Surfing and aggression

Almost exactly one year ago, on August 20, 2007, I wrote about a lesson surfing has taught me: There is no such thing as being too aggressive.

I still believe that, but today I had reason to wonder about the ways in which aggression is worked out through surfing.

I had a lot on my mind today, thinking about a business deal I was working on. I was thinking about how to make it go my way (to win, in other words). The waves were small and easy and I took wave after wave, ride after ride, surfing much more aggressively than I generally do. There were those who pulled back from me. I gained more and more confidence and just kept going. It was very satisfying.

The problem is, later that day I blew the deal I had been working on, unnecessarily---simply by not being aggressive enough.

Is it possible I misplaced my aggression and used it all up where it wasn't needed---rather than the surfing helping me later on to be as aggressive as I needed to be in real life?

That certainly seems to be what happened.