A week ago I walked into my office and like I do every morning, I change the number on my whiteboard…the number that counts down to the London to Paris ride. That morning, I changed it to read 120. Something about that number stunned me and honestly, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since.
I’m completely out of my element here, and that scares me. To say that I’m not athletic is a bit of an understatement – ask anyone who knows me. All my life I’ve avoided activities that involve anything to do with a ball and/or a stick. Which pretty much leaves out every sport in the free world. Never having played sports, I’ve never had to mentally prepare for “the big game” and I don’t know how to prepare for what is the equivalent of the biggest game of my life.
Why is it easier to let doubt take over the mind when it should instead be finding peace at the end of a long day? Why do negative thoughts seem more powerful than their positive counterparts? Why is an otherwise intelligent person unable to push those thoughts aside and focus on what’s important?
I’m a smart girl. I know that negative thoughts at this point are not productive. I’m actively working on shifting my concentration to what I’ve already been able to achieve on the bike…things that I never thought possible for me. Concentrating on the joy that I get from riding my bike because if I lose that in this process I will feel like I have really failed. In the meantime…
…this morning I changed the number to 113.