Surfing Has Better Returns than Wall Street

A New Way to Get What You Want, Right Now |Surf Origins| [005]

A deep inhale. Easeful smile.

Everything came down to an unassuming wave. A wall of water curved before me, promising something more—if I could hold my line. My friend Julian had handed me the key just minutes before: "Angle the board 45 degrees, weight on your front foot, and close your eyes." Surfer talk for: just f*cking commit.

I hesitated, a small voice in my head whispering, Will this wave be worth dislocating my shoulder again? And then the other, more demanding voice chimed in: Let's go bro. Commit.

But this wave wasn't just a test of skill. It was the culmination of everything that had brought me to this island—the sacrifices, the doubts, the relentless pursuit of a different kind of life. The question was simple: Could I, at 31 years old, make a living as a professional adventurer? I didn't know, but the wave demanded an answer. As the lip curled over, I was about to find out.

The Outside-In Trap

Throughout high school and college, I lived in pursuit of a promised reward. The belief that something better was just over the horizon drove every decision. I stacked up leadership roles, sacrificed weekends with family, spent late nights locked in with textbooks—all for a golden ticket: financial success. As a Cuban-born immigrant, financial success was the path to attempt to pay back even a fraction of the sacrifices my family had made to bring me to the United States.

Years later, I found myself on Wall Street as an investment banking analyst. I made it.

It was Tuesday, 1:20 AM, six months into the job.

The office was still. Fluorescent bulbs hummed above me, and mangled letters squished in an Excel cell waited for me to fix them. My head bobbed between three screens, and my fingers twitched with muscle memory—the residue of caffeine. I looked up.

|=fdskjklakjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj|

That's a good sign as any. Still in a half-trance, I decided to walk around. A filing cabinet started talking to me:

“Climb on my back, I dare you.”

Not one to back out of a silly dare, so I jumped on the cabinet.

An extra waist-height let me see it all: Associates, VPs, Directors. Their movements ticked with the precision of a pocket watch - a digital one. Associates glued to their screens, VPs walking to Directors, returning with blood-inked edits from pitch decks. And me? I was just one of many heads dozing off in front of three screens.

For the first time, the promised future showed itself for what it was. Hollow.

Is this it? Now what?

Suddenly, the frame that had driven my decisions evaporated. I no longer believed the future held some grand reward. The present was heavy, weighed down by tasks from past ambition.

This was the Outside-In Trap: the belief that fulfillment lies in reaching external benchmarks—the next promotion, the next pay raise, the next item on society's checklist. School, university, and corporate environments taught me my worth was always beyond my grasp, always the next thing I hadn’t yet achieved. The result? I became disconnected from the present, unable to enjoy life as it unfolded because my mind was too busy chasing sunrises without feeling the warmth of their rays.

Living this way makes it almost impossible to be here now. The urgency of the next goal drowns out the moment with layered webs of conditional logic: If this, then that. After enough conditional statements the final implication is always the same: I get to feel XYZ. The push for more—prestige, money, accolades—becomes deafening. I lost the ability to listen to my own desires and values. And I realized that the life I was building, brick by brick, was one that I didn’t even want to live in. I was laying the foundation for a house that wasn’t my home.

I stopped playing, stopped exploring, and instead clung to a checklist of arbitrary achievements. As psychologist Jordan Peterson describes it, I entered a phase of "motivated refusal to learn." I became rigid. I focused on inputs and outputs. I sat, tunnel-visioned, in the beige of a cubicle—an Excel Zombie stumbling from screen to screen.

Core Values: Revealed not Engineered.

In August of 2024, I reached another low point. I worked for six months on a workbook business. Two weeks before launch Amazon bans workbooks. I was burnt-out. Rudderless. I drifted in a downward spiral for a couple of weeks.

“Yes, you have been through all this before,” replies his heart. “But you have never been beyond it.” Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn. - The Warrior of the Light, by Paulo Coelho

I felt a call to the wild. To slow things down and see what I did “not want to learn,” I went camping for three weeks.

The experience answered one simple question:

When there are no problems to solve, what do I naturally care about?

I began reading, writing, surfing, and holding space for friends. I began creating a course to help my past-self six months ago to not procrastinate any longer, launch, and build momentum in the next venture of his Life’s Work Museum. I began accepting Source, Tribe, Creative Impact, and Natural Adventures as core values. I reacquainted myself with myself, and myself is a pretty dope dude!

This wasn't about abandoning ambition. It was about re-ordering ambition —prioritizing values I deeply cared about. Whether I choose to live in alignment with these innate values is my decision - but they are not going anywhere.

The first time I tried surfing seriously was in the cold waters of New Jersey the summer before interning in NYC’s Financial District. The kind of waters that make your feet slow to react. And your totem? Small and compact.

