Does this look like a drive on your favorite freeway in rush hour?
Would you like a strategy that would work to get you through this or any situation quickly and safely?
See how I've applied lessons learned on the street and in places like this to decrease my anxiety and stress and increase my safety and enjoyment.
Safely Through The Crowd.
Way back when I started driving a car one of the first things I was taught was to keep looking ahead. Over the years I’ve heard variants of the same theme and most recently the best description of why I should do this came in my Total Control training. Lee goes into detail regarding how our minds work and why looking ahead and even expanding my vision would help to reduce anxiety and stress. All of this helped me to connect some dots and with a bit further research and application I had my own epiphany regarding vision and control.
As I get a bit older I am really beginning to view life as a puzzle and each experience I’ve had has been a piece that I’ve turned over. Some have fit into place very easily and others have been sitting on the side waiting to be places. If you’ve ever put together a puzzle there comes a point when a large group of pieces come together just from the simple placement of one or a few. Most recently, from riding on the road, training on the range, walking around a crowded convention hall and finally a few discussions online I had a large group of pieces come together and finally have a well to tell the story to others.
Warning Zen Zone Ahead
Motorcycling constantly reaffirms old and teaches me new lessons about life. When it comes to vision, the lesson is probably the biggest of them all. You see, looking ahead not only applies to riding on the road, but living your life as well. If you focus too closely on what right in front of your face you’ll miss what is going on around yourself and quite possibly opportunities in the future can drastically change as well. The further you look and plan ahead the better things will eventually turn out. But let me start at the beginning instead of skipping ahead to the lesson learned.
For more than half of my life I’ve worked directly in sales, from on the floor retail stuff to national direct and factory representative situations. In all of those positions the key to any successful sales came from preparation. In every single sales training I’ve ever taught or trained, what to do before beginning the sale, has always included. In the teachings of Dale Carnegie, probably the most famous sales trainer, I learned many things, but one lesson that applies here is this “First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.” You see the mental state that you place yourself must be proper before you look at any situation and the same holds true on the street. If you have not set a state of mind first, when you do look at things your have no agenda and therefore no way to proceed until something happens. With a plan ahead of time, or as I just described, a state of mind, I can approach any situation prepared for the worst and therefore not stressed if the worst does happen and actually relaxed when the worst doesn’t happen.
While Total Control does address mental state, it does not break things down into a strategy. I don’t fault the curriculum for that because it is an advanced training program designed for riders who have been on the street for quite a while and does assume that these folks already have a strategy that they use and that works for them. The MSF curriculum that I teach also addresses “Are You Ready” in their training, but do not include Mental State in their prescribed SEE (Search, Evaluate, Execute) Street Strategy. Once again I don’t fault that curriculum because it obviously has millions of students that have benefited from its teachings. But that being said I do believe that after taking that training and before attending a TCARC a modified strategy can help to better handle the street and be more relaxed while doing so.
Over the last year I’ve spent a lot of time relaxing myself on the street and tracking exactly what I was doing that allowed me to have less and less issues or close calls. Over the past 6 months I found that literally nothing surprises me on the street and although I do get frustrated with the occasional stupid driver, I’m not in a dangerous or iffy situation because of that driver. Mostly because I apply a strategy that maximize both time and space whenever I drive or ride. I’ve also found the more I concentrate on the mental preparation of each situation then less stress and anxiety I have, and overall I’m a lot more relaxed and happy all the time. So. Let me share my approach and feel free to adapt it to what you use.
With my next post I'll introduce my advanced strategy for the street. I call it SCAN and as you'll see it is a comprehensive way to maintain your focus and safety as you move along the roadway.
Set your mind
Categorize stimuli
Analyze movement
Navigate the situation
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