7 Inspiring Life Lessons I Learned From Riding a Bike

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

If you think about it, cycling is a great metaphor for life — keep the balance, avoid the bumps, tame fear, take on challenges, and don’t neglect maintenance. If you are good at cycling you probably are good at life.

There are many transferable skills you can learn from your bike. Every challenge, every opportunity, every difficulty can be overcome by proper planning, training, and responding to the environment.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned while pedaling.

1. Go Faster

When you are riding, speed is your friend. It sounds counterintuitive but it’s easier to keep your balance once you gather momentum.

The number of times I’ve crashed for going too slow has taught me a lesson: every situation requires the right velocity, not too fast but not too slow either.

When your mind is shouting: ’careful! slow down!’ you should assess the situation, decide if it’s a ‘go’ or a ‘no’, and then bite the bullet. In life, similar scenarios occur when we overthink, over-analyze, and get paralyzed by fear. Try to avoid falling into the trap of analysis paralysis.

If you do nothing when the situation requires action, you will be in trouble. Risk is a double-edged sword — procrastination and avoidance are riskier than understanding the situation and responding to it.

Fear is a lousy companion. It will make obstacles look bigger than they are, challenges out of reach and comfort the most desirable option.

That is exactly the opposite of what you should do. Ignore your fears, get out of your comfort zone and just pedal faster.

2. Set goals

Every cyclist has goals. We either want to go faster, longer, climb higher or improve our technical skills.

In cycling you learn to set realistic goals, to work towards them, to have patience and to subdivide everything into smaller tasks.

This year I plan to ride 10,000k on my mountain bike. At first this goal might seem overwhelming but when looked closer is not such a big deal. It’s about 830 km/month or 52 km a day/4 days a week. Totally doable by most people.

Just like every other goal in life.

Do you want to lose weight? Become a doctor? Learn Chinese? Start a successful business? Well, if you plan ahead, subdivide the goal into smaller tasks and keep at it for long enough, you can achieve any goal no matter how lofty. Impossible is just a word.

Our minds are fear-inducing machines. Everything seems impossible until it’s done. By ignoring our misconceptions and keeping our eyes on the target there is no limit to what we can achieve.

3. Keep improving

You can improve beyond your imagination. If you still haven’t realized your full potential is because you are getting in your own way.

If you think you are not smart, strong, skillful, or organized, you are wrong. Anything can be learned to a high level by anyone. Don’t let your mind tell you otherwise.

Every time I see a difficult trail my first reaction is: no way I can do that. Yet, I try and try, learn from my mistakes, acquire more technique, and eventually what seemed impossible becomes easy. This happens over and over again.

From this experience, I’ve learned that nothing is impossible, whether on the bike or in life you should never say I can’t. Instead, say I will.

Whether you want to make more money, find the love of your life, get healthy or learn quantum physics, you totally can, anyone can and in fact, it’s much easier than you think…if you are willing to pay the price.

4. Resilience

When there is a long road ahead, you have to keep going one step at a time, focus on the now and try to enjoy the moment.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by a distant goal that might take years to achieve but that’s the wrong way to look at it. Life is a journey, you shouldn’t rush to get to the other side. Don’t wish your time away because if you do, you’d be wasting it.

Often my non cyclist friends ask me if I don’t get bored of cycling for hours. The obvious answer is no.

What seems monotonous from the outside feels very different from the inside. I often wonder how people can do activities like bird watching, sunbathing, or gardening without losing the will to live but that’s just because I’m an outsider, I don’t really comprehend what’s going on there. Had I taken the time to understand those hobbies, I might be more inclined to pursue them.

The exercise, the road, the rhythm, the speed, the dangers, the sensations, all add up to the experience and make time fly away.

Cycling, or any seemingly monotonous activity, is in fact a great form of meditation. This is a time you can focus on the task at hand, on your body sensations, and not worry about the past or the future. In a world where everything is becoming so stressful and distracting, sweating away your problems by pedaling can be great therapy.

5. Time is relative

It’s uncanny the number of times I’ve been on my bike for hours and felt like minutes.

Time is just an idea, a construct. It can go very slow or very fast depending on your attitude. 5 hours on the bike goes faster than 5 mins stuck in a traffic jam.

When an activity is aligned with your values you just don’t perceive time in a conventional way. It goes in a flash even if you are suffering, struggling, and pushing yourself.

A good lesson from this is: try to do activities where you don’t have to look at the clock all the time. Avoid the rest.

If you often find yourself wishing your time away, that’s a bad sign. Examine your life, change your job, cancel commitments, learn to say no until you feel more engaged with the goals you are pursuing.

Time is all you have, don’t waste it by living someone else’s life.

6. Perception is everything

There is a mountain called ‘La Vela Blanca’ which I climb very often. It’s short but steep.

Despite having done so many times I still hesitate every time I look up and think: ‘Will I manage today?’

Surely if I’ve managed to do it 300 times, I should be more confident in my abilities, and I am, but there’s a part of me who enjoys casting doubt, spreading fear, and developing insecurities. Let’s call it the ego.

The ego is a professional saboteur. It will cajole you into thinking you are not capable, not good enough and just an impostor whenever the stakes are high.

If you listen to your ego, it becomes stronger and you become weaker. This is a never-ending battle but you should never give in. If you do, you’ll be overtaken by fear, anxiety, procrastination, and doubt.

Every time you hear that voice in your head, you must do the opposite. Train your mind like you would train a dog. Don’t encourage bad behavior.

You know you can do it. You have done before. You have achieved remarkable things already. The mountains you’ve climbed in the past seem smaller and the ones ahead look bigger but that’s just an illusion.

No mountain is too big if you have the stamina, the determination and the courage. Don’t let your ego fool you. You got this.

7. Keep sharpening the saw

You must take care of yourself (and the bike)

Eat healthy, exercise, meditate, rest. Stop every now and then and smell the flowers. Life is not a race. You don’t win by getting there faster. You win by enjoying the ride.

Don’t neglect your body and mind. These are the tools that will accompany you all your life. Nothing is more important than taking care of yourself.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax

Abraham Lincoln

Conclusion

Cycling is just a metaphor for life. Don’t go too fast and miss the scenery, but don’t go too slow either and lose momentum. Keep everything in balance. Take care of yourself. Don’t let fear scare you into inaction. Plan your goals according to your values and have fun even when doing chores.

Your bicycle, the road, and you are just one thing. Let go and melt into one. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine, it always is.

Enjoy your ride.

Follow me on Strava or drop me a line here if you want inspiration to follow your journey.