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The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course
“BMX is more difficult than you can imagine. Finding happiness through BMX is twice as difficult as you can imagine. Learn how to imagine.”
Introduction
The people you admire for accomplishing great things aren’t special.
The practices they live by are special.
With you as my guest through this home study course, I will focus your attention on the practices that I have observed in people who have accomplished great things.
In the end, you will be an accomplished person who is not special, but you will be an accomplished person who was definitely selected to follow a special path.
This home study course will cost you. The price you’ll pay is to believe. For some people, to believe is too high a price to ever consider paying. You don’t have to pay up-front.
I believe you are willing to pay.
Throughout your repetition of this course, you will gradually develop the ability to afford to believe. You’ll find things you can trade in exchange for believing.
Do you believe there is someone in the world so wonderful that you would gladly trade all your vacation days to be with that person? Imagine that.
This home study course, when studied and internalized, will pay for itself many times over. It will pay for itself because you will learn to trade. In addition, you will learn some history of action sports and the remarkable mindset of the people who created it.
Ultimately, you will learn how to believe properly. You will learn it interactively. Every word is an exercise with a purpose. The purpose is also revealed in the course.
Let’s begin.
I am speaking to you from your future.
You will adopt these words and apply them to your present life. For example: “I am adopting these words and applying them to my present life."
Pay attention to the verb tense used.
Verb tense orients your perspective. From that perspective, you’ll observe how concepts and objects align and influence one another like constellations. You’ll be able to see the push & pull between them.
When you believe these simple words, they will become your own and YOU will be the one leading yourself to your future life. You might say it differently. I encourage you to say it with better words.
That’s the deal you’re making with me, the author of this home study course.
Chapter #1
Be your own stunt double
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course
Speak only The Truth.
Do not hesitate in the face of your fears. The more you fear something, the more you must work to resolve and deplete your fear of it.
This first lesson came to me from one of the most-incredible people I ever knew. This person is my childhood Hero.
My friend heard this lesson at the same time I heard it. We absorbed it differently. I believe the way my friend absorbed it makes for a good story.
To my friend, that lesson came from the most-incredible person he ever knew (other than his mom).
But my friend had a relationship with fear that drove him to want to account for every little detail in a situation.
My friend’s name is Dave Nourie. The situation he was trying to deal with was his plan to create the world’s first action sports 40-year reunion world tour.
It was Team Haro, which first assembled in 1984. The name of the world tour is “Back for More in ’24.”
At the time, I was doing a YouTube show with Dave. We decided to film all of the behind-the-scenes meetings. The shows featured lots of discussion, banter, and (quite frankly) ridicule of the whole ordeal.
To make it entertaining, we framed it a bit like 3 guys pushing 60 who want to go out for one more tour.
You can imagine how that might apply pressure on Dave. The world was watching - live - as he put together a world tour for the first time. Large Ray, legendary cult figure, held nothing back to make us laugh. Ray only tells the truth, and only speaks what he sees.
You can watch the first 3 meetings of the “Back for More in ’24” producers. You can watch Dave obsess on lists of lists of things other people should do. He even assumed the committee would self-organize to make a list of things to make a list about.
You can see the doom loop.
But then…
One day, Dave had a moment of clarity. In that moment, he stopped fearing. He connected with what he cared for most. That caring feeling gave him vision of precisely what the tour needed to live.
According to Dave, he:
The funny thing is: things worked out.
Dave made a video as his leg of the tour began. He was in the San Francisco airport waiting to depart for Munich. His hero called and said “Oh uh. Hey, Dave. I can’t board because my ticket says Ron Wilkerson, but my IDs all have Ron W.” Dave thought that was really funny because he knew Ron would get to Munich with the craziest story of how that situation worked its way out.
The good news is: You can do that, too. You can be Dave or you can be Ron.
And you can switch every other day if you like.
Dave and Ron each have mindsets. You can change your mindset.When Ron and Dave are apart, their lives become more different. But they miss one another.
When they work on something together, they come together. Dave lightens up as a planner, and Ron shows up at public events with lots of cameras.
They meet in the middle.
You want heroes that meet you in a middle that you want to be at.
Maybe you want to be a little more inclined to laugh.
Maybe you want to be a little more courteous to strangers.
Maybe you want to be a little better at juggling work.
Pick your heroes wisely.
We ride freestyle BMX. Some freestyle BMX riders know what it’s like to have riding friends. They might even have been part of a team.
You might have had friends or teammates. You might have only ever seen this in movies and never met your true friends.
It happens. Maybe you joined the Army and went to war.
Maybe you made a baby and went to work.
Maybe your parents died.
Don’t feel bad about having done the things you needed to do. You paid the price to make certain that what needed to get done got done properly.
You may have done those things already - celebrate.
You may be doing those things right now - celebrate.
Everything that is great in your life is obtained with focus, work, and sacrifice.
You may have to stop doing dumb things to do great things.
When you do, you get good at doing great things.
Then you keep doing better the more you do.
You can see the hope loop.
You are now on my team. You bought-in to this course. That means you sacrificed.
Maybe you paid with money from a trust fund.
Maybe you paid with money you worked for.
Maybe you paid with time you spent on a scavenger hunt for a discount code.
Let’s begin the first lesson.Pro tip: Always pay for what you want.
Exercise: Force this on yourself and only on yourself.
Always pay for your own education.
Always pay for your own food.
Always wash your own clothes.
