Motorvation – Three Ways to Get Going

 
 
As you probably already know from looking at this website, I’m a motorcycle enthusiast. I love motorcycles. I hesitate to use the term “biker” nowadays because it’s become so diluted that it has little meaning. But I’ve sampled the subculture that the term used to imply – it was fun, but not of much use to me personally. When you can get beat up for wearing the wrong vest, you know you’re in a weirdly weird place. Things sort of have to make sense to me.

Anyway, I’ve been riding for upwards of 45 years, with a break in-between because of money and family. Starting when I was 15, I’ve owned and ridden everything from a Honda 90 street bike to the BSA 441 Victor dirt-monster, to chopped Harleys and an antique Indian.

In the old days, the bikes were sturdy but quite honestly extremely temperamental when it came to getting them started (you oldsters know what I mean). Which is not surprising since we usually set the ignition timing with a cigarette rolling paper and the spark plugs with a matchbook cover.

Old school: the hard way…

In those days all bikes had kickstarters. You’ve seen them, if only in the movies. The badass bikers stroll out of the bar, swing a leg over, jump on the starter lever once (or twice at the most) and off they roar. That was in the movies. The reality was that 90% of the time, it was actually 8 or ten kicks or more. Sweat dripping, cursing, getting off to adjust the carburetor or ignition, get back on, try again. More sweat and cursing and eventually you had paid sufficient cost to the gods of frustration, and the thing sputtered to life. Oh happy day.

Old school: the lazy way…

Then there was the bump-start. My friends and I all had machines at one time or another that we would not park unless there was a hill nearby. Who needed a kickstarter if you could put the thing in 2nd or third gear, turn on the ignition, pull in the clutch and let ‘er roll. Pop the clutch at the right point, and you’re good to go. Of course, if your timing is off, now you’re stuck at the bottom of a hill with nowhere left to go. Call the buddy with the pickup, or get a tow back to the top maybe.

New school, the smart way…

But beginning in the 60’s or so, with interest in motorcycling picking up (including among females), manufacturers needed to find a way to make the sport easier and thus more appealing to a broader range of people. Most less-athletically prepared people and women, who sometimes weighed half their male counterparts, were not about to make carburetor adjustments in the field, let alone spend 20 minutes trying to kickstart a high-compression engine. And so the electric starter was born. It added weight to the machine, but was it ever nice to push a button and be on your way.

What does this all have to do with you?

I think that this is an excellent metaphor for how we can proceed in life.

Hard…

In any endeavor, at first you’re likely to want to do everything yourself. You figure you’ll kickstart your project, whether it’s a business or a path to personal development, using pure brute force of will. You’ll learn everything, work 16 hours a day, concentrate and focus. You’ll huff and puff and sweat and curse and make adjustments until the thing actually starts. Maybe it will, or maybe it won’t.

Lazy…

Or, you could try to bump-start your project. You relax, don’t sweat or push, figure that the Universe will provide what you need when you need it, and wait for Happyville to show up in front of your handlebars. Of course, what you don’t realize is that the momentum and expectation you feel is being provided by gravity. Gravity only works in one direction, for our purposes – downward. But the power of expectation and hope alone sometimes don’t work. If that happens, eventually you’ll reach the very bottom of the hill, and gravity is no longer your friend. You find yourself out of power, in a low point, and from there on you spend a lot of energy climbing out of your “depression” (in several senses of the word).

Those are the old-school ways of doing it. Oh, they’ll still work sometimes but they also use up a lot of time and energy.

Smart…

Nowadays, you needn’t do either of those things. With the proliferation of teachers and coaches, the internet with its availability of information (which of course you need to filter for usefulness), and all of the tools that those things bring, success no longer requires a ton of effort in the way that it used to. You now have access to an electric starter. You have a battery full of knowledge and wisdom on board, if you take advantage of it. Yes, it costs a little more. You do still need to push the button, and maintenance is a little more complicated. But if used properly, the modern resources combined with your modern attitude can make it a whole bunch easier to get rolling.

Old-school is not always the best. The bike I ride now has an engine that’s called the “Evolution” model. If I do the simple maintenance required, I push a button and I’m off to the races. Some people stubbornly call this a copout. I call it progress. Using all the resources available: that’s evolution. You need to do it yourself, but you need not do it alone.