Compete or Free Surf??
April 18th, 2012 | admin
It’s a question I ask myself quite often as a professional bodyboarder. I was raised amongst competitiveness so it’s part of my program, yet I still question it’s relevance to my direction. Do I need competitive success to feel good about myself? Do I need to be the best? For me, the answer is no. But it does help. I want to be the best I can be. And competition give’s you reason to strive. And why not strive to be the best you can be. At what ever it is you are doing. Put yourself in a competitive environment, compare your best effort with your competitions best effort, and learn from the experience. And when you dissolve the fear of losing your competitiveness takes on a new form. Win or lose, your learning no matter what. And your aware of this. Your not lost in denial. Or the fear of other peoples thoughts. Dwelling on where you went wrong is fine, thats part of learning. As long as your aware and the dwelling doesn’t turn into doubtfulness. Life go’s on. I feel this applies to all areas in life. I haven’t mastered it yet. When I lose I have a fucking meltdown!! But maybe this is natural. If you look at nature you’ll notice a thing called ‘Natural Selection’. That’s natures version of competition…STRIVE OR DIE !!
Anyways, I chose to stay in WA and miss the Port Macquarie Pro this weekend. To be honest, I totally forgot it was even on. I had my eye’s set on a swell hitting home, and before the Arica event coming up in May I thought it would be nice to ride some left slabs for a change. We don’t get many lefts in WA. Swell direction & reef formations aren’t favourable for the left hand ride. I’ve also developed a nice taste for the social life back home. A good social bender is healthy. Ya can’t be serious all the time. In saying this, riding waves is the heaviest of all my habits. Without a good dose of ocean juice thing’s get a little weird at my end. Lucky it’s healthy because I aint kickin this habit any time soon.
Here’s a couple images shot by Andrew Semark from my last wave riding bender down the dirty south west of Australia. I guess this is what I did instead of competing. Free surfing took the crown this time round!
I fly out to California tomorrow. Change is good.
wow man, tough question, and i think what you need to answer it is to decide what’s your goal right now, if you’re focused in something else maybe compete is not the best idea, anyway, in life winning or losing there is always something to learn, i hope everything is great, awesome photos by the way, can’t wait to see you ripping in El Gringo! yeew!