Now, ten years later, I am on my way to surf Rock Island in the Philippines.

Note to Self: Your Core Values are not going anywhere.

Corollary note to self: Keep your totem in tropical climates.

Monday, October 14, 2024 - Journal Entry

The engine sputtered to life accompanied with consistent air spits from a giant. The “thu-thu-thu” base taps our skin and reverberates through our lungs. The sight of waves ahead keeps us focused. It’s Mono-the-Manta, Jimmy Lane, Jimmy Lee, Felix, and Juliano –a tribe of misfits.

Water is calm. Turquoise. Welcoming almost. Except once you’re in.

Once you’re in she does what she wants with you. And occasionally lets you caress her skin with your hands and board if you know what you want and you paddle well and read her well.

Surfing with friends is different, though. Rewarding to the very essence of who we are - a primal pleasure without words, a secret we all know and a secret we love living in.

The ritual is another part. Every surfer applies wax. Every surfer applies zinc. We chat about what we might expect. Each of us gives a slightly nuanced prediction of the same thing.

“Not that crazy but still rip-able. It looks clean.”

“It’s less powerful than yesterday but looks even glassier. And 1pm is a good time. Its hot. The other surfers have probably left.”

Another part of the ritual of every surfer - hoping the other surfers have left.

Surfing, I've learned, is inherently self-rewarding. You paddle out, you wait, you catch a wave. Not for some external prize, but for the joy itself. The ride is the reward. The Tribe is the reward. The same applies to building a business aligned with your values. The intentional pursuit itself becomes a source of fulfillment.

The Barrel

The board I used that morning had good volume —38 liters, when I was used to 29. Each stroke felt like a breeze, and the extra float made all the difference. I could take off much deeper on the wave.

"I'll backdoor it," I decided.

To backdoor a wave means to take off on the deep side, where the lip throws water forward in front of you. To stay in the ride, you have one of two choices to make.

The first, let the drop-in give you enough power to swerve around the breaking wave and join the clean face on the other side.

The second choice requires more attention: you need timing, spatial awareness, courage, and maybe a touch of stupidity… and also even the blessing of some fourth-dimensional beings. You need all that to catch a glimpse into the timelessness of a barrel.

I tried again and again. Each time, the wave sucked my board from under me, and the lip crashed down on my head. Each time, I braced myself, tucked my arms, and thanked whatever forces kept my shoulder in place and my back away from smashing into the reef below. Julian reminds me “—angle at 45 degrees, commit!” I knew where to place myself now.

A medium-sized wave approached, almost like a backwash from the island. Unassuming. I approached without pretense.

Paddle. Easy.

Pop-up. Smooth.

The wave built beneath me, lifting me higher. I crouched slightly, letting the swell form around me.

Shifted my sight from the lip to the hills in the distance.

The lip started to pitch over, outta nowhere: Brrrrrhhhhuuuuuuuu!!!

The lip broke on my left —a roar of endless thunder. I kept eyes locked on the hills in the distance –my 45-degree marker, not daring to glance at the cascading water. An endless zoom-in rushed toward my face.

“Don’t look. Stay here. Stay now.”

“Holly f*ck. F*ck. F*ck. Can it be?”

“Nooo…? Am I really??”

I hear a “Yew!” in the distance.

Barrel validated. But I stay piercing toward the hills.

In that moment the YouTube video that inspired me to move to Asia two and a half years ago played in the background. The voices of my surf friends: Jordano. Juan. Renan. Juliano. Cyro. My brothers in the Mustache Gang Minus One. The cold Jersey waters with my first surf friend, Robby. The banker colleague who asked me, "isn't it time to let go of your nature-man dream?" The lonely nights in tears missing my family in Miami. The relentless surf sessions in Bali. The constant tension between a good swell and all other priorities. The jealousy of my past girlfriends toward my love for the sea —and just as equally their moans and affection. It all came together. It all made sense—for a split second.

Siargao had welcomed me into its sharp embrace.

I got out of the time-warp and then wiped out.

As I broke the surface, I couldn't help but shout, "YEEEEWWW-RRRRRRRUKUKU!"

This was always the vision.

I looked around, paddled to the guy in the brown shirt who had called out the "yew."

"Full cover," he confirmed before I could ask. Amid—his name—had witnessed my first barrel and shared in the joy.

Dissolving the Outside-In Trap: Self-Permission

The barrel was proof. Proof that I was on the right path—a path defined by exploration and curiosity. A reminder that magic lies in the moments where you are fully alive, where nothing else matters. Life is not an endless march towards some distant reward; it's about being present in the ride, even when the ride inevitably pulls you underwater.

