Kelly Slater shares how a bout of wicked self-loathing made him the greatest athlete of all-time

"'You're such an idiot.' Like, literally, that was my thought."

Life hacks, cheat codes, secrets to success have long been sought by regular folk too dumb, stuck, basic to ever get ahead. We see the yawning cavern between “us” and “them” and so attend conferences or subscribe to Masterclasses in order to learn, from them, how to reach our full potential (which might, at the end, be dumb, stuck and basic).

Well, the greatest competitive surfer to ever live, one Kelly Slater, recently sat down for a fundraiser at for the Mangawhai Heads Volunteer Lifeguard Service. Reclining comfortably in an earth-toned chair and holding a microphone with much ease, he shared, “People don’t know how negative my inner voice has been. I had this moment about 20 years ago, I was in South Africa surfing against a guy named Danny Wills from Australia and I knew I shouldn’t catch this one wave but I caught the wave. In my head, I’m like, ‘You’re such an idiot.’ Like, literally, that was my thought. ‘You’re an idiot, you don’t listen to yourself. Why are you not following what you feel?’ And then I fell on the wave and I handed him priority and right then I went into this process of accepting the mistake I had made, changing my inner voice, just surrendering to the situation and I swear 30 seconds later the most perfect wave came to me and I wouldn’t have caught it if I hadn’t made the first mistake. Because I was in a different place, but I had to accept it first before I could see what was happening. Once you get a hold of this stuff and you grasp what’s happening, energetically in the world, you can control this stuff. You can feel the energy change in your body and in your thoughts and your happiness.”

Hammer town.

Do you think you can be a better version of yourself today or has the “Better Version” ship already sailed?