Hey, Now

The process of writing Accept Love: A Coaches Manual allowed me to go deep into my experience of working with and coaching a large number of individuals. I’m calling this collection of stories INSPIRATION.

Robby Naish provides the basis for inspiration that reaches a worldwide influence. He is the definition of a Hammah, a world class athlete and a destination.

Everything about Robby and his accomplishments is inspiring. Somehow, at a very early age, he learned how to make hard work fun. When kite surfing came along, I remember him telling a story about being dragged down the beach by a runaway kite. He was excited and animated about learning how to handle those kinds of situations, and you could feel his excitement. That is the Robby Naish way — find the thrill in the challenge and never stop learning. If you want to know how he did it, the long version is worth every word. Click HERE to download.

My Story with Robby

I met Robby Naish when he was in the tenth grade at Punahou School. He was in my health class. Now, as a teacher you learn to read a room. But Robby stood out immediately — that kid with the blond hair was really paying attention. Before I knew it, I was teaching directly to him. His ability to focus was exceptional, even then.

Later, before he graduated, he came up to me with a simple question: “Have you tried windsurfing?”

“No,” I replied. “I’m too busy.”

He looked at me and said, without hesitation: “That’s wrong. I’ll teach you.”

A while later, I took him up on it. We met at the shop in Kailua. He set me up with a rig, then sat down on the beach and watched as I struggled. When I was completely exhausted, he said simply: “It will come.”

It did. And I was hooked.

Robby Naish and the Accept Love Pathway

Robby Naish has lived Accept Love the way it was meant to be lived — not as a philosophy he studied, but as a truth he embodied.

Open Heart

Robby cares — genuinely, deeply, and without reservation. Whenever you hear from him, he is fully present. He listens. He reflects. And then he expresses exactly the right energy for the moment.

When Robby shares a story, it is never about the trophy or the title. It is always about the confidence that carried him — the quiet inner knowing that allowed him to keep moving forward, in his sport and in his life. That confidence isn’t arrogance. It is the natural expression of a man who has done the work, trusted the process, and stayed true to who he is.

That is Open Heart. Not softness — presence. Not sentiment — care. Robby makes you feel seen, and that is one of the rarest gifts one human being can offer another.

Elevate

When I retired from teaching at Punahou, I was finally free to windsurf at Brown’s when the wind and waves were at their best. On one unforgettable afternoon, Bruce Eliashof and I sailed perfect conditions for nearly two hours. The wave at Brown’s is a short, hollow right followed by a long left that races down the beach — on a good day, it is as fine as it gets.

After our session, Bruce and I retreated to the beach to rest — and that’s when Robby showed up.

What happened next was something else entirely. A natural goofy foot, Robby slapped off the lip of that short little right and surfed the wave into complete submission. Over and over. Effortlessly. Joyfully.

Bruce and I looked at each other and arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously: the definition of insanity is comparing your performance to his.

Robby doesn’t just perform at a high level. He elevates to a place the rest of us use as a reference point for what is humanly possible — and then he goes beyond it, making it look like the most natural thing in the world.

Trust

Recently a coach shared with me how difficult it is to teach present day athletes to simply work hard. It stopped me in my tracks — because when Robby was just 13 years old, he was already traveling the world and winning competitions. Not on talent alone. He outworked everyone in the field.

His secret was never mysterious. Robby had an extraordinary ability to break down the mechanics of what was required, trust his capacity to master the current standard — and then perform way beyond what anyone expected.

Like the day he showed up on the North Shore with west winds and a sizable west swell pushing into what was still a perfect Pipeline. Conditions that would send most surfers to the beach. Robby took the drop, turned off the bottom, slammed the lip — and made it look so perfect, so easy, that you had to remind yourself what you were actually watching.

That is Trust in its purest form. Not reckless courage. Not blind confidence. It is the deep, earned certainty of an athlete who has done the work, broken it down piece by piece, and knows — knows — that when the moment arrives, he is ready.

Pull

His presence pulled people in without effort. Athletes, industries, and entire cultures across the globe were drawn to him. That is not the result of marketing. That is what happens when a human being is fully aligned with their purpose.

Walking down the beach in Kailua, more times than I can count, excited men and women of all ages would rush up to me with the same question burning in their eyes: “Where is Robby?”

Then there was the time I was living in Atlanta, Georgia. A repairman came to our rented house to fix the air conditioner. While he worked, I was looking at a small photo Bitsy — Robby’s wife — had just sent me, announcing the birth of their daughter Nani. A beautiful moment, private and far from Hawaii.

The repairman glanced over at the photo and stopped cold.

“You know Robby?”

I looked up. “Yes — but how do YOU know Robby?”

He straightened up with a proud grin: “I helped build his car. The fastest street-legal car in Atlanta.”

Receive

When other athletes speak in awe of Robby’s resilience and mental strength — marveling at how he continues to defy his age and compete at the highest level — his answer is always disarmingly simple.

“I’m just having fun.”

You could call it humility, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But it runs deeper than that. What Robby is expressing is pure gratitude — a felt sense of thankfulness so genuine that it fuels his awareness, sharpens his preparation, and quietly dissolves the weight of expectation.

He doesn’t perform despite the pressure. He simply doesn’t feel it the way others do. Where most athletes brace against the risk, Robby opens to the experience. He allows the sensations, the feelings, the joy of movement to be driven entirely by passion.

That is how he receives. Not with a trophy held high, but with a smile that says this is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Simple formula. Profound result.

Return

The greatest gift Robby Naish carries is his sense of wonder.

After everything — the world titles, the global fame, the decades of defying what is possible — he has never lost his ability to be amazed. By the ocean. By the wind. By the people in his life. He moves through his extraordinary world with an even keel, maintaining deep and genuine relationships with family and friends that are never overshadowed by his legend.

And when we talk — this man who is known on every coastline on earth — the focus is always on me.

Not his latest project. Not his next competition. Me. He makes me feel special every single time. That is not an accident. That is not charm. That is a man who has received everything life has to offer and made a conscious choice to give it all back — one conversation, one moment, one person at a time.

That is Return. And in my experience, it is the rarest quality of all.

Robby didn’t just achieve greatness. He became it. And that is the Hammah definition in its purest form — a world class athlete and a destination. People don’t travel across the world just to watch what Robby does. They come to be near who he is.

That is Accept Love, lived out loud, for a lifetime.

That’s HiLevel!