Prospective Retrospection Explained
Roadman, today I want to talk to you about a little strategy to make sure you get the most out of every single day. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman Cycling Podcast. Thank you for joining me. It's good to be back and stick another week down. First week since the post at Jiro the Talia break and it's nice to be back. So on is splitting the stones here in Dublin, getting out, riding my bike as often as I can and back into the swing of things with the podcast. Today I I want to talk to you about something that sounds like a little bit of a tongue twister. Prospective Retrospection. Yeah, I fucking said it. I said it. Prospective Retrospection. What the fuck is that? It's a really simple strategy and I want to talk to you about it today. Before I do, just a heads up about Patreon. Pause it. It's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. I'm a full-time podcaster. That's the way you you can choose to pay me for my work. It's a model of being cool and being sound reciprocity. If you're getting some value from this, you're paying fucking sco-y Amazon, Netflix, all those faceless corporations. So think about supporting myself, a small independent creator. And also what makes a huge difference is, wherever you listen to the podcast, like it, review it, share it with a friend and tag me over on social, because I get a real kick out of that. It's roadman.cycling. So, prospective retrospection, what is that? Well, it's the idea that right now we're living a dream life, and it's the dream life of our future selves. So if you fast forward to some time in the future, what we love to do is riding the bike, but at some time in the future, whether it's our kids, if you have any kids or a doctor, they'll say to you, it's no longer possible for you to ride the bike. And you're gonna sit in that Norsein' home looking out the window and you're going to look back so fondly on days like today when you can just pick up the bike and you can head out the door. So it's putting yourself into the body of your future self and the mind of your future self and knowing that we will decay and at some point we will physically be unable to do that which we love. Now step back into it and the enjoyment you'll get out of it. So this podcast is very much based of my last time meditation podcast was on Tuesday, which we got a lot of feedback from and people wanted to go a little bit deeper on that. So that's what this one's about. So right now your day is, they may not seem special, but there is a chance you'll look back on these days as inverted commas to good old days. And a nice little trick that I like to use around this as well, it's trying to picture myself like I'm writing an autobiography. each evening at bedtime. I'll look back on the story I told for today and I'll say well the story I wrote today with my actions. Am I proud of that story? Is it an exciting chapter in my book? And that way you can start to infuse it's the Helen Keller quote that I love and I quote it so often that life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Framing Setbacks As Lessons
It makes sure each day it has some meaning and we're not just drift and truer but also as a storyteller you learn an important concept and that's this idea of framing. So you take something that's very typical for a boy gracer, it's a crash. And so we'll take a crash where you're in a boy grace and you come into a corner and you slow it out front wheel. Front wheel sloid out are horrible. If you've raked long enough everyone's had one. So when you're sitting back at the end of the day you get to frame this or when you're writing your book at the end of your life you know this doesn't have to be an actual book, this is a metaphor. But you get the frame and by that I mean put into context that crash. So you could obviously choose to look at it and say I slid out on a corner, cyclin's fucking little. I'll never do that again. And this is the chapter about how cyclin is little and you realize it's a very dangerous pastime and you're never going to do it again. Or you can go more on the aggressive and you can be like, you know, someone put that gravel on the corner, fuck them or even maybe the race organizers are just negligent not sweeping the corner or we can look at this and say, this is the day I learned how to corner. This is the day I learned that there's a number of things that are important. Entry speed, breaking, line. This is the day I learned how to corner and this is the chapter where I learned how to corner in my life and it becomes a tale that you can pass on down the ages. So that's what I wanted to do. It's a short podcast today but it was just a simple and enough concept that sounds very confusing. I'll grant you that retrospective, prospective retrospective, retrospective, and you know, both do take some time and just to make it actionable do take some time. Whether it's today and it's a bit of a time out or this evening and you're looking back on your day and you're dealing with the kind of chapter idea and what was today's chapter like or if you're just taking some time during the day in your daydreaming. Fast forward to that time. Maybe it's 20 years from now, maybe it's 50 years from now. When you're going to be not as physically capable as you are now, your mind is still going to be there and somebody is going to say at some point, you know what, you're not able to cycle anymore. You can't cycle anymore. It's too dangerous. It's too medically harmful. If you crash, it's going to be devastating injuries and we're going to have to look after you so you can't cycle anymore. So you'll sit there and you'll look back on days like today and think, oh the sun is beaming down, there's kids playing outside, I haven't got that much on my work island or I could definitely squeeze in a riot, my bike is sitting in the corner, what the fuck am I waiting for, old man, let's get on the road. Road man, thanks for joining me, enjoy the week and take that, get out and riot and enjoy the ride, tag me in the shit on Instagram because I love seeing the pictures, I love hearing the stories, I get just such cool messages from listeners around the world on the podcast and I just I get such a kick out listening to these messages and these stories and it's you know it's one of the main I don't know I want to say it's one of the main motivations for me on the podcast because it's definitely not one of the main motivations but it's just so enjoyable I just won I won't say who it's from but I just got one last week and I put a smile on my face I've been listening to the podcast for a while now and I enjoy and appreciate everyone.
Listener Story From Philadelphia
I just want to mention a little about my motivation. I know you talk a lot about doing what you can do just to get out the door and ride. I had a long weekend which included taking care of my wife who got a call, bad allergies. Monday morning around 6, I was lying in bed trying to decide should I go for a ride. After about 10 minutes I told myself, for the rest of the day you're going to be thinking about one of two things. You'll be thinking about the ride you went on this morning or you'll be thinking about how you should have went riding this morning. So I got out and rode. I had one hell of a ride. I only had time to do about 16 miles but it was well awarded. The weather was perfect. The streets of Philadelphia were semi-quiet and I was able to put on a couple of PRs on local segments. Thanks for all you're doing. Those sort of messages are just so brilliant to me that, you know, the words I'm speaking into a microphone in Dublin are reaching somebody in the streets of Philadelphia and it's given them that motivation to get out the road. Roadman, enjoy the weekend, Right safe, I'm gonna catch you on Monday. Okay, stop what you're down. It's Anthony again. I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight-week challenge. So for eight weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. Whatever that is. For eight weeks, I want to take you under my wing and I want to personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling and went off and taught a really big business man. I came back and I realised I wanted to get into cycling but I knew after a bit the training alone it actually wasn't making me any fitter. My needs is an entire system. It needs a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm going to give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used, and even the motivational audios I listened to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week, or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time at roadmancycling.com forward slash eight weeks. Chatty all soon.