“We’re coming up on a narrow section of trail that shoots between some boulders and has a good little drop coming out of them. You need to keep your speed up as you go through so you don’t lose momentum and end up going face first over your handlebars. It’s no problem. Just look where you want the bike to go.”
These were the instructions given by Josh, the Camp Director at Glorieta Family Camp in New Mexico. He had taken a group of us dads this past July high up in the Sante Fe National Forest on a pre-dawn mountain bike ride.
6:00 am. $4,000.00 electric mountain bikes. 63 degrees in July. A perfect morning.
Those bikes were the most fun you could have on two wheels and the electric help was completely necessary for those of us that live at 500 feet of elevation now climbing at 7,000 feet. Once at the top, we rode over to a trail aptly named Hole Molè where Josh could give us some really important downhill guidance before our descent.
“Look where you want to go.”
We were getting a crash course on target fixation. During World War II, pilots went through training learning to avoid this particular danger. It was possible for them to concentrate so heavily on a target that they could possibly run their plane into it.
Mountain bikers face the same problem. On narrow single track, there are numerous hazards to avoid. Large and small boulders. Roots. Branches. Trees to squeeze between at high speed. Cliffs. With all of these problems in front of you, you have two choices. You can either focus on the hazards themselves or you can look around them to where you want to go. If you stare at the two trees, you’ll hit one of them. If you focus on the line you need to take between them, your bike will go there instead. Focusing on the hazards you want to avoid leads you directly into them, but actively looking around the hazards leads your mind and therefore your body in another direction.
The market has me thinking a good deal about target fixation lately. CNBC, Twitter, CNN, & Fox News are all screaming “Look at the boulders and trees and roots!” And rightfully so, there have been some pretty significant boulders to look at lately.
Those are some big boulders over the last month. Staring at charts like this and listening to endless pundits act like they know the market’s next move is target fixation. The more focused we become on things we’d rather avoid, the more likely we are to make decisions that run us into the proverbial boulder unintentionally.
What if, instead, we looked around the boulders we want to avoid?
What if we looked around a giant boulder in 2008 and trees in 2011 and roots at the end of 2015? What if we looked where we wanted to go financially? It might give our long-term financial plan a better chance of succeeding. What if instead of looking at the most recent statement or watching the financial media melt down, we looked forward three or five or ten years down the road. What if we planned our future starting with the end of our life and looking backwards at the life we want to intentionally live? What if we actively looked ahead to where we wanted to go and who we wanted to become?
This recent market descent may be close to its end or it may have a ways to go. There will be boulders, roots, stumps, drops, & trees. However, if we actively look ahead at the life we want and the impact we want to make, our bike may just head that direction.
*And if you want to see a clip of the Hole Molè trail produced by Mountain Bike New Mexico, here you go!
**Gap at 0:32
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.