Tapping Into Your Unmistakable Creativity Through Nature with Srinivas Rao Part 2 (of 2)
“Find what are you curious about go out and explore it. Be an explorer of the world”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Srini Rao
Srinivas Rao (aka. "Srini"), is the host and co-founder of the Unmistakable Creative podcast where he has conducted over 600 interviews with thought leaders and people from all walks of life. Unmistakable Media creates content across various platforms that inspires creative professionals to lead more courageous, productive, and meaningful lives. Rao is also the author of three Wall Street Journal bestselling books: An Audience of One: Reclaiming Creativity for Its Own Sake, Unmistakable: Why Only Is Better Than Best, and The Art of Being Unmistakable. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Inc, Business Insider, and The Blaze.
Transcendence and presence in the ocean
“It’s funny, because I have no sort of genetic predisposition for anything athletic. I was the most improved player on my seventh grade basketball team, which basically just means you're the worst player on the team. I started surfing after catching a wave on a beach in Brazil, at the end of 2008. I was doing a study abroad there. And I tried probably 10 times before that to surf and I just never stood up. But the moment I did, it was just a sort of religious experience of transcendence and presence. I thought at first, it was a fluke. And then I did it again. And I did it again. And I remember the time I got to the water I couldn’t believe the hour was over. The Brazilian surfer guy who rented us our surfboards who looked like this old Argentinian version of Steven Tyler invited us into a surf shack, and his wife made us a Brazilian barbecue. But what struck me was how happy this guy was for how simple his life was. And you know, that always stayed with me.
I happened to be coming back to business school for the final semester at Pepperdine, which was in Malibu. I realized I've been driving by the ocean every day and it took a living in Brazil for me to pick up surfing. Instead of going to the bookstore, I went to the surf shop and I bought a board and a wetsuit. And so that was how it started. I figured out it was a fantastic hobby for an unemployed person because it takes a ton of time and it doesn't cost any money. It went from a sort of hobby to straight up obsession, where it was all I wanted to do. It was all I could think about. There were days when I’d get in the water at six in the morning, and I'd stay in the water till two in the afternoon. And it was great because I was so tired that I couldn't go anywhere. So I would just pass out. It got to the point where I started scheduling interviews around surf conditions, and I would actually ask not to have to come in. And so bit by bit, it just became this thing that was almost obsessive. It was at a time when I should have been really stressed out and really unhappy because I hadn't found a job. I actually wasn't, I was okay. Everything was always better when you got out of the water from a good surf day. And that's still true. And then what's funny is that evolved bit by bit to where I got better. I spent six months living in Costa Rica. And then eventually it translated into snowboarding because we had a bad surf season one year it was raining all the time. I was like I need something to do. So I always say, surfing is an amazing first love and snowboarding is an amazing mistress. But I think that there are numerous things that came from this. One was that I don't think I really understood what it meant to be present. I don't think I've ever experienced true presence in my life.
Anyone who has done any of these sort of action sports knows that they're huge flood triggers. So that rush that you get is so addictive. You never want that feeling to end. And the funny thing is that's also had a profound impact on my creative work. I don't think I could do the work that I do without that. It's just one of those things where you really have no idea how any of these things will affect you. And I started late in life for doing these things. But surfing is kind of taking me around the world, I've even traveled to India now. When I go there, I go for surfing, which I never thought in a million years I would do. My parents were stunned that I was going to bring a surfboard to India because I went for the first time in something like 8-10 years. I said, ‘it's a country surrounded by water. Of course, I'm gonna bring a surfboard.’”
connecting the dots
“When you're in an environment like the ocean or the mountains, because of the fact that they're high risk, high reward environments, they have all these sort of flow triggers. There's potentially a downside, you could drown. So they're risky, the environment is novel. It requires intense focus, and you can't do anything else. But one of the things that happens, as a byproduct of that, is it kind of shuts off your logical brain and all that chatter that you typically get from just being a person in the world. And there's nobody that doesn't have that. The voice in your head is always going to be there.. the voice in my head is an asshole, I wish I could fire him. But I can't. And but the thing is in the water, that the volume of that voice goes down so much, that what you start to hear are the things that lead to your creative work. So almost every insight I had for writing, was informed by my time in the water. I could connect these dots in a way that I couldn't, anywhere else.”
Putting things in perspective
“Waves actually come in sets, they don't just come one at a time. Now, sometimes, you're gonna be in the wrong spot where, basically you're gonna get clobbered. That's why you learn how to duck dive because waves are coming. Now, sometimes you actually don't make it and you're in an area that is known as the impact zone. You'll get thrashed around, and on really big surf day, I thought I was gonna die in Nicaragua. I had my rash guard get ripped off of my body, I got dragged under. And the funny thing is, when I wrote Unmistakable, I thought this is such a perfect metaphor for difficult experiences in life. Because the thing is, when you're in the impact zone, it feels like you're never going to come up for air, and all is lost. But inevitably you do. And the thing is, the only way to prepare for that is to build a tolerance for it. Your tolerance for taking waves on the head goes up, the more waves that you take on the head, and the same thing could be said for challenging experiences in our lives. If you take physical risks, or you find yourself in physical danger, everything else in life sort of pales in comparison. So like, let's say, I go out, you know, and surf, and I nearly die. When I get back in, somebody written me a one star review for the book, it's like, I almost died, I don't care about your one star review. So it helps to put things in perspective. The other thing is that, I think it makes you see just how connected everything is. And this is something I've been thinking a lot about, particularly in the wake of a pandemic, in terms of what we're dealing with, as a society, you know, from race relations, to riots to climate change to all of it.”
Waves mirroring life
“It mirrors life in so many ways. And waves are like the experiences of your life. Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're small, sometimes they kick your ass. Inevitably, it makes you incredibly present. It's this constant experience of living in the moment and keeping your eyes on the horizon. For the overwhelming majority of a surf session, this is the thing that makes it so frustrating and so joyful, is that you literally are just sitting there half the time. And on the days when it's cold, you're like, I don't know why paddled out here. And you know, when a good wave comes through, somebody else catches it, you're like, damn it. But that's largely why I think it teaches you to be so present.”
The ultimate unplug
“With nature in particular, it’s complicated, isn't it? The beneficiary of being in environments that make these things accessible to me. That being said, it doesn't really matter whether it's surfing, snowboarding, whatever it is, being out in nature is the ultimate unplug, right? It's the way to quiet your mind. When I go on walks with my roommate, I try to leave my phone. Because it would be really easy to go and I know what you want to take, when I take long walks, I'm guilty of this all because I get bored, I just listen to a podcast. I don't really listen to podcasts, mostly it gives me ideas for things to write about. So I'll go back and listen to this, and I'll have a dozen ideas for things I want to write about. And that's why I go back and do it. But the thing is to look for those opportunities. I discovered this way late in life, you know, people don't start surfing when they're 30. That's not common. So that's one thing I would say is don't let age be a deterrent from trying the things you want to try. I think it brings us full circle, back to the very beginning. Find what are you curious about go out and explore it, you know, be an explorer of the world.”
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