Oversteer or Understeer?
Before you think it – No I’m not going to ask if your back end is stepping out!
Instead I’m thinking about the amount of control you exercise in your life. Have you got the balance right?
The clients I see tend to want oversteer but have understeer. Often they go about their day to day activites following other’s lead and letting life happen to them. They might plan for the next big holiday but often have no idea what they would like the next year to be like and definitely have no clue about the next five or ten. Instead they work from one day to the next, maybe planning a week or so ahead in some areas but with a general lack of focus and purpose.
When that all gets a bit too much they try to oversteer. They start planning every minute of every day, cramming as much as they possibly can in and trying to control each and every aspect of their life. There’s a lot to tempt us along this path. After all if we are in control we have fewer surprises…but then again we have fewer surprises and where’s the fun in that?
So how do you get the balance right? Well as in motor racing it all comes down to the driver’s preferences and what they are best able to cope with. In the racing world we’d like to think the driver knows where he or she was going and what targets they are trying to achieve but they need to be flexible enough to be able to handle the things outside their control; the car spinning up ahead, the rain that starts half way through the race.
How do you find out what will work for you? Well to be honest it involves a bit of trial and error. I would suggest that you know which races you intend to take part in, what speeds you are hoping to achieve, whose help you are going to need and what vehicle you’ll be racing in.
As a first step spend some time thinking about what you want and don’t rush the process. As so few of us take these steps we’ve lost the art of dreaming, especially dreaming big, and so we work with what we think is possible or likely. Get used to day dreaming. Ask the what if questions. Try not to rule anything out as being impossible (not at this stage). Most importantly have some fun with it.
