Life lessons from mountain biking

As the weather changes and the mountain biking season comes to an end, I’ve decided to reflect on this season and the lessons learned. As always it was another fun season with lots of laughter and smiles. I got a chance to ride some new trails, conquered some features on others, and continued to work on improving my skills…. jumping is fun when you get it right! One of the lessons that I continue to work on is, ‘look where you want to go’. I still find myself at times focusing on the obstacle in front of me whether it be a tree or rock and sure enough if I don’t change my focus, I hit it! In life, we can spend too much time focusing on the obstacles which can make for a bumpy ride. Instead, we need to notice the obstacle and look past it, and find the line forward.

 While taking a lesson, my instructor told me to slow down so that I could practice with the new skills. I would follow the advice for a few corners but then I would speed up and go back to how I used to do it. He told me this is normal because the new skills haven’t made it into memory yet. When life speeds up, it’s normal to default to our old patterns; our new skills haven’t made it into our memory. We need to slow down and remind ourselves of the new skills and continue to practice them until they become second nature. 

 When I first started mountain biking, my anxiety would get the best of me. Six years later, it’s still there but not to the same extent, unless it’s a new trail! I’ve started to tell myself that, just because it’s a new trail doesn’t mean I’ve lost all my skills. (My anxiety tells me that I don’t have the skills for the trail!) This new self-talk is a work in progress, and one that I’ll get lots of practice with as I continue to expand my comfort zone. When we face new scenarios, anxiety will often fill us with self-doubt, but the trick is to take a breath and remind ourselves of the skills that we’ve learned, the skills that we’ve been practicing, and that we got this!

 Until there’s snow on the ground, I will continue to ride my bike and practice these skills.

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmond Hillary