Erik Surjan's Life Lessons from Sports
Sydney, Australia, December 2, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Erik Surjan has tried many things in the course of his life, and he has done well in them all. He studied business in great detail at two universities. Erik Surjan holds a Bachelor of Business degree in Marketing and in Management from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. He received both of those degrees in 2003. More recently, Erik Surjan earned a Master of Business degree from Monash University in Melbourne in 2012.
Erik Surjan is also greatly interested in acting. He has appeared in TV ads in Australia, and has been in several instructional videos. Erik Surjan is currently studying the craft with Bill McCluskey, a veteran Australian actor who has appeared in numerous productions on stage and screen. Erik Surjan has also studied with the Sydney Screen Acting Group in its Screen Acting Workshop, and in the Acting Edge with the Actors Centre Australia. He has taken part in Faith Martin Workshops, run by the acclaimed International casting director Faith Martin, where he studied drama and the camera.
Erik Surjan has also been a successful athlete who has competed in Track and Field events all over Australia. He has always been a standout athlete, able to run faster and jump higher and further than the other kids that he grew up with.
"Everyone involved with Track & Field will tell you it’s unique," Erik Surjan says. He describes the endless hours of working toward a single objective, and how reaching that objective takes fierce determination and an indestructible work ethic. And there are always the setbacks: the injuries that sidelined him for prolonged periods, the other guy who was just a little bit faster or a little bit stronger, or the event in which he didn’t perform as well as he was capable of performing. “A good friend of mine tagged a Facebook photo of herself at competition as ‘Athletics: my love hate relationship,” and Erik Surjan says that pretty well sums it up.
But he knows he has benefitted from the experience, and has grown as a person. “The application of perception and attitude in daily life is a topic that interests me,” Erik Surjan once wrote. "Dennis S. Brown said it best – 'The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude!' The easiest thing in the world is to give up or to not try. Very little is accomplished by resting on laurels. It’s my belief that a person’s attitude toward failing, making mistakes or dealing with worst case scenarios is what defines them, [as] opposed to the rainbow period of success or good times. Michael Jordan (yeah the guy who slam dunked from the free throw line and starred in the Hollywood epic Space Jam) once said ‘I failed over and over again in my life and that is why I will succeed.’ That’s a powerful comment when you realize you fail more than you succeed. Experience is a term we use to basket our failures together. It’s also an important tool that helps people to succeed."
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