather the storm, but if you never get out of the inner tube, all that floating around might make you seasick.
The difference with the surfboard is knowing the general direction you want to go. After some practice, you get better at reading waves. After some wipe outs, you learn to stand up, balance, and really get into it. With experience you instinctively follow the power of the wave. You might land a little bit off that mark on the beach you were aiming for, but that’s ok. You adjusted your weight and turned with your intuition to keep moving and had the ride of your life. It felt so good, you can’t help but paddle out and start over. But surfing is really demanding. To do it well enough to enjoy it, you need all your physical, mental, and spiritual parts in good working order. Even if you love the ride more than anything else in life, you can’t surf every waking moment. You need to recharge to avoid the painful wipe outs.
Most of us get stuck at some point and spend too much time on one ride or the other. If we can pay attention to what happens right before the seasickness or the wipe outs and see what’s coming, maybe we’ll realize it’s time to switch from the surf board to the inner tube, or from the inner tube to the surf board. A switch in time might avoid some unnecessary pummeling.
So, do you want the surf board or the inner tube today?