Insight: You have the ability to have anything you truly want in your life. It is as simple as paying for those things.
Insight: You must sacrifice something to be able to pay for what you want. You must trade something to be able to pay for what you want.
Create, nurture, and preserve that instinct in you to always sacrifice, work, and trade for the things you want.
This simple mechanism will create habits in you that:
You can freestyle life. Freestyle BMX is when you do tricks on a bike.
At its beginning, a bicycle was utilitarian. It was like a wheel barrow in that regard. But people learned tricks on bikes. In the right hands, a bike can be made to do a lot more than it was originally designed to do.
You can do that with life.
That’s what I do with my life. That’s what my heroes do with their life.
There is zero difference between you and The Hero.
You can have everything your hero has. But you don’t truly know what your hero has or traded - you only know what you suspect the hero has.
Perform this training exercise:
(Worksheets are provided after the instructions)
Step 1:
Don’t show anyone.
Use your timer to keep you at exactly 5 minutes and 43 seconds.
Go.
Stop.
Now look at the list.
Step 2:
Step 3:
Open your eyes.
Your wish has been granted.
You CAN have those things on the list.
Next, we will find what to trade for it.
Step 4:
Step 5:
Step 6:
Next up are examples of the worksheets for you.My Hero Has
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.My Dream
( things my hero has that I wish to have )
1.
2.
3.I Have
1.
2.
3.
4.
My Budget (the upper limit of my sacrifice) to have My Dream
Item #4 from “I Have”: Good work. Not everyone performs that exercise. Your Hero did. You did. That was your first step.In that exercise, you put the price of one of your goals next to your budget for the goal.
Now that you see the thing you want side-by-side with what you’re willing to sacrifice for it, you can take the next step in the exercise.
Step 7: Find an affordable way to get the goal.
Example: If you wrote down on My Hero Has list “a front row view of motorcycle riders backflipping every day” then you can watch Nitro Circus footage every night at 8 pm with your favorite drink in your favorite hat and shoes. Even with your favorite friend.
You can do that.
You can do something to get a tiny taste of the feeling of the thing you want to have in your life.
The feeling is the key.
Beginners learn gymnastics with a spotter on a pad.
You can begin toward anything by doing something to get the feeling of the thing you want.Do this: Pretend this exercise is a game that progresses through levels. See it like beginning to play soccer video games then kicking a ball then dribbling in the yard.
Do any tiny simulation to get the feeling of the thing you want. Even just your imagination.
None of those simulations contained fear.
The purpose of your plan is to define training steps that cause no fear while allowing you to feel the goal.
For each progressive step, feel your goal in the absence of fear. If fear comes, confront it and work it out in your mind until it’s depleted.
Again, if you detect any fear, use the unlimited power of your imagination to grant you the power to resolve that fear.
For example, say, “It can’t hurt me. I’ll snap my fingers and transport it away. I’ll re-imagine the landscape. I’ll push it away. I am in control of my imaginary simulation.”Direction: Set a goal you’re willing to pay for. Do a tiny bit more each day.
Speak only The Truth.
Do not hesitate in the face of fear.
Class dismissed for today.
Be sure to do your homework.
Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”
Chapter #2
Wake up!
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course.
Now is the time, Hero, for you to wake up. Your dreams have been dominated by interests other than your own.
Now is the time for you to pursue your own interest. But very slowly, so that you don’t alarm the people around you.
Any good salesperson can tell you her techniques for getting you to say yes. One technique is “softening the target” by getting the target into the habit of saying yes.
The setup is to ask two questions with answers that are obviously “yes.”
Then, when the target is in the habit, ask a commitment question that is not obviously a “yes” within the target’s interest and belief.
This happens to you all day. Advertisements are made with this format. Martial arts masters do this to convince you that your body can be conditioned to move in ways you now believe impossible. Yoga works this way, too.
If you have an aquarium, you put the bagged fish in the water to acclimate it to the tank’s temperature.
You can do this to yourself.
You can be the master of your own life by commanding yourself and obeying your own commands.
To do so, you need:
This course is made to give you #2.
You define #1.
You perform #3.
My interest and belief is for you to be fit to pay the price.
The quicker you achieve your dream, the quicker you’ll have paid in full.
Along the way, the world gains a friend - you. That’s priceless.
Friends make life rich and meaningful.
I want us to live a life rich in means and friendship. Money buys things, friends make memories.
Read this chapter repeatedly. Develop a deep understanding of the subtext.
Study every word.
Allow it to infiltrate your dreams. Allow your dreams to put the message of the lessons into your own words and images and feelings.
People learned to do this.
You can learn to do this, too.
The trick is to learn how to control your dreams.
To begin, imagine a topic before you go to sleep.
Close your eyes and imagine a scene of how that topic would play-out.
Replay that scene with one tiny refinement.
Then repeat over and over until the scene works out perfectly.
This method of refining your imagination is similar in principle to how people learn gymnastics moves. People do so by repetition with a spotter on a pad.
Be your own spotter in the scene in your imagination. Eventually, you’ll dream about it subconsciously.
In your dream, you’ll construct and refine a mixture of the landscape, the circumstances, and the characters. Changes in that mixture will change your feeling.
Curious, isn’t it? The images you see in your dream aren’t objects you can touch in the waking world.
But you can recall the feeling you had in a dream. That is something that comes back with you from the dream world.
You’re going to learn how to feel Stoke in your dreams.
Stoke is the feeling of excitement that propels you to take action which intensifies the feeling of excitement.
