I'm not gonna lie to ya, Reader

I spent the better part of this summer fretting about attendance for this year's Bovine Classic Gravel Race–an annual international cycling event I started four years ago.

Last year, we had our biggest growth yet in terms of both attendance and snazzy press recognition. Somewhere in our monkey minds we had a wee (and unreasonable) notion that "all that good media means this year'll be a breeze in getting people to sign up early, right?"

Wrong.

That's the thing with expectations. They're premeditated fears and resentments waiting to come out when stuff doesn't go our way.

What's really happened is completely reasonable, and somewhat predictable. The Bovine is a luxury purchase, which makes it dependent on most people having some spare moo-lah lying around. All manner of uncertainty, however, has been this year's cultural vibe, and people are simply holding on to those fat stacks of Benjamins later and longer.

As July rolled around, my inner needle started to tilt a little towards the "uh-oh" part of the meter, causing a fair bit of handwringing, future-tripping, and imaginative self storytelling. There are healthy ways to use that imagination and not so healthy ways… my mind leaned towards the latter.

In fact, I did something I rarely do: I didn't look at our numbers for a full month. I'd like to tell you this was some kind of strategic, intentional self-care.

Let's face it, though, this was proper, out-and-out Bryan in intentional avoidance mode.

At the beginning of September, when I looked at actual numbers, something happened. The Bovine Classic had its best August … ever. Even more startling, we're only 1% off of last year's record attendance numbers.

Here's where I just choose to laugh at myself.

Our team has always known the trend with this event. 45% of our participants always hop into the herd in the last 60 days. Still, I managed to, as the young kids say, choose violence.

When I shared this with my dear friend Jeff, who's in the similar business of selling concert tickets, he shared this gem…

"OUR BRAINS WILL TELL US SCARY STORIES — and then dedicate our nervous system to coping with and drowning under the effect of those stories!"

My mind can be what the mystics call "a misery manufacturing machine."

But here's what I've noticed working with accomplished professionals: we're not just manufacturing misery. We're generating static–a static that feeds the kind of doubt, hesitation, and second-guessing that ultimately erodes our core self-trust.

Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees!

I often see this same tendency to manufacture our own misery in other insanely capable professionals too. It's the monkey mind in action.

The thing with monkeys is that they toss around their own poop.

Wisdom is the benefit of years of experience, but that comes with a cost. It comes with years of built up internal static. We have a very natural tendency to overly activate the muscles we train. When confronted with uncertainty, we train ourselves to tune into that static before finding our way to the actual signal.

Here's what lives in our static: unexamined beliefs, assumptions, silent expectations, and dogma.

Very often, we choose to act or not act based on what our monkey mind imagines it hears in the static. The challenge is when we start to scaffold identity and action based on this static.

I've worked with executives who've experienced powerful trauma in their lives. The kind that's situated them in a constant state of hyper-vigilance and a chronically defensive posture. For very understandable reasons, their inner static convinces their nervous system that every higher-stakes meeting is a form of potential high-stakes combat.

The static starts convincing them their instincts can't be trusted, when the real problem is they're tuned to the wrong frequency entirely.

Maybe where they work IS combative. But, it may be equally true that it's not. The net effect, however, is that their energy is being directed towards either attacking or defending… rather than being directed towards generatively creating.

This is where healthy skepticism becomes useful—questioning whether our assumptions about threats are actually accurate.

What Would Pyrrho Do?

This is a trick question.

Pyrrho, ancient Greece's OG skeptic philosopher, lived his philosophy of keeping an open mind and not taking anything for granted–to the extreme. By some accounts, were it not for well meaning friends, he would've walked off cliffs, been torn to shreds by angry dogs, or crushed by a runaway cart because he doubted its existence … and, thus, had no need to look both ways before crossing the street.

So, don't do exactly as Pyrrho did… but also do practice not taking anything for granted.

I'll admit that skepticism is my natural default. It's not the kind that tears down. Tearing down is pessimism with a sledgehammer. Pessimism is where hope, trust, and faith go to die. My brand of skepticism however, doesn't set out to destroy. It seeks instead to challenge, and says "show me" or "prove it."

