Stories We Tell Ourselves: How a Motorcycle Class Led to More Mindfulness

Catching the Stories We Make Up: A Motorcycle Class Lesson in Mindfulness

In this episode of Mindful Kindful Living, Connie shares a personal story from a weekend motorcycle workshop at Red Rocks Community College to illustrate how often people invent untrue stories in their heads with limited information. She describes the class dynamics, learning to ride through small steps, and ultimately passing the motorcycle test, then being told by one of three whispering classmates that they had assumed she wouldn’t make it. Reflecting later while writing her book Speeding To Compassion, Connie recognizes she also made judgments, labeling others and reducing them to stereotypes. She emphasizes mindfulness as becoming aware of repetitive thoughts, catching the stories before believing them, and choosing to drop or rewrite them more kindly in everyday situations like driving, relationships, and texting.

00:00 Welcome and Theme
00:35 Motorcycle Class Begins
02:03 Parking Lot Riding Basics
03:21 Test Day and Results
04:05 A Surprising Comment
04:29 Mindfulness and Made Up Stories
06:34 Rewriting Stories with Kindness
07:38 Challenge and Closing

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Transcript

Connie Warden 0:02

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Mindful Kindful Living, where story by story, heart by heart, this is how we make the world a little kinder. Today's story is one of my stories, and It is about catching the stories we make up in our head, because we make a lot of stories up that aren't true because we don't really have enough information. So this story begins on a, a late Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful spring day, and I find myself walking down the steps of Red Rocks Community College to a basement classroom where I'm gonna do a weekend workshop learning how to ride a motorcycle. And with that, I am going to get my motorcycle jacket and get into my role here. So it's Friday night. We're piling into this downstairs classroom, and people are quiet, whispering to each other. There was a lady There was three ladies. They looked like they were the kind of high school or s- college students, that they looked like they were they had known each other for a while, and they were really whispering. There was a, and it turned out to be true, a father and his son. And there was a lady there who I was like, I th- looked like she already rode a motoc- motorcycle. She had the bandana on, the leathers. And then the two Harley Davidson teachers come down the steps and welcome us all. And on Friday, it was mostly safety and looking at papers, and But Saturday, Saturday we got to go out into the community college parking lot and get on a motorcycle. Right, so first we get on a motorcycle, and we walk all the way down the parking lot, turn around, come back. And then we actually turn the motorcycle on and go down and back. So it was baby steps all the way, which was perfect for me. I was so afraid, and I but I was so curious. I really wanted to see if I could do this. And by Saturday afternoon, we were all riding a motorcycle, and the whole parking lot looked like streets. And there was, uh, curves, and there was, um, there was tape on the ground where you had to learn how to stop the motorcycle right there. And I was having a blast, and I remember one of these curves I was coming around happened I, I was going pretty fast, and the, one of the Harley Davidson teachers from across the parking lot goes up like this and is like, "Hey, Connie, I can't wait to have you out on the road with us." I was so excited. I'm like, "I am getting this." So Sunday comes around and we practice a little bit, and then we're gonna take the motorcycle test. So now it gets a little serious. Everybody's, you know, they've got pieces of paper and they're writing stuff down, the instructors. And then we go down the steps into the basement classroom, and we're gonna find out who, who got their motorcycle license or not. And so they started p- passing out pieces of paper. And oh my gosh, the lady who looked like the motorcycle lady, you could tell from her body language she didn't pass. And then I got mine. Oh my goodness, I passed. I was so excited. I couldn't wait to get out of there and go home and tell my family. Opening the door, ready to leave, and somebody taps me on the shoulder, and it was one of those three gals. And she said, "You know what, Connie? We looked around the room on Friday and we were, like, wondering who wasn't gonna make it." And she said, "And you were one of them." And I was like, "Okay. Wow." Um, she didn't steal my thunder. I was too excited. I was gonna go home and, and I just I kind of forgot about this story until I started reading, uh, started writing my book, Speeding To Compassion. And one of the biggest things, uh, the reason behind the, the mindfulness piece is be- to become aware of your thoughts, right? 90% of what we're thinking, we've thought about before. It's not new. I'm gonna take this jacket off. And, and I f- I thought about this story and I thought, you know, I can make myself the victim here, but I wasn't actually that innocent either about the story I was making up in the, my head about some of the people in this class. And for example, that lady and those two other friends, I, in my head I called them, uh, Charlie's Angels. And if you don't know, um, I Actually, that wasn't a compliment, but, um, I mean, again, I didn't catch it at the time. And there was the motorcycle lady who I, uh, obviously minimized who she was. She could've been a Nobel Peace Prize winner, right? I don't know. I just reduced her to the motorcycle lady. And so the stories we make up, and Brene Brown talks a lot about it, we make these stories up because we wanna have something complete. And- But to catch them before we actually, actually, actually think they're true is, is a big deal. It's a very big deal. And we do that out on the road, we do that in relationships, we do that in the classrooms, we do that with our families, uh, especially, right, we do it with our texts. And so catching, and that's why the mindfulness piece is really, really important, and we'll talk a lot about that here on this podcast. Catching the stories is half the battle, and then deciding whether it's true or not, you can drop them or you can change them even. Like say you're out driving and somebody cuts you off, and you're like, "That is a jerk." They're probably... And you could go off into a story, right? And if you go, "Oh, I don't know that this guy's a jerk," or what the story is, maybe make up something that, 'cause you made it up anyway, make up a different story that is, you know, uh, is more kind. Like, "Oh, maybe, maybe they have to get to the hospital 'cause they're, they're having a baby." You know? I always think about people who turn really slow. You know, it's just like, "Turn. Would you just turn?" And I, I make up a story and I say they probably have plants in the back there, maybe a pot of soup that's got really tall that's really up to the top and they don't, and they're gonna share it with their family. So I just make up a story like that and just say, "Okay," and kinda let, let it go then. So that is my story about the motorcycles, my s- motorcycle class. There's And I've got more stories from my book, but I challenge you today and until next time to really become aware if something is true that is going on in your head, or if you're making it up, if you wanna keep, uh, keep on doing it, uh, or keep on thinking about it, or if you wanna let it go. So I'd love to hear how that goes for you. And so until next time, be mindful with yourself, kindful with others, and gentle with the beautifully imperfect journey of being a human being