During my life, I’ve attempted to learn to surf a number of times. When I was in my teens, I purchased a board, tried surfing, it was tough, I gave up and sold the board. Then, a few years ago, we purchased surfboards for Christmas, used them a few times but we never really “cracked it”.
From my experience, surfing is one of those sports with a pretty significant “dip” that you have to go through as you learn and become more confident.
Seth Godin describes “the dip” as follows:
Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip. At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. The Dip is the difference between the easy “beginner” technique and the more useful “expert” approach in skiing or fashion design.
With surfing, it’s easy to get intimidated by the size of the waves. You also don’t want to get in the way of the more experienced surfers so this can throw you off. And on top of that, finding the right conditions where the waves are large enough but manageable, isn’t always easy.
Since coming to Bali, I’ve had a lot more opportunities to learn to surf. I’ve been practising on a regular basis and I’m also a lot stronger than I was a few years ago.
During my last few surf sessions, I’ve had some great successes in the water and I now feel a lot more confident and capable than before. Today I felt like I’d made it through “the dip”. I’m not an expert, but I feel like the hard part of this learning curve is over.
The thing that really made me feel positive was being able to a catch a number of decent sized waves and surf along the breaking sections (instead of just riding the white water). I’d ride waves like this before, but today I really nailed it. Today I found catching the waves and surfing along a lot easier than previous experiences.
So yeah, I did it. I made it through “the dip”!