I use it to interrogate my own thinking, and I use it on others too. Some feel it as a challenge to their identity, but that's never the purpose.

"Show me" is more to scrutinize our assumptions, pierce beliefs that may or may not be consciously operational, discard what is not actually true, and sharpen our actions. It's not about showing what we can't do. It's about more clearly focusing us on what we can do better.

The question becomes: are we applying that skepticism to our borrowed limitations, or to our actual capability?

Skepticism's built-in doubt works equally well on the things our beliefs tell us we can't do. I take a particular delight in saying "prove it" when a client tells me "Oh, I could never do that thing that way"... whatever that thing actually is for them.

Heck, even I catch myself saying "I'm not a writer," in spite of writing all the damn time.

Overworked Muscles Don’t Get Stronger. They Break.

Since my days of coaching people on bikes and in the gym, I've sought ways to apply foundational training concepts–range of motion, flexibility, mobility, etc–to this kind of durable self-trust work.

Jeff's insight about the effects of our stories cuts to the mechanical truth: our nervous systems become dedicated to coping with manufactured threats rather than responding to actual conditions.

The hyper-vigilant executive I mentioned earlier? They've trained themselves to treat every leadership moment as potential combat. Their nervous system is already fighting before their body's even in the room. The compounding effect is an overwhelmed, frayed self-trust muscle.

Imagine it like this. Your nervous system is supposed to be like a skilled mountain biker navigating unpredictable terrain–constantly adjusting, reading the surface, maintaining balance through micro-corrections. But when we're operating from the chatter of our static, it's like riding with a broken suspension system. Every small bump chatters through the body, and every decision point becomes a "skills don't fail me now" drop off a cliff.

This takes a toll on how we understand our self-trust–our identity-level capability to handle the terrain that comes our way. We end up asking ourselves, even at a below-conscious level, "can I handle this?"

First, Notice The Pattern.

Over-taxed self-trust systems need a kind of "neuromuscular" retraining that replaces outdated instincts. They need to be injected with a different self-understanding and self-awareness that brings a refreshed nimbleness, agility, and range of motion.

A friend of mine used to tell me "Gotta feel it to heal it, Bryan." I didn't understand what he meant until I was forced to look at some of my own inner stories, beliefs, and instincts. The instincts had become so automatic I couldn't even see them happening.

But here's what I've learned: the real damage isn't from having the thought "What if I can't make this vision happen?" The damage comes from immediately judging that thought as evidence of something terrible about ourselves.

Notice how quickly we move from having a story to deciding what that story means about us. "I'm having doubts" becomes "I'm weak." "I made a mistake" becomes "I'm incompetent." "I don't know the answer" becomes "I'm a fraud."

The judgment is where we get stuck. The story is just static. The judgment turns up the volume until it drowns out everything else.

Bringing attention to that pattern—feeling when we're judging rather than just noticing—is the awareness that allows the work to begin.

1. What IS the story?
2. What judgement am I attaching to the story?
3. What am I saying about my situation based on that judgement?
4. What’s the real headline, once I drop all my judgements?

So, Where Does This Leave Us?

The thing about static interference is that it doesn't just go away on its own. It requires intentional re-tuning. For some of us, that means developing the skeptical muscle to question our borrowed limitations. For others, it means building awareness of when our nervous system is fighting ghosts instead of responding to what's actually in front of us.

If any of this hits home and you're curious about what your own static might be costing you, let's have a conversation. I've got a few Strategic Reset sessions opening up in October. No pitch, no pressure—just 30 minutes to explore what stories your brain might be telling and what shifts when we turn down the volume on the noise.

Worth exploring if you're tired of your nervous system running the show.

Remember to breathe.

Your partner in climb, Bryan

PS - Murray's 🐈 approach to static interference is refreshingly direct: he simply ignores any frequency that doesn't involve food, attention, or prime napping locations. His nervous system remains remarkably untroubled by imaginary threats.

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