Here’s a real life example of mind body in action from my past. Back in my sports car racing days, one of my favorite tracks was at what is now called Texas Motor Speedway. Its one of those huge banked oval tracks that Nascar fans are so familiar with. Its attraction for me was that it also had a 1.7 mile, multi-turn road racing circuit that used about half of the oval track, then turned left down into the infield for a few turns and then left the oval for few more turns before returning to the back straight-a-way of the oval.
So, with that image in mind, imagine you’re in a built for racing Corvette, about 600 hp, big racing tires and you’re just entering the back straight-a-way of the oval at about 70 mph. Push the pedal to the floor, shift a couple of gears and you’re accelerating thru Nascar turns 3 and 4 to arrive very quickly on the front straight at 170 mph.
That’s when the excitement begins because just after the start / finish line you must turn left almost 90 degrees, dropping down the banked track into turn one of the road course. Its a 80 mph corner.
Lets take a quick timeout so I can tell you that a race tire or any tire for that matter only has so much traction build into it. Thats all it has no matter if you’re accelerating, breaking or turning or any combination of those actions. If you exceed that quantity it will slip and break traction. No doubt you’ve seen cars spinning their tires or locking up their brakes or skidding sideways when turning a corner too fast.
Back in the drivers seat, your challenge is to slow the car from 170 down to 80 mph without braking traction and at the same time turn the car 90 degrees to the left, also without braking traction. The bottom line is that at no time can the amount of braking traction used plus the amount of turning traction used exceed the total traction of the tire(s) or the car will spin off the race track.
As you approach your braking point, you apply the brakes hard – just shy of locking them up. Your speed drops very quickly to 110 -115 but now you’ve reached the point where you have to start turning into the corner… so as you start to turn you have to start releasing the brakes. The more you turn into the corner the more you have to release the brake until a point comes when you have to totally take your foot off the brake so that all available traction can be used to turn the corner. At the same time one part of your mind is yelling for you to keep your foot on the brake and another part is yelling take your foot off the brake.
So… the point: I see parts of my life where I have the brakes pushed to the floor and I can’t make the turn thats coming up. I see the same thing in many other people… going through life with the brakes on. Take a look at your life… relationships, health, jobs, success…. areas where the results have been less that thrilling.
Maybe its time you take your foot off the brake.
