I love surfing even though I suck at it. This big scar on my left knee is because I tried to walk on water and didn’t do so well. Yet I can’t help loving it. Watching people walk on water. It’s because it’s a blend of this incredibly powerful force in a wave and in an individual. It requires trust and balance especially on the human side. After all, imagine trying to steer a wave, hmm? Not so easy, I know. I tried. My knee reminds me all the time.
Surfing requires this kind of co-operation that blends the most powerful part of each of the components. Which is why I wanted to use it to describe to you what’s possible in love. Why not use something you can google and watch to remind you, anytime you wish a reminder of how to get the most of out of romance. Sweet, don’t you think!
So why surfing…and love?
Here’s what is true about our brains and love. For those of you new to my list and those who can use a reminder – our brain works to limit our expansion as a life saving exercise. It’s not self sabotage, which is what we so often mislabel it. It’s survival instincts running wild when there isn’t much physical danger we need to survive these days in a mostly modern world. Our brain reads ALL expansion as risk – physical, mental and emotional risk lights us up, kicks us into gear. So it tries to shut us down when expansion is at hand. And boy does love expand your life!
So here’s what surfing can do to help you remember there is more to you than a survival instinct.
Surfers don’t know exactly where they are going to end up when they surf. They know they’re going to travel, they accept and respond to the wave itself, trust their own bodies and board to move with the water and take that journey. When you hear them speak, some of them are positively reverent about it. Surfing gets them up in the morning at obscene hours and out into crazy weather. It’s an incredible high to work so closely with something so potent and trust, moment by moment, what you create together.
That’s what love is like when you sign up for the journey without trying to push the water where you want it to go. Each surfer has options. They can dive off, back over the wave or learn from misjudgment when the get munched by it. Love has some of those same kind of options as well.
Yet so many of us, particularly those with a female brain, go into high alert trying to determine an outcome before we ride the wave. It feels frightening to trust and flow discovering our own power and ability as we work with the ocean itself. Hey, safety’s wired into us for survival reasons, so no judgment – just saying!
I’m talking emotions here… let’s not even bring sex into the mix yet. We’ll save that for another post. This is all about trying to push the waves of emotion where you think they should go rather than dropping down for the ride and seeing what is created together moment by moment.
It means risking showing your feelings and taking responsibility for yourself for whatever the reaction is. It is never wrong to feel something and it is also not someone else’s responsibility to respond to your feelings the way you want them and when you want them to, seriously. It’s our responsibility to take care of our own emotions and see if someone can meet us there to go further together. Our brain would shut us down and scare us into never revealing ourselves again because that’s its job! To protect you. That’s the most effective self limiting behavior and you see it everywhere you look.
What happens if each time you share yourself, whether at work or in your relationships, you let others off the hook for giving you what you want. What if you give yourself the emotion you are looking for from others, hmm? Praise yourself for the power in being vulnerable, honest, brave. What if you know that even before you speak up that you are taking care of you, paying attention to you, validating you. How might that shift your power center in saying anything to anyone. And how free would you be… Retraining the brain takes repetition so you have to plan your expansion carefully…
I’ve heard story after story after story of how painful it is to have feelings unmatched when you reach out and reveal yourself. Our brain equates rejection with life or death. It goes back to that childhood need for parental love and it’s overwhelming at times. But you’ve survived. Each time, you have survived. Remind yourself of that. Soothe yourself with that. Stay tuned for some good audio tools that help you retrain your brains!
Meanwhile, start with the small waves and build your strength up, your skill at revealing yourself up. Then move up to the bigger waves of emotion. Trust yourself and learn to trust the waves. You too can surf like a pro – you’ll do it on emotions instead of the ocean! Hey, close enough!
If you would like some support – I’m here and glad to offer my services. Nothing like seeing the Truth in you – resting right there in your hands. Just click and make an appointment.
Or go google some surf videos. It is comforting, thrilling, inspiring and fun to see how badly we can take a fall and get back into the water to master it it – if you only will. Watch how we can walk on water…
All the best,
Lisa Greenfield
