I was recently putting together a YouTube clip and it truly stuck me the words of ‘You are the sum of everything to this moment.’ Now it’s not like I haven’t used this phrase before or seen its full effects with clients and friends lives, however on that day it really kicked home to me just the full concept of that statement. In micro moments I could feel the substance of memories long since stored away popping up and having a say around unrelated tasks I was trying to perform.
Let me set up the scenario. With all the lockdowns in our great land of Oz, I got into bike riding nothing hard core just a bit of outdoor fun. Being that my preferences in life is to have a touch of adrenaline and challenge I slowly started to gravitate towards playing with the very basics of mountain biking techniques and I mean the very very basics. Now let me show you how slowly the birth of this interest has been. A few years back I did paddle boarding which was the first real test of my core muscles since a paragliding accident a few years earlier. To say my body and mind managed to come up with a magnificent failure, would be an understated description of the evenings efforts. Don’t get me wrong it was fun and in a strange way empowering because it’s not always wins that can give you strength and courage in life. It was a very nonjudgmental environment so to fail wasn’t a big deal and felt good to expose my body again to something other then safely walking and rehab.
It did though throw into stark contrast as to what was still required and how much, needed to be done to get the appropriate muscles to turn on and off properly and have mental confidence in that process. So fast forward a few years getting back on a bike again for the first time since my teens. Now that’s many many moons ago. Any way basic riding was relatively easy. Though any form of fast cornering or sliding made me feel enormously uncomfortable. On the edge of freezing up slightly but finding I could generally breath and work through it staying present. Since there was no goals in mind or time frame pressure I was able to just potter away with it and slowly expose myself more to the feeling. Gaining my confidence in little pieces, only progressing as I felt safe. I wasn’t hiding within my limits, however there wasn’t any reason to push hard up against those limits. Just contently nudging away.
Then I starting watching some YouTube clips and began to appreciate the world of trail bikes and mountain bikes much more. I hadn’t ever really experienced that world except in passing conversations and a few red bull races on tv. I was stupefied and amazed by the top athletes skills and tests they appeared to do with such easy. A growing interest to understand more and dip my toes into some of the tools I needed to get comfortable with in order to take on some beginner trails. I still wasn’t that keen to actually do a trail just play around within my own little environment. Like when you first get your paragliding licence all you want to do is climb every hill or slightly raised elevation point within your surrounds and launch off it. That warm spark that lures you into exploring and challenging was being lit and feed.
Of course I was well aware of my abilities vs reality but now the reality had a reason to get a few good nudges. What I hadn’t taken into account was ‘You are the sum of everything to this moment.‘
I decided what the hell wouldn’t it be fun, to do a wheelie. After watching a channel called Joy of bikes, Alex the lead presenter gave a clear encouraging pathway to getting this done plus it was pretty much targeted at older riders to get out there and give it a go. So nicely inspired I grabbed my bike and thought yet let’s do this. Muscle up buttercup!
A few attempts reiterated exactly where my base of competency was actually at! Lower then my ego would like to admit but I was alive, outside and active so couldn’t be all bad right. The skill itself I expected to suck at; though of course I had hoped less so; however I quickly got over that fact. What I really wasn’t anticipating was the flood of emotions that dropped in needing to be acknowledged and quietly placed to the side as I tried to stay focused on my present moment and not the protection self talk from my past.
Let me give you two examples. I used to work with horses in what now seems my distant past almost very day. Riding, training and progressing them towards competition pathways. During that time some of them would be rears, for any number of reasons but the long and the short of it was the front legs would come off the ground and they would be balanced on the their hind legs. Some were stronger than others and some would have a much better understanding of keeping both themselves and you safe. The majority of the time in those situations I was trying to spend as little time with their front legs in the air as possible. So instinctively my weight goes forward as their came up, which for a wheelie you actually want your weight to come back. Now that in itself is just slowing training your self to overcome your instinctive action. Almost no intellectual thought straight to action no real conscious decision making needed. So I had thought this would be a little mental hurdle before I started and had anticipated that contradiction and lagging of these skills as the brain over came this hurdle. When I was first learning to fly fixed winged aircraft another student pilot had a similar problem with the rudder pedals. In his youth he’d done lots of billy cart races. The pedals in that situation work the opposite of aircraft pedals. He discovered when the aircraft was taxiing at slow speeds he could think his way though the problem and over ride his instinct. However while taking off or landing when the brain was dealing with lots of other information the brain wanted to load shed that task and go back to it’s unconscious pattern. Of course that got a little sketchy at times 🥺 But eventually the brain wired new patterns and his training progressed after that hiccup.
Now here’s the tiny little seed that slightly throws a curve ball into that pattern, to add an unexpected emotion. Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist’s book True Colours my life. Spoke about how what ever your last session before going on a break could really unconsciously set the tone for how your brain processed that down time in a positive or negative way moving forward to when you picked things up again. Hence why most people/students really want when they are training to have a good last moment before they wrap up a session. The old adage of end on a good note is more often than not a great practice to keep.
