1.Hello Rolmen and welcome back to another episode of the A1 Show

Hello Rolmen and welcome back to another episode of the A1 Show. I was away in Drona last week hence the little bit of radio silence. I had brought my microphone with me but yeah just didn't prove possible to get a recording done over there. The apartment that I rented in Airbnb you can't really seem to filter Airbnb boy acoustic quality so unfortunately sound is kind of like a a ping pong ball and if you can bounce it off a wall, hard surfaces, sound generally bounces off at the exact same way. And the architecture in Jirona, typically of, typical of Catalonian houses, it is beautiful but it's a lot of wood and it's a lot of exposed brick, neither of which make particularly good recording environments. So apologies for that and I am back today. So today I want to talk to you about Huyallove Cycling and this is going to be a little bit of a tangent to start off but you're well used to that. If you're a regular listener and if you're not sure you're going to get used to it. So I want to talk to you about Huyallove Cycling and sometimes complicated but often misunderstood philosophical concept called Stoicism and how the two of these intersect. low for cycling and this obscure philosophical, but it's not that obscure anymore. It's becoming more mainstream. It's been around for a long time since about 1500. It traces its origins back to Greek and into Rome. And we've, you know, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and leading tankers like that from the Roman era. Some serious hitters all throughout history have classified themselves as Stoics and it's just a way of thinking. And over the course of this podcast, I'm gonna show you how that this way of thinking on one of the core strands of it really intersects with Hoiai's cycle and Hoiai's thing cycling is such a powerful tool for bringing you happiness. People that have subscribed to this true timer like Nepoli and John F. Kennedy, we have a bunch of modern-day athletes down it and of course little only. Well this all came up and sprung into my head as an idea for the podcast about two weeks ago, just before I traveled to Jaroni. An old teammate of mine, Marko Callan from Aquabloon. He's not racing the bike so much anymore and he came down to me. He said he's looking to rediscover his love of sightland. He's going to come down for a weekend and we do a bit of exploring around Wicklow and so you can find that love again. We went out exploring through the Wicklow Mountains. We'd lovely been and as we wrote the conversation kind of stirred us too, is there a difference between racing and roiding? And there definitely is. I do them both for very different reasons and I remember in 2013 I was writing for a Stellist that year in the States and I had a particularly bad crash. I broke Colerbone, I broke my Glenoid Fosseau, which is your shoulder. I didn't know that at the time. why they use those obscure Latin terms is beyond me. I broke color bone, shoulder, bunch of ribs and it had collapsed long. A pretty bad day on over and I talked to a buddy of mine who was world tour and he was coaching me at the time and told him I'm finished rising and I was recovered from the injuries at this stage and I said to him I didn't want to quit when I was injured and I said look I'm finished rising and he said go and he rang me up on like the Monday like after this is I had a talk on a Friday and he rang me on the Monday saying I want to go for a ride. And I was like what are you talking about? Like I told you last week I'm finished and he's like yeah you're finished cycling. You finish racing. You didn't say you were finished riding. And I was at that moment like ah there's a difference. And there is a big difference and I got into cycling initially because I like riding my bike not because I like racing so long after the racing Corbin comes down for me, I'll still be riding my bike and today's podcast will attempt him to explain why I will still be riding my bike. So when we think about stoicism it just a brief little a brief little background to give you some context that's the one I'm going to talk about. So just some just two real taught leaders that I follow in stoicism, they're Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and the The big thing with Epictetus is it's a real simple question that he asks us to consider. He wants us to separate things into two buckets.