It’s a fearless flywheel of joy and freedom which propels you to be, to do, and to have the good things that you desire.
The Way of The Stoke will get you hooked on the feeling. Then you’ll yearn to work on it - even for 5 minutes and 43 seconds. That’s actually enough daily time to enjoy your goal-seeking practice.
You must enjoy the pursuit of your goal.
You can mime your goals. For example, put your feet on the ground as if it’s a tight rope across a canyon.
Imagine the ground is three hundred feet below. You keep your balance on one plank of floor, or on a folded towel, or on a row of chairs.
You’re waking up to The Stoke you felt when you imagined your hero’s life as a kid.
Who cares that you’re not your hero today. Your hero likes to imagine the hero life just like you do. The only difference is the time your hero made for the thing you want.
To enjoy BMX again, you can make a simulator with your bike.
Do that thing where you lay on your back and do airs. Turn-down. Can-can. Tuck no-hander.
No footer requires a bit of practice, but it can be done. There’s also a tiny risk of wrecking. Don’t have babies or old people around when you learn no-footers.
This works for flatland, too. You can mime flatland. You can also put your feet on the ground and stabilize the pegs against your shins. You’ll be 10” lower, but it’s close enough to feel some Stoke.
You’re waking up to The Stoke you felt when you rode bikes as a kid. Who cares that you’re not Mat Hoffman right now. Who cares that you’re not Matt Wilhelm right now. They like to imagine riding just like you do. The only difference is the time Mat and Matt made for riding.
It’ll take you some time to find more than 5 minutes and 43 seconds a day to get your hands on your bike. Hands-on is all it takes. For example, clean your bike, dial the brakes, true the wheels.
Use WD-40 to put on new grips. (Yeah - who knew lubricant can secure grips!?). There’s so much more to explore - the bike technology is all different than it was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. There are so many variables to play with. You can make your bike feel exactly the way you want it to feel. Regardless of your goal, it will take you some time to find more than 5 minutes and 43 seconds a day to simulate your goal.
Hands-on is all it takes.
There are so many variables to play with. You can make it feel exactly the way you want it to feel.Don’t mind critics or commentators. They are embodiments of fear. You knew those kind of kids back in the day. Just emotional and yapping. Don’t let the haters capture your attention. They’re struggling to get happy, too. They just make a mess while they’re doing it.
But not you - you’re waking up to The Stoke because you believe your life depends on it. You put your attention on your goal, not on your fear. You take tiny steps consistently.
That’s why you’ll succeed.Just don’t quit.
You’re going to go into work in one month from today and tell your co-workers, “you know, I used to ride BMX back in the day. I’ve been riding again now for a month. It’s been almost 13 years since I stopped. But I’m back. Imagine that!”
Most people seeking their dreams now can tell you the story of when they Woke Up and grabbed their gear again. They can tell you exactly why they stepped away from their dream for a period of time. They can tell you how, when they reignited their pursuit, it was all one continuation.You must read this chapter every day, maybe several times a day. In time, you’ll memorize it. Pay close attention so that you don’t misread a word out of (bad) habit.
You must wake up to the excitement of your dream.
You felt it when you got your first glimpse. You felt it when you got your first taste. You felt it when you watched videos, saw demonstrations, or went to tournaments.
You can do that now, too. There are plenty of dream-seekers of all ages seeking their dreams right now.
There are enough dream-seekers just in BMX to provide a large collection of examples around which to illustrate the exercises in this course. BMX riders talk openly about a thing they call The Stoke. It gives them a power to turn an obstacle into an opportunity. Some of them have made a living on creating and performing tricks.
Bikes were made as utility objects. Transport. Bicycle freestylers turned them into creative devices. Every single person who has done a trick on a bike is part of the freestyle movement.
They brought this thing into the world and kept it alive. They keep the spirit of bicycle freestyle alive by embodying it and practicing it.That’s how spirit propagates.
It’s 2% spirit and 98% practice.
Bicycle Freestyle is a good spirit. It makes everyone around it feel good. Having fun on bikes, by riding them in a way they were not designed to be ridden.
There are so many variables in-play in a bike trick. So many that if it were someone’s job to do bike tricks, the government would make it illegal to force employees to do bike tricks. They’d need universities to run the bootcamps to produce trick-performing employees.
But how could a university teach The Stoke? Do they have instruments? What about labs?
Perhaps this course could be part of Stoke University.
Perhaps this course could be part of The Church of Stoke.
Perhaps this could be part of your Life of Stoke.Bicycle freestylers learned all on their own. They learned all their tricks themselves. They don’t have a high school freestyle trick diploma. They learned it without attending a mandatory class.
You can do that, too.
I ask you, please: accept that learning freestyle tricks is one of the hardest human endeavors in all of history - and you are learning how to do that in this course.
Please celebrate that.
I ask you, please: wake up to the fact that you are watching yourself prove to yourself that you can do great things. You are proving to have the ability to do great things - because you know how to learn the hardest things in the world.
Wake up to that fact and live with it.
Remember figuring out how to walk? Remember figuring out how to type on a keyboard? You felt like you could do anything! And you can - provided you pay for it.
An hour on your bike or on your instrument of choice means an hour missed in a bar. Or an hour of some other nonsense you won’t miss when you’re 100 years old.
When you’re 100, you’re going to remember getting back on your instrument of choice with determination.Wake up to that reality. Spend 5 minutes and 43 seconds each day in-touch with your bike or your instrument of choice. Clean it, dial it, or ride it.