So for me the tiny seed of difference to my overall history with rears was that last horse, who was what I would define to be a consistent rearer. Tho importantly wasn’t an overly stable rearer and would more often than not lose a hind leg and fall to the side a little. That in itself didn’t worry me too much at the time as I was fairly well practiced and trusted my timing and decision making skills in those situations. However I would often drop my stirrups a little earlier with that particular horse. Something I didn’t usually do. Now why is that important, well as the moment the front wheel of the bike started to come up I’d drop one or both my feet immediately off the peddles. Combined with a rush of adrenaline far in excess of what I was doing. I was gearing myself to feel uncomfortable but that was a surprise and of course unbalancing as I ripped my foot off the pedal, which made it more so. Knowing I would be naturally struggling with doing a new skill I had totally expected, but being slapped with a memory and emotion that wasn’t even connected to a bike really surprised me at first.
It took a little bit to come to terms with this new found roadblock which until that moment I was blissfully unaware of how my brain had been quietly going about its task of filing and sorting memories. Ready to dust them off if any similar type situation arrives in order to keep me ‘safe’. Apparently this was that moment to dive into the vault and bring this action and feeling back to life. So confronting, disconcerting and annoying plus it gave a little more voice to my negative self doubt, like most of us at different times it doesn’t take much prompting for that voice to turn up the volume. You are and an old broken man you have no chance of getting this done. ‘FOOLISH old man!!’ Like the video shows I talked my way through those voices I was just wasn’t expecting it coming from that background because as stated I was realisably comfortable with hoofs coming off the ground and yet now I was feeling very vulnerable and uncertain with the thing I thought shouldn’t be a huge issue. Live and learn. Apart from the slight pressure of filming myself I that recalibrated my thoughts to remind myself the over all goal wasn’t the wheelie complete package but to explore the skill and have fun. Pressure back off, now I can just let the thoughts come and go and not be bullied by them as I understand where they are coming from. Doesn’t mean I can stop the instinct reaction to them but I can put the action I want more to the forefront of my mind. Find a little mantra that works and consciously puts the actions you want in play. That way I can get two or three peddle strokes in before taking my feet off the pedals. Chipping away at it.
The second factor to ‘You are the sum of everything to this moment’ is if those emotions had popped up earlier in my life I would have switched off the camera and worked though everything behind closed doors until it was good enough to show in public or never letting it see the light of day. During my competition days I was a slightly superstitious about being filmed for many quirky and weird reason, but they were my reasons so they got embedded into my psyche 🤷🏻♂️. Coupled with hating to ask someone and then feeling they were putting themselves out to come hold a camera for me. Hence I would rarely get myself on film apart from when my father was around who always claimed the role of cameraman in chief and I very much appreciated that fact, despite my protests. Moments in time were captured both good and bad but with distance enjoyed. Any way because of that it took me ages as a coach to develop the skills on how to best use footage around students and managing their expectations. Getting people to truly see not what that brain is telling them to see but what their eyes are actually watching and processing that information, with an enhanced sense of self-worth and deeper understanding what is involved in the training process of letting go of an old habit and it’s emotional baggage as they invest in rewiring a new skill.
Take a breath let your silent stalking watcher do it’s job and you just stay in your lane and concentrate on your job. The brain does like a good scapegoat and in years gone by the camera would have grown into mine, meaning the session needed to wrap up and end immediately. Yet here I was resetting myself, and calmly letting it just do its’ job and me mine.
On the one hand I was getting flashbacks and emotional bullying from unrelated events of my past and yet from an obvious Achilles heel of that same past I was amazed by; how far my own personal growth had come. However both sides of that past life I felt I could look at with curiosity not fear nor did I need to hide from it or bully my thoughts around and put my male armour on and march into battle. I could just accept this is where I am at in this moment, but I am doing my best to keep improving. That’s all any of us can do. If you get a chance to watch the clip you won’t realise how much is going on and it was too in-depth to explain in that format. In the video I talk a little of it but can’t dive into this much depth. Experiencing an event or having a skill won’t always give you the cross over you think it might have, but if you are humble; it does allow you the freedom to fail and go again because hopefully life’s big lesson is you learn how to lean into challenges and changes. Failure and setbacks will be forever close by, however the ability to reset from failure or setbacks is the underlying secret that unpins everything. We are the sum of everything; some of that will seem good some will seem bad but if we always remember to both understand the unfiltered lesson and equip ourselves to make a growth moments from that situation. Then the sum of our future isn’t weighted down by the sum of our past.
Good luck and as always be kind to the person who matters the most. You.
I’ll leave a link below of a great book that explains how you can move away from whether you are good or bad in your efforts.
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The Four Agreements Wisdom Book: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
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