2.Those things which we can control and those things which we can't…

Those things which we can control and those things which we can't control. And the first intersection of Stoicism in Sowiklin happened for me in about 2012 when I heard Dave Bresford taking over Team Sky and he said their focus was going to be on controlling the controllables. we heard that before, separating two things in the two buckets, those which we can control and those which we can't. So the stock philosophy was very much indoctrinated into Team Sky earlier on, controlling the controllable. So much was happened in a race environment. So many things we can't control. We can't control the weather. We can't control the surface. We can't control how our opponents behave, our opponents tactics. But we can control loads of stuff about us and that's what they don't they set out to control the controllables Looking at aerodynamics force team to wear skin suits looking to use no shoe covers again focused on aerodynamics fuel and differently warming up before a race Sky change cycling by looking at the control of focus and all their effort on them and Taking that mental brain power and capacity out of wondering what the opposition are going to do wondering you know and engaging in this bitching gossip and and infighting that's often so rampant in these sort of incestuous environments like professional cycling can be. So when we take this philosophy and we extend it into life and we extend it into our interaction with cycling, you can buy a really fancy car, you can buy a Lamborghini or you can buy a bike but you can't make that bike and press people. So I can accumulate a lot of stuff as you go through life. you can hear my watch as houses crazy wealth, but you can't make people respect you, or you can't make your parents be proud of you. You can't control what other people do or think. You can only control your actions and your thoughts. So why are you trying to impress people with the house, with the fancy bike, with the fancy watch you bought? Instead, Epictetus teaches us, why don't we work instead on not needing to impress people? Or else, better, working on that insecurity that leads us to think that if we impress people, that we'll be somehow a better person. And that's a teaching that I've followed for a long time and I get a lot out of it. And there's some really high profile examples of stoicism being used to So, you know, better humanity. President Kennedy used it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He used the concept of stillness, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute. And the same in Napoleon used the concept of stillness as well to win many wars. So, there's some really, really powerful examples of how it's been used historically. But I wanna talk about why I use it because, and why I think you should focus on using it because when we focus all our energy on controlling that, which is within our control, so the team scoia idea of controlling the controllables, we get to decide what messages we allow in and what messages we don't allow in. We get full control over that. So we can say, no, I'm choosing to let these messages in, or I'm choosing not to let these messages in. So the Blaz Pascal, he had a quote saying, all of Man's problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And we are in a world of constant distractions, absolute distractions everywhere, from phones to TVs, to advertisements from friends and parents and co-workers vying for our time and our attention. And we move really, you know, without any mindfulness from one task to the next, never really sit and still. And I don't even think I need to say, I think all of us, when I will all think of our own example, when I say what's stillness, when I say stillness, I don't mean the act of just sitting perfectly still. I'm using stillness to mean a moment of just being completely present. So think about moments you've been completely present. So for me, it's, you know, Christmas with my family, sitting at the Christmas table with my family. I'm completely present in that moment. I'm laughing at the shit Christmas cracker jokes. I'm eating the food. I'm just totally there at my family. I never think at that moment I wondered again an email. I wondered whether I checked Twitter. It's almost like the whole world has checked out at the same time. So it's given me permission to be still, to be in the moment, to be focused. And we've all have other examples that I always can draw for some people. It's their wedding day. For me, I know I remember after finishing exams, I always had this complete piece and calmness and stillness.

3.Was a feeling of accomplishment, yes

It was a feeling of accomplishment, yes. But there was a feeling of, right, I'm exactly where I need to be. Because the day after exam, it was almost like fresh opportunity, but I've done everything I can up to this point and it's not yet to the point where I need to think about what I'm doing next. So, it was just a somewhat manufactured perfect stillness. You'll find that stillness, it's not something you can buy, it's not something you can get. It's more the, it's a reductionist theory, it's more when you start stripping other things away that you get stillness, when you strip the exams away, when you strip the distractions away, when you strip the noise away. That's why meditation has become so so popular. In recent years of spoken about meditation on this podcast, I love meditating. I know so many listeners meditating. It used to be even when I was getting started in cycling. It was probably a little bit taboo or a little bit left to feel to say you meditated. I think a good chunk, I don't want to say a majority, but a good chunk of my friends and show listeners also meditate. If not habitually they do it every now and then. And the idea of meditate is just to be present for a long period of time. But this can take years, it can take some time decades to get really good at this. Like you look at the monks and the monkey who sold his Ferraris, actually a cool book, just a tangent. The monkey who sold his Ferraris, the book about this lawyer who goes and searches, kind of answers what's the question we're all on the path to search, who do I want to be, and what path do I want to take to get there. and he finds these monks and the monk has some eternal truths for him and yeah it's well worth a read but anyway these monks like every monk had spent decades nearly trying to find this still and some peace and peace but i found the answer and you found the answer and we don't even know it so cycling is an absolute forced mastery of meditation like i rode in Wicklow on was it someday with a friend and on every hill there wasn't one thing I thought about. I didn't think about, oh I wonder if I had my mobile phone bill, oh I wondered if it bins you out tomorrow, I wonder what's for dinner to save, then I wonder how this work situation is developed, and I wonder how this investment is progressing. I didn't think about anything only that moment, the pedal stroke, my breast, the effort, all just melted into one forced meditative state up the side of the mountain and that for me is the beauty and why cycling is just so amazing. It's this meditative experience that takes lay folk, we'll use lay folk to anyone who's not a cyclist. It takes them almost a lifetime of mastery. A lifetime of practice to achieve mastery and and we get it every time we go out cycling. In this forced, the forced exertion, it's almost a survival to get up the hill. You need to put out that amount of effort or if the bike just doesn't go forward and you don't get the way you need to go. And I've tried meditating. I meditate most days. Meditations hard. Like if you get 10, 20 minutes of meditation, that's pretty good. Most people find themselves getting a little, when I say most people, I'm talking about me, find myself getting a little bit distracted, I wonder how long I've been doing it now. My mind wanders a little better. If I'm doing guided meditation or sometimes the mind just goes off and a bit of a tangent and I start thinking about something completely different. And cycling is just such an amazing escape from just the digital bombardment we're getting. At the moment, you're on track to spend 42% of your life looking at a screen. How depressing is that? You're going to look at it or your computer or your phone for 42% of your life going forward. Cycling is such an escape from that. And that's why I absolutely love this daily sort of practice of meditation. And by allowing all the messages, by allowing all the messages in, sorry, I just have to drop my laptop there, by allowing all the messages in and constantly looking down the road, we end up getting this kind of conditional happiness. This is if we don't filter messages. If we just let in and we don't take time to be mindful of it and to be still and decide what messages are important, what messages aren't, we just get bombarded. And oftentimes we fall victim to this conditional happiness.

