Psychological Barriers

There is a ramp leading from the parking lot to my office.  I have permission to park my motorcycle in a non-used, covered entry way to the building, so each day I putter up the ramp to park ... some days puttering better than others.

As you can see from the picture, the sidewalk is five feet wide, with a retaining wall between the ramp and the building and when  I traverse the ramp I face a wall in front of me, and either to the left or right of me. Therein lay the problem.

I love to train with motorcycles so have taken many, many classes on maneuvering my big VN 1600 (750 lbs.) in small spaces.  On a training range I can easily make either a right or left hand turn in dimensions far less than described above and curiously coming down the ramp each afternoon I have no problem with the smooth and easy turn.  But riding up that friggin' ramp each morning I am batting about .500; either I make the turn easily and smoothly or I fixate on the wall and stop or put my feet down.  Every now and then I just bounce off the wall, scraping it with my foot pegs.

And the difference is all in my head.

While living in Arizona I had several training opportunities with the Arizona Precision Drill Team, a bunch of hard core riders (men & women) whose favorite rig is a big Honda Goldwing.  They successfully compete all over the country in precision riding and have the trophy's to affirm their skill.  These are among the best of the best when it comes to handling big, bulky motorcycles.  After one particularly arduous training session with them, during which most of us either dumped our bikes or massacred more than a few cones, the instructor told us a story:

All of the folks on the Team can easily turn their bikes in a circle of less than 20 feet diameter and doing it on the range was no longer a challenge for them.  One of the members has a driveway, twenty feet in diameter, with  walls on both sides and of course the garage doors in front.  So one day the Team met at his house, chatted a bit, and set out to practice tight turns in the driveway as a new challenge.

Not one of them was successful!

Remember, these are experts at maneuvering big bikes in tight spaces at slow speed; they can easily turn those monsters in under twenty feet on the range, but not one could do so in a twenty foot driveway surrounded by walls.

The difference was all in their heads.

Thank God - it's not just me, but all us humans who have psychological barriers that prevent us from doing what we know we can do!  I wonder in what other endeavors I limit myself not by skill or ability, but my head?  And what does it take to get out of my head and trust my skill, to move beyond the psychological barrier that prevents me from achieving success?

I'll keep pondering and I'll keep tackling that doggone ramp, and one day, one glorious day, I will allow my skill to triumph over the limitations of my head!