I was riding my Harley-Davidson Road King a few days ago when my mind suddenly thought -
“The Chinese Philosophical concept of Yin and yang describes how opposite or contrary forces may be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world.”
What? What? Huh?
It happened right in front of the Daytona Speedway and got me thinking about advice I give my clients about slowing down. It goes like this -
“You must slow down to get what you want.”
Advice like that is why I get the big bucks for what I do. No, not really. I get paid because nobody believes me, and it’s up to me to prove it.
Let’s go riding.
Whenever I’m cruising on my motorcycle, I love fast and loud, and it makes me smile. That’s the Yin of riding a bike, but you can only go fast and loud for so long before the light turns red in front of you or blue behind you.
Occasionally the place you were speeding toward gets congested, and you have no choice but to slow down. But when you are a high-performance machine designed to go fast, slowing down can be challenging - especially on an 800 pound Harley.
That’s where the Zin of riding a motorcycle comes into play.
Slowing down is the opposite of fast, yet it can yield the same result - if you know what you are doing.
Whether it’s your life or a motorcycle, success requires precision control. If you get it right and trust yourself and your machine, you will continue to make progress.
On a motorcycle…
1) Slow down but keep moving. Never stop.
2) Rev your engine so that you always have power to your wheels.
3) Since the motorcycle wants to go faster, pull the clutch into the friction zone between nothing and everything while putting your foot on the rear brake.
What?
Slow down? Rev your engine? Hit the brakes?
Yes. That combination virtually assures that you keep moving forward in any situation, in full control, until it’s time to open it up again.
That same thing happens in life.
You can’t run full out all the time, and sometimes you need to a complete stop. For everything else in between, you keep moving forward - no matter how slow you go.