Do anything where you can get the feel for how it swings, goes up on one end, and how it stops.
Feel how your perspective rotates. How the counter-weights feel. How the parts sound when you let them snap back into place.
Get the feel of your instrument of choice 5 minutes and 43 seconds a day for a month.
If you want to have a lot of fun, film yourself doing it and create an archive. One day, not too far from now, you’re going to achieve a goal and you’ll want to look back and be grateful. You’ll want to see your first step.
Do you remember your first step as a baby? No?
Then make this recorded first step a keeper and keep it.
Someone special in your life will watch it with you one day. They want to see your first baby step toward The Stoke.
In this course, you are learning how my friends and I connect to The Stoke to get us on our bikes when we don’t feel like it. Maybe we’re sore, maybe we have a headache, maybe we had a long day at work.
Everyone has those days. Getting in touch with your bike is the way you get through those days.
Then, you won’t be able to help but get better. That’s how it works. The simplest process for getting good on the instrument of your choice.
Keep doing that. Don’t quit.
When you arrive at a big goal, people will ask how you rode to success. And you can tell them, “you know, it’s funny: I paid for a course 5 years ago. It really did change my life. And I continue to happily pay for it each day. Now I just pay for fun.”
Read this chapter once more.
Class dismissed. Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”
Chapter #3
Make People Smile
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course.
I tell people that I paid a friend nearly $10,000 for a course and that my assignment is to make people smile by telling them a true story.
I tell them I paid nearly $10,000 for a course because I saw a guy from a magazine get his team back together 40 years later while the funniest man alive made fun of him the entire time.
This works because it’s true and it’s up-lifting. It’s true.
I now tell you to say that and my friend, Dave, got his team mates back together 40 years later. That’s a first in action sports.
And you paid a friend nearly $10,000 for this course.
The funny thing is: it works!
It will make someone smile.
Another funny thing is that you don’t know what’s funny about you until someone who loves you tells you.
Dave’s friends told him what they found funny about him. Dave didn’t understand at first - Dave thought they were making fun.
But then Dave realized his friends were showing him his “gift to the world.”
Dave’s other friend helped him learn how to lean in and use it.
Dave knows two people who go very far out of their way to get people to smile. They trade techniques like stock brokers.
I tell people Dave lost a bet and had to be written into this lesson.
But the point is: work very hard to be good at getting people to smile.
Start by being kind. Then be spontaneously complimentary - just compliment and move on with what you were doing. Don’t wait for a thank you. Don’t say “you’re welcome.”
If they keep thanking you, just say, “You did all the work. I just call them like I see them.” Build this habit.
Rehearse your stories on the way to meet people.
Imagine your story as you walk through crowds.
Why are you here? Answer as if it’s the part of the movie just before the Jedi tap you on the shoulder and ask if you’re done being a run-away.Every day in silence, without telling anyone what you’re doing, interact very kindly with people - while you wait for The Master to tap you on the shoulder.This builds in you a sense of anticipation.
You know from following 43 that it can happen at any time.
You look for 43, you sense when it’s near, and you see them snowball.
More on 43 later.
To BMX freestyle riders, the feeling is like searching for a nice parking lot to ride in, or a bank-to-wall. You have a gut feeling.
You know people who have radar for riding spots. It’s what freestylers learned as riders before indoor parks.
They rode the streets.That’s how you need to walk through The World making people smile.
They’ll be cool to you. They’ll get the feeling you’re on an adventure. If they become inspired, they’ll add to your adventure so they can be on an adventure, too.
Always be kind, but aways be on your way.
Remember - you can’t stick around; you paid a friend nearly $10,000 to learn how to live your dreams. Perhaps you decided to send your friend $43 every time you see a 43.
So you have money to find. You are looking for money because you’re sending money back to the one who wrote the course you study.
Looking for money is a side-quest that can help you make people smile.
Even looking for a quarter on the ground is looking for money. You can easily do that.Remaining faithfully focused on your pursuit builds character.
That’s what you’re building.
That’s what we’re building together. You can see me do it, too. I am following this practice with writing.
Be in pursuit.
You can feel
that you are happy
when you are
in that character,
when you are exhibiting
those character traits.
Make it your character.
Make it honorable, pleasant, and kind.
Then you will make people smile.
Your exercise: walk through a farmer’s market one day a week. Set a timer for 5 minutes and 43 seconds. This is your practice.
Make notes about how your experience changes.
What do you see?
Who do you see?
Who is at these things?
Is there space for you to do a bicycle freestyle trick?
Is there a booth that would sell The How “You Rode to Success” home study course?
Whisper this to yourself: “Who can I inspire to smile?”Find strangers. Make them smile. Move on. Some call this “Stoke & Go.” It’s a practice. It’s your training. You are practicing the art of getting strangers Stoked and inspired to smile.
This exercise is very simple.
You begin by going into a crowd, getting into character, shopping, and letting the spirit of The Stoke flow through you.
It won’t work every time at first. Few things do. That’s natural. Some people are irreversibly grumpy. Some people are dead-set on being grouchy. It’s their identity.
Don’t try to convert people who have an identity of a grumpy grouch.
First, find people who have an identity of being happy. They’re the most-forgiving. They’re ideal training partners.
They recognize people early in their happiness training. They know to give a smile in exchange for an effort to get them to smile.
Use this to build momentum and skill. Find what works.Over time, you will identify sure-fire methods for making happy people smile.
