1.Robeman, here's why you shouldn't rush into a New Year's resolution

Robeman, here's why you shouldn't rush into a New Year's resolution. Let's cure 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 Robeman Podcast. Rolmen, welcome back. I hope everybody had an amazing Christmas. It is Monday the 28th of December 2020. I do the podcast 5 days a week and I take a break on Saturday and Sunday but over Christmas, weekdays, weekends, they ceased to have any meaning and they all just kind of blend into one. So it actually feels like I've been cheating. It feels like I haven't been putting in the grind on the podcast, even though I actually haven't missed a day. My last podcast to you guys was Friday, Christmas Day, and now I'm back on Monday to 28. So I took off the 26th and the 27th. But yeah, just the way Christmas is for today's don't mean anything. New Year resolution it is kind of at the front of my mind now and I gave some time and I sat silently with myself kind of over the Christmas and started, you know, there's a famous lyric, I can't even remember what song it is, I'm contemplating thinking about thinking and that's what I'm doing, I'm starting to contemplate this new year process and new year resolution and I know a lot of people think new year resolutions are fluffy and they say, oh you know I make decisions in real time but it is a nice period of the year where it's typically not as busy for people, especially in a professional work context. So you get to press pause a little bit and reflect quietly on the year and sort of set your intentions and your goals for the following year. So I'm not as skeptical as I used to be about new year resolutions. Before I jump in and tell you where I'm going with this, I want to remind you all to head across to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch guys in my mind the podcast has been a massive success up to this point. And it's getting to the point now where I I need to start monetizing the podcast and we need to start giving the Patreon a bit more love, a bit more of a push. I'm gonna start developing more Patreon-specific content and I got loads of plans in the new year for Patreon. So please jump over there, support the podcast, make sure it keeps rolling forward into 2021. So I wanna let you in a bit into my taught process in these days leading up to my New Year's resolution. And as I start is just slowing down and shutting out some of the noise and distractions of my life over the last few days and stepping away from technology a little bit. I started having time to formulate my thoughts. And one of the things that's definitely been on my mind is Plato and he attributed these words to Socrates. And I think this was in his letter, the apology. And it's an unexamined life is not worth living. I don't know if I fully agree with it, an unexamined life is not worth living because there's almost connotations of suicide or giving up and that it's binary that you have to either examine your life or end your life. I think it's a softer version as my interpretation of it. That our unexamined life, it brings unnecessary, unneeded drama and it's definitely the teeth of fun. So as we start out this year and every year, what anyone who believes in resolutions, what we try and do is we try and create a life for ourselves, a vision of our life that seems attractive to us. And to do that, we use routines, patterns, relationships, experiences. And this tries to bring us closer to our interpretation of happiness of, as Plato says, a life well lived. So we stitch together these routines, patterns, relationships and experiences.

