Sarah Catto, a personalized learning coach with our office, explores failure in her final blog post about mountain biking and change.
Welcome to the third and final post in this series on mountain biking and change. In this installment, we will explore how mountain biking (MTB) and trying something new are similar when dealing with failure, especially if that failure involves having to fail the same thing over and over and over again. The trail that I found most recently in South Carolina is in Travelers Rest. Gateway Mountain Bike Park is a skills park with a smaller pump track and a bigger, more technical flow track. There are a few miles of trails of various skills levels. Some trails offer rock gardens, roll downs (drops), skinnies, wood bridges, and wood structures dropping off into rollers to jumps. It’s a practice park, one designed for mountain bikers to try and fail, and the first one I’ve ever ridden.
So how is this connected to change? I’m going to discuss three ways finding the flow in failure when mountain biking can help when we take on something new:
Context
Inner mantra
Mindset
Hopefully this post will help guide you to find the flow in failure when you are tackling change.
Context
It's nice to have a space where we feel like we can try something and fail and then try again and realize we improved a bit (even if we fail again). This MTB trail at Gateway is the perfect opportunity to try and fail and then try it again in a different way. Different from a “typical” MTB trail, Gateway was designed for practice. One of the Merriam-Webster definitions of practice is:
To perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency.
We practice to maintain and we practice to improve. That’s what makes Gateway unique. The tracks and trails are made for practice. When we practice, sometimes we do well and sometimes we don’t. My feeling riding these tracks was very different from riding my typical trails. I always feel free when I ride, but this time, it was a different sort of freedom. It was the context of that space allowing me the opportunity to truly practice and improve; to try something new, but know that anyone else who is there is practicing and improving too. In that common physical (and mental) space, there is comfort in knowing you can mess up. It’s almost expected.
So how can we create this kind of context in our settings as we take on change? As an educator in your building, do you feel that same kind of comfort as you tackle something new? Is there a common mental space shared by you and your colleagues where you all understand this is going to be a risk, but we are not expecting it to be perfect in the first, or second, or even fifth iteration? As a leader in your setting, do you believe your team feels this kind of freedom? If not, change is going to be difficult to undertake.
As you experiment with change, what is your inner mantra?
Inner Mantra
When I get on my bike and start a new trail, I usually get off my bike when I encounter something new that I haven't tried before. Take this, for example:
I encounter the obstacle, then I get off my bike, check it out visually, and tell myself how I’m going to go about trying it for the first time. Then I'll hop on my bike, and give it a shot. And in my mind, I have a mantra:
It's okay if you fall. It's okay if you fall. It's okay if you fall.
This inner mantra is new for me. When I first started mountain biking, I was terrified of falling. When I did inevitably fall, I would get frustrated and wouldn't give a second try on whatever caused me to fall. My inner mantra at that time was:
You better not fall. You better not fall. You better not fall.
I believed if I failed at something while riding, it showed how bad I was at this mountain biking thing and it would be better to just continue on down the trail, not look back, and definitely not try it again. It has taken years of falling off my bike, failing when I tried a new biking skill, trying something over and over again until, finally, I could say, “It’s okay if you fall.” That inner mantra doesn’t set me up to fail. It sets me up to know that if I do, it’s okay.
As you experiment with change, what is your inner mantra? It may be background noise, but it is important background noise that you can have control over. It reflects what your mindset is, which is the final component of finding flow through failure.
Mindset
Let's take a look at this:
This is Gateway’s flow track. Watch a video of someone (not me) riding it here. Flow tracks are designed with bermed turns, rollers, and jumps that allow you to keep your speed up with minimal pedaling. They are made to keep your “flow” going. When you hit the flow, it feels exhilarating. But it’s not necessarily a skill every MTB rider is born with. For me, finding the flow is difficult. So I knew this part of the Gateway Park was going to be the first feature I practiced. The first time I tried this, I was braking entirely too much. If you’ll remember, from my second blog post, one tip is to stay relaxed and off the brakes. I was not following that tip at all as I tried this flow track. I was nervous and my mindset was focused on the fact that I knew this was something I wasn’t good at when it comes to biking.
The nice thing about the design of this park is that the features like the flow track take less than a minute to run through. Which means it is designed for you to try it, loop back around, and try it again. My first time through, all I could focus on was how many times I was braking. The second time, my goal was to not brake on the first bermed turn. My mantra became:
Lean instead of brake. Lean instead of brake. Lean instead of brake.
If I could lean more into the bermed turns, the acceleration I would gain from them would set me up for that “flow” I was searching for in this ride.
On my second, third, and even eighth run through this flow track, I was still braking a lot more than usual. But the design of the track supported me in trying again, and again, and again. Until finally, on my ninth attempt, I found the flow. I came out of the last bermed turn with a whoop of exhilaration and success. I had to try something 9 times over until I found the flow. I had to learn from each pass through, adjust where I was braking and leaning, monitor where I was gaining and losing speed. That takes a flexible mindset that is willing to try something several times.
We see lots of posts, articles, and pictures about mindset. Are you flexibly encountering the “hard stuff” while tackling change? Are you willing to loop back around and give it another try? Finding the flow through failure isn’t easy. But if you can achieve it, it’s a feeling you’ll want to duplicate again and again.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog series. For the next few months, we will have guest blog authors from around our state sharing their journeys and viewpoints around personalized learning. Stay tuned!