When you achieve this pinnacle, your instinct will be to keep progressing.
Soon, you will seek unusual and unique sure-fire methods for making people smile. You will develop your niche.
Then you’ll have a home. It will feel like home. It is a home of happiness that you built for yourself and for a tribe of happy people like you.
You’ve done this already.
You’ve already built yourself a life-home. You did so without much conscious effort. It’s how you live today.
But through this course, you’re going to build your new dream-life-home with conscious effort. It can even be better. You can build an even greater life for yourself.
This course teaches you how to, with very minimal effort, establish habits that compound and grow.The thing about habits is that they form easily, sometimes without you even knowing. But they aren’t always leading you to what makes you happy.
Believe it or not, habits build up based on what’s running through your head all the time.
Today’s exercise is to have smiles running through your head so that you pave your world, gradually, with smiles.
This does wonders.
It paves a road to success. My friends rode such a path to success.
It truly is that simple.
The part that can, at the beginning, appear to be hard is the daily ritual of keeping your head filled with smiles. That’s why I instruct you to re-read this course.
Repetition makes a simple daily ritual feel less scary. Repetition eliminates the feeling of fear.
The part that is most-reliable is the easy-peasy construction of a road to your success.
I know this because over the course of two years,
I coached Dave through
orchestrating a group of his friends
to do what they love to do
with a goal of putting on a reunion World Tour
of a show Team Haro first did in 1984.
Someone wrote a book named “1984".
Team Haro’s story is very different.But, according to sources, Dave and all of Team Haro had a very different Big Brother.
You can be your own Big Brother. You can be the one commanding yourself to be happy and healthy and kind. You can be a good Big Brother to yourself.
Many happy people will tell you this. You’ll hear from some of them in later chapters of this course.
You’ll meet some of them when you join a tour stop. You’ll meet some of them when you join an event sideshow. Or watch my YouTube shows.
It is my dream that I convince you to believe that making people smile magically paves the road to your success.
I wish this because when you succeed, you will pay what you once considered an exorbitant price - and which you, upon achieving your dream, consider a remarkable bargain.
This is my wish for you. I hope this makes you smile.
Read this chapter once more.
Do your homework exercises.
Class dismissed.Workbook notebook
The rest of this chapter is for you to make your notes.
Write your first-time answers on these pages.
Thereafter, use a spiral bound booklet to write the questions and the answers each time you re-read this chapter.
Each month, re-read your answers from every day. Observe your gradual change.
Answer these questions:
Today’s date is:
The market I first visit is:
The number of minutes I spent at my first market is:
When I arrived at the market I realized: When I walked through the market I realized:
For my next trip to the market I believe I will realize:
On my second trip to the market I realized:
This is what I think my friend is trying to tell me:
Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”
Chapter #4
Train Now for Setbacks Later
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course.
The pain you choose for yourself today prepares you for the pain something else chooses for you tomorrow: a setback.
Learning means changing. Change brings discomfort. Ironically, if you want to control the pain of change you feel, you must drip-feed yourself the change you need. Doing so minimizes the pain today and maximizes the change next year.This is the hidden message in the movie “The Princess Bride.”
The Hero gamed-out the moment he would confront his nemesis in a decisive battle of wits. The Hero poisoned both drinks. For the prior several years, the hero conditioned himself to be tolerant of the poison. His nemesis did no such thing. His nemesis perished.
This is a children’s movie.That movie broke the 4th wall.
The movie was about a grandfather reading his grandson a bedtime story of an adventure. Within the adventure, there were multiple storylines. The story was barely about the plight of the princess. The story was about her protectors and the lengths to which they go to protect the future the princess will bring.
This is a children’s movie.It is my expectation that this course will be to you what The Princess Bride was to millions of children over the course of decades.
To prepare for creating a memorable piece of writing, I collected and distilled lessons from my friends’ long careers in BMX freestyle.
My message to you:
Find a thing you love.
Do that thing.
No matter the scale of that thing’s impact in the moment - no matter the size of the crowd - do the thing you love to the max.
You will achieve a great deal in a lifetime when you don’t quit doing what you love.
Doing what you love is like “whistling while you work.” It keeps you going. Love is leverage. Pulley systems and see-saws work with leverage.
Happiness is leverage to sustain, over a long period of time, the hard work you need to invest to get your goal.
It fuels endurance.
It builds muscle.Body builders know this. Marathon runners know this. Even computer programmers know this.
Gamification is a technique for issuing a series of rewards (which release dopamine in the brain) along a course of action so that people willingly work toward a goal at the end of that path. For TV executives, this means watching more TV (and TV ads). Social media works the same way.
It can be used for bad or for good. It’s just a natural mechanism. You can use it to get yourself through all the steps necessary to achieve a worthy goal. That’s how to use the mechanism for good.
The way Dave applied that mechanism to his life experience in 1984 resulted in an outcome that was different than the outcome of the book by that name, even though both dealt with the same principles.
The difference (between the book 1984 and Dave’s career start in 1984) is vision, the resultant direction, and the person directing the action.
Your autonomy makes all the difference. Your choice to be autonomous, to direct your own life, makes the difference. You must have vision and finesse natural mechanics. (BMX tricks).YOU must be the one directing your life. This course reveals techniques for using natural mechanisms that you can use to direct your life.
This course also reveals techniques that condition a person so that you can recognize when someone else is attempting to control you. OR when your dumb thoughts are controlling you in a dumb direction.
