Learning The lesson of Life through Riding a Bike

By Denise Nelson

Biking is a skill that parents are proud to pass on to their youngsters. Remember learning to bike? Dad was running beside you, holding on to the seat tightly as he explained steering, pedaling and braking, until you realized he was not holding on to your bike seat afterall. You were riding on your own. Suddenly, you crushed down the sidewalk frightened but excited after learning you were in charge of everything.

The same happened with me. I remember how difficult it was keeping my balance, steering and pedaling all at the same time. I crashed a couple of times, cried, lost faith, went it again and fell again. But despite the pain and terror, I finally mastered the magical mystery of biking. Several weeks later, I was coasting down the hills like a champion. I pat myself on the back for overcoming my fears and being able to advance from the tricycle to a big bicycle.

Life is a bike, hand down. Riding the "Bike of Life" is a lot like riding your first bike. It needs balance, motivation, perseverance, hard work and realistic goals to achieve bone fide success. The concept of a bike will help you identify areas in your life that require focus so you can head in the right direction.

Bikes work through some basic mechanics. The pedals generate power and move the bicycle forward by turning the rear wheels. The drive chain transmits power from the pedals to the rear wheels every time you pedal. The forces acting upon every tire, such as your weight and forces of road contact, braking and pedaling, are reduced by the rigidity of the spokes.

Spinning wheels have an angular motion, and when you sit on your bike, you and the bike and its wheels create a system that follows the principle of conservation of angular motions. That particular momentum as well as the direction of the momentum remains constant unless twisting force is applied to alter the angular momentum of the wheels.

In life, you need balance. Maintaining balance contributes to living a successful and productive life. If you lean too much on one side, you will fall off. Take an Olympic athlete for example. For an Olympic athlete to get optimum results, the athlete must train for the competition in the most efficient and productive way. When in training he/she must maintain discipline and a routine that comprises a proper balance of sleep, diet and exercise.

Life is a series of learning from our past mistakes. That's how you learned to ride a bike. In the beginning of your learning process, you stumbled and fell countless times but you took a deep breath, got up, dust yourself off, and started all over again. Learn from your past mistakes so you don’t run the risk of repeating them. Time and experience are the best teachers when you learn a lesson from your bad decisions.

If you never looked at the ground when learning to ride a bike, congratulations! Most of us used to look at the ground rather than looking up ahead and we lost balance and crashed as a result. Realize that in life, it is easy to get trapped inside your own world. By being trapped inside your world, you don’t just disconnect from the world, but also from yourself. Break out of you shell and connect with the world. Only then can you thrive.

Biking is a magical mastery of control – lined with pitfalls. One benefit of cycling is that it teaches us to be strong. When the road throws you a curveball, you go with it. Sometimes life also throws you curveballs and in order to stay atop, you have to go with the flow. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes you, accept its pain and soldier on. Every tragedy that happens in our life is not meant to defeat us but to make us stronger.

For a bike to move forward, the cyclist must pedal to generate the power. Without the cyclist paddling and balancing, it won't go anywhere. Life is like that too. You need to act today if you want to achieve both your short term and long-term goals. A lot of people who have failed, do so simply because they do not get started. They fail to overcome their sluggishness to make a beginning.

About Denise Nelson

Denise is a profound lover of the cross country mountain bike. Worked as a trainer for 6 years. Also considers herself a great mountain bikers. She’s also a founder of MountainBikeEZ.