New Year Goals: Conquer my Fear of Failure

Here's an article I think was written for me....

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HEALTH AND FITNESS: CONQUERING THE FEAR THAT SLOWS YOU DOWNKatharine McCoyJanuary 9, 2009
Use your brain to conquer fear, and become a better riderFear is good. A healthy fear while riding your bike is what keeps you alive. Everybody from the time they first start to pedal their bike needs fear. Good fear is what keeps you from charging into the street without looking, putting on the brakes in the middle of the pack during a group ride or cutting in front of the teenager who looks like they just got their driver’s license.However, there is another kind of fear; a fear that slows you down and keeps you from doing your best. Many people don’t even recognize that it is fear. They never stop to questions if it is fear that keeps them from making a breakaway when they are feeling strong, keeps them from attending a group ride or that sends them back home when a ride starts to seem a little too hard. There are two factors in the success of any sport: the body and the mind. We tend to just focus on the first because it seems like it is easier to control. It might sound like a bunch of psychobabble to some, but any successful athlete will tell you that it is the mind that separates the mere talented from the standouts. Cycling is an especially mental sport in that injury, and often pain is always just a bobble away. Even the best riders have experienced an unexpected crash resulting in at least a serious case of road rash. Our brains tend to remember these experiences and often times it takes a while after a crash for a rider to feel confident again. But physical pain is only one aspect of the way that fear can slow you down. There is another type of fear that is some times harder to spot. Often times it is simply the fear of failure or even embarrassment that keeps us from reaching our potential.RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEMMaybe you think that only wimps have fear. Not true. AA has it right when they say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem. The truth is that this is a problem that affects in someway almost everyone. You don’t need a fancy therapist or sports physiologist to figure out if fear is one of you’re the things holding you back. A little self analyzing and learning to recognize the symptoms are a good start. Ask yourself what you would do if you weren’t afraid? Is there something that you have avoided doing because thinking about it makes you feel apprehensive? Have you avoided committing to that 100 mile ride that your friends do because you really are too busy or because you fear that you can’t make it. Do you tend to ride towards the back of the pack because you are afraid of making a mistake or even becoming involved in an unavoidable crash? Do you avoid riding with anyone who might be better than you? Have you wanted to enter a race but keep putting it off? Be honest with yourself about what your real limitations are and what you fear that they might be.Learn to recognize the signs that fear is holding you back. Are there points while you are riding that you tend to tense up or feel like you could push yourself harder but instead hold back? Once you acknowledge that there is fear you can learn to control it rather having it control you.USE YOUR IMAGINATIONMost of things that we worry about or are fearful of never happen. And even if we do experience what we are afraid of it often isn’t as bad as we thought it would be. At the same time if you have suffered a bad crash your imagination often replays the incident in your mind, causing you to experience the crash over and over. The first step in conquering a fear is finding the good in the fear. What have you learned from that crash that you won’t do next time? What is you brain trying to protect you from? If it is a real issue acknowledge it. Yes, riding a bike has risks, but so does spending your life on the couch. It is one of the oldest mind tricks in the world but one of the best defenses against fear is to replay the positive in your head. Imagine the best thing that would happen if you found that you could ride 100 miles, or if you did enter that race or if you did decided to brake-a-way and it worked. Just thinking positive thoughts won’t make it happen, but the opposite is often true as well. Thinking negative things will often times keep the good things from happening, many times because you didn’t even try. TRAIN PAST THE FEARIf a certain part of a ride always makes you shaky then train there. If you really want to try that 100 mile ride start to train for it. Telling yourself it is achievable goal. Ask another experienced rider if they will help you set up a training program or if you can afford it get a coach to help. Knowing that you have the physical tools and have done the work will give you the confidence to do it. Having the help of a more experience rider can inspire you to workout at a new level. It may take your brain awhile to adjust but when you begin to do whatever it was afraid of your brain will see it as something that can be done rather than an overwhelming task. STAY FOCUSED ON THE NOWAccording to studies done on successful athletes one of the things that they are able to do is to focus on the here and now and not ten minutes from now. A football player who is thinking about a Superbowl ring instead of the current play or a baseball player who is worried about his next at bat while he is covering first base tends not to do as well. The same holds true for riding your bike. When you are on a big hill don’t worry about the decent and when you are in the flats don’t worry about the next climb. Don’t allow the fear of the next thing rob you of the energy that you need for the here and now. FEAR: IT’S NOT ALL IN YOUR HEADThe fear response of the body does not stop within your brain. We are all very aware of the way that adrenalin can affect the body for the good as well as the bad. Any experienced rider knows that a good dose of adrenalin at the right time can be the very thing that propels them to the finish line or over the top of hill past their riding buddies. Adrenalin can give our muscles an extra does of energy, but too much over longer periods of time can also wear our muscles out and cause us to be tense, off focused and feel drained. That is why you often see riders at the beginning of a long race working on relaxing their muscles and calming their thoughts rather than pumping themselves up as they might do before a sprint. The more we learn about the way that the mind affects the body the more we learn about how some of the processes can be controlled for our benefit. Using music, positive imagery and relaxing breathing techniques can actually have a real impact on your brain and therefore the body. MRI’s have shown that these things can affect the way that our brains function. When we are tense and fearful our breathing tends to be quick and shallow not allowing our bodies to get the oxygen that they need. We are in an age where calming music and proper breathing techniques are just a download away. Listening to your mp3 player or even your walkman (do they still make those?) can actually help you to learn to relax so it can be a trained response when you are undergoing unhealthy fear.Acknowledging and letting go of fears that are holding you back can make a huge impact on the way that you ride and whether you reach your full potential in any area of your life.