Tim van der Vliet • • 3 min read
5 Life Lessons I Learned From Skateboarding
I have a lot of fun playing with my four children, and while skateboarding with one of them recently, I realised there is a lot to be learned from children’s playfulness and activities. In fact, the lessons learned from skateboarding can be very well applied to our daily life!
This is what I teach my children, and keep reminding myself.
1) Keep Your Balance
When skateboarding, one mustn’t lean too far forward, backward, to the left or to the right. We should stay exactly in the middle, otherwise you will fall. In balance is where we enjoy skateboarding the most, simply because we stay on our feet.
In life too, we shouldn’t lean forward too much, living in the future. We shouldn’t lean to the back too much, at the risk of living too much in the past. If we can stay in balance we are exactly where we are finding our genuine joy: right now, in this moment.
2) Stand Up After You Fall
I am really not such a strict daddy. But when one of the kids falls and maybe even is hurt, I am sure to tell him or her to stand up again and skate a little bit more. If not they’ll become afraid of skateboarding.
This has always been my way when I was skateboarding, roller skating and snowboarding. After a painful crash, in life or skateboarding, just stand up and give it another shot, even if it is just a little bit. Take those baby steps!
3) Good Fallers Fear Less
Learn to fall! There are worse things than falling. And if you learn how to handle a fall, you’ll naturally become less fearful of falling. With less fear your body is more relaxed and you will see that falling is not as painful as you thought it would be.
Happy people are not afraid of falling (or failing) because they know they will learn something from it. And if you are less afraid of falling, or hitting a rock bottom, the quality of life becomes better simply because you live less in fear, which is more in love. Learn how to fall and you’ll be in love more!
4) The Risk of Pain is the Joy
Skateboarding is fun because there is a risk to hurt yourself. Without this risk you wouldn’t like the game. So when you have shaky knees because you’re a little out of your comfort zone, just enjoy the rush. If you fall you stand up again and if not… wow what a rush!
Without the experience of pain we wouldn’t know the experience of joy. Life would be too boring if we would never be in pain, it’s as simple as that. Life starts outside of your comfort zone.
Yes, outside of your comfort zone you may get shaky knees; you may even be downright scared. That is okay; just enjoy the rush. Take a risk. You’ll be fine.
5) Stop Thinking!
When you are on your skates you shouldn’t think too much. If you do you become scared or you just forget to move your legs there is something else on your mind. Stop thinking and pure joy in the form of an adrenaline rush will flood your body.
We just think too much. We plan our future and we are upset about our past, leaning too much forward or backward. We worry about things that might never happen.
We can never know how our future will look like. Life will always have a surprise for us, whether it is big or small. So stop thinking and start moving is the way.
Baby steps when you’ve just been hurt and big giant steps when we are living in love. If you think less you will enjoy more. This is true for life and skateboarding!
Enjoy your play and check out my book!
