Moment #3

My office is a 5 minute drive and a 10 minute bike ride from my house.
Going by bike is a more direct system and keeps me off the main streets.

It also keeps me from getting worked up about traffic and when I say traffic I mean there really isn’t any.

A few years ago I acquired a trailer to hook to my bike so I could transport my massage sheets back and forth.  (It was because of transporting these sheets that I hadn’t previously been able to ride my bike to work very often.)

However, I found that once I had the trailer I was still not riding my bike to my office.
I had to think about why I wasn’t riding my bike and I quickly figured it out.
This is what I was thinking:

There is a big hill I have to climb to get back home. This hill is steep and long. This hill is almost impossible to surmount with a trailer full of dirty sheets hooked to my bike. I am tired after a day of massaging and felt riding up that hill was just going to exhaust me. I probably wouldn’t even make it home before I gave out completely.

This is what I was thinking about riding my bike to work.
I decided to check and see how accurate this thinking was.

I rode my bike to work and back with the trailer full of sheets and paid attention to how steep and long the hill ACTUALLY was.
I paid attention to how much effort I ACTUALLY had to exert to get up the hill.

I paid attention to the time it ACTUALLY took to get from the bottom of the hill to the top.

I paid attention to how I ACTUALLY felt while I was climbing the hill and when I got to the top of the hill.

This is what I discovered:

The hill isn’t that steep or long. The hill caused me to put out a moderate to strong amount of effort. The hill took me less than two minutes to climb. My legs felt strong as I climbed the hill and were not worn out when I got to the top of the hill. As a matter of fact once I get to the top of the hill the rest of my route home is flat or downhill.


Default mode:

Circumstance: Riding my bike to and from work.
Thought: That hill is going to kill me.
​Feeling: Defeated.
Action: Don’t ride my bike to work.
Result: Continue to add to global warming by driving my car five minutes to work.


Managed mind mode:

Circumstance: Riding my bike to and from work.
Thought: That hill is not that bad.
Feeling: Neutral.
Action: Ride my bike to and from work.
Result: Get fitter and do my part to stop global warming.

I have been riding my bike to work almost every day for the last three weeks.

I continually catch myself thinking all those false thoughts about “the hill”, which means I haven’t stopped having them.

I have stopped those thoughts from being unconscious.

I catch them and then I change them to thoughts I now know to be true about “the hill”.

Eventually, some bright day I will no longer have to catch these thoughts because I won’t be having them any more.

Until then, I keep practicing!