Self Development is like Riding a Bicycle

Self development is like riding a bicycle: Little hills are easy to cross if you got some momentum. If you loose too much momentum however, you need to shift down or you may even need to get off your bike and push it to the top of the hill. At the cost of some valuable time.

No matter it can be physically demanding to always keep your momentum but you reach your goals much faster if you do. Plus, it’s somewhat more pleasant to feel the fresh air pressing against you.

Unfortunately, there are neither mental pedals nor mental feet you could pedal with. So building mental momentum differs a little from building speed on a bike. But just a little.

Let’s see how building mental momentum actually works:

Preparation

If you start to ride completely unprepared you risk having to move back to your starting point. That’s not what you want to do, so consider applying the following tips:

• Goal awareness: Do you know your goals yet? Your movement is just not effective if you don’t. I mean, how would you even know you’re moving into the right direction? You don’t need to plan every stopover but you should at least have a vague idea about where the journey should lead you.
• Safety measures: Know that you will experience times of doubt and maybe even frustration. Set up the steady will of not giving up. Having a hard time moving usually just means that you are moving up a hill. So look forward to the downhill ride that is yet to come! I also recommend writing a little motivational text you can read when you’re feeling bad.

Starting to Move

Time to ride!

1. Set small goals. This is the mental equivalent to start driving in the first gear. I recommend daily goal setting for fastest results.
2. Speed up the process of reaching those goals. This doesn’t mean you need to do achieve an amazing number of small goals a day, just make sure you built enough mental momentum to reach those goals fast and with ease.

Shifting Gears

When going for your small goals starts to become less demanding and you feel that you possess some unused motivation, you might want to change up:

1. Set some bigger goals. They shouldn’t be too hard. Setting goals that are out of reach would considerably slow you down. It would be like changing up too early. You shouldn’t choose goals that are too easy to reach either, as you need to go to the next level in order to get extra momentum. You don’t want to stagnate, do you?
2. Again, speed up the process of reaching those goals. Use your collected momentum to reach these bigger goals. Everytime you complete a task, your speed will increase by some amount.
3. Then you might want to change up again.

Repeat this process until you grew beyond what you’ve thought to be possible. Believe me, this mental momentum is some kind of motivation that will help you to yield quite some amazing results.

One additional note: You don’t unlearn riding a bike. Think about it.