At a neighborhood potluck last weekend I had the genuine pleasure of meeting two of our newest neighbors and chatting with them about their favorite hobby: mountain biking. They’re SERIOUS about the sport and they travel all over the country seeking destinations and terrain varieties that I didn’t even know existed. When discussing the bikes that they ride, they rattled off wildly specific brands and specs that my brain couldn’t process let alone remember. This summer I started wheeling around town, so in an effort to find common ground with my new friends, I made the honest mistake of telling them that I also ride bikes. “Oh yeah? What kind of bike to do you ride?” he asked me. “A GREEN ONE!” I replied. In a past life this might have mortified me, however I’ve learned that transparency and willingness to learn are far more powerful representations of someone’s growth potential than pretending you’re something that you aren’t.
They laughed. Thankfully. She told me about the lessons she attended and she told me about one of the most important things to remember when mountain biking, and the metaphor for it nearly knocked me over.
Chuck Hot-Socks and Linsey No-Shirt Frawley, Circa 1980. This was the only biking lesson I ever received, so I was riveted listening to her description of the adult lessons she was taking.
She told me that one of the most important lessons someone needs to remember when mountain biking is to not look at the rock. You’ll be riding a trail and up ahead you might see something larger than a pebble in your path, maybe even a little boulder. She told me that no matter what you try to do, you’ll roll directly over that pebble and likely fall if you keep your eye on the rock. You’ll be gravitated toward it. Your brain will tell you “don’t go near that rock” and your body will throw caution to the wind and think “I need to get closer to that rock!” See, we gravitate toward what we focus on, and in this case, it could possibly end with a scraped knee, a concussion, or worse.
WE GRAVITATE TOWARD WHAT WE FOCUS ON
Where are you focused? Some people speak often of the divinity or the power of the universe when it comes to manifestation and destiny. I think it’s quite possible that things are also simpler than that. I truly believe that when we put our minds to something, we’ll naturally drift in that direction. With focus and energy, we might get there sooner. A BOLD Law is “What We Focus On Expands” and that is so true. We might say something like “I’m just going to put this out into the universe…” There may actually be something incredible out there guiding us, and there may also be something cooking under the surface of our consciousness that is marionetting us in the direction that we’re thinking about.
Think about your mood. Just your mood. If your day starts incredibly and productively, are you conscious of it? Do you ever stop and think “woah, things are awesome today”? Quite often, other awesome things follow. It’s not just divinity, it’s actually science. Our noodles are conditioned to seek the familiar and find patterns in everything, so if your familiar is ‘awesome’, then your brain will continue to seek awesome. Conversely, if you feel like you’re playing ‘whack a mole’ and putting out fires, that you can’t seem to catch your breath and that this isn’t your day, you’ll subconsciously seek patterns of unfulfillment and dissatisfaction.
Metaphorically speaking, that rock could be something incredible or it could be something awful. If you focus on it, you’re going to roll over it. So. Don’t look at that rock unless you want it to have a significant effect on your trajectory.