2.We curve them and mold them in such a way that that we hope we can…

And we curve them and mold them in such a way that that we hope we can get to something of a life well lived. And if we're lucky, we get something which is closely aligned at the end of the year when we get to the end of December and we look back at the previous year, we get to something which is closely aligned to that vision which we set out for at the start of the year. But it's possible that that vision wasn't entirely correct or what more likely is that along the way to pursue that vision, It was like a mirage and we were lured in a different direction and we didn't even realize it. Even for those who are lucky, for those people who get to live out a year, aligned with that vision, happiness itself, it's what we're all searching for. That happiness itself can be very, very elusive. So I take this time for reflection and I give my thoughts some space to breed because ultimately the quality of those thoughts, that's what determines the quality of my life. Now stay with me, I know I'm getting slightly heavy on this. The quality of our thoughts determine the quality of our life. So think about that for a second. So states like happiness, stress, anger, suffering, these are all mental events. These have to happen in our mind, in our consciousness for them to be real. Now I'm not so naive to think that a year of COVID where it's, you know, devastates our ability to socialize and social isolation is so prevalent. I'm not saying that that has no effect whatsoever on your thoughts. Like the world obviously shapes our body and our body shapes our mind. But for those things to matter, for that sadness, for that stress to manifest and for that to matter, it has to appear in our consciousness. So if you take COVID, there's a a couple of ways of looking at it, you can spend 2021 and you can try to change the world and you know, great, some people will, they'll come up with a vaccine. Or maybe you're a non-believer in the lockdowns and the strategies that governments are pursuing at the moment, and you can try to change other people's beliefs to match your own beliefs. But two of those are very difficult paths to tread. Ultimately, what's going to be a lot easier for you to do is to control the quality your thoughts. You can cease to respond to life in ways that produce needless suffering for yourself and those around you. Like us to bring it back to a cycling example, like earlier this year you heard in the podcast, I was warming up for a race, routine enough Saturday evening race, and I crashed and my bike broke. Stupid crash, totally my fault. My bike smashed, really really annoying. But I get to choose how I respond to that because the world around me has chosen to crash at that moment. Whatever sequence of events led to that crash, it was out of my control in that moment. But I do get to choose that response. I can go home, I can fuck, and I can course, and I can be miserable, and I can let it affect the quality of my thoughts, and then seep into into the quality of the relationships around me or a compressed pause and go, you know what, accidents happen. Give yourself a break. How can you get a lend of another bike and jump back on the horse tomorrow? And it has so much less drama. That's such a, the impact of that event on those around me is minimum. As opposed to that same event happening, a metron and absolute, stroppy and coming home and everyone I interact with and bringing them down, it's just a horrible, horrible place to be. And this is why I started the podcast when I talked about this softer version of an unexamined life isn't worth living because I feel like the unexamined life brings unneeded drama. Like you take that, you know, some people and drama attracts drama.

3.We all know that person and they just seem to have endless drama in…

We all know that person and they just seem to have endless drama in their lives. They're not in control of their thoughts. And I've had Peter Ryan on the podcast as a guest before and he was a recent speaker in my Roman performance summit. And a line that Peter said to me years ago, Peter is visually impaired if anyone doesn't know the story and he's lived since the age of 16 or 17 with a visual impairment and his story is inspirational in a lot of ways and he's a good mate so I don't like to tell him that too often because that's the Irish way. But I've learned so much from him and just in habits, in attitudes and there was one line I can't remember the exact situation that he ordered it, but he said to me, offense isn't taken. Sorry, offense is taken, not given. And I never really understood what that meant. And it's a catchphrase almost that I've heard him saying a bunch of times, offense is taken, not given. And recently I've come to realise what that means. If I'm out on the bike and I get a close pass from a car, I get to choose. Your man has dealt out the offense, but I get to choose if I take that offense or not. So in between the stimulus, the car horn beeping or the close pass and my response, gone crazy, shouting and trombone water bottle at him, there's a gap, there's a gap in between stimulus and response and in that gap you get to choose the quality of your thoughts in the gap between someone you know slower and peter from being visually impaired and him choosing to get down on himself for being visually impaired there's a gap the gap between stimulus and response it really really affects the quality of your life so why am I going on this kind of tangent about the quality of our thoughts and you know the thoughts only matter or feelings like suffering anger, distress, this can only appear in our consciousness. Why is this important? Because it's time a year where we just need to exhale, breathe and give ourselves that space to reflect on the year that's gone, give ourselves, Realize that there has to be a mental components to a new year resolution, that it's possible to achieve all the material, success and sporting success and goals that you have planned for 2021, but still not be happy. And the reason for that is its consciousness, its the hot and anger success, fear, they can only be experienced in that consciousness. So in this period between now and when you set your new year resolution, I would highly encourage you to have a mental component to your new year resolution and don't have it entirely as something goal-oriented like a physical goal or a material goal or an earnings goal. Focus on the quality of those thoughts and you're going to have an amazing 2021. Roadman, thanks for listening to this sort of spiritual type rant. I'm going to be back again tomorrow. Jat Yereen. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join and arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.