About

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Srinivas Rao

My name is Srinivas Rao and I’m a surfer. Currently I run a personal development blog called The Skool of Life, where I write about spirituality, self help, and not surprisingly I find myself writing quite a bit about the spiritual aspects of surfing. After a while I found myself writing about it to so much that I decided that I should just start a blog dedicated to my love of surfing. I’m not a life long surfer or surfing expert, just an everyday surfer who seems to have found a passion for the stoke that seems to exceed my passion for everything else in my life.

How it all started

When I was in my MBA program at Pepperdine University, I spent one semester abroad living in Brazil.  During that time I spent insane amounts of time at the beach, mainly just drinking caipirinhas and admiring the ocean.  I got in the water a handful of times and I tried to learn how to surf, but couldn’t surf worth a damn. In fact it wasn’t until about the 8th time I paddled out that I finally caught my first wave and understood the stoke. It was 2 days before I left Brazil and I had been living there for 6 months. In the small beach town of Garopaba, an old Brazilian man and his wife rented me and a friend our boards and I finally got the rush of riding a wave. He was one of the happiest people I’d ever met in my life, yet he lived an amazingly simple life. That day forever changed my life even though I didn’t know it at the time.

Fast Forward to My last Semester in B-school

I remember thinking when I had started business school that as an MBA student in Malibu not learning how to surf would be almost sacrilegious.  Fortunately that slight moment in Brazil did something to me. Right when I returned from Brazil and my financial aid check was deposited, I went to Becker and bought a wet suit, and I got on craigslist and bought my first Wavestorm Costco 8’0 board. Every free moment I had between classes, I would drive down to Zuma Beach, paddle out and attempt to ride the whitewater. Eventually I found myself wanting to be in the water more and more. I would cut group meetings short so I could get to the beach and surf. But, I still couldn’t surf worth shit. All I was doing was riding whitewater. In April, I graduated from business school and had no job, was running out of money, and had no idea how I would survive the next 6 months. I really honestly thought I was about to sink into severe depression. Little did I know that this past summer would be the one that forever changed my life and turned me into a lifelong surfer.

Since I didn’t have any money, going out and partying was not an option. All I could really afford was to pay for my parking at the beach, and a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Like any unknowing surfer I would go in the afternoon to the beach because the sun was out.  One day I decided to use something I had learned from the world of self help called creative visualization to see if it would help me to surf better. That day I caught 7 or 8 waves in succession and had no idea how I did it. But, I felt unstoppable.  Then I began to go to the beach every single day and surf. I found one surfing buddy through a friend and we would surf every day together. Eventually he left to San Francisco.  Sometime at the end of June, I ran almost completely out of money. Here I was age 31, out of money, and forced to return back to my parents house 1 hour away from the coast.

A classmate from business school agreed to rent my apartment and let me crash on the floor there when I surfed, until I found a job.  My parents gave me 50 bucks every week that they could.  Since I could only surf Wednesday thru Sunday, the first week that I was forced into this situation I decided that I would surf for 6 hours a day.  If you surf then you know how this ends.. or actually how it begins.

The beginning and the End

After 5 days straight of surfing 6 hours a day I realized I had discovered bliss like I never had before. I made new friends, all surfers, many who had just started, others who had been at it for years.  It was the perfect escape from the job search, the fact that my MBA was seeming useless and the lack of money in my life. It was the only place I could seem to find any real peace.  Soon I found myself itching to get back to the beach as soon as possible. All I really wanted to do was surf. If I couldn’t surf I’d watch surf films, write blog posts about surfing, and then wonder what the hell I had been doing with my life in California for the last 14 years.

After a certain point it became a joke that I was still riding the Costco foamboard. I didn’t have any money at all so buying a real board was not an option for me. Even though I was surfing 6 hours a day, I did it on a foam board.  It’s rare that you expect somebody on a foam board to know how to surf, so I was always this strange anomaly.  The Indian community had only one thing to say about this whole thing. “Damn Srinivas you’re really dark.”   By September I had surfed what most people do in 2-3 years in about 6 months. At moments I began to think that having a job would only be good for one thing, getting a new board and taking a surf trip somewhere.  I got a job in November, I got a paycheck, I got a board, and I quit the job because I hated it so much. Somewhere along the way I decided that a pursuit of passion was the only calling I had in life.  So, a week ago I decided to launch Stoked for Life where I could write about surfing, review boards, and just share the surfing experience with the every day surfer. So that’s the story of how this all started.  My goal is to figure out a way to spend the rest of my life riding waves and making some money doing it. I really want to be Stoked for Life.

My own journey through The Skool of Life: Part I: Part II: Part III: Part IV