We do this through the parable of BMX tricks.
This course will save your life from dumb influencers. It will guide you to your happiness.
You can measure your progress by observing your BMX tricks.
This course will teach conditioning. You will condition yourself: your thoughts, your actions, your habits with a beautiful goal in mind. You will literally keep that goal in your mind all the time. You will re-watch it on the daily.
Do you remember how many times you watched your favorite movie growing up?
Some film makers take their game to a level that transcends film.
A very special bike rider named Kevin Jones (The Second Hero) changed Dave’s life one day.
Their two teams met up at the same bike shop on the same day one summer in Ohio. Dave had been getting walloped at contests by all the people doing Kevin’s tricks.
Kevin knew this. Kevin looked at Dave and said, “Keep doing your style. No one else is doing it.” That made Dave feel great.
So Dave followed Kevin’s life-coaching. Now, 40 years after their first tour in 1984, Dave went on tour again performing that style in 2024.Try to count how many people who love their style so much they’d do it despite getting walloped in professional class televised competition.
Try to count how many people continue to do their tricks at 58 years of age.
That’s the Never-Been-Done that Dave claims.
Dave can claim it because Dave never quit. Dave found something Dave loves doing, a style that is his own, and he did it every day (a few days off, to be honest) for 40 years. Then he took it on a World Tour.
The audience felt The Stoke radiating from Dave Nourie.Back for More in ’24 was not Dave’s first world’s first.
Dave once competed in The X-Games (albeit as Chad DeGroot) - but it counts.
At age 58, Dave has a signature frame by Reklamation bikes.
I say this not to brag on behalf of Dave Nourie, but to impress upon you the “compounding interest” that occurs when you do something you love daily for 43 years. Dave rode for about 3 years before he signed with Haro bikes. Imagine that!
More on 43 later.You can do this, too.
I have plenty of examples of friends who have ridden bikes daily. Some have taken years off to start their family or career. They came back to it and did a little bit each day.
Team Haro conditioned their relationships over the course of 40 years of tour life to be surrounded by the most-capable touring troupe they can imagine.
They did it gradually, without quitting. They talked about it, replayed it in their minds over and over, and told others their vision.
They all talked about that vision and how they could pull it off together. They talked about it a little bit at a time for two years.
Then they did it.
You can read the backstory in a series of digital zines on the website LargeRaysSlowRoastCoffee.com .
The story gets scary for a moment when Dave was considering quitting. But it ends nicely.
Dave had people around who refused to let him quit on his dream of a 40 year reunion World Tour.
You can do this, too.
You can dream a big dream.
You can work toward a series of goals.
You can refuse to quit.
Read this chapter once more.
Do your homework exercises.
Class dismissed.Workbook notebook
Write your first-time answers on these pages.
Thereafter, use a spiral bound booklet to write the questions and the answers each time you re-read this chapter.
Each month, re-read your answers from every day. Observe your gradual change.
The rest of this book is for you to make your notes.
Answer these questions:
My first huge dream as a kid was:My second huge dream as a kid was:I achieved my dream by:After 10+ years, I look back at the way I achieved my dream and I feel: If I had super powers today, my vision and goal would be:
If I had the superpower of belief that cleared all obstacles from my path, my vision and goal would be:
Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”
Chapter #5
The 43
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course.
A young man walks in to a house party in The Bay Area in the early 80’s. He tells a story of his father complaining about all the change he’s carrying around. “The prices are $6.43 and $12.43.” He’s imitating the accents of the bodega owners. Everyone laughs.
The next week, they all come back with stories of paying $3.43.Today, you can see and hear references to 43 in movies by Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, and TV shows by Dave Chapelle.
At 1:17:21 in “Being John Malkovich” the apartment is number 43. Google the director and the director’s early career.
These are planted 43’s. It’s an act of agriculture. gOrk, The creative director of the National BMX Hall of Fame museum, is a 43 historian. He and his friends tell stories of times they’ve been surrounded by them on bank signs that show weather, on speed check signs, on busses. 43 is everywhere.
When you observe one, you begin to connect the dots. You notice how you feel. You imagine your next step. You observe your confident next action.
You are among 43s.
Branches of science and theology have many things to say about this phenomenon. But none of them predicted how it would propel BMX and skateboard culture.
One curious thing about 43 is that once planted, it blooms. The Bay Area origin story of 43 is generally believed to be the beginning of the story.
Some, however, have reason to believe 43 was planted in that house party by the father through his son.Mid-lesson writing exercise
What do you have reason to believe regarding the origin of 43?: Looking for 43 is fun. Sharing 43 photos with your friends is fun.
Anyone can collect 43.
Imagine having a tough day. Imagine what it feels like to find a 43. Bonus if it’s been there the whole time and you just now saw it. Imagine what it feels like to connect the dots between 43 sightings.
According to sources, 43 is “the number of coincidence.”
When you share the idea of 43 with someone (and they begin to see it), you feel connected to 43.
You can search the Internet. For example, the possible tunnel to Cleopatra’s tomb is 4300 ft long and lies 43 ft underground.
A foot was not a unit of measure at that time in history.You now know the entirety of the story of 43. Someone brought it to a Bay Area house party in the early 1980’s. One week later everybody at the party was seeing it.
Then it spread person-to-person for decades.
It appears in TV shows and movies. It appears repeatedly in Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler movies.
It appears to have a life of its own.
Even the story of 43 has developed a life of its own.
