Maintaining focus ... lessons that I take from mountain biking into business

The topic for this article occurred in slightly amazing although somewhat painful circumstances. I have just returned home shortly after flying over the handle bars on a local downhill mountain bike trail. My arm is a bit cut up and also have a bruised foot (and a bit of a bruised ego as well) but there are some lesson for life that overlap from my mountain bike hobby and into my day time gig as a marketer in the international education sector.

Maintaining focus and stance - for a split second I did not focus fully on the trail and the task at hand and I am dealing with the consequences of that lack of concentration, a painful lesson. I was daydreaming and looking at a section of the trail which at the time wasn't the most important part. I wasn't focussed on the section of the track that allowed me to maintain my stance (or balance in this case)

Lesson - One of the awesome lessons that I learned in my career was about "maintaining stance". When it was mentioned within meetings at the time had absolutely no idea what it actually meant, it wasn't until years later at an Aikido demonstration that it dawned on me. In a nutshell, how we focus on the task, maintain consistency in how we do things and how will interact will determine how we are perceived and how we are able to achieve our goals

Goal setting - every time I head out when I head out on the mountain bike there is some kind of goal attached, usually distance or time related. Believe it or not the most I have ridden in one day was 103km. My goal that day was simply to ride to Katoomba from Springwood (a significant climb uphill), have a look at the Three Sisters and then back to Springwood. I felt alright when I arrived and decided to keep on riding up to the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath.

From there, I decided to keep on going. I had achieved the distance that I originally set out, felt alright and decided to keep on going. There is a point, somewhere around the 80km mark where the type of energy your body uses changes, this is when you hit the wall. The 10km between 80 and 90 were the toughest, even though road was downhill. At 90km, I was so close to 100km that I just wanted to push on for the achievement.

Lesson - Within our businesses and as an individual we need to set goals in the short, medium and the long term but we also need to be dynamic and resilient enough to adapt and adjust our goals when required. We need to be able to push ourselves in order to achieve what is seemingly impossible or potentially insane at the time of setting the goal.

Healthy thoughts - When I moved to the mountains I was terribly unfit, both in body and mind. When you are active and enjoying life you simply have more energy to enjoy life and to make better decisions. Before I moved, the furthest I moved over the weekend was to cross the train track to buy the Sunday paper and then chill out with some snacks while reading it. It was a genuinely unhealthy existence. I had no energy and simply didn't care. These days, I am looking forward to spending as much time that I can out and about.

Healthy thoughts obviously assist us as individuals but we can also harness that to help those who are in less fortunate positions than ourselves. Over the past five years I have been actively using my hobby to assist children's cancer research charities in finding a cure.

Lesson - body and mind are related. When you get both aligned you will be at your most productive.

Clearing the mind - for me, mountain biking provides a bit of an escape from the day to day routine of being in the office. An added advantage is that some of the trails that I go to take me off the grid. Having that some of the most productive and best ideas that I have had have been fifteen kilometres down the back of a fire trail somewhere.

Lesson - finding an escape from the office and the regular routine is essential as it does assist in achieving better results when you are in the office

I am the International Regional Manager (Subcontinent) at Education Centre of Australia. The views expressed in my articles are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisation