The Power Of Positive Thinking

February 19, 2014

25 years ago in June I went on a training course at the Swallow Hotel in London. The course was a "Train the Trainer" affair - teaching me good presentation techniques to use in my new job. The course was brilliant and I learned a lot.

One two hour slot was put by for a topic called "positive thinking" - I had heard of this before but never took any notice of it. The main point to this session, was to get people to really believe they could achieve what ever they set their mind to. I went away thinking I must try this.

The following weekend I was racing at Brands Hatch - the Sir Ben Ball Trophy Races, the likes of Mike Hailwood and Barry Sheene had won this event before. I drew a bum number and was on row 8 of the grid, but on the start line I put into place "positive thinking" - telling myself I could win this. There were 40 riders on the grid as it was the longer GP circuit, my favourite. The light turned and we hurtled off, by the end of lap 1 I had managed to get to 5th place, the leaders had disappeared but I put my head down and rode as hard as I knew how. On the second to last lap I caught the leader and went to pass him at Stirlings - lost the back end and was up the grass narrowly missing the Armco. I stayed on and set off again and went across the start line 1000th of a second in second place.

Okay I didn't win that day, but I had a good ride, broke the lap record by nearly 3 seconds and it still stands today - this sounds impressive but they changed the capacity class from 500 to 600 in 1990 so no one has had a chance to beat it. LOL

Positive thinking - try it.