Now that you know the story of 43, you can imagine yourself as part of it.The lesson: Observe the impact of capturing someone’s imagination. Even your own.
43 never tells people what to do or believe.
43 never scolds people or praises them.
43 just shows up at significant moments.
People give meaning to 43.
People give life to 43.
People hope to see 43 live on.
You can do that, too.
You can encounter an idea that feels good - a feeling that perhaps makes you feel close to God. Then you can breathe life into that idea and transfer that wonderful feeling to other people.
BMX freestyle is now what many thousands of people collectively made it over time.
BMX freestyle grew like a tree, branching off in well-traveled directions and branching off in rarely traveled directions.BMX freestyle trick names have a structure that goes back to a root. Many of the people who created the root of BMX freestyle are still alive to tell the story.
You can sit around a camp fire for hours talking about 43 and the origin and evolution of any trick.
That’s how 43 and tricks bring bike riders together.43 is a story. Trick origins and their evolutionary paths are stories.
Our life story is that we rode to success by telling and seeing our life as a story.
Message: You have a choice. You can choose your life to be a tragedy or a hero story. You will survive any temporary setback when you see your life as the hero story. You won’t quit when you’re set back - that’s because heroes keep going. And you’re the hero.
Do you understand the message?43 is a story.
43 can make people feel wonder and feel connected to a bigger picture.
Your life is a story.
You hope to feel wonderful and connected to the bigger picture.
You have the power of choice. You choose to keep going. The reason you keep going is: heroes keep going.
Message: When you act like something you become it. You play the role of it. Then one day you wake up and observe that you are it. You are the hero.
That is the mechanism I am instructing you to understand and properly apply to your life for all good things which you desire.43 is like a snow globe on your desk to remind you of The Power Of Story to shape your focus upon the theater of your mind.
You are sitting in the box seats along the right-side wall.
There’s a jungle on the stage.
A spotlight shines on a broad leafed plant. A second spotlight shines on another broad leafed plant. Then a third.
Because you own the theater, you instruct a fourth spotlight to shine on what you believe to be a fourth broad leafed plant. In deed, the fourth light finds a fourth plant.
Then you enjoy that scene.43 is a lesson in the mechanics of your attention.
Where your attention goes, an energy flows.
You can do this with things in your life.
Exercise:
Step 1: Look at your back yard and identify twigs.
Step 2: Set a timer for 5 minutes and 43 seconds.
Step 3: Go into your yard and gather twigs.
Step 4:
When the timer rings,
answer this question:
Was it more or less than what you imagined when you only looked at your back yard?
Activate your attention.
Seek.
Then find what you’re looking for.
Do what you love every day.
Stretch every day.
Walk every day.
Read parts of this course every day. It reminds you of principles that reliably lead to having what you love in your life.
That is how my road to success was paved: one daily brick at a time, consistently, without pause for 43 years.
Dave’s most-recent success is putting this formula to work and sharing it with you.
I’m telling you: it was one tiny step every day until one day Dave believed it was inevitable.
Then Dave walked through his day laughing at the setbacks because they seemed so classic and silly.
When I told Dave I was writing this course, we both believed that
you reading these words
was inevitable.
I am writing this chapter on August 28, 2024 while Dave is on tour at The Eiffel Tower in Paris performing BMX freestyle with my friend Alex Jumelin (who was mistaken by over 24 million people as David Beckham at The Olympics this summer).Workbook notebook
Write your first-time answers on these pages.
Thereafter, use a spiral bound booklet to write the questions and the answers each time you re-read this chapter.
Each month, re-read your answers from every day. Observe your gradual change.
The rest of this book is for you to make your notes.
Answer these questions:
What was your first success in your life?:What was the smallest success in your life?:What big success do you dream of in your life?:What success can you make a tiny step towards by writing it right now?: One success I dream of studying is:
If I believed I could achieve any success, I would set out on the road to achieve: Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”
Chapter #6
Find Your Why
The TerraDome
Sports Science Research Centre
presents
How
You Rode to Success
home study course.
Mat Hoffman is so deeply invested in his BMX freestyle dream that he underwent knee surgery without anesthesia so that he could continue to live his dream.
Your mission in life is to pursue a dream you love that deeply.Every piece of guidance you read in this course is a facet of Mat Hoffman’s mindset in that moment he decided to put himself into a trance in that Canadian doctor’s office.
It’s that simple.
2% spirit, 98% practice.
Every facet you read in this course is a poetic interpretation of Mat Hoffman’s mindset.
With that in mind, you must agree to take baby steps very intentionally toward your dream.
One day, you may be called upon to make a significant sacrifice so that your dream will live. For your own sanity, dream big enough that you’ll pay any price you’re forced to pay.
This is why I am training you to learn to pay for good things you desire.
The nightmare scenario you might face is pursuing a “dream” that isn’t worth the price you may be called upon to pay for it. The only way to not pay is to let the dream die.
Lesson: The only perfectly guaranteed way
to avoid The Nightmare
is to only pursue a dream
that’s worth any price
you will be asked pay.
Congratulations.
You turned the page from The Nightmare.
You can enjoy The Pursuit of your dream. The Pursuit must be gradual, taken in baby steps. You must always be the one who chooses to increase the intensity of the step (aka The Price).
In this mindset, a price is paid with money, and money has facets.
One facet is cash.
One facet is time.
I need both money and time to pay the price (aka trade) for what I want.
You do, too.You will pay with cash.
You will pay with time.
