-Welcome Layne.
Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
Can you take us back to when you made the decision
to make surfing your life?
Was it a conscious decision, and what drove it?
I remember the day that I chose
that I wanted to become a world champion.
And yes, I had a lot of ambition.
The moment that it actually occurred was when I was
8 years old and to give you a bit of a background story
I was adopted at birth into a beach-loving family
with the last name ‘Beachley' became a pro surfer
all a very fortunate twist of fate.
But when my dad sat me down as an 8 year old
and told me I was adopted that actually
that moment had a profound impact on me.
For anyone in this room that's ever experienced adoption
on any level, from my own personal account
I felt, at that particular moment I felt rejected
I felt worthless, I felt unloved.
I thought “Well, hang on."
"If I'm not deserving of my own mother's love"
"like if my own mother has given me away"
"then whose love am I worthy of?”
And it's at that moment when we experience that level of
setback or disappointment or adversity or challenge
that you have a choice. You have a choice to make.
You can either become a victim of circumstance
or you can become a master of your destiny.
And I decided at that particular point in time “Well"
"I know. If I become a world champion"
"everyone will love me.”
And we know that it doesn't happen like that
but that was particularly the moment where I decided
“Hang on, if I become a world champion"
"then that actually will make me worthy of love.”
I wasn't motivated to succeed to get
a bunch of trophies and be the best surfer in the world
so the world could give me a whole lot of reward and accolade
I did it to actually prove to the world
that I was deserving of love.
And if you can identify what your driving forces are
if you can identify what your intrinsic values are
your own personal values are
then you can actually utilise them to create that good
to fuel your sense of purpose.
And actually that's the motivation that gets you up
in the morning and go to work
even on the days when you don't feel like going to work.
And even as a professional surfer where
my bikini was my uniform
makeup was sunscreen
and the ocean was my office
it looks like the most ideal wonderful opportunity to do that
but there were days when I just did not
feel like going surfing.
The great thing about being a surfer is
we embrace change every day.
We embrace change because it's a necessary part
of our evolution as a surfer. The great thing about being
a surfer is that you can never master it
and you have to adapt and you have to change course.
You know, you might take off on a wave
with a very clear plan of what it is that you want to do
and how you're going to approach this wave
then all of a sudden a section will appear in front of you
and you have to change your way of thinking very quickly.
So you have to have a very adaptable mindset.
You have to be very decisive.
You have to be very quick-thinking
and you have to be willing to accept that the course
that you were going to take is not actually going to work out
and change course very quickly.
I love to win and I love to succeed
but what drives that was my willingness to improve
my willingness to constantly step outside
of my comfort zone and grow as a human being.
So when I won my first world title
I celebrated it and recognised it but then I thought
“OK, well next year when I come back"
"I'm going to have to start all over again."
And it's a matter of celebrating, recognising
and then going “OK what am I going to do differently"
"this year that's going to give me that edge?”
The one thing that stopped me from winning my first
world title, which took me 8 years to achieve
was distractions
and they are the number one threat to a productive future.
I was so distracted about all the noise
I was so distracted about what my competitors were doing
and trying to find a way to do it better.
And also the advantage we have as being athletes
is that we're constantly eliciting feedback.
We want constructive criticism.
We want to draw as much attention to our weaknesses
as fast as we possibly can
to turn them into our strengths. Because the mistakes
me make in business is we spend all of our time
ocusing on our strengths and they
ultimately become our weakness.
So when I won my first world title I knew what my strengths
were but I also knew what my weaknesses were.
I kept an eye on what my competition were doing
but I never compared myself to them
because comparison leads to a sense of inadequacy
and the more you compare yourself
the less you're focusing on what your strengths are
and what you need to do to get the best out of yourself.
What do you need to do to improve yourself?
What does your business need
to make it that little bit better?
Because the 3 things that affect the quality of your life
are the quality of people you hang out with
the quality of questions you ask
and the quality of the decision or the choice that you make
based on the knowledge that you have.
And so I surrounded myself with people that believed
in me more than I did
and then I made sure that if I was having a bad day
that I shared those challenges with people that wouldn't
put me down and say “HA! Suck it. Lose.”
But people that go “OK, how can I help you?"
"How can I pick you up and learn from you"
"and also make sure that you achieve your goals?”
What role did fear have in your career?
Fear has had a monumental role throughout my career
and I think a lot of us actually fear fear itself.
But if you can actually admit
“Actually, I'm afraid at this particular moment.”
Surfing has actually taught me a lot of very valuable
life lessons and I know when I've gone into business
and I haven't maintained connection with those lessons
that's when I've made the biggest mistakes.