How Lots of Experience Can Slow Us Down

Smarter Every Day

My favorite channel on YouTube is called Smarter Every Day. Destin Sandlin is the host, and he has an amazing ability to translate complicated things into understandable situations that most of us can relate to. He has taught me a lot about things from submarines and water flow to rockets and lasers. 

One of the videos that I recently watched was about Destin learning to ride a bicycle that was set to steer backward…so turning the handlebars left would actually turn the bicycle right, and vice versa. His dad’s friend is a welder and had created this using a pair of gears on the front of the bike, and no one seemed able to ride it. It sounds simple enough to do. I can hear many people right now saying, “Okay. Got it…that doesn’t sound too hard.” Only it is. 

The Unlearning

In this video, Destin walks through his story of unlearning how to ride a regular bike, and learning to ride a reverse-steer bike, and then going back to a regular bike. You’ll be surprised at how long this took.

Part of the beauty in what Destin shares is that he realizes how a thought pattern around something as simple as riding a bike was simply too strong to turn off. Our thoughts and habits in thinking formed over years and years (like riding a bicycle) are really difficult to change, especially when we don’t know about them.

Identifying Patterns

After watching this, I challenged myself to find some of my own habits and patterns.  I realized that I overly rely on action and activity to fix things. It’s not something I’m turning off overnight just by being aware of it, and I’m taking steps to check in with myself and not automatically default to action as the best course of action. Just like riding a backward steering bike, knowing where I have a habit doesn’t mean I can undo it without being intentional and consistent. 

I’m putting on my helmet for the journey.

What were your takeaways from this video?

Major thanks to SmarterEveryDay for creating this video, and so many others like it!