You will pay with attention.
You will pay with comfort.
Mat Hoffman paid for his career with tremendous discomfort. That mindset rode him to his dream.
You must also understand debt.
Debt is a measure of the things you have for which you have not yet paid.
You must track your debt.
Dave faced a moment of extreme discomfort when he made a promise to people, collected their money, then stopped making daily progress toward the goal for which they paid.
This was the scary period between the announcement of Back for More in ’24 and when the tour dates were booked. Comfortable with new money from the GoFundMe, Dave ran away because of discomfort along the path to success.
This pattern of behavior will destroy a life.
To overcome this roadblock, I held Dave accountable for his debt. He didn’t enjoy it.
Gradually over time, the discomfort of disappointing people exceeded the discomfort of making progress toward the goal.
At that tipping point, Dave began to make progress on the goal for which his friends paid him. That is how Dave paved his path to success.Practice:
At the point of maximum discomfort, Dave listened to someone who loves him.
Ron told Dave, “Dude, it’s gonna be fine.”
At that moment, Dave stopped resisting and began to take steps to ready the tour.
That was the moment Dave began (again) to live in Trust of The Hero.
Then, Dave paid the debt.
He made good on the promise he made to The People.
The People’s dreams relied on experiencing the first-of-a-kind action sports 40-year reunion tour.
Dave focused only on the dream.
The dream was the tour, it was the end game, it was the goal.
The end game was the goal. The end game was not the steps to get there.
That mindset allowed Dave to choose the steps as and when they were called for. He didn’t have to plan them all ahead of time.As a result of bringing the tour to life, Dave created hope in tens of thousands of other people’s minds.
That hope resembled, “If Team Haro can reunite after 40 years, then I can start enjoying BMX freestyle now and do it for the rest of my life.”
That feeling of hope propagated to the people’s life-partners (who hoped for a happy partner forever).
The kids of those people felt hope for a life of happiness.
Happy parents make happy worlds for their kids. Happy parents can make sad kids happy again.
If my math is correct, Dave’s promise of a world tour made 4.3 million people feel full of hope to be happy.
Then those 4.3 million people will propagate a feeling of hope across networks of people.
Therefore, when Dave delivered the complete Back for More In ’24 world tour, the entire world will have felt hope that it can be made happy.
As a result, what began in 1984 won’t end up like “1984.”That’s a story you can live, too.
That’s a story you can see everywhere. It is a perfectly reasonable direction of the story.
Happiness flows like a wave on a string.
You can choose to send a wave of happiness across your world with tiny bits of daily effort that habitually compound without end.
This can happen simply when you don’t quit.Exercise:
How cruel can you be when you do not have what you desire?:
How cruel can you be when you are aimless, without a goal, without a dream to warm your heart?:
Lesson:
The warmer you want your heart, the bigger you make your dream, the more you happily pay.
Like learning BMX freestyle tricks, start small and gradually build by focusing on the trick. Pay for it with time, attention, and comfort. Enjoy the feeling of hope, the feeling of progress along the pursuit, and the feeling of small accomplishments. Use cash to pay for the construction and maintenance of your own practice studio. Make it a temple to your pursuit.
Remember the story of Dave, who acted like The Hero.
The Hero enjoys life along each and every step of the way to The Dream.
The Hero’s Dream is so big it can be hard to believe.
I know this person (The Hero).
Believe me, it’s The Truth.You can do this, too.
This practice gives you superpowers. You must act in accordance with The Rules.
The Rules:
Amongst dreamers, there is a self-correcting mechanism that prevents cruel-dreamers from dominating the world. You must expect to encounter this self-correcting mechanism.
The self-correcting mechanism ensures your dreams will be safe. Your dreams will be guarded by agents that remain outside your awareness.
You must pursue a good dream so big you’ll pay any price.
You must pursue small parts of the big good dream first, then make daily imperceptibly small increments. Do so like learning a trick.Don’t quit.
Don’t be cruel.
Find others doing the same thing.
Protect good dreams.It’s that simple.
It’s 2% spirit, 98% practice.
You must believe this.
You must believe what I wrote for you in this course.
Then you will understand it.
The 2% spirit is: You believe that Belief is the mechanism that makes The Practice deliver The Outcome. I will gladly help you pay the price (sell you more courses) for as long as it takes for you to believe.
For my own conscience, I am telling you the punch line early so that you make an informed choice to allow me to continue to convince you.
You can choose to remain convinced by re-reading the same simple lessons with alternative story points.
If you need, I will continue teaching you this practice (in different ways) to keep you convinced to believe.
I will do this if you keep paying.Invite your life-partner to read this chapter.
He or she needs to know where your money is going and why.
This is how I monetize the Back for More In ’24 tour: I am asking people to give me money (a mix of cash and time) to keep them convinced to believe.Workbook notebook
The rest of this book is for you to make your notes.
Answer these questions:
My first payment for this course was this amount:My second payment for this course was this amount:I paid the author of this course to convince me to believe the following:My first small dream is: My second small dream is (after one month of paying for the first):
My next-largest dream is (after 2 months of paying for the second): Throughout time
The ones who saw through
The illusion of fear, pain, & despair
Have written in no uncertain terms
That faith and prayer change things.
They have also life-coached the
Prayer to imagine the single highest
(The Most-High) unifying principle.
For our purposes today, you may call that
The Way of The Stoke.
It works when you believe.
“From Belief
Comes The Stoke
To make The Trick
Come to Life.”