09 Jul [July 9, 2011] Determination in the Crash of Life: Lessons from the Tour de France
It’s July.
For some of the world that means the Tour de France, the greatest bicycle race of them all.
Encompassing 21 days and 3430 kilometers (2131 miles) it’s a small micro world of struggle, determination, dedication, commitment, and overcoming physical and mental resistance. [to read last year’s ezine about the Tour de France and Training the Mind with Meditation click here]
This year, the first week of the Tour has been fraught with crashes and injuries and some of the big names of cycling having to drop out of the Tour.
- Bradley Wiggins from the UK had a bad fall, left the race, and is having surgery.
- Tom Boonen, the Belgian star cyclist stepped into the team car after crashing on his head a couple days before.
- The most painful was watching Chris Horner, the American whose training was at his best as he hoped for a possible podium finish.
Yesterday Chris Horner was involved in a massive pileup by the side of the road about 40 k’s from the stage finish. The cameras showed him lying still for a few minutes until the team doctor arrived.
Chris was able to get back up on his bike and finish the day. Sheer determination got him to the finish but the docs there seeing him dazed, confused and unaware that he had finished
packed him on a stretcher and off to the hospital. 
Even the commentators speak of how scary these situations can be, watching them. One can only imagine how dreadful it would be to a family member seeing your son so
vulnerable on international television, unable to help. My heart goes out to all the people caring for these determined men. [latest news is that Chris is fine – Thank God! Had to pull out of the Tour because of a painful hematoma on his leg.]
No one wants to drop out of the race. Despite injuries these men get back up, want back into the race. That’s what’s on their minds. Not the crash, not how hurt they are but getting back in.
This is THE race of the year for all cyclists. Just to ride in it is an honor. To drop out is a difficult defeat.
But let me not give you the wrong idea!
The Tour is not all dread and horror and pain and suffering.
We get to watch someone like Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter from the Isle of Mann win his 17th stage win of the Tour de France.
Some call Mark the fastest man in the world as he powers his bike time after time over the finish line. Last year he got 5 stage wins. He’s hoping for more than the two he’s already won this year.
To give some perspective, Lance Armstrong had 22 stage wins in his career of winning the most Tour de France titles. Mark Cavendish in his five years of pro cycling seems to be moving up to become a legend.
What does this have to do with healing?
I know. You were starting to feel like I was going totally off on a tangent, living the dream of being a sports commentator! [Sorry 🙂 not one of my dreams — but I do love the Tour] But here’s the thing.
All of these guys are teaching us about determination, commitment, keeping the end in sight.
Knowing there’s a goal and we can get there. Yes, you might fall, yes, you might get hurt. All that is true. What we see are a few things: intention/motivation, single pointed concentration, and the importance of fellowship/belongingness/community.
Intention/Motivation
When we’re in a healing crisis or process we often find ourselves feeling like “it” is happening to us. We’re “fighting a battle,” we’re working against this difficulty that has overcome us.
Perhaps of the lessons for those of us on the sidelines is making a choice to be in the experience.
Mark Cavendish, the “Missile” said the other day that he believed that “if you really, really, really want something to happen you can make it happen.”
He’s got the want. That want – the intention to win, motivates him.
Two subcategories: 1) Feeling Worthless and 2) Having The Felt Sense There’s More to Life But No Idea How To Get There
Feeling Worthless: Now, maybe you don’t want to win the Tour de France, or any other sports race in the world. Maybe you’re like so many of the clients I see who feel worthless,
incapable, or simply have no idea what they want to do.
After a lifetime of not feeling wanted, cared about, where life has taken you down it feels like there’s nothing out there worth going after or worth living for. There’s this passive willingness to end it now.
From this place, how do you generate an interest to stay in the process and live a different life, generating a different outcome?
Felt Sense There’s More: Or maybe you “know” something inside, something you want to be or do but have no idea how to get there. At least Cavendish knew what he wanted, you might not.
You might have that inner knowing, that longing, that inner agitation or warm bath of joy that is trying to find its way out, trying to move you toward something. It amazes me that so many people have that inner sense of knowing. So many people have that longing yet can’t figure out how to harness the longing for more. [see the blog entry on Life Means Longing]
Single Pointed Concentration
What these guys in the Tour show is there complete focus on getting where they want to go. It’s not all easy. The physical training can be hard.
And for those of us who struggle with diet and food it might be good to know that even the greats, like Chris Horner have difficulty changing diets and eating a healthier diet. Here’s his blog post as he writes about changing his diet from Big Mac’s, soda, and candy bars; found the discipline in dieting even more difficult than training for the Tour de France.
We get lost in the old patterns of our lives, our old ways of being. Cultivating a new way, like Chris Horner changing his diet, is hard for every one of us. [Alice Rosen writes about her dream of changing the fast food culture with mindfulness. Click here to see her blog post.]
Cconcentration meditation is one way to train yourself in that invaluable orientation of one-pointed focus.
Let’s say you have a felt sense that there’s more but you have no idea how to get there. You need know take the time to become aware of the inner stirrings, the longings, the pull, the call that starts from inside.
Where is that pull, that dream, the sensation located?
Be with it as you would an infant, fascinated by every movement. Learn about it, dropping all content about it and instead becoming mesmerized in a single pointed way.
Fellowship/Belongingness/Community
Cavendish continuously attributes his stage wins to the organization and fellowship of the 8 other riders that literally take him to the finish line. They have what’s called the best “lead out” team in the world.
Each of the riders line up in front of Cavendish as they prepare for the sprint. Each guy at the head of the line gives it his all till he can’t take it any longer, peels off and the rider behind him takes over, giving it his all till he can’t. Each peels off until “Cav” is left with the finish line ahead and takes the ride home, earning the win.
The peloton, the term used in cycling for the pack of riders riding together, makes the most of the combined energy of everyone on the race. It’s easier to keep a fast pace within the peloton than riding on your own. You get into the slipstream of those in front, like Cavendish does with his lead out team, and it’s easier to move forward.
When we’re in rocky emotional worlds, feeling tender, lost, insecure, unwanted it’s incredibly difficult to make contact with others. We expect to feel shamed, humiliated, unwanted.
More importantly, though, we often don’t know how to join on the connection. We used to seeing how people don’t want us so we continue seeing that.
This is where concentration, the ability to focus single pointedly on one thing instead of the other, can change your life.
What if, in the presence of others, instead of seeing your normal habit of what’s wrong with you, and how you don’t fit in, or what’s wrong with the other – what if, instead you looked for and deliberately focused on what you’re doing right, what brings you joy in connection, seeing how others move toward you instead of away?
We hold onto those painful rejections (perceived or imagined) and fill them with life.
The beauty of being part of a larger community, in which we feel we belong, is we are carried along by the fellowship and presence of others especially when we feel we don’t have it in us.
Maybe in the end all I want to say is that “You’re not alone. There are people out there. Reach out. Don’t let the old patterns keep you down. We’re all in here pedaling together. Come find us. We want to know you.” For more information check www.nbcsports.com/cycling or the versus cable channel.