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Mind Over Matter

Most Recent Ride Update:

3 weeks and one day in. First week: 400 miles (66 per riding day) Second week: 477 miles (80 per riding day) Third week: 564 miles (94 per riding day). Total including yesterday: 1541 miles, 80 avg per riding day, - 42,000ft climbing!


What's that? Thought he would be slowing down his pace? Then you don't know my dad!

Nearing the end of his journey, my dad has had time to reflect on his experience. Something he has given a lot of thought to is how he responds to challenges, both on the road and in life in general. Specifically, he has spent a lot of time thinking about the internal and external factors that shape how he faces obstacles. With so many obvious physical and mental challenges to overcome daily, understanding how these factors influence himself and each other has become increasingly important.


External Influences:

The biggest external influence for my dad has been the weather and road conditions, which are considered affective qualities of his physical surroundings. External factors are usually thought of as tangible elements that make doing something more or less enjoyable. The obstacles they create are so easily taken negatively, especially on a 40+ day bike ride across the country. His approach to overcome these factors is to focus on parts of the challenge that makes you happy to be where you are. My dad does this everyday by appreciating and exploring his environment and making sure to find beauty in both what makes his path easy and what makes it difficult.





As an athlete, he is accustomed to pushing through physical obstacles such as injuries or weather. A new challenge for him has come about through scarcity of food and water sources. Being in the middle of no where has massive impacts on his behavior and how he classifies needs and wants. For example, food and water are essential, which makes them a need. He has quickly learned that he doesn't NEED a steak dinner, that is just how he WANTS to satisfy his hunger. Accepting this has been difficult as you can imagine, no one wants to survive on granola and even beg strangers for water (only one time) at the end of a 100 mile day on a bike.

Another external factor he has come to appreciate is the network of people that make up his support system. These can range from forming relationships with people you meet on the road or reaching out to old friends to see a familiar face. He has been able to make immediate connections with the people he has met along the way through shared experiences, pain and achievements. He has also discovered the just noticeable difference in his time riding with a new stranger for a day, in that a tiny difference in personality, fitness, or ability can create a tremendous difference when spending so much time and biking with someone.

Making friends wherever he goes!

Who you surround yourself with and meet everyday have a significant social influence on your decision making and mindset. He has been able to spend time and recuperate with family friends along his route and have time to reset his mind in a familiar setting.

With so much change everyday as he explores new places, having rest days in a comfortable atmosphere has been so relaxing and appreciated. Other social influences come from emotional support you get friends on social media to messages of support from his wife and kids when he’s having a tough day.


Internal Influences:

With only a week and a half left in his journey, Freeman got the opportunity to speak to my consumer behavior class about how his decision-making process has changed in the past year. He used some of his time with my class to talk about the internal influences that have impacted his trip so far. The biggest factor for him has been maintaining a positive mindset through obstacles.

"I’ve talked about it before but today was another great example of how a poor mindset can significantly negatively impact the day." (Daily Diary 24)

Your bike breaks, you get a flat tire, you don't have access to the food you want or need. There are two ways to face these types of obstacles. A positive mindset or a negative mindset. Things go wrong, but one occurrence doesn't determine your entire day unless you let it.

He mentioned how focusing on having a positive outlook has caused him to go too fast because he wants to push himself further than he thinks he can. The tradeoff of this in his case, hurting himself or even worse: Missing out on the experience. This happened at the beginning of the trip, but luckily he quickly realized he was focusing too much on the utilitarian aspects of biking, being more task oriented and missing out on parts of the experience. To combat this, he started to look internally to what really motivates him and keep in mind what is truly driving his behavior. He came up with two major drivers that to get him through each day:

1. He was doing this to fulfill his dream and show his kids you can achieve anything you put your mind to

2. He could find mental strength through small achievements by chunking parts of his day into smaller more attainable goals that will boost his self-confidence.


For anyone who wants to know more about this kind of mindset, my dad recommends reading the book: You Can't Break Me by David Goggins.

Word Count: 926

Added Value: Daily Diary 24, Book Suggestion, Quotes from Guest Speaker Freeman!


CITATIONS:

Angell, A. (2019, March 20). CB Chapter 11: Situational Influences. Lecture presented at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Angell, A. (2019, February 4). CB Chapter 6: Personality, Lifestyle & Self concept. Lecture presented at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor

Babin. B., & Harris, E. (2017) CB8. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

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