What riding my bike taught me about life

Cycling is beneficial for you, me and everyone in many different ways. When you google why cycling is good for you, you would probably find a lot of health benefits, benefits from being outside and benefits for the environment. These are all very cool for your body and the planet but not what this article is about. The lessons that cycling taught me is more of psychological nature. So without further ado let’s jump into it.

Emotions are fleeting and can change from moment to moment. A slight outside change can lead to big emotional changes.

How the hell did get that from moving my legs up and down on a bike?

Let me explain. For some reason on long bike rides you feel a whole host of different emotions compressed in a short amount of time. It’s something I heard over and over from other cyclist but also experienced it myself many times. Here is an example I had lately:

I started my bike commute to work early in the morning. Since winter is coming, it was already pretty cold, something like 5-6 degrees. So I put on my full winter gear and head out the front door and on the roads. For some time it was warm but after a while I started to feel cold and the mist hanging in the air that morning didn’t help. After around two thirds of my ride, my hands really started to feel cold and I just wanted to arrive in the office and warm myself up again. I didn’t feel great. But then all of a sudden I rode up a small hill and all of a sudden no mist anymore. Sunshine, from one second to the other. This sunshine didn’t just help to warm up my cold hands and feet but also brightened my mood in the same fashion. When I arrived in the office I had a big smile on my face and promised myself to remember that the sun can, sometimes literally, start to shine at any moment. Even when I am down. Even in the worst moment it can turn to bride sunshine within a few seconds.

In some ways riding your bike causes you to feel a range of emotions in a very short amount of time that you normally only feel over a whole week. This is an amazing lesson because you recognize that emotions are not permanent and can change very quickly. Recognizing that help you to understand your thoughts and decisions much better. For example when you are pissed of at your boss and you might not be aware in this moment that the negative thoughts you have are strongly tied to fleeting emotions, you might think you have a shitty job and might even make bad decisions based on that. Like quitting your job. Though, when you recognize the power of fleeting emotions, you can seperate your thoughts and your emotions better. You might still have the same thoughts popping into your head. The ones with hating your boss and all. However, now you might also realize that this is just triggered by your emotions but not the representing reality. So you might come to the conclusion that you have a nice job, but just a bad moment and that’s all. This prevents you from compulsively checking new job postings or writing angry emails to everyone. This is not just helpful in situations where you are angry but also makes you more resilient generally.

One of the main reason people quit, despair, throw in the towel, suffer, fill in the blank, when times are bad is that they don’t see light at the end of the tunnel. They don’t have hope. But when you realize how fleeting these negative emotions can be, you realize that you just have to keep pushing for a tiny bit longer and make it through this phase. It is not permanent, it is just a phase and often times a pretty short one.

So am I recommending you to all jump on your bikes and do 100km loops?

Not necessarily, of course I am happy for each and every person that start biking but you can also find your own thing that teaches you that lesson. For some it might be playing football, it might be anything. Even if you haven’t found it yet, just pay close attention to your emotions. How they ebb and flow, particularly when you are doing something hard. This paying attention might also teach you the same lesson.