Kelly’s Korner: Keep Calm and Karate Chop The Ego
Last Updated: November 30th, 2020
Fear. It has to be the most crippling emotion we humans experience. Certainly nothing has held me back in life as much as my own fears. That’s why deciding to learn to ride dealt a metaphorical karate chop to the deep-seated messages I had chosen to believe during the formative years about who I am and what I’m capable of doing. It also created new, terrifying and thrilling misgivings about change, about discovering who I could be, and knowing nothing about bikes. In fear lies possibility.
I think — and I could be wrong, but bear with me — that on average, women tend to internalize such fears more than most men. After all, many of us were not raised among bikes and were discouraged from pursuing “boys’ activities” in our childhood years. No matter who we are, though, when we choose to get on a machine that we don’t yet understand but know could kill us, and when we find ourselves surrounded by people whom we assume to be more accomplished and knowledgeable than we’ll ever be, we let fear keep our mouths shut. We have so many questions we want to ask, but we are scared of looking ridiculous in front of a group. We don’t want to risk being laughed at or chided. And so we cave to fear, even though we know that doing so only hurts our progress.
Where does fear originate and where does it thrive? Using the triune brain model, fear and ego reside within the limbic system of our brains. Ego is tricky. It’s a messy combination of self-preservation and conflated sense of self, with something useful in the middle. In the extremes, ego presents a person who does nothing with her life because she’s so afraid, or it creates the selfie-obsessed narcissist who can do no wrong. Sometimes, ego and fear save our lives but they are, for the most part, deterrents to self-discovery.
The good news is, if we stay aware of the ways ego and fear can affect us in the extremes, we are freed to seek balance in the middle. And riding, which is called “the lazy woman’s Zen” for good reason, provides an ideal vehicle for seeking that balance. How? By applying the lessons we learn on a bike to our day-to-day lives. You can draw endless parallels between riding and life. For example, a while back, I realized that in life, just as in riding, I go where I look. And there’s so much more — about physical and mental capacity. About how we react to unexpected situations. About how we treat ourselves and other people. About remaining teachable. About karate chopping fears.
Becoming an ever-better rider requires willingness to push ego aside so we can learn and absorb something new. This is part of why the simple act of a novice climbing on a strange little bike, alongside twenty other people taking the same step, starts to break down the barrier that ego has built. After putting in the hard work of breaking down the ego barrier, the danger becomes not falling prey to the assumption that as we grow more proficient on a bike, we should know the answers to our questions or, worse, not have any more questions. Just because we’ve taken a Basic RiderCourse, does that make asking questions any less appropriate? Of course not.
However, sometimes it feels like it would be easier to tell ourselves to keep quiet, we’ll Google the answer later or pull someone aside in private, rather than feel bare, exposed, possibly dumb, before other people. In reality, taking any of those routes is a letdown because we’re allowing ego and fear to control our behavior. Look at question-asking this way: You’re helping me to become a better rider. I’m helping you. In my experience, people are asking questions I hadn’t even thought of and that I now desperately want answered.
Remember, fear is not real. It feels real yet it exists only in our own minds. If we want to be better motorcyclists, we have to move beyond our ego, push back on our fears, and open our minds and our mouths. You can even start by asking me. Send your questions to kellyteal13@gmail.com
No ego involved, I promise!
For the Entire TEAM Arizona Newsletter Content, CLICK HERE