4.Is the odd be happy when culture

This is the odd be happy when culture. And think about the I'll be happy when culture I'll be happy when I win that race at the end of the season I'll be happy when I get my gravel bike. I'll be happy when I get the new S works carbon shoes You get the S works carbon shoes. You get the gravel bike. What happens life just goes back to normal So you fooled yourself into thinking I'll be happy when But what do we do we don't learn from this like this is we are rational creatures most of the time but this just makes no sense to me. I'll be happy when culture. We've all experienced that we've all got to the destination and then seen that it's a move on goal post. I'll be happy when I make 100k. Well happens, someone gets there and then they go, they don't go, oh, I'm not happy, I'm at 100k and I'm still not happy. What they do is they change the target. Oh, maybe it's 200k I need to together. They don't work on just being happy now. They just don't learn the lesson. So, yeah, I'm not saying on this, don't have goals because goals are so important for an athlete. We need to have goals. What I'm saying is set the goals, have them set and then leave them. Don't touch them again and think about the process and immerse yourself in the process. So when I'm talking about someone's goal, what I say is, okay, that's the goal. Now let's look at the process. Now, are you in love with this process? Because if you're not in love with the process, you've picked the wrong goal. Because the process is what's going to make you happy. Because there's no destination, there's no winning any race, there's no material possession that's going to make you feel happy if you don't already feel happy. So if somebody comes to me and I say I want to do the dirty cans the next year. Well, do you like riding on gravel? Do you like getting dirty? Do you like riding for 10 hours? 10 hours plus? Do you like constantly chugging down jails, bars, cakes? Do you like having a pretty sore ass for 10, 12 hours on the bike? If you're not in love with this process, that's the wrong goal for you. So although you might have seen an EF education video and finally love the romance of Lachlan Martin and Alex Hales riding dirty cans out, if you don't love this stuff that's not the right goal for you. So we need to look at the goal yes but then examine the process and something that I heard Tiger Woods is dad talking about. It's the word enough. He would never let Tiger Woods say the word enough and what happens when you don't know when there's enough. It's a great attitude in a lot of ways for an athlete because you're constantly striving for the next race win, the next race win, but you're never happy and present in the moment because happiness is always something that's down the road. It's after a win, we tend to race. It's after a win, we're 12th race. It's a move on goal post and you never get there and it'll eventually end and you look back and go, shit, I haven't been happy all along. So that's why the movie is called, and the term is called, the pursuit of happiness. Because it's something we chase after. It's not a destination. It's a practice. And I always laugh when I hear people kind of say, oh yeah, I read that book. Like the idea isn't just to rack up these books and just like on desks in front of me here. I have Marcus Aurelius' meditations. It's not about getting Marcus Aurelius' book of meditations and reading it. and then thrown it in on a dinner party conversation saying, oh yeah, I read Marcus Aurelius' meditations. It's not something to get to the end of. It's a pursuit, it's a practice, it's a daily, it's something you deal every day, and that's what philosophy was when you look back to ancient Greek and ancient Roman times. It was a daily practice. It was a daily practice of constantly striving and learning to be happy. And I think what we've talked about, and this is stillness, And I think that stillness is the exact same as happiness. That stillness isn't a destination. That stillness is a pursuit. And cycling every day is how I practice stillness and how I just quiet my mind in a really, really busy world. Thanks for listening.