Self-belief….
There’s an amazing series that Stab Magazine (surf) created a couple years ago called How Surfers Get Paid. The series highlights ways in which surfers and brands make their money. For a long time the top brands in the surf industry were powerhouses within the world, often generating billions of dollars in revenue. To ride for one of these big companies often meant that you were a big deal; striking contracts that paid you enough to live comfortably while traveling the world to surf. Like most industries it’s pretty cutthroat when you get money involved and the relationships between brands and surfers were often viewed as asset management versus individuals. The point that I found the most interesting while watching was how the highest paid surfers, typically the ones who push the limits of the sport, really couldn’t be clamped down by their sponsors as much as other surfers were….
Surfing, which is such an isolating sport even when compared to the other individual sports, is incredibly temperamental. To reach the elite level in surfing, I personally think it’s the hardest sport to do so in, mostly because the amount of reps you can do are marginal compared to any other sport on the planet. Waves aren’t consistent, they are all different, and they can get exponentially more scary depending on where you are in the world. It’s crazy to think that a wave like Nazare (100 feet), isn’t nearly as terrifying as a wave like Teahupo’o (Tahiti). It’s even more crazy that some of the guys that surf Nazare, wouldn’t stand a chance surfing a wave like Teahupo’o. Waves with a tremendous amount of consequence are thirty percent skill and seventy percent belief. The odds of you hurting yourself are so high, that you can’t second guess yourself once you commit. Making it one of the most mentally demanding sports on the planet.
All of this to say that, to judge your worth requires tremendous amounts of self-belief. To then quantify your worth with money means your belief is tied to something that has consequences. The difference between the elite and the professional is that self-belief doesn’t have limitations. The people that outperform everyone else are elite mentalists, whether that be business, sport, art, and life. In my opinion the pursuit of enlightenment is to reach a level of self-belief that you understand from a quantum, to a macro perspective, that you are capable of anything you put your mind to. That your reality is dictated by the mental state that you decide to envelope your life in, and the reason most people suffer is because they allow their own thoughts to deceive them from such. Obviously there are levels to this generalization, but the gist being the more self-belief one has, the more they control their destiny.
The real world example of this is what ended up happening to most of the elite surfers. Most, if not all, recognized their worth was far superior to what these brands were offering them. Instead of contracting their life away, they decided to turn themselves into their own brands. With the advent of YouTube and Social Media, these personalities could easily build up their own following and generate their own income from it. Meaning, their belief in themselves gave them the opportunity to control their own destinies.
How does any of this apply to you? Self-belief is essential in controlling your own destiny. When you crowd your head space with negative thoughts, beliefs, or limitations, you ultimately fall into the trap of self-sabatoge. We as individuals have an intrinsic value, what that value may be is determined by your own level of belief. People tend to gravitate and follow people that “Have it all figured out” because it gives them meaning in a sometimes meaningless existence. You never know who’s paying attention to you, and you never know who looks up to you as their North Star.
Thanks for reading.
With love,
Kai
Weekly Poem:
Greatness is an attitude
Don’t let that attitude hold you back from creating your own destiny