The Outside-In Trap tells us that we'll only feel fulfilled after reaching some external goal. But what if you gave yourself permission to feel what you want right now? What if you could feel free, joyful, adventurous without having to "earn" it first? What conditions have you set for yourself before you allow yourself to feel what you most want?

Alan Watts said it best: "This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play." When I started seeing life this way, everything changed. The stakes were lower, but the rewards were infinitely richer. I stopped chasing trophies and started enjoying the game.

An Intro to the 5Ex Model: Building a Value-Exploration Business

In his book, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life, Boyd Varty says, “don’t try to be someone, rather find the thing that is so engaging that it makes you forget yourself.”

Similarly, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly explored the same curiosity of Optimal Experience through a research lens. His studies concluded that those who live most often in a state Flow—being fully engaged in what they are doing, losing themselves in the experience– report the highest levels of happiness.

And finally, a follow up from Alan Watts: Sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing.

These and other thinkers helped me formulate a hypothesis.

If my Core Values create gravitational fields of deep engagement, then building a business that explores those Core Values maximizes the amount of time I spend in a fully engaged state. And, as a consequence, significantly increase my probabilities of happiness.

The follow-up question:

Q: Can I create a sustainable business that explores my Core Values?

A: I believe so. If only I can manage to stay focused on the Core Values and not fixate on how it must look like.

Oftentimes, I lose sight of the Core Values and get distracted by all the sexy vehicles around. All the sexy solutions my mind produces thinking “that’s it! Eureka! I’m the Messiah.” The Amazon workbook company is a great example of a faux-Messianic distraction.

In other words: I fall in love with my version of the solution rather than falling in love with the endless challenge of living in alignment with my Core Values.

As a response, I’ve formalized a mechanism to help me stay on course and engaged with my Core Values as I build a business:

• Explore: Acknowledge that my values have weight—I listen to them and let them express what they want to say. I also identify the challenges that arise when I prioritize living through these Core Values.

• Experiment: Come up with solutions to those challenges. I try different approaches. I document everything.

• Experience: Live through the trials and errors. Direct experience is the highest-grade of Truth.

• Examine: Reflect. What worked? What didn't? Did joy arise in the process? Was I fully engaged? Did it effectively solve the challenge?

• Expand: If it works, build on it. Expand what brings you joy. Expand what is working.

I call it The 5Ex Model.

And yes, the “e” made you look twice ;)

Here's a quick example of how The 5Ex Model is working for me:

I accept Source, Natural-Adventures, Tribe (Family and Friends), and Creative Impact as my Core Values.

Challenges arise—how do I sustain myself financially while staying true to these values? Different solutions surfaced.

I Explored the following: a part-time remote job creating impactful systems, launching an adventure brand, remote-based client work teaching the basics of self-publishing.

Then I Experimented with writing about my adventures camping, reading, and surfing.

Then I Experienced writing and working the part-time job, every day.

I continued to Examine how I interacted with these two projects. What does the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional engagement of my day-to-day and week-to-week look like?

Finally, I Expanded this newsletter and fully embraced the part-time job. Both are extensions of my values. Writing allows me to be even more engaged in my Natural Adventures. The part-time COO role allows me to create systems of impact leaving me with energy and time for my other Core Values.

We'll explore this framework deeper in a future letter.

Embarking on the Greatest Adventure

To the Carlos of eight years ago, sitting at his desk on Wall Street, lost and disconnected: I understand why you are there. The promise of the reward was strong, the conditioning deep. But that wasn’t the way. The way forward is to look inside, to explore those core values that make life worth living and to build something that allows those values to shine.

It would have probably been wise to save up a bit more capital for another year, but hey, now we are here, sucking the sweet nectar out of life. And we also know not to make any life-changing decisions 48 hours after a Tony Robins seminar—another story for another time.

That wave in Siargao was my reminder. I know that, no matter what happens, I am on The Path.

The world needs people who are willing to live by their values –adventurers, creators, solopreneurs, and dreamers.

It is our responsibility to create a life that responds to our innate curiosities. The frontier may not be physical as it was for our ancestors, but it’s no less daunting. Today’s exploration requires courage—the courage to turn inward, to ask what truly matters, and to reflect that answer in the real world. It means having faith in a values-centric life, not because it guarantees comfort or recognition, but because it decreases regrets and heightens deep engagement.

If life in human form is the greatest single gift in the known Universe, it is our responsibility to live in such way where we are fully alive, moment to moment, until our last wave.

Fully Here.

Fully Now.

Exhaling with a smile.

Un abrazo fuerte,
Carlos

P.S. This is the second essay in the Write-of-Passage program. The prompt: What is something that’s missing from the world, and why does it matter? I am beyond grateful for all the help from my WoP colleagues for their depth and feedback.