The first thing my physical therapist made me do, every single session, was to put me on a stationary bike of some sort. Even the first day; my job was to slowly move the pedals back and forth and stretch the quad muscles that had been affected by knee replacement surgery. By the last day of physical therapy, I was on the least favorite of the stationary bikes, with resistance, knowing with absolute certainty that the initial stiffness I felt in my knee would go away as I pedaled.

I have a bike in the garage, and I intend to ride it, again, but my brain kept reminding me of a few things. For one, I bought the bike a number of years back, and I had the pedal cranks replaced with shorter ones because my knees couldn’t bend enough to push them around. A couple years ago, before surgeries, I got brave and decided I’d perhaps try to take the bike out and see if I could add it to my exercise, but no — I couldn’t muster up the mental fortitude needed to get on the bike and move those pedals around.

Part of my issue, back then, was that I had to move the seat up more because my knees were even more limited. And I am short. A 26” bike is a lot for me, especially if I have to have the seat up higher; I couldn’t figure out how to get ON the thing without hurting myself. I eventually gave up the idea.

I started thinking about it all over again, each day I rode the stationary bikes at physical therapy. I started thinking about how I would need to take the bike to a bike shop and have the cranks replaced now that I have knees that actually bend. Honestly, the bike needs a small overhaul, anyway; the innertubes and brakes probably need to be replaced and other maintenance items tended to. I started mentally listing the things that would need attention, and then thought that maybe my best option, being a shorty, would be to give up the 26” bike in favor of a 24”.

Honestly, by the time I got through thinking of all the options I would have to consider in order to ride a bike, again, I had mentally run the price up enough that I started thinking that maybe bike riding isn’t in the cards.

Then, it came to me: lower the freakin’ seat, already. I can likely lower that seat as far as it’ll go and push those same pedals around without an issue, now. Because… NEW KNEES THAT BEND! That solves the shorty problem AND the crank problem. **smacking my forehead** Seriously, it’s a lot cheaper, too!

This is just one of the things I’ve had to learn about my own mental makeup — I tend to want to do mental gymnastics instead of looking at the most simple, most obvious answers when I fear doing something. Getting back on a bike scares the hell out of me, so my brain threw out all these roadblocks to why it would have to be WAY down the road instead of my initial goal of riding, again, later this year.

In the past, I’ve done the same thing with the entire idea of losing weight; I’ve thrown up roadblocks that make the whole process so difficult and so overwhelming that I’ve given up before starting. And really, getting started on anything, whether it’s weight loss, exercise, regaining a skill, starting a project, takes one simple step: starting. That means throwing out the things that we insist are holding us back.

It boils down to simple problem solving, switching from a mindset that lists all the reasons why I can’t do that to one that looks for solutions. All great things start small; they’re steps outside of the comfort zone until that comfort zone expands. Once the momentum builds, the ways we can continue to problem solve multiply, but we have to want it